this is what I said into my audio recorder on the train back from Colchester followed by the one I said in bed, during a sensory overload on Tuesday:

Photograph by Elinor Rowlands

It’s extremely fast and it’s black outside

Let’s hope as it gets darker

I’m on my way to London or so I'm hoping because I was (running running to a platform with no number and a train with no name and a destination with no location. (G would have agreed with you about it all Gem. Your names G too. The 2Gs are right about the stories told from the people used, by the people not seen as people but inspiring stories from, why can't they use their own stories? aren't their lives inspiring enough? G'd have called it wrong, patronising, contrived, damaging, telling not showing, stealing not breathing. why are our words wrong until regurgitated by them, why when from their pen, is it considered right?

breathing,

she had that in there too.

I am seeing flies, as flying eyes, as my eyelids soft, are burning now, from tears that felt glorious before to release

and now,

are dry and I can't make any,

only breathe, see into the darkness, this might be a tunnel or the sky falling down, with us training in the sky flying.

I'm only seeing them as lies, as grease you accidentally wipe and have on your hands and can't get them clean again,

The flies are open, all of their mouths are itching

Licking up the leftover food all over the cabinet shelves

The flies are open all pinned down on the roofs of tins

Their mouths scream open all waiting for fresh air but they can’t breathe, their lies are open all unguarded, inside out and down underneath the mattress ground

The earth is red, we are screaming with our tonsils on fire - they write words as directed but are they actually telling stories?

The earth is shedding water, one teardrop at a time, the land is flaming desert, dry above a muted brushed open sky my fringe is despairing of me

If a bit open into fruit of juice of tasteless effortless breath that nosedives down inside a heartless sea of rain, of big clusters of light of fathoming might I am rightly holding the paper in shedding dry hot earth and bursting might of heart gash gunk trunk

The geese teeth -there are many front and back

The opening letterbox

The fireworks we left behind

The popping

In the dark I am climbing shelves of metal leaves I am burning up the dry ones in my cauldron pot - I am opening my heart until the waterfall slides about

For there’s no structure inside the bone cage

Beautiful sensations

Beautiful beastly

Beautifully tight

Frozen cold ice dry

Air mouth

Seething

Air grasping in my throat

Tight airways

Opening a fuller gaze

A wall that doesn’t know it’s a wall

Its paint dries off my sleeve

A beg your pardon

A man not able to open up to hisGarden.

Then the peas

The peas are green.

Sliding around on my plate.

(later, in bed)

Say new words: inside language of not being understood once expelled outside

Yellow.

Just tonight I am armoiring myself as an armoire in the clothes of myself bringing close the cloths of lined dreams

Just tonight I am arming myself with the armoires of the armour of your love and amourative the armed torturing of my love this sweet shell casing cave crate thinly sliced signing on the batter brick butter of warmth

Drip slipping down lips slipping down slopes hoping for a denoting breath.

Air.

Reached inside a whales tongue, a sheep

For turning over arms up in a field, the others have run off.

He lies there as it rains.

In air hoofs to star, a good wink.

A clasp of hands, a ditch of turning, separate a hold - a paper throat a voice like pencil shavings stick in sharpener the tone of voice that they shout down are you ready for this truth?

Nay, they are not

A cold hearted twist of birth bright in the sky, yonder cloud.

How doth

Steam and brink of morning light

Do not cower behind the open tails of my

Fraught

I hold distance

Breath in

Breather.... run (brethren)instead some words I couldn’t quite ascertain

Me

And me

In the field now in the distance broth cream peasnap and happy contentment

It is in bridges that we sheepishly distance our hearts

Moon clap, trapped behind branches

All this makes sense to me.

All words, puddled imagery, all is sensical not hysterical sheared.

Dreaming.

On a long branch wooden crisp and dry like sandpaper

The slip of song

The throat whistle.

Do I dare ever speak again?

E C Rowlands, 2019 copyright