Borderland

No feud is enough to keep me from you
I brave the barricades and the border guards
And you appear so near now. I journey
Through memories in dark and restless sleep
A bleak borderland, a stark, dry terrain
Where suicidal strangers meet.

We dwell within the ancient walls
Of a forgotten country, scorched and frozen,
By turns; haunted by a history of hatred
A decimated island on which matchstick
Children stand, tormented by the sun
And praying for death.

This is a vulnerable state, on the edge of hell
Sandwiched between two superpowers
Clinging to an impossible peace
And all around there are pillars of salt,
Crumbling statues of fleeing citizens
Who dared to look back.

The father says, ‘Son, take this gun’
And sends his progeny off to war
And he carves curses upon stone
Primitive and inglorious
Hit by one calamity after another
We are all crazy here.

Antidote to Winter

Inferno

Original

Place Holder

There He Goes Again

There he goes again
That mad, megalomaniacal monarch
Severing heads and hanging heathens
With on look we could condemn ourselves
One word out of place is treason
And often he executes without reason

He sits on his throne
A sumptuous fest spread out before him
He watches as the executioner does his work
He slurps and slavers as he anticipates
Future killings and bestial blood lettings
While all around him subjects shudder

‘Your Majesty, it was not me’.
They cry. But it is rather like addressing
The indifferent sky. With a gloved hand
He waves them away. He had never had
So much fun. Power makes him high
Power makes him fly…

And his reign has only just begun

In the City

My Late Father

I missed the anniversary of my father’s death. He passed away in July 2013.

I had been sitting here for years waiting for someone to rescue me. A knight in shining armour perhaps. Or maybe a member of anonymous. For two years I waited on this island nation otherwise know as my sofa, surrounded by a sea of red carpet. But nobody came.

And then they told me that my father was dying. He had terminal cancer. But to my eternal shame even this failed to break the spell. I remained unable to tear myself away from the excuse for a life I had created for myself.

(And let me emphasise this: I did this to myself. What I did is widely know as ‘narcissistic withdrawal.)

I only visited my family three times a year and left the burden of caring for my father to my immediate family. They shouldered a heavy responsibility. I have no excuse for letting them do this without me. They spent a large part of their lives on the cancer ward of the general hospital, negotiating with consultants and making my father as comfortable as possible while I sat isolated on my sofa, paralysed by anxiety which sometimes spilled over into sheer terror, rocking backwards and forwards, playing ‘This Too Shall Pass’ on a continuous loop.

My father fought his cancer valiantly to his last breath. But in July 1913 I received the phone call I had been expecting. My father only had ‘He’ll be gone by the morning,; my aunt told me. ‘Come home if you can.

I whispered back, ‘I don’t think I can.’ And then a voice in my head said ‘You must. You will never forgive yourself if you don’t.’

So, in the end I did manage to tear myself away from my tiny  four-walled country. I caught a train for the first time in a decade. I arrived at my father’s bedside at the last minute. The heart was still beating, the motor still running. I kissed him on the forehead and he responded by whispering my name.

They said that he had been waiting for me but the blanket skeptic in me rejects this notion.

A few hours after we returned home from the hospital my aunt kocked on the door of my childhood bedroom to tell me that he had died. ‘He’s gone, Louise’. And her choice of words somehow comforted me. For if he had gone then there was a possibilty that he might come back.

In situations like these magical thinking seems like the only option.

Portraits: Winter/Summer

http://bellarie.deviantart.com/art/Carved-Out-of-Stone-112635144

On Boxing Day

Warning: Tediously self pitying content ahead

I wrote this on Boxing Day:

(Fun Fact: Boxing Day was traditionally a day off for servants and the day when they received a ‘Christmas Box’ from the master. The servants would also go home on Boxing Day to give ‘Christmas Boxes’ to their families.)

I have given myself five years.  I am severely mentally ill, unemployable and thus, economically unproductive.  I am a useless eater. I am also childless and possible barren.  I have no life and I am terrified of the future.  Life is brutal and I am not equal to its challenges. (Note: I see this as my failure not the failure of life itself.)  The one and only human being who loved me for myself had departed from the planet.  I have decided that if I do not get a job, have a child and a meaningful relationship in the next half decade I will erase myself from this world.

If I were a mangy cat I would have been put to sleep long ago.