I Didn't Laugh Because I Thought He Was Dead

(via stephenishere)

D’awww

My eyes sting with hot, heavy tears.  Received news that you’re dead.  I was yours and you were mine, for 3 whole years.  The pain is so so strong.  A piece of shrapnel has flown right into my chest and it will not move.  We hadn’t spoken for a few weeks, I never told you about how I’m hunting for an apartment of my own in Edinburgh or the research trip to India I’m currently on.  It all feels so small - I feel so little sitting here in my hotel room alone at 01:30 with a monsoon battering against the window and thousands of miles from the town we met.  Things are moving so fast, the world is moving so fast and now you’re gone and I just want to grind the planet to a halt and curl up in bed.  Anything to feel less adult and revert to a safe, childish state.



I will never forget the summer we spent together travelling through Europe - 8 countries in 6 weeks! :)

When we were travelling by train through the night and I would shiver with the cold, you’d slot in behind me in the bunk and kiss the back of my neck.  I remember waking in Prague and not wanting to tour any of the city but just to lie there with you drawing smiley faces and love hearts on the window.

When we climbed Olympus in baking heat you’d lend me your water bottle and push back my hair.  

When I dipped my toes in the quayside in Valletta, you shuffled along beside me and skimmed pebbles - breaking my peacefulness but making me love you more for it.  I still remember how we both glanced up slowly at the same time and held each others gaze for minutes.



I told you that I would suffer anything for you.  If I could click my fingers and have myself face the same fate in Hyderabad today, instead of it having been you in Koln, I would not have to hesitate :(. It would be done.  You knew my eyes and you knew how they never could lie, you knew it was the truth.  Any pain, no matter how excruciating, I wanted to be there beside you.

You melted my heart, you made me a little less cold and distant, you brought me to life and kept me alive during the best and worst years of my life.  Only you know what I was like then, most others from that era are gone for some reason or another, and you shall be the only one to ever know.

So thank you, I couldn’t have hoped, begged or wished for a better friend, a better lover or a better acquaintance in recent years as we both pursued differing paths in life. You were my first, my last and my only.

I’m not one for living in the past and neither were you, but I loved you when we met in 2006 and I still love you in 2011 - for differing reasons.  Perhaps the love has matured, perhaps it is now more deep as opposed to fleeting, perhaps it relates to the realisation by both of us that we would never date again but that we valued each other immensely.  You are alone tonight in some unloving hospital, but know that you have someone half the world away who mourns you and would clutch your hand so tight if only he were closer.  I’d bring warmth to that hand again, I’d push the hair out of your eyes and I’d sit reminding you of your rubbish pebble-skimming skills and how it made me laugh so much.

This is pointless and you would have shouted at me for it, but at least I didn’t use the phrases ‘Rest in Peace’ or ‘Sleep well’ - you would have slapped me if I’d done that.

Your Murray, your little ‘Max’

I got thinking about people reinventing themselves, and thought about how it must feel to be unveiled after an operation (medical or cosmetic) to find your life-long image altered.  People put themselves through so much, I haven’t decided if I approve of it or not.

Faultlines

Some hieroglyphic crash victim
Cotton soft and tight, hugging the contours of your image
Womb-like and protective.
Remove, retain, depart.
They unwind the bandages
Round, round
STOP
Round, round
CUT

Piercing light and
Your Assailants;
  Noise
  Smell
  Sight

Such scenes,
You are smothered no more.
You are embryonic.
Smile.
Guided like a child to the mirror.

Corseted, perfect posture and lithe limbs
Pale milky reflections show a stranger,
That’s perfect
That’s what you asked for.

A new you.

Now to continue…
One more week on the slab
You’ll stop,
You promise,
You’ll stop when they’ve reached your toes,
Those ugly toes.

I’ve never really written a piece about myself…so here goes *deep breath*, this is pretty much the core moments of my last 20 years so if you don’t wanna read about death, violence, romance or (the very rare) sickeningly happy moments :P then navigate away now. I suppose this is some form of autobiography. If anyone reads this then I recommend that you do so slowly and out aloud if possible :3 and try to imagine the scenes in your mind’s eye. Inspired by seeing this advert on television, made me think about stuff, and attempt to try my hand at a short, sharp summary of my life. I like how everyone uses Tumblr for reposting pics of hot guys and I use it as some sort of art/english classroom but meh hardly anyone follows me anyway xD http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zMtyOCoqHTk

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A red night-light in the corner of the room.  Dull glowing coals and high-pitched gusts against the window. Those bed time stories that soften the world and muffle the noises of the night.  Your mother whispers, “Sometimes there are stories which are real, and sometimes they are scary but you better not blink and miss them - it’s important to see them through until the end.”

