Breaking, I reach for the poem.

I thought I had a break.
A break in the madness,
but now the break is somewhere else.

Crushing bleak love
hammers inwards.

The desperate black
months long been so threatening
the hand wavering and hovering
falls again.

A hand punches
a hole in my chest
back again. The last time it was here
it never really healed.

The face that soothed me
turns no other cheek
turns no cheek whatsoever
just turns away.

Someone else will get what I wanted
again. What I loved
what I needed.
What I thought, for a I moment, I had.
Or so she told me.

Mountains rise and fall
but mine just keeps on keeps on rising up
and I havent got the legs
or the heart
to keep the climb.

One heart healed the other hurt
and now they both burn as new as a baby
feverish and fatal,
damning heart hurt.

The desperate, crushing black
the illness in me
learning me and thrilling
ripe on my shoulders, rippling as it runs across
and thrums through my brain.

The illness in me
that is me as I was born and bleed
wants to kill me soon.
The illness that destroys me moves
and pushes all away soon.

The black belief has no reprive
and no relief.
Not so as I breathe I do it freely from’t.
Damning black.

So black it has no name.
So full it has no mass, no weight.
So wrong it knows no right.
So swollen, cruel and crushing,
all in a moment and every
one of them.


Smothers me in all it's hell
and laughs at me.

So long as I remember me
I remember it too.
Days and nights and shame
and frights.
Always living.

The illness in me hates me
and I hate it back, with all the hate I feel for me
and more.
All the fuel they give to me
the words and wounds
I use to hate it.

The black wont leave when I bleed
and the black wont leave when I scream
and the black wont leave when I cry.
The black leaves
when I leave.

And it wants to leave as much as I do.

Hate me and I’ll hate me too
hate the blackness and brightness that I wish for
that slips away and runs
like the light from the light.

Fix me
and I’ll be perfect.

I've got the makings of a wonder in me,
the mind works too much
the body works not enough
because it's all broken.

Fix me
and I’ll be perfect.

Fix me
and the black leaves and it’ll just be me.
As I want to be,
As I dream to be.

Swallowing me and thorns in the back of my hands,
splinter and spit me out
slashed and scorned and sleepless.
Laughter in the black.

You didnt see the hell in me
but now you do.

Now you do.

Script.

Just thinking about how I want to get writing some scripts again, but I can't think of any stories. Even if I could, I don't feel like I've got the time! I've got driving lessons and tomorrow I'm going to see Ice Age 3 with a friend then I've got to go and see another friend in hospital, then I've got more driving lessons and shopping with dad and doing other stuff and at some point I need to sleep! God knows when that'll be though. Well hopefully I'll get writing some scripts at some point soon, there's ideas buzzing round my head but at the moment they're so vague they barely exist, if that makes sense?

I've also been reading back some of the stuff in my moleskine (my verse) and can't help thinking how bloody crapping awful it is. I used to read my stuff back and like it, used to think it was good but now it all seems a bit...shit. I don't like that. Think I'll spend some time over the weekend writing, if I can separate myself from the parents and get some time on my own. Call it homework if you will. But hopefully I'll enjoy it. Think I need to get reading some more poetry/verse to help me write stuff. As I've been reading more novels and watching more films I've felt more of a pang of want for writing books and scripts, so maybe that's the way forwards. Or at least a step in the right direction.

Moving.

Just a relatively sparse post today.
Things seem to be moving along nicely in my world, touch wood. Had my first go in a car on fathers day, I did stall first time :( but second time managed a lap of the car park :D then I broke the car. Well, I didnt, but the problem decided to ruin my driving as I thought I stalled and then the car wouldnt start again. Poor car is still in the garage and having to be transferred to a diesel specialist as our garage is stumped. Poor car.
My provisional licence arrived this week and Im booking a taster lesson asap. By taster I mean I want to find out whether I want to learn intensively or non intensively - I know I want to drive. Quite excited about that! Got a visit from two friendly police officers earlier on today telling me that I need to go to my local police station at 6.30 on Tuesday, which means that chapter will finally be over. A final warning is one step below a caution so thats a piece of marginally good news too.
Bunnies doing well, took them to the vets the other day for a health check and their myxomatosis vaccination and it turns out they may in fact be sisters not brothers! Will keep you posted. They're both developing their personalities and tastes for their favourite plants in the garden that they're not supposed to eat! Little scamps...but they're so cute I cant get mad at them :)

