by Rochelle Del Borrello
There is a wishbone stuck in your throat
it sits lodged between your vocal cords
amazingly it does not hamper your voice
in fact, it creates your voice
With every breath, you inhale desirously
ambition to replenish your want for success
The Wishbone absorbs your breath the split bones
two halves pluck you chords
not choking just your voice singing
with the expectation of ongoing expression
Such is the mysterious awe of the performance
the wish expressed through your voice.
Except the unexpected
because I'm bursting with ideas
and I'm going to do it all.
So insanely talented,
yet terrified to do anything,
destined to be nothing
but a frustrated artist
too busy watching Youtube
scrolling Instagram and playing
Candy Crush,
brainwashed into wasting time.
Soul crushed by comparison.
Why bother trying when
is it all taken away from you in the end?
Poetry is deceptively delicate
it's a whisper which gradually becomes a scream
a dream turning into a nightmare
which stays with you all-day
a compliment transformed into an insult
subtle niceties and manners on the
surface while being sarcastic and real below.
It is the truth, leaking out
of the heart despite itself.
The beat of a constant drum
below the flourishes of what we
create for ourselves.
Subversive, not submissive
honest razor-sharp observation
its words are strength,
they can be deadly.
Thank the muse for bringing the light
of poetry, into a tenebrous world.
My poetry is a constant whisper in my ear
a dark, haunting and persistent dream
my inner voice leaking out of my head
a constant weeping emotion
which is eerie, untamed and real
it is always uncomfortable
to share as the words come from an awkward place
yet they feel beautiful just the same
They are like little deformities
which express a deep insecurity
unpleasing to the eye
yet satisfying for the soul.
I coax them out of me like untamed wild animals
I watch as they slowly show me their savage power
I am always in awe of the epicness of human emotion
And how it can consume itself.
The tired gardens of Autumn are beginning to slumber, dry out and wither.
The smell of rotting fruit is somewhat enticing like burnt cake, pungent and warm
everything is left to rot, too late to ripen and even to be picked or eaten.
Rotten stink bugs rub themselves with us, our clothes buzzing in their attempts
to flee and fly away.
I grab one inside my fist and throw it making it fly even if it doesn’t want to,
it leaves behind its perfume on my palm
a strange incense smell that many think is disgusting
The odour reminds me of these short gloomy days with intermittent bursts of sunshine
and the inevitable promise of the encroaching winter
that bring moments of deathly silence.
Strangely these are my favourite days
to reflect and create upon.
You can reinvent yourself
endless times in life
so don’t be so precious
about failing,
just get up and reset.
_________________________________________
Don’t accept what others think
as the truth of who you are
you are your own creation.
_________________________________________
Today I ate, drank and lived
without sharing online
and I felt truly alive.
___________________________________________
I've never been able to let go of my delicate impossibilities
the airheaded dreamer holds onto what if moments
what would have happened along another path
with different people by my side
or even by myself.
I delight myself in remembering the gentle caresses
standing too close or too long with someone
regretting not leaning over and kissing
or not following someone to the train station
losing touch, moving on while holding on to a first love
never forgetting shared intimacies and always desiring more.
There is one fleeting moment which constantly
haunts me, a man I loved when he was but a boy
I worry perhaps he was my soul mate
he was a reflection of myself, and I have always loved him
I still have his perfume, I smell the odour of our youth
my innocence.
I wish him all my love
and still, I dream of him.
Did he see himself in me and flee
Perhaps he believed I forgot him
I'm a good actress
I can never forget that piece of me
I found myself with him
and I want to let him know
I will always remember you,
soul mate and love
even if you make yourself invisible
the delicate impossibilities will remain.
The bearded lady shaves off her beard
what a strange sensation
her skin tingles
the upper lip so smooth
she is almost cold
as erotic as a Brazilian wax
feeling naked she strangely misses
her fuzzy covering.
As strangers look at her
she realises no one knows
about her beard
only the subtle lines
of her pale face, dimpled chin
and a strong jawline.
Beneath her mask she is beautiful
but she never acknowledges it
or feels her power
she is always hiding, meekly behind
her overwhelming insecurities
she had left it too late
to be free from her plumage
past her prime, she rubs her
smooth cheeks and wonders who
she might have seduced
in her youth
if she had the courage
to shave before
then she suddenly desires her beard.
When words are all on the screen,
everyone forgets about
the love of paperbacks.
The love of softcover paperback books
shows how much you adore the written word.