The BIG day.  The warmth of halogen kitchen lights and the lukewarm sop of Readybrek - that red dragon mocks the unhappy, confused child trussed up in a tie.  Winter mornings and biting, nipping, pinching air.

Bruises, blood and more bruises, a smashed whisky bottle to the face and pain unimaginable.  The thread of the carpet rubs against your hand.  Just stare at the skirting board.  Just stare at that scuff.  Scrutinise it.  Just don’t get up, don’t move.

You, your mother and sister are alone.  Escape.  A house of our own.  Your fortress.  The smile returns.  You won.  Questions pick at the corner of your mind though.  Bubble wrap being popped by an insistent curiosity.  Why is mum crying all of the time? Where’s the money gone?  You struggle to get by.  No.  She struggles.

Cheshire countryside, soft vowels and tinkling laughs.  The shady hollows and dark ravines exemplify the comfort of escaping the frigid Highlands.  Stealing tadpoles from the lake and chasing squirrels as russet-red as the apple you crunch.  Juices trickle down your lips and the pinkness of your cheeks demonstrates a healthy child.  An archaeologist, hunter, prince of the forest.  Mud streaked across your knees and all manner of grazes.  Joy, pure unadulterated joy.

The benevolent protector dies.  Your grandfather, the brigadier general, the fair judge.  You were his little soldier.  It’s unusual for a soldier to survive a battle and not his senior.  It’s darkness, it’s an empty manor.  Ghost house.  Echoing halls and a ticking grandfather clock.  Just that name is mocking.

Lou Reed’s ‘Perfect Day’ oozes hauntingly though the church as your young Aunt Sandra is laid to rest.  The sod of earth trickles through your slim fingers into the chasm and onto the coffin.  You’re reminded of dusting a cake with icing sugar.  Strange child.
“Pull your socks up and stop crying Murray, be a big boy and grow up.”

Boy does he grow up.  A compliment on the aftershave. A soft kiss on the neck.  A tuxedo and a dress torn off like chocolate wrappers.  A crescendo of the body but not the soul.  Relief and heavy breathing but frustration that the puzzle feels incomplete.  Not for long.  Your Aryan boy bursts into your uncertain life - the German with his blonde locks and steely blue eyes.  He’s taller than you…that’s rare…that’s note-worthy…is that even allowed?!  He charms you.  Is it difficult to charm a fifteen year old? 

You told your mother about him anyway…she took it well. Took two years to do it though.  Another cold logical aim ticked off the checklist.  You’re getting good at this Murray…fulfilling rights of passage…you’ve even learnt to drive this week.

He’s at the airport: waving, smiling, walking.  Gone.  You cling to the memories of the Colossus of Rhodes and picking strawberries in French fields.  You and he were well travelled for a pair so young.  The photos are sentenced to a year in the drawer, they did nothing wrong…merely their retention of memory was enough to consign them to such a fate.

A calendar has never and will never be such a terrifying symbol to you again.  There are 9 months of life left. Dead, finito, morte.  Stumbling home from the surgery.  Swinging in parks on rusty chains and glancing at the moon.  An animalistic wail as you let it all pour out and scratch at your face.  Maybe it’s a symptom?  Screeching at the sky when alone. 

A coastal rock at night, salty spray splashing high and slicking away the tears.  You don’t seem to be ‘enjoying’ this family trip.  Cheer up, you’re not on death’s door. 

The satisfying sensation of sand shifting between your wiggling toes.  It’s the small things that you learn to love.

It was all a hideous mistake, a hideous mis-diagnosis.  You’re fine.  A long summer of cider and music festivals.  Love reappears, he’s not the same as Malte, no one could be.  Stop it.  That image is outdated Murray, it’s no longer relevant.  But yes…anything will cause the corners of your lips to curl and a dazzling smile to break free. The proverbial Cheshire Cat you are…

Whistling café tier and sickly pastries.  Working late.  Alone but for the mermaid printed so garishly on your apron.  Drugs change people’s behaviour.  He didn’t WANT to hurt you…he just wanted the money.  You curl in a ball on the floor with your slit wrists.  The bleached tiles shift to cerise in the time it takes to blink.  You’re no hero.

