ugly stage

FREEWRITING EXERCISE #92

The sun must dip under the horizon
like ducking under a gantry,
breaking its way into a secured compound
where the secret to all that makes up
happiness
can be found,
or perhaps,
where every past love has gone to die
a slow burning
as they grind their knees to dust
on the cold uncaring linoleum floor
of an unnamed factory
pumping out name after name
for some unspecified purpose

many things now exist
without purpose or meaning
just stationary in their spotlights on
the stage of some higher power
as they sit around waiting
for the light to beam them up
or slowly cook them alive

I am one of those things
I am determined to be meaningless
I do not need a Wikipedia page
although it might be nice
nobody needs a Wikipedia page
just like nobody truly needs
a suitcase full of twenty billion dollars
how large a suitcase I don’t know
possibly the size of 3000 olympic-sized swimming pools

I don’t need anything
I mean I am alive
I have a roof over my head
and a love all to myself
I am fed and clothed and warm
I can enter a store
and not have shifty eyes follow me
but the entirety of human civilisation
is built to emphasise and sharpen
that pang of want
want
want
to keep the gears turning
blood sweat tears as lubricant
for foreplay
for the foreman to keep the machine going
again, for some unnamed boss
who earns more than everyone else
without having lifted a finger
and you will have people
throw themselves onto
the railroad spike of progress
if only to say

there is nothing wrong with anything ever

Freewriting Explanation: Every day, Valen shall use 5 minutes to write completely unprompted and uninterrupted, letting the words lead the way. There is no end purpose to each piece, but rather, the pieces are allowed to develop naturally in their own way. The pieces are then uploaded without edits.

FREEWRITING EXERCISE #91

Photo by Scott Walsh on Unsplash

A week from now, the sea will
bend itself back, pulling at the
edges of continents and islands,
tugging them together again with
the slow patient touch of a long-
loved grandfather. Yesterday, I
dreamt about the long journey
it would take to shorten this
distance; in a snowy terminal,
flanked by snaking briar trees
naked for the winter, I could
see you, lugging up one
suitcase after another onto
a sleeping, humming bus;
I could see the slow burn
of relocation, how each
little gesture is but
a larger step of moving on;
I can see the rear view of
the bus as that white world
is left behind – oh how the
bus will turn onto the
interstate, and how
the planes will take
off forever and ever.
I am imagining small conversation,
a bustling airport, and you
sitting in a cafe thinking
about home, and maybe
when you are done
with your morning tea
in the well of the teacup
I’d be there in the dregs
as though a vision, a sign.

slowly tugging them
together again.

FREEWRITING EXERCISE #90

Photo by Mubariz Mehdizadeh on Unsplash

There is a slack in the arm,
where the elbow
bends taut
like a crane
dipping its head into the water.

Its beak
disappearing
only to reeemerge
filled with fish.

The way the scales
must run,
all slimy and cobblestone,
down the tongue.

To cut to the point
I am feeling
like a felled tree
the thud of timber
muffled on my mattress
and there, being no birds
to fly off dramatically into the distance.

I wanted more from this life,
I wanted suspense. I wanted
dagger-throat romance,
I wanted sea of green swimming-pool,
bills plucked fresh
with their faces still clean.

I wanted absurdity, I wanted freedom,
and now all I have is peace, and
a little quiet on the weekends,
yet some wind in my chest
is rifling through the
papers, flipping
the channels
and water splashing like a prophecy
onto the banks of man

I don’t know what it is I want
but I never feel like I have it

FREEWRITING EXERCISE #89

Photo by Craig Whitehead on Unsplash

An intruder in the garden,
two steps by two steps.

We are alone
but only for the brief period
between one hue of the sky
to another.

