Out of Time

Nothing to listen to.

Sweet quiet on the airwaves.

No sound, no beat, no base notes.

Emotions controlled by the music in life.

Unexplainable joy, sudden sadness.

Feelings changeable as the track in the playlist.

Short stanzas, stable and permanent.

A desperate, emotional, need to be heard.

Sounds odd, sounds selfish, sounds petty to write it.

Honesty, honesty is self conscious, self aware.

So maybe that is right, self worth, self actualisation.

In a minor key I look back over everything I have done, over two ages.

I have a joyous overtone, a ring, from E minor, to G, D in to G.

Insignificant though it might sound the distance I have travelled, the distance from little ball of original sin.

I was baptised, I was brought up Christian, joyful ceremonies in the modern church, joy without laughter.

An open respite, but I am not quite telling everything.

Onslaught of being young, developed in adolescence, then an empty feeling when I went back as an adult.

Though I remember feeling... something... now, empty, lazy, sleepy buildings with deep shadows in the curves of the wall, and where the whitewash meets the burnt clay ceiling tiles.

And now I don’t have that faith I used to suppose I had, I have fame, and that is my new belief.

I have been lying through song throughout my whole life.

In the silence of summer we all felt our own rhythms.

Understated but explicit, changing rhythms with hair switches.

As though I only listen to the first part and skip on to another record.

I don’t work, I don’t need, I don’t emote.

I am moving on, moving out, from low to high, because wouldn’t you be.

And I watch time passing, know what it means to spend time, and I feel the rise, every one followed by a fall, and that’s the end of my day, low, and that’s where I pause, thinking back through a shallow empty period of time, and the mess that I have made and how I will have to clear up in the morning.

And I dream on bodies that aren’t mine, thinking them glorious.

I didn’t dream it would be like this when I woke up.

Feral that works both ways, instinct that cuts both ways.

Given an idea of heaven, no, you’re not told what to expect, you’re just told how to get there, as if it is real, and everyone can work out what it is for them, our own dreams, not clouds and big guy in sandals, and the show of love I made back then, wasn’t that good enough for heaven, didn’t that feel right?

It did.

God was invented in a moment like this; and beatification doesn’t seem to add up here.

You could treat this as a minute of silence.

I am just alone with the moments in my memories, moments I cannot put words to, moments I should cherish, cherish.

I want to move on, but there is this pause, with some delicious chord progression, on a go slow.

In the long grass, in the sun, this insect came across me, long blue body, warm cold-blood, cool-fire light, ice hot-spring.

Sunspots, flares, and the lens glare inside my eye.

The tones are warm, rich yellow and taste of summer, the hours are long and I love these people I am with, and I want to play that game, anything to get to move to move closer to her and to talk to her, making eye contact across the rug, making me forget all the childhood, and all the adult to come, feeling more than forever.

But tomorrow, it feels a little empty, a shallow happiness, after the night, we tested it in the hottest conditions, and like bright from shade it just doesn’t seem right.

Like there is good will, but not much more.

Unpredictable, joy or sorrow, sun or storm.

That’s odd, but it is lucky.

And I can feel sunstroke coming on, and I need a glass of water, and sorry but I can’t think of anything except bed right now.

Leave as easy as that, all clinging to promise.

They took me to church, imposed belonging.

The child accepts, the adult questions.

That these events that happen in series, one after another, events which make up our adolescence, that period of time where we discover, discover ourselves in the company of others.

That’s why I question the confidence-trick of youth.

Maybe we all did it, maybe I’ve been used.

But I know I didn’t belong, any more than I belong here writing this.

Age understands, without words to explain.

The sadness of my role, the loneliness of creativity, selfishly guarding what I am doing, I want you to leave because I have work to do, I want the party to end, because I want to be alone to do the things, I don’t know what yet.

I am afraid of what  they’ll say, I want to use a pseudonym, I want to divorce one guy from another, one person from every one thing that I do, split, twenty lives, one for each partition, like partitions in the brain.

Muscle-grip strains on the pen, this paper, yellow, another world, or a more open world, eyes half closed, face set, everything my own.

Now the change, the release from the feeling which gripped me, the release at the end of this tune.

Frustrated with that, that I am on my own in a desert.

Surrounded, by socialites, surrounded, by a crowd in contradiction, the first butterflies of the year, the first bees.

I want to contemplate on the big numbers, luxuriate in the little things, the life that there is no chance of.

Contemplate on the universe, allow my mind to obsess about the reach of the light.

But I don’t want to feel alone in that universe, I am afraid to be alone.

So in some base loop, contemplating insanity, I am looking from the bridge to the amplifier, wearing old striped shirt, un-ironed, as yesterday.

I am a mess like you, you dirty pretty addictive persona, you remind me of some sin I must have been born with.

Repeating in agony, events, associations, associations, secrets meant for myself only.

Something I cannot deny I want.

I pretend for others that I have not needs, but I need this.

I am taking it at this moment, without regrets, they can come later, five, ten, fifteen years... twenty, it will catch up with me I am sure.

And in all this feeling is fleeting, proven so once again, and it leaves me, signal, sine-wave.

That peak we were searching for in the background!

I am the shape of these alpha waves, bring up, who knows what next, base note.

My brother said this was just A after A after A, emphasis makes them notes of joy.

Deep lows replaced so quickly by sky highs.

When I was young I didn’t know note from note, just as heaven from hell in church.

I would not trade the A for any other note, I would not trade the summer months for any other summer, would not trade the alone time for company, nor company for alone.

Chosen, chosen words, scripted wilderness explored in the subconscious.

And that, in the ring of success, faded, gone.

Left me in love, love only, who has come home again.