Prose

Hercules and the Beast

Posted on by Emtage

You are a blessing written in cursive unto my subversive stare.
A code without a hope of translation.
Inviting misinformation.
You are the words that I wish I could write, and the fears that I will not fight.
Dare to look up from your literary haven – your heady heights of heaven – your misshapen multiverse of mesmerising musings and see! Do you dream? Believe! Do you feel? Be free!
If our world was not so woefully well-kept we would speak!

And the sigh of relief that the carriage would breathe at our meeting would christen the day – the hordes of the mindless, minding their own business would rejoice, their unmuted voices unleashed, abounding, resounding through the metal and tin that chugged and stopped and blew uncontrollably from destination to vacation to home and to back.
Jubilee! as we flee the mundane and the monetary and delve into your world in your hand – to my world in my ears: the tune of a rattlesnake who has learned to fly, gracelessly sliding from here to there.
Take me to Neverland, and may we never land, so saturated with dust and lust and infatuation we could be.
Take me to Wonderland, and wander, grand amongst the mediocre Marvels of my mind.
Meet me on Olympus, you distant traveller you
god of distracting diversion amid the swarm of infected sheep.

For this snake mécanique is bleak – its rattle too fast,
and it’s trumpeting cheerleaders too keen
to announce but the end of spectacular dreams.
So until the next Fate ties our strings,
I will remember you,
Adventurer
galant extravagant
Reading my life in the palm of your hand,
alone in your world and
I, unknown to the grandeur and awe
of the face behind the closing door.

Advertisement

3 September

Posted on by Emtage

Stepping stones.
September, September, September. Non ti ho mai amato.
The end of infinite joy, and the blow to the brain of a broken promise.

Monotony and repetition and boredom and more repetition and Mondays and even Tuesdays and repetition and deadlines and obligations and restrictions and still repetition and tube strikes and mind the closing doors and Downing Street is unpopular and living wage equal wage minimum wage wage and ever more repetition awaits.

Stepping stones to an opportunity for a chance to perhaps pursue an application to a lottery that may or may not lead to an item worthy of a CV.
Job satisfaction long forgotten.
Place of your own long abandoned.
Chasing your dreams long since soured in your mouth, never left the tip of your tongue, never more than a fairy-tale phrase – the once upon a time, the happily ever after of your hovel of a castle in which you have a bed and a cupboard and no drawers and a lightbulb and no curtains.
Disappointment, thy name is London.

And yet, we are the lucky ones.
We are the few.
Where are the refugees names immigrants we left to starve or drown or freeze to death on our doorstep?
Where are the African tribes we plundered and pretended to empower purely for political gain, and then abandoned?
Where are the people – who ARE people – whom our “people” rejected when they sought help?

British pride is no more than British snide comments waiting in line for our privileged (if over-priced) bus to take us to our privileged (if under-paid) jobs.
How are we so broken that we see injustice everywhere but where it’s worst?
Broken of brain and hardened of heart and ruptured of reason and I’m starting to believe that hope is lost.

The heart and soul of London has lost its heart and its soul.

…

…

Looks like rain.

A Genoese Caffè

Posted on by Emtage

Poetry is on my mind, in my blood.

It’s the focaccia I eat, the air that I drink, the nitrogen that lulls me into a false sense of security and addicts me to the silence of the sea …
It follows me into the darkest alleys of the Maddalena and pounces when I pause to seek out the moon.
It hears the flap of my flip flops on the road, and outruns me on my way to the world.

The devilish lullaby, once heard unpurgeable, sleeps in the bell towers and in the boats docked in the old port and in the museums that you stroll leisurely through, thinking yourself free of mind and of spirit.
But once a pawn or puzzle piece of poetry, always a pawn or puzzle piece of poetry. For the all-pervasive power of sentiment controls and dictates and upholds and berates and moulds and erases its benefactors.

Behold! The unrequited love of the written and spoken world, the word that takes on life feeds on our soul, rips our heart whole from our chest, and tramples love into the dust that clothes your bookcase,
all while watching gleefully on as we sing its elegy to the sky…