Copyright 2020 Sonny Clarke
Day 1: Clear with a chance of calamity.
I watched a distant fog today descend like the inky-black skirts of a fat-arsed grandmother slowly lowering her arthritic self down onto the roof of the world. If only I had watched closer, I would have seen the slithering shadows break away from her ankles and follow some of us home. When we are alone and it is quiet, it attaches itself, it’s fangs are sharp but painless. It starts off tiny, a frail, hungry leech but it grows swiftly as it feeds on my mind. It may feed for a day or two and when it is done it has grown into a monstrous looming mass with large pointed limbs like a dream of Dali. I have been left drained and deflated; It knows that now is the time to strike. It raises its spider-like arms and reveals shining butcher hooks. It plunges its many fingers into my skull and it lets out a terrifying scream that is my scream stolen from my mouth and sucked from my lungs as if I were helium balloon at a party of darkness. It hooks its barbs into my brain and pulls at the spaghetti fibres that hold the program of me. As it tugs at the strings of my life my eyes widen, the popping eye-balls of a marionette and the light becomes hot lasers that burn every image that ever existed in the world onto my retinas. I close my eyes-lids but there is no relief, I will carry these emblazoned images for days to come and they will not stop burning like pyres in the night. The beast saves one of its needles for the very last act, with surgical precision it implants it deep within my right temple and will then carry me around by this blade for the next full day. My body is limp and I am blind but the shadow carries me like a horror hand-bag on the arm of the child of death.
Day 2: Sun-Razors and Rain-Glows.
A new day dawns and I cautiously awake from a sleepless slumber. I have spent the night with the movie of light using my eye-lids as a silver screen. As I open my eyes I can still see the burning images I have collected on a minds-eye. I swallow the moss in my throat and work up the courage to feel at my temple; my hands tremble with fear, but the blade has dissolved somewhere in the night. The pain is now just a dirty stain, a stain that will throb at my heartbeat for one more day. My mind is missing, wiped of all memory, this is how it lives on. Simple thoughts are an endless maze with the meaning hidden deep with-in the twisting, turning hedges of language. I stare at times, mouth open wondering where I am who. There is nothing for me but silence and stillness for my body won’t want to move and my mind won’t know how to move it. This is the waiting day.
Day 3: Showers with a chance of hours
The fog has now lifted and in the mirror reflection I can see a resemblance of me, bruised and limping but somehow still whole. At least I hope I am whole, who knows if all the spaghetti in my head was returned by my vile visitor. I want to vomit and I want to cry and I want to shit all at the same time but I settle for taking a deep breath and thanking what ever it was that has set me free. Today I tell myself to keep an eye on that fat-arsed fog the next time it sets in but I know tomorrow I will absent-mindedly let the shadows in.
Day 1: Clear with a chance of calamity.
I watched a distant fog today descend like the inky-black skirts of a fat-arsed grandmother slowly lowering her arthritic self down onto the roof of the world. If only I had watched closer, I would have seen the slithering shadows break away from her ankles and follow some of us home. When we are alone and it is quiet, it attaches itself, it’s fangs are sharp but painless. It starts off tiny, a frail, hungry leech but it grows swiftly as it feeds on my mind. It may feed for a day or two and when it is done it has grown into a monstrous looming mass with large pointed limbs like a dream of Dali. I have been left drained and deflated; It knows that now is the time to strike. It raises its spider-like arms and reveals shining butcher hooks. It plunges its many fingers into my skull and it lets out a terrifying scream that is my scream stolen from my mouth and sucked from my lungs as if I were helium balloon at a party of darkness. It hooks its barbs into my brain and pulls at the spaghetti fibres that hold the program of me. As it tugs at the strings of my life my eyes widen, the popping eye-balls of a marionette and the light becomes hot lasers that burn every image that ever existed in the world onto my retinas. I close my eyes-lids but there is no relief, I will carry these emblazoned images for days to come and they will not stop burning like pyres in the night. The beast saves one of its needles for the very last act, with surgical precision it implants it deep within my right temple and will then carry me around by this blade for the next full day. My body is limp and I am blind but the shadow carries me like a horror hand-bag on the arm of the child of death.
Day 2: Sun-Razors and Rain-Glows.
A new day dawns and I cautiously awake from a sleepless slumber. I have spent the night with the movie of light using my eye-lids as a silver screen. As I open my eyes I can still see the burning images I have collected on a minds-eye. I swallow the moss in my throat and work up the courage to feel at my temple; my hands tremble with fear, but the blade has dissolved somewhere in the night. The pain is now just a dirty stain, a stain that will throb at my heartbeat for one more day. My mind is missing, wiped of all memory, this is how it lives on. Simple thoughts are an endless maze with the meaning hidden deep with-in the twisting, turning hedges of language. I stare at times, mouth open wondering where I am who. There is nothing for me but silence and stillness for my body won’t want to move and my mind won’t know how to move it. This is the waiting day.
Day 3: Showers with a chance of hours
The fog has now lifted and in the mirror reflection I can see a resemblance of me, bruised and limping but somehow still whole. At least I hope I am whole, who knows if all the spaghetti in my head was returned by my vile visitor. I want to vomit and I want to cry and I want to shit all at the same time but I settle for taking a deep breath and thanking what ever it was that has set me free. Today I tell myself to keep an eye on that fat-arsed fog the next time it sets in but I know tomorrow I will absent-mindedly let the shadows in.