Fragments from 2007/2008

Victim

I’m tired of playing the game.

I’m tired of your trembling and of your cowering.

I’m tired of your collective victimhood.

I’m tired of the taste of blood,

The fat coating my tongue.

I’m tired of dousing myself in the ashes

and putting up the act. Do not prostrate yourself in my path.

I’m tired of drinking your blood

I’m tired of my flamboyant blood-streaked hair.

I’m tired of my head-ripping strength.

I want to sink down, weak and forlorn

I want to be a victim.

The hate speech reverberates infinitely

That boy whose blood I must draw

And these red monkeys

Flagellete self

With pointy hatred keen

I draw blood

Mine

The ritual exorcism

Always fails

And for ever more

The long dead vengeful wandering ghost of hatred

Causing choler and melancholia

Traverses my body

In its long aborted

Attempts to be born

She would shudder away from the possibility of a breakdown. In spite of the drama she craved, she hated being too loud. So she buried the little hairy ball underneath layers and layers of forgetfulness. Coating it with the mother of pearl sheen—it was precious and secret, after all. It seemed to her that she stood on the brink of the great big abyss managing to cling on somehow in spite of the tremendous allure of the fuzzy, unending darkness of oblivion. Later Dr Cherebous would say that she ‘was already nearing the great impact of the fall’. The Fall. From deliberate forgetfulness or innocent misinformation. Nobody told her—you’re alright. They all wanted to squeeze out all the drama out of her while they could. She who hated public displays of emotions but was invariably melodramatic. A secret craver of Plathian neurosis she waited and waited for the intense pain-pleasure of the masochist. It never came. The intensity was missing in everything but her desire for it. So, frustrated, she pushed everything away. They went away, happy to conform to the roles of victims.

the keen edge of a knife

slices off so perfectly leaving the white bone bared.

I want a rusted saw to hack at me again

And again

Make me feel pain

Not the keen pangs of the living—

But to bring me back from this undead world

Hack me into feeling

Pain, love

Transform this wormy flesh

A self-conscious cat

Sleeping

When it feels your eyes upon its

Furry yellow body

It wakes up

To greet you

With a silly smile

It swats a butterfly

Its whisker incandescent against the white page

Its tail curled up snail-like

You just can’t make it purr