Like vinyl shows a tangible love of music.
They show you are hungry for books
how you don’t have the money to buy the hardcover
and are resisting ebooks.
Lovers of words should touch them, write them,
caress them, hold them in their original form
smell them, know them as you recognise a human
as they come from the ether,
from whatever exotic country they are born in
to the writer, editor, to read them out aloud
then onto their home through the ages
to their final destination in some readers eyes, souls and dreams
to then finally, return from whence they came.
Battered covers are well-loved and re-read
crisscrossed calligraphy shows
classroom notes and learning
while yellowed pages are
a long-lasting love affair,
My paperbacks are like sunburnt Sienna.
I’m frightened to touch them else they will disintegrate
their tiny print was once easy to rip through,
but now they are difficult to read
they seem like spidery footprints
who gives me a headache
The paperbacks on my shelf are a time machine
they take me back to when I was young
voracious and wanting to read everything
now I still want to satisfy my appetite
I know I cannot read everything
so I’m more selective
I have moved onto a virtual text
which is as fleeting as a thought
when I finish reading a book
I often wonder if I actually read at all
I miss my book stacks
holding them and turning their pages
swiping on a screen is so mechanical
while touching, smelling and devouring each word is bliss.
I want to put it all in one song
but it won't fit
So many things keep me awake at night
vivid memories of regret,
something I should be doing and don't
endless what if's and perhaps
never quite happy with what we have
we torture ourselves in our sleep
Do you remember when we talked our way
into the new millennium?
A 2,000 filled with promise, just needed
to take a step outside of ourselves,
we felt we could eat the world up
but now there is only hurt
I ran away too fast and fell over myself
I didn't realise I was still attached
Tore me into pieces.
Now I'm humming along to the music
pretending to know the words
and trying not to piss on myself.
Is it just me or is anyone else feeling kind of lost?
Do the super-rich disgust you
and the poor make you feel guilty
of your plenty?
Is there strange serendipity when you read the gossip
as if you live next door to Miley Schwarzenegger
and are complaining about her irritating trashy pop music
being played too loudly
have you heard it all before?
Do you have nightmares of having your head chopped off
because you don't follow the right religion
or of being gunned down when you are sunbathing
on a remote beach
Kalashnikovs are arriving on rubber dinghies.
Does online seem more real than every day?
We post, postmoderns, Xennials
With an analogue childhood and digital adulthood
and virtual Millenials
are all lost in our heads,
and it's making us all morose.
I write because I can't help myself
it's an itch I must scratch
a craving I want to satisfy
I'd be lost without words
my companions on this journey.
As I read, I need to write,
my mind ticks over at many beats a minute
the brain overflows onto the page
despite the torturous process of giving
my thoughts some logical sense
we are as irrational as hypertext
leaping from one idea to the next
faster than thought, to hand, to page.
Still, I insist on putting pen to paper
I tenaciously grip my pen
even if I have a hundred incomplete ideas
who are all screaming for my attention
submerging myself into my thoughts
it is my meditation
a prayer I say to myself every day
to remind me to be true,
to exist despite every heartbreak.
Words come out from the ether
as if my grey matter is filled
to the brim
with a vocabulary
which needs to be liberated
the words would suffocate themselves
if I didn't write them on the page.
Writing saves my life.
We are a Babel of words
where once stood a tower of fluency
now lies the remains of Babel
a lost tribe with a fragmented tongue
there was a time we spoke
the same voice
a single extended family
with the same vocabulary
as the creator
A choir building itself up
with a deafening rumble of unison
a body of voices whose swarming
made the Seraphim look down upon the earth
A Babel of words uttering the one desire of all
to build up to the heavens
to reach the ear of God
The sound grew louder with a resounding arrogance
that pricked the ear of Lucifer
and sparked the anger of the almighty
Humanity felt superior to God
building up to the celestial dome
to reach to the highest point
Until the sound was silenced
as the monstrosity came tumbling down
everything was crumbled into pieces,
nothing remained but dust and rubble.
After the sound of an echoing universal language
first came silence as bodies were muffled and crushed
while others fled like ghosts coated in grit
then came wails of despair, muffled calls for help
that were misunderstood in the confusion of disaster
no one could hear one another
the speech of human kind had become
A Babel of words
Fumbling to rebuild something of the fluency
stumbling over ourselves
with shredded syllables
and fragmented cultures
a lost purity which crumbled with the tower
into undecipherable debris.