Other than that, just got a few things I want to get done. Here's a rough idea;

• get my verse moleskine up to date with stuff I have managed to write
• start on the cahier
• read the huge stack of magazines waiting to be finished/started
• clean up my macs hard drive 
• get reading The Unbearable Lightness Of Being and do the college assignment
• sort out my desk drawers and assorted crrraaaaap.
• get writing some more verse! really want to :)
• get new pens :)

So there you have it, my little update for today. Cant really be bothered to go into more detail over everything cos I'm tired lol and, if I'm honest, cant be bothered in the slightest at the moment :) 

Oh and by the way, IM MELTING!

A 'poem'.

For some reason this evening, I felt like sharing (for the first time on blogger) a 'poem' of mine. I put the word poem in inverted comma's because I always feel there is a stigma attached to the word and though I'm unsure why, I don't like using that word to describe what I do. But that is what I do so tough luck for me I suppose.

This 'poem' was the first thing I wrote after the events of NY'sE, and it took me quite a while to work up the courage to post it on my livejournal, but after I did it seemed to be fairly well received, so now after the weeks/months I've spent jabbering on at you lovely lot over here, I though I'd test the waters concerning my 'poetry'. So here you are. Feel free/please leaves comments letting me know what you think, when it comes to my 'poetry' my favourite bit is the feedback.

EDIT: If this seems to be received well, I have many more to share, including some personal favourites.



Untitled

Curled up under a tree
next to a lily pond;
wish away the hours gone,
stolen
by a claw with one finger.

Breath in the green
of the silken, shattered fronds
and feel them shudder
in the lungs.

Rest easier in the arms of oak
and grass,
a plentiful safe house
of nature and nurturing tongues;
no evil, no fear.

Pass time with passing insects
always feared before
now not so much.

Not so much as the claw
with poison dripping
and bastard strength, poised
to steal from anyone
without thought.

A bag of barrels
hidden under a bushel, ne'er
disturbed.

You're disturbed,
you bastard.

You've peturbed, left me
is all I can fathom.

Talking to words.

Yet again I am not asleep and it's tomorrow. Today. Whatever. Yesterday was not as good a day as I'd hoped, as it seems that my tutor will have to know what happened at NY's and thus all my lecturers will be made aware of the fact I am under pressure. Not really sure how I feel about this, as on the one hand it means that I'll be able to get support when I need, but on the other hand, I wanted to be strong enough to get through this alone. I guess I have to realise that might not be possible, and that that's okay.

On the subject of writing, things seem to be slowly, slowly starting to move. I'm starting to get little phrases pop into my head again, true, not anywhere bear as often or as good as before, but they're there. This may explain some of my more seemingly random Tweets, as I've taken to Tweeting them so then I don't forget them, and they're somewhere I can find them. In terms of the essays however, progress is a little slower unfortunately; still haven't written a word for most of them.

After another 'funny turn' yesterday/today, and plenty of napping, I'm now more than ready to sleep. Will post more tomorrow.


iPhone post

Day.

By my logic you've already had your photo for today, so you can go whistle if you think this post is going to contain anything for you to look at. I'm up and livejournal-ing again as of...the other day or somewhen, have posted some actual 'poetry' today, not too pleased with it but something told me that I just need to start posting again, maybe then things will start coming back to me. Since I started this blog, I've been debating whether or not to cross-post any of my 'poetic' offerings here as well as over on lj, and I'm now thinking that once I get going I will probably bring a few over here too.

Still not really had any luck breaking the writers block today, and it is starting to get me down. I have two quite important deadlines that have already been extended, and are looming once more and now I'm so afraid I won't meet them and I'll end up having to repeat this year at college. But I am trying to remain positive and focused, trying to not let this beat me.

