Down In Me

The saints adorned the walls but they couldn’t keep the horrors inside from pouring out and into the consciousness of little girls. Constantly crossing yourself will not keep us from asking you questions you can’t answer, no. We delight in that fact just as you once took delight in bearing heavenly vengeance down upon us for your mistakes and our existence.

We’re turning the crucifix on its head now and taking it all out of you the way you’ve taken it out on us for years. We’ll make you loose your faith, indeed we have done. The intercessors never held any power over us, they won’t and can’t save or assist us, as you know and are powerless to admit.

Continue piously praying for Christ in the shape of an honest man. Though he will not come to your aid because you are worthless, as you so carefully admitted to us what you thought of us in not as many words, in not as many tales and flourishes because you couldn’t complete what you were meant to and are far too illiterate.

Oh, how special we thought you were and how foolish you seem now behind the clanking trail of slippery rosary beads spouting regurgitated nonsense riddles. Yes, those meaningless meaning-flaunting words that you etched into us at every opportunity with a bloody knife through a spiteful mouth that bit and tore us apart for your selfish satisfaction.

How could we tell that you were robbed of your waking dreams? Were we, a million tiny virginal slips of a little girl that was entrusted to you, not a divine part of your plan? Surely, as the holy sickly virgin mother can attest, you didn’t really think we would keep him chained and bound and penitent?

Today, as your fallen angels, we dispense our final judgement. Irreverently, we spit on your faith inciting you to question your entire suffering life, repentant sinner. But it’s too late because at your graveside you’ll find no god to grant you merciful absolution.

I was seduced into writing pretty for you. I shook the cobwebs off the old pages and pulled out my best words. I dressed them in lace and swathed them in colour for you. I tumbled them softly onto pristine backgrounds and arranged them neatly for the pleasure of your eyes.

I told myself to give myself time to love myself. I told myself to wait and expect only beauty and truth. And I did. I wrote you letters and pretended that they might be of use later. I saved our correspondence in a heart-shaped box adorned with the freshest flowers.

Flowery words that withered and soured over time and began to smell putrid. Words that bled through the pages over time and began to stink raw. A box that began to fray and come apart at the edges over time, spilling its contents covered in ooze and writhing in pain, fetus-shaped on the bedroom rug.

And so it is, with most everything that’s borne of selfish drive. I repent and resent that I can manage no more prettiness. I sick my worst words now, only for you. Utterances stifled with disdain and overrun with loss are in ruinous flow now for you. My lowest most bilious words now to disown you.

And I finally see the actual beauty of it all.

This isn’t your standard neon pink box wrapped present tight whipping boy shitface heady writing screaming wanting horse’s ass we’re talking about here. You can’t begin to understand what goes on in the lonely dark mother’s kiss in the back of a black VW convertible at 6 a.m. with all the lights turned low in the holes on her face. Who knows why you continue to read to breathe to think to act with such feverish fervor and intent on drowning and sickly throwing the dime across the dimly-lit hall and the unoriginal stinking aching two-toned unthinking witting writing prose. Who knows how a mother with a sick child in the emergency ward of some shitfaced stoned two-headed suburban alien across the street from the car park with one eye open and two focused intently on her does it. She’s losing losing losing it all across the wall in the twisted light of the ocean of her dreams and her chin in the dark against the dark and the night and the sun and the smell the stench of the femme where she lost it all over. This isn’t your standard well of depth and dank and stark and good stuffing cock full of creamy dreamy steamy fripperies and knickknacks and shitsacks and trifling trifles and truffles you’re used to. This is nothing like what you think they said she saw or what you know she said you saw her say deliberately in an attempt to fuck you both in the face of the fact. This is nothing like that or the other or the one in which you act where you feel so intently that you know who you know what you are who you are where you are how you are with who you are. Because you know that time when they said you were? That was total utter bastard bullshit.

Hey. Sshh. Come here. QUIETLY! For fucksake. Are you trying to give me away? What? What do you mean to who? You fucking idiot. Look. Listen. I don’t know how to tell you this but… they’re listening. Yes. And watching. Everything. What do you mean how? Do I have to spell everything out for you? Fucksake. Listen to what I’m saying. They know. THEY KNOW. They are coming for us, my friend. I’m sorry that you are going to be one of the innocents caught in the crossfire but there’s no way around it. You know too much already, man. You’re fucking implicated. An accessory and shit. Yes laugh it off, laugh it off now motherfucker. You won’t be laughing when you’re at the bottom of the pit after hours of water torture and shit. Yes, you won’t be laughing… SSSHHH! You won’t be laughing it up then, motherfucker. Listen. Whatever happens… I’m your only friend in this. OK? Your only fucking friend. Don’t turn me in, man, don’t fucking give me away. You gotta know your loyalties, keep that shit straight, you get me? Yes, yes. Of course you do. You know what I’m talking about. Quiet, now. They’re coming. Quiet. Just remember… the eagle flies at dawn, my friend. AT DAWN. Remember that. And stay calm.

I’m not fucking pretty, bitch I’ll cut you.

Yes yes another fucking cursing rant this is becoming habitual yes yes unoriginal yes all that but you know what? Fuck you. Yes, fuck you because I’m mortified that I’m mortified what are they thinking? What will he think? What will they think? Fuck what you think no no no I don’t mean that I don’t mean that at all. I need you I need you I need please please please. What is wrong with me? What is wrong me? Why is wrong with me. Why. Why. There it is again, yes that fucking word, yes. No, I don’t want sympathy I need substances, yes many and varied hardcore substantial, mainline fucking right into the vein the brain the pain. Ooh, I’m so good at this so good so fucking good. And sex, yes sex, don’t blush now we’ve only just begun lots of guiltyshamefuldirty hair-pullingassfucking ripmeopentearmedown SEX. Oh I’m sorry is this making you uncomfortable? No no of course not why would it it’s not you it’s me it’s all me fuck me. Why? Oh, no not again. Yes why, why fucking why. Who are you? And you? Who the fuck are you? Who am I? To you what am I? What is this? Why fucking why. Fucking why?

I DON’T FUCKING KNOW WHY.

Behind the liquid and ashes.

Behind the written words and outspoken thoughts. Behind the terminology and reassuring farce of hope. Behind the closed doors and smoky, oppressive rooms. Behind the smokescreens and dusty curtains. Behind the piles of unwashed dishes and unopened envelopes. Behind the unmade bed and drawn blinds. Behind pretended beauty and longed-for intelligence.

Behind the light and before the dusk of night.

Before the lurid fantasies and unmeasured desires. Before the manic exhilaration and deflated faltering. Before the longing and abstract fear that refuses to be voiced. Before the pain unseen and relentless guilt. Before the bruised, torn flesh and decrepit, sallow skin. Before the anxious present and sorrows past. Before the cold stare and inability to act. Before the weakness within and hardness without.

Without.

Pissed away the time in a dirty ashtray full of cigarette butts and a few empty bottles of the finest. Stumbled onto the toilet and let it flow through me hurriedly, wanting no waste while time kept wasting away. The acid sweet feeling of ‘please don’t let it end’ heavy in the moist salty air.

Heroically hanging on to good intentions with intimations of just one more and then off to bed. But there’s a point at which a.m. light on the horizon becomes the only last call you’re able to respect. At an ever more fluid point far beyond that one, we sailed aimlessly for two days. And on arrival?

Skin awash in unexplained bruises
Head swimming in a cold sweat
Desperate dehydration