Choiceless Ceremony

Sitting at the choiceless ceremony

In complete indifference to the girl

Attempting to prise her way into my

Cold embrace, as it has been for so long.

You are all dolled-up with no one to kiss,

Nobody to hold your hand as my sight

Rests firmly on a former flame that was

Never lit because of the pretension

That time has helped me come to loath so much.

Tonight is the culmination of it

All, where the awards are given to

The worthy, and the months, days, minutes

And seconds wasted finally earn

Some form of recognition from their pears.

And yet you only have eyes for me while

Mine are set across our table at the

Beautiful woman in the cream dress, with

Those eyes that just light up whenever she

Laughs, with her golden skin so soft to touch.

And she sits there, blissfully unaware

Of the conundrum her grace has caused me,

The doubts her previous confession still

Raise in my mind, as I always wonder

If she really meant what she said before

On a cold September night long ago.

And what makes this whole thing tragic is that

You brought me here under false pretences,

Perhaps believing that we may share a

Kiss under the star light of this venue,

The Mansion House, a marble marvel lost

In this decaying city of false hopes.

And the irony is I posses no 

Feeling for you, and she has no feelings

For me; we three are just chasing shadows,

Conforming to this game they all play in

Their confines of calls and chat, just waiting

To be broken again, as you cannot

Prevent the inevitable ending

Naivety brings when you have no choice.

Golden

Desperate defeat left quickly behind

With the chance to dance on deity’s designed,

Shaped in September of a year now lost,

Fumbled through fingers as chores crossed.

I wipe away lashes, disillusioned tears,

Your disappointment and your future fears,

Realisation hits, you slowly start to smile,

No more excuses or drunken denial.

Surrounding circumstance is then ignored,

Past idleness forgotten by the bored,

Focus becomes present, to you and me,

The end of an era sets us both free.

Beauty resonates in your smooth cream dress,

In your golden skin I love to caress,

And it is up, not down, I am staring,

The lights in your eyes, the sign of caring.

And even when you can stand no more,

Alcohol weighing you down to the floor,

We sit in silence, your eyes shut tight,

And we hold hands amidst the passing night.

Your head resting gently upon my hand, 

While I stroke softly every silk strand,

And by the end I walk you to your door,

Waving goodbye to your kiss once more.

Shaken Hero

I see all the belief you have in me checked

And re-checked, again and again, doubtless,

Without a single clouded thought crossing

Your mind so sure of my capabilities.

Then, I see you look into a mirror, and you

Waver, unable to meet your own gaze

Because what you see within your eyes

Is a soul so restless it feels the need to act

Without rationale whenever it is pinned down.

Flight is always easier than confronting

The issues at hand, and flight is always

Your chosen way, one flight after the other,

Until the ash trail you leave behind from those

Cigarettes smoked in stress leads you back to

The beginning again, and you realise you have

Been running in futility from problems that were

Never irresolvable, just overbearing.

Claims of misplaced faith fall onto my deaf ears

Because the only faith that has been mislaid

Is your own in yourself, dropped somewhere 

Along a rocky road that has shaken you

Time after time, rattling your nerve,

Until you become certain that every little thing you say,

Every little thought you think, and every single

Choice you make is the wrong one that sends the world

Crashing down around your ears.

And I see, then, that you need to be told something

That can help restore your belief in yourself,

And your love for those around you

And for this life we have to live.

That one thing is this and I beg you to heed the words:

My love for you is unwavering

Because you are my goddamn hero,

Shaken, but not broken.

Suppression

Suppression of thought self-imposed
By a need to complete the trivial.
Those trips down lurid lanes on nocturnal nights
Within my mind have ceased because
Straight-seeing sight with sleep-filled hours
Is the only way to finish the task at hand.
Now a different kind of delusion grips me
As hours upon hours are spent staring at
Fractions that do not add up.
Forty over one hundred multiplied by five
And three-fifths, but why?
I do not want to be locked away while the sun
Shines down on my friends outside,
Who are living their lives to the fullest.
“Providing for the future,” they say,
“is as important as living your life now,”
But not when I am setting myself up for a
Life I do not want to lead.
And I can only drop to my knees in despair
At the feet of my table bearing the brunt
Of my being, a responsibility once held
By a pen set right into prostration.
This workload has numbed my very essence,
Stifling something that should come fluidly.
Not so long ago words would lash down on paper
With the same ease as rain falling from the sky.
Now, there is no rain, nor any words to go with it.
There is only sunshine.
Eternal.
Evaporating all the emotion from me,
Silencing my gift.


(my thesis is due in a matter of weeks, meaning I've little time to do anything but work on that - this poem is about the horridness of that feeling)

News: published in Minus 9 Squared

Minus 9 Squared is a literary zine that contains poetry, prose, photographs, artwork, and many other products of the arts by various contributors. It has only been recently set up and the first issue can be viewed here.

I was fortunate enough to have my poem Chaos to Silence published in this issue, and my friend Michael Fogarty also had a poem published (and, by random chance, the poems feature beside each other in the online magazine on pages ten and eleven, which is always nice).

All the work, both written and visual, is excellent, and hopefully there will be more to come from Minus 9 Squared and its contributors in the future.