Tomorrow I am off to a UCAS event, where hundreds of Universities will be displaying their wares and attempting to seduce me with their prospecti...I'm kind of nervous about it, because, as I have mentioned in previous posts, I'm feeling more than a little unsure of my future at this stage in my life, and tomorrow will either reinforce that insecurity, or cure it. I know which one I'm hopnig for.

I did it. I actually did it.

I broke the silence. I've broken down the wall. I'm fighting back. However you want to put it, what it means is this; I have posted on livejournal again. True, this first post is not poetry, it is an explanation of sorts, but that doesn't matter because I now know I can do it. The rest will come now, I'm sure. At least I hope it will. The post there ran thus, and will go someway to explaining to you followers here too;

Deep down I've been ready for a while now, but something was holding me back. If I'm honest, I expected some kind of full on epiphany before I felt I was ready, before I made this move, but that's just not the case. Somehow, somewhy, this feels right tonight.
Over the past few days I've had conversations I've needed to have, and admitted things, things I'm scared of, things I'm feeling. One of the things I admitted, was that I was scared that what happened would cause me to lose my one true love, my first love; writing. Ever since I learnt how, I've written; short stories, poems, essays, novels, plays, movies. I've revelled in sentence structures, assonance, consonance, sounds and rhythms, patterns and so on; I’ve pored over essays, writing and re-writing, drafting and re-drafting them. And then, a few years ago, I fell deeply in love with poetry. My first attempts, young, simple and naive were, quite frankly, terrible, but then about 5 or 6 years ago I fell into a depression. It is only now being diagnosed. I think I’ve known all along. This depression however, seems to have spawned one good thing; my writing. Well, at least from my point of view the writing from recent years seems less like a 12 year old moaning about how cruel their parents are, and from the feedback I’ve had from others, it feels like I might be good at what I love. So, over the past two years I threw myself into writing. Over the past year, I’ve thrown myself and my writing on you lot on livejournal. Over the past 3 months, I’ve retreated. It’s clear to me why.
All I will say is this; something happened to me in the early hours of New Year’s Day, 2009 – something that I would not wish on my worst enemy – and I have been struggling since. For the first month afterwards I threw myself back into ‘normality’, which possibly in my case was not the best thing to do. In recent months, I have found myself spiralling further back into a depression I never even clambered out from, and struggled to cope.
Part of why I feel ready now is that after the conversations I had just two nights ago, I have decided that I am not going to let anyone destroy me, apart from me. The only person who I am going to let grind me down, make me cry, make me give up on everything, is me. And I’m not ready to do that just yet. So I’m fighting back. I have to, I have no choice, because I want to live again.
This is perhaps more than you need to know, perhaps more than I need to say, but I feel in another way that I need to say this. I’m not sure why.
Part of the repercussions of the events of NY’sD meant that I abandoned my writing for that first month; I did not pick up a pen and put it to paper once – I could not. My usually un-silence-able mind had fallen silent, had nothing to say. Then, slowly, it started murmuring, then, towards the end of January, after another few hours of crying in bed, my heart burned through my fingers and I knew I was ready. My head started screaming again, and I had never been so glad to hear the thousands of words all fighting to be written down first, brawling in my brain once more.
And so, I won the first battle, but since then I realised I was still losing the war, of course. I had not posted anything real since the 19th December (apart from a piece of prose written as college coursework that I sort of threw at you almost out of desperation; I think I was trying to show myself what I needed to start doing again). That realisation scared me, but what scared me more was the thought of posting again. And then that broke my heart. I didn’t want to be scared of doing what I’ve always done; writing things and feeling that warmth in the heart when someone else likes it, or when it touches someone, means something to them.
So now, after weeks of promising you I would be back, I am coming home.
He will not win the war he started.

So there you have it. I now feel ready to rejoin my world over at livejournal, so from now on I think I will be posting poetry regularly there again. This doesn't mean I'll be abandoning this blog though, oh no. This blog offers me so much as well, I'd be foolish to give it up. Once I get going again at lj, I'll probably post some favourites over here too for those of you unable to get at my lj, and just because I can :)

Like I said, he will not win this war he started.

