Here today

Drawn work

Another finished today…

Are you there?

Insanity knocks as constant as the beat of my heart and as enduring as the march of time. Alone and needy today, I chose to open the door to Insanity, earnest he enters, and Reality whispers her warning, the struggle is brief.

How beautiful Insanity is as he entertains my deepest desire:

to be close to that which will forever remain distant from me.

Across the river and into the trees

Abendlied

The songs have ceased. I had hoped it were the interlude I was waiting in, but this one has gone far too long now. Perhaps this time it was never an interlude, perhaps it really were the end of it all.

Quidam

She cast the same shadow of a woman she'd not yet been, she was not of this time and wanted so desperately to go home, but the door was locked. Had she not got what she came back for?

reflection of a foolish wish

The most foolish little thing she was, for long ago she had fallen in love with the moon. It was the most wonderful thing she had ever known, she thought it as a man who could shine his light and make beautiful even the darkest of places. What magic. But the moon had travelled the world endlessly and had seen the most beautiful of women, and foolish was she who thought that such would ever love an ordinary girl like herself. Still, she wished to live in the sky next to the moon like her secret window reflected, and be that second satellite, circling around and around forever. But the wishes of small-town girls are only ever just that, with her head in the clouds, upon waking in her simple life, another dream of distant places snuffed out as violently as the flickering, desperate little light before slumber.

But that was long ago and she has grown up now and knows the way things go, the dreams have faded as has her foolishness and though she will always love the moon, it is now enough just to know that it exists,

the moon and her exist at the same time!...that is enough for her.

The beauty is so close to me

I am waking up, and time is running out...

undercover

clown blanc

My bedroom when a child, was filled with imagery of melancholic clowns. How odd perhaps it was for a child to keep company with such things. The image I remember most vividly was the one hanging on the wall opposite my bed. When I awoke each morning I would run over to the curious little picture of four solemn clown faces painted on a mirror with gold trim. My reflected face would appear next to their painted ones and I would try to teach them all how to smile. I told them it was easy. I would smile and smile, every day for years, but they just stayed so sad. I didn't understand then, but I do now.

My smiles were all lost on them,

the fool I was to try disfigure something so beautiful.

looking up at the moon

Circling in my existence

I have died some thousand deaths and exist only in the air I breathe out of my corpse. I know my  journey by heart now, it is always alone, with soft steps that run out when I arrive at the empty house in which the people of the light once believed in, then there I lay myself on the earth floor and weep until my eyes bleed and the carrion eaters circle.

The lost child 1886

It is quiet in my studio, and so from my mind, begins the procession of ancient sound and pictures. The sound of children's laughter begins to drown out all else, growing more lucid as I draw. The little girl is coming, she is so quiet, she is sneaking up on me and screams BOO. My 5 year old self has frightened me. She stays for a while and watches me draw, but then says she has to go back, the others are waiting for her to make a wish and cut the cake. She whispers in my ear her wish... that she will never be lost and that she will never be forgotten.

I told her promisingly, "I would never forget you", she smiled and was gone.

The windmills of your mind

foreign tongue in a familiar room

In an empty room she spoke your name out loud to see how it still felt on her lips. It had been quite some time. It was foreign now. Your name, the language she was born to speak was now just another forgotten language that she shall never learn again.

Have you ever seen painted smoke?

2:11 in the morning, jumping around dancing to my favourite tune in the universe, intoxicated on bittersweet red wine in the company of ghosts, phantoms and souls without mates. Paintbrush in hand, painting the most beautiful shit I have ever painted, throwing them in the fire and watching them go BOOM. I have paint on my face and fingertips and am as happy as can be. As they char and turn to painted smoke I realise I am free, never bound to anything that will not be bound to me.

The Last Leaf

The last leaf fell long ago, so she found a new place to stay, inside a cardboard box. Sometimes she steps out for a while. She puts a fragile sticker on her forehead and pins some bubble wrap over her quiet heart. She doesn't stay out long, the trees are all dead there and it's getting harder to breathe so she returns inside her box. The cardboard box is easy to kick around, and those that used to love her all take their turn. The box is easier still, to carry away, and those that love her yet, all have their excuses why they cannot.

Awaiting the return that never comes

And sometimes when I have so much hope left in me that it almost becomes the madness, I will go and sit at the train station and wait for the train that only ever arrives when I leave.

The unreturned, the hysteria of another day of it, comes, and then fades,

...as does the day.

stay me no more; the flowers have ceased to blow, the frost begun:

Perhaps you were only ever just the shawl I wrapped around me a little tighter when the cold was coming, never realising it was full of holes. Or maybe you were just the breath I would exhale, then go to grasp because I didn't want to lose you, but it was just nothingness I would cling to.

Nepenthe

...and with each sip, I hold it in my mouth, as I hold each remembering in my heart.

I swallow, and my heart fades away.