Twenty-Past Three Read online

  © 2009 The Author

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form or by any means—graphic, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or information storage and retrieval systems—without the prior written permission of the author.

  ISBN: 978-1-907179-20-4

  A cip catalogue for this book is available from the National Library.

  Published by Original Writing Ltd., Dublin, 2009.

  Printed by Cahills of Dublin.

  THIS IS WHERE I CAME FROM

  It’s funny a conjugal union,

  that to a wider audience,

  bore the verisimilitude

  of parenthood.

  For this little one

  that found herself

  deposited in their care,

  the order of the day was

  to proceed cum grano salis.

  Her, implacably ruthless,

  Him, surreptitiously lustful,

  Collectively they personified

  the paradigm of coffering abuse.

  I was deft at imaginatively escaping

  this temporal existence,

  to a being incorporeal,

  skilled in the power of inviolability.

  This aegis may be described

  as an ephemeral one,

  the return to the reality

  of a crepuscular darkness

  inevitable.

  Literary adjuvants

  offered further succour,

  and are now the most

  familiar of friends.

  Determination and an angel

  Betty purged the affects of this

  misappropriation of innocence.

  The past now but a cadaver,

  redolent with decay.

  Future is the chalice, the Topkapi

  of this closing scene for

  that is where I came from,

  this is where I’m going to.

  BLOOD ON MY MOUTH

  Blood on my hands,

  Now awoken from my torpor

  Induced

  By three decades of

  subconscious vacation.

  Swollen limbs,

  the containers of shame,

  astute in the collected art

  of secrecy and silence.

  This body atrophied to a kind of amphigam,

  a city of the world’s desire decimated

  to a mass of occluded orifices,

  a pilfered cornucopia

  nauseous with the pungent yearning

  to become the sort of place

  That means to detain you

  IF THE WIND WILL TAKE YOU THERE

  Austerity is the aesthetic,

  It began with early-morning hallucinations,

  blisters appeared ominously thick scars

  bathing me in the blood of another.

  The body wears its’ shame

  heavily, remorselessly.

  My abiding memory…

  hemmed in by white-coated technicians

  with startling efficiency,

  foraging like eager hunting dogs

  deep in to the path to the womb

  to their expected course.

  Tradition dictates that this

  assault is accompanied.

  The final push, dark and relentless

  We didn’t shake hands officially.

  Yes for those who pummelled

  our soft bodies we remain strangers.

  The rising sun is warming the tops of the trees.

  We are not is Shakespeare’s Arden now

  but through the branches it is just possible to see

  the endless sky stretching out before you,

  If the wind will take you there.

  IN THINKING OF YOU

  In thinking of You

  As a genius liar

  As an accomplished cook

  As a violent thunderbolt

  As a cold murderer

  As a compulsive spender

  As a part-time gardener

  As an unmitigated pessimist

  As a xenophobe

  As a colourful dresser

  As a schemer

  Alone

  GARDEN PARTY

  My garden likens your garden.

  Why does my garden liken your garden?

  And my face is the same as your face,

  but this is my space and in this place

  I choose my life, terminate all strife

  And mow the lawn.

  THE DROWNING

  A store cupboard memory

  You towering above me,

  mouth twisted, carrying the

  rictus of power and hatred.

  At five years old my only foibles

  were an inquisitive mind and the

  ungainly knack of catching you

  in your moments of ramifying callousness.

  I questioned as my head was repeatedly

  thrusted below the level of the bathwater,

  the air filched from my lungs,

  that this unlikely prenicious act

  may secure my release from your daily torment,

  my heart racing, both cheering frenetically

  at this possible departure and announcing,

  my remarkable supplication to live.

  Your incredible desire to expunge me

  from this physical existence did not

  render this tiny body impotent

  but raised this amphibious vessel

  to the acme of enigmatic impregnability.

  And when a maker’s rage

  deigned to this child’s

  impalpable omnipotence,

  a nebulous haze descended

  on a mission renounced.

  Know that………….

  I want you to choke

  on the utterance of my name,

  I want your heart to atrophy

  and decay at the memory of me,

  I want you to acknowledge your

  preponderance of indelible acts

  of inhumanity towards me.

  I want you to plead for forgiveness

  I want you to crave forgiveness………….

  I want you to set your soul free.

  LOSS

  Loss has made me…..

  bitter

  ANGRY

  CONSUMED

  distrustful

  spectacularly lonely

  prey

  that loss could make me

  original

  F R E E

  RECAST

  OPEN DOOR

  A room with a bed

  Parent trap exuding

  sweat and shame.

  Childhood refuge

  and innocent betrayal.

  A single mosaic

  masterminded in effortless joy,

  an articulate bandage

  on this seeping wound.

  The door,

  a flimsy metaphor

  of apparent safety,

  between childlike freedom

  and adult voyerism

  now deliberately removed.

  Yet still the heavy presence

  of the scent of danger chokes.

  A new face to an old enemy

  proves too difficult to exercise

  open door notwithstanding.

  PIE-CHART

  A silent pause,

  and the disapproval

  was axiomatic.

  Provenance of an insatiable desire

  to shamelessly measure oneself

  as a series of failures.

  Fulsome directional criticism

  arises out of a demanding inner

  longing for unapologetic acceptance

  that of oneself by ones
elf,

  and oneself by another.

  Rejection is the simoon that

  swiftly purloins the seedling

  of root and perch.

  There exists no decorous substitute

  for the self.

  Somatic death of the soul

  at the feet of temerarious remarks

  Vamoose!

  Arise as both fellow and variant

  Even if affection is suspended.