Bottled it.

Yesterday I had the bright idea of saying I would try and take at least one photo per day, and make at least one blog entry each day; so here goes for today.

The story behind this photo is fairly simple; as with every day I got on my normal bus, although today it was a double decker which threw me a little bit as it offered me more choice of seats than I could cope with, so I dithered in the aisle for a millisecond whilst I tried to scan and pick without people noticing, and then I took my seat at the back on the left hand side. I have to sit on the left hand side of the bus - it doesn't matter where really, although the back is preferable. I'm not sure why. Anyway, I chose my seat at the back and put my feet up on the opposite chair (which is the one in the photo), pressed play on the iPhone's iPod, sat back and started rolling a cigarette to the sound of Fleet Foxes.

When I'd finished that little job, I brushed the little flakey bits of tobacco that had fallen into my lap onto the floor and sat up, feet on the floor, leaning forwards. It was as I did this, and looked out the window, that I saw this bottle wedged between the window and the chair opposite, and then noticed the pen next to it. Something, and don't ask me what, grabbed me about it, so I dived into my pocket, wrenched out the iPhone and took a photo.

Todays image has also been through a fair bit of image editing because the light levels made the original image look faded and over-saturated, but I still can't decide if I'm as happy with this picture as I am with the traffic lights. Something about that photo really grabs me, and its quite possibly one of, if not the, picture I am proudest of having taken.

Daily photo aside, today went well. Still slowly working up the courage to post some 'original writing', but that will come with time. I hope. I am still physically writing things, lots of things, but that's about as far as it gets at the moment. Just too scared of letting something go out there, of letting others see something so personal. In time. In terms of tweeting, today was a quieter day from me, didn't have as many conversations going or as much to tweet about. Tomorrow is Red Nose Day - that means costumes, friends, fun and music; and all for a brilliant cause - I can't wait. Having been to one of the poorest countries in Africa myself, I know how much good Comic Relief money does. Give generously, raise enthusiastically, have fun, and remember what you're doing it for.

Night all.

Maybe

I was thinking, maybe it will be easier to start posting 'poetry' again if it's here, on the new blog. Perhaps an element of the courage-to-post struggle I've been experiencing is because lj is something that remains the same as from before what happened, so I don't want to go back? Which really annoys me, because I'd built up a good sense of community over there that I don't want to lose. Another element is probably that, technology wise (blogs in particular) I get bored easily of the interface, themes, general layout etc, so probably sub-consciously that was a part of it. All in all, I don't want to lose my writing because of this. He's taken enough; he's not taking this. Writing has always been important in my life, from the little stories I used to write as soon as I learnt how, to the many discarded attempts at novels, plays and movie scripts, but most importantly; my 'poetry'. Personally I hate the word 'poetry' (but we'll save that for another day) but I guess I've always written it. I'm a musician too and lyrics are basically poems, so 'writing poems' is something that comes naturally. Over the last 18 months or so my confidence as a writer had been growing, (you could say it was even overtaking my confidence as a person) as I found the courage to show my writings to those in the know. But now, after what happened, I find that my stomach fills with a crippling sense of dread at the thought of posting anything online, where anyone else can see it. I didn't, no couldn't, physically write anything for about a month after, but then gradually it started coming back to me; little phrases here and there, that would just pop into my head like they used to, need writing down again; complex rhymes and rythmns would float around and need to be accounted for; once more, I would find myself desperately having to write something down for fear of losing it. The mojo was returning. But now, at this stage, despite having written full 'poems' and pages on pages of phrases that all could be developed into something more, I still can't show it to anyone. If he had left me my ability to write, I would almost be able to forgive him everything else, but the fact that he has taken my confidence as a writer...sounds ridiculous I know, but it's true. Writing was all I had, it was the only thing that I was even slightly better at than others, it was my art. Maybe one day, it will be again. Here's hoping.

Shall I...?

Was considering compiling a blogspot post of some of my favourite posts from lj?
As blogspot doesnt possess the lj import function of wordpress (but lets not talk about that hassle right now) and I kinda feel like it. But it will take bloody ages. Hmmm?