The sun sets
too soon
for any work to be done
and we are home again

Waiting for the minute hand
to lay itself on twelve

Twelve hands
Twelve bodies
Twelve silver bells

Chaos sprawling on a chalkboard,
skidmark green, bloodstain red
numbers and words all mud
there was some meaning here

when I write about this
we will be in the same unnamed garden
looking for the first sign
of winter’s wilting
and the wane of this

I call it this
I don’t know what this is
I don’t know if this is named
or if this is specific enough
to only apply to me
or us
or anybody within my periphery
bulbs in the distance
or bobbing on the water
the light dips,
and disappears,
and dips,
and disappears.

let’s go drown ourselves
in a pool of tomorrow’s luxuries.
let’s go throw ourselves off
into a cloud of serendipity.
let’s run into traffic.
let’s run like we’re invincible.

I don’t love you but I wish the best for you.
I don’t like you but I wish the best for you.
I don’t know you but I wish the best for you.

Or maybe that’s what the clouds meant,
that day in the unnamed garden,
morphing from one blurry face to another.

FREEWRITING EXERCISE #88

Photo by Donna Mccoy on Unsplash

Variations on a theme.

The taste of freshly cut
pear in the mouth, the
off tune of seagulls by the pier.

The swirl of wine
in a green glass bottle.

In this poem, we are
going, back to a time
when we did not know what it took
to hurt one another.

People strolling down the sidewalk,
a hustle of seagulls fighting over a fry.
Two right angles
seated on the same bench.

I am not looking at you,
I am not.

All birds are the same to me,
all feather and chaos
in flight,
beaks scissoring to cut,
their throats all filled with protest.

I do not remember why
I remember any of this,
I do not know why
you don’t.

It’s a simple matter, really,
a scene from a time
one could
classify
as better,
but, for now,
has resigned into a box
in the back of a dusty storeroom
for which the door is always kept shut.

FREEWRITING EXERCISE #87

Photo by Michael Jin on Unsplash

Imagine the head as a puzzle
box, thoughts like silver
bearings running through
a suspended maze, translucent
walls of varying colours, rotating
in the hands of some unseen
child. Imagine – silver,
dripping slow, hot
down the canal
of a prisoner’s ear,
imagine being lead
by the hand to a
field of flowers
before finding the gallows in the middle of it.
Imagine – the lack of surprise.
Imagine, peace and anxiety
muddled together in the same unwashed coffee mug
and you, hurriedly drinking the slop
to quench a thirst that never runs out.
Imagine being content to be
thoughtless and meaningless,
to float undisturbed in the ether
of God’s womb, and
to find no pain hence.
Imagine being
the only consciousness
in your sphere of concern,
and then rolling down a hill
into a busy intersection
and the middle of a 4-way crash.
Imagine confetti scrap metal,
imagine loud screech of claw on asphalt,
a tire burning to mark the occasion,
and someone’s quiet sobbing a week from now.
Imagine not being afraid of being afraid
to live, imagine living, imagine dying.
Imagine thinking at all.

FREEWRITING EXERICSE #86

Photo by Garret Silver on Unsplash

Silence, then. Silence on a
silver platter, silence in the
central column of our spines.
Silence in the hallways. Three
steps down a wooden staircase,
the familiar gallop of a man
rushing on his way to work;
his hands running down the
bannister as though a flourish
on a keyboard. In the deep
thick mud of my insignificant
anxieties I find myself wily,
swapping sound for sound,
as if to put together a whole
different place to reside in.
At times like that I do not need poetry,
and this is a conscious reminder to stop
conforming to the squared box of my daily
reality, and to believe, to believe in a higher
order to all of this math, this give and take
of humanity and its relationships, the
daily division we sow amongst our
selves, the seeds of doubt sewn in
the folds of our brains, the notches
on our spines like bookends on a shelf,
sorting out these fears into little organised
militias, sending them out to
fight proxy wars against myself.

I admit that I am full of anxiety,
but I work on it

I admit that I know that I am anxious
but sometimes it really does feel bad
and I guess I have nothing poetic to say about that

I admit I admit I admit that I am anxious
that this will not be a poem but merely
a thinly veiled rant and perhaps dressed
in the sound of the present’s wrapper
being torn open on a warm christmas morning