  Arguably self-approval is imperative

  Save rarefied.

  UNTIL WE MEET AGAIN

  I remember you.

  I remember the powerful

  feeling of togetherness we

  experienced.

  I remember your wide smile,

  I remember your tender hands,

  I remember your deep gaze

  that ignited a turbulence within me.

  I remember our dramatic parting.

  I remember the rite of passage of

  our inborn, a dual recondite loss that

  saturated my heart in darkness.

  I remember our heavenly entente.

  I remember in perpetuity.

  I remember to remember.

  I remember to unhand.

  WHO AM I?

  Who am I?

  I give in

  Don’t fit in

  Maybe step my way…

  It’s lonely.

  GESTURES

  Gestures,

  Can’t say I love you

  Can say I see you

  Can’t say I need you

  Can say I acknowledge you

  Can’t say I like you

  Can say I stand aside

  Can’t say I trust you

  Can say I will engage

  ………………………………………..in time

  PERMANENCE

  It seems immutable

  this struggle for life,

  It also seems inevitable.

  My capacity to be overwhelmed

  often by this burden for existence

  has inevitably created the standard

  menu whose regular features are

  disappointment and frustration.

  There are precedents,

  They are called memories,

  Does memorable mean forgettable.

  THE GREEN ROOM

  Why must you linger

  like the stench of rotting flesh,

  your screams now for recognition

  too loud now to ignore.

  Why must you pattern my

  body with your mark that

  diet or determination

  cannot seem to revoke.

  Why must I be reminded of my

  passage to this day

  When can I shut my eyes

  and yield?

  When can I open my door.

  WHAT FOLLOWS ON

  My last one….

  I thought I was prepared.

  Hours of self-analysis had

  liberated me from the

  drawer of self-deception.

  I incorporated successive

  corrections to this narrative.

  Whilst not having a working title

  for this nascent maturation,

  I chose to take action and again

  participate in a partnership for which

  I was noticeably disinterested.

  I have never known those of you

  beyond my closest friend,

  that I can confidently assert

  gained my admiration.

  This time, and the last time,

  I was all but aware, if anything,

  this union was scant consolation

  for an accomplished self-reinvention.

  I participated because

  I couldn’t not participate.

  However much my intuition

  yelled caution,

  it has generally been

  summoned to submission

  by the all too wearisome

  demands of another.

  I view this history with misgiving.

  Certainly the influence

  she could exert with her

  lessons in self-sacrifice

  in favour of the controlling male

  set the standard by which

  I subconsciously measured

  a prospective union.

  I concede these suitors fell

  lamentably short

  of the calibre of the person

  I had imprisoned

  and have since released.

  I think what I did not

  know how to do was be

  Now I cannot imagine otherwise

  FAIR WELL

  Trees, variegated bark exposed.

  A chestnut anointed my head

  today as I strode in search of

  the quotidian broadsheet.

  Emirates airline has placed

  an order for seventy A350 airplanes.

  I’m ready.

  MAKING SPACE

  A spider’s feast

  separation.

  New, wrinkled as a baby

  visiting Visconti, Sylvia screams

  “Who’d walk in this bleak place?”

  WHITE FLAG

  If I had read the script

  could I have rejected the part.

  If I saw your face could I have

  chosen another.

  If my spirit was weaker could

  my consumption of loss

  been less barbaric.

  MANY TEARS………

  ….yet

  I live

  And from there

  I learned

  And now I speak

  Thus.

  PASS

  Not enough

  and………………too late

  An abrupt alert, sinister

  in it’s delivery, a “sneak attack”

  RIGHT NOW

  I refuse to respond to your calling

  OUTRAGE

  Reprimand myself for any perceived weakness

  RETROGRADE

  I thought you could no longer reach me on this orlop

  CHOKED

  Have I really understood the inconsequential passing of time.

  PARALISED

  For the moment, perhaps.

  FORGIVE ME

  Forgive me,

  The rancour I endure silently

  towards you continues unabated.

  Though the occasional moments of

  tolerance you express for those

  around you softens as a welcome

  mat at the doorway, they are but

  false signs of hope, enigmatic almost,

  and you are foreign once more.

  Any thoughts of a reconciliation revolt,

  confirmed by those boorish comments

  surrounding that wedding, unattended.

  incessant aggrandizement of bodily

  weakness save imaginary illness, the

  fastidiousness directed at elements

  of conversation where silence is appropriate.

  How spectacularly skillfully you eschew

  all opportunities for redemption,

  prerogatives one deems portentuous, lost.

  Explicitly atone for all your crimes……….odious

  The death knell.

  IN THINKING OF YOU (II)

  In thinking of You

  As a victim.

  CHOCOLATE ON SUNDAYS

  Among you we are crushed

  as a peppercorn under a pestle

  as an ortolan by mouths in black hoods,

  pressed hard in a vacuum pack

  as cheap spongy bacon.

  SPIDER’S FEAST

  Breath that burns

  Dead awake.

  SOUND BITE

  Historical restrospective

  In the warning scent of treaty

  Links ally in support, opposing

  details lost in pictorial fiction,

  a different reading.


  Insatiable dreamer,

  An important day.

  HOME COMING

  Tonight,

  I wish to dance over the moon,

  I wish to awaken Neferttiti

  from her slumber and together

  sip the nectar of rose petal syrup.

  I wish to gather with the lepidopterological

  Monarchs on the hills of Michocán and drown

  in the scent of the first hanami in late spring.

  This is my home coming, legato.

  I could not have moved on

  from where I had never been.

  In silence lays understanding.

 

 

  Sarah Gibbons, Twenty-Past Three

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