Hot, dying embers of a Scottish summer.  An explosion of sociality.  University is here…and it smells clinical…it looks bland…but it FEELS exhilarating.  A darkened kitchen.  Tricked.  Too late.  Fuck.  Forty of them burst out of corners to a tremulous ‘Happy Birthday!’. None of them know you yet, but they all do in time. Smiles.

The bringer of bruises and broken bones has become so drink-addled that he’s punished with dementia.  No, wait.  A final trick.  You’re named legal guardian.  He does it on purpose.
“Who are you again?”
He. Does. It. On. Bloody. Purpose.

Whispers of another failed relationship and agonising health issues.  But no, it will all go right, determination to be happy is half the issue. Happy, happy, happy.  A strong breeze and a busking Cellist symbolise Edinburgh. No more of the Stirlingshire campus with it’s mercurial loch and golden carp.  An equally wild place, yet tamed by culture. You like culture.

A summer of true independence lies ahead, no returning home.  Slimness, sprightly, spinning on the tip of your toe and splashing in a Spring puddle.  Almost 20 and all of the clichés of acceptance and happiness pour forth from your mind, with good reason, they could just be true. We’ll see.

Those bedtime stories are relevant.  Everyone has a tale which is littered with tragedy, silence and ecstasy, but having been there you know that you’re glad that you didn’t blink and miss one second of yours.

Haven’t written in ages; poems, short stories, thoughts/feelings, nothing really! So it got me thinking the other day when I took a trip to Edinburgh Zoo with university friends and we lay having a picnic…about all the strong memories I have from specific smells, sights, weather and time of day. So I just kinda grabbed a pen 5 mins ago and rambled into my journal about something like that, some trip I made to St. Andrews with someone a few years ago. Warning: it’s not Shakespeare, it’s intended to just be casual and random lmao but maybe someone will think ‘oh yeah…kinda makes me think the same’ :)

“The moments after a sunset are the most complex but memorable of my life.  You are standing there on a hilltop being lulled into contentment as you watch the horizon, or sometimes you are reclining into the grass like a permanent feature of the landscape.  The sky shifts its hue to a Prussian blue.  Sailor-chic and naval stripes are popular this year. Awkwardly knobbly knees rubbing against each other.  The warmth of the wind whips around your ankles and bare arms, you add to it with a great, last exhalation as you let your chest rise and fall fitfully.

The waves seem to lap slower at the shore and the forest behind you becomes bereft of any sound other than that of crackling and snapping…signs of wildlife retreating home and the heat of the day escaping from the weather-worn copse. There’s a heavy, sugary smell in the air.

You occasionally feel the warmth prickling to your skin - slowly escaping to your sandaled feet and pushed-back hair.  You look like some kind of Oxford toff who has escaped to the country for the day and found it all a bit too much.  The picnic blanket, the lover, the assorted debris of a perfect day are all gathered up in your arms and slowly dragged back home.  Prussian blue transforms into plum purple and that brief millisecond of frozen time dissipates and the night wraps its cold, uneasy arms around you.”

I sometimes wonder what seasons/times invoke memories in other people *curious*

Woodwork…hmmm…I’ll just stick to paper :P…the ink doesn’t really absorb well into the grain.

Theme of violent elements/weather interacting with people or objects ^_^

1st lighthouse and gulls, allusion to Greek gods

2nd nuclear submarine, stealthy artificial predator of the deep

3rd arguing couple upon the beach, violence symbolised by elements - suggestions of domestic abuse etc

Compass

Shining star
Shimmering
Floating like a balloon
But not bobbing,
Constant,
FlAsHiNg

Monolithic walls
With only enough purchase for limpets -
Even they find it unassailable
Mercury ebbs at the vulnerable cracks and gaps
Crashing waves throw up spray like a bag of sugar
Tasting like salt
The feathered squadron forms in a hurried way
To avoid the currents
Ducking, diving
Over and above the elements,
Both comprised of hydrogen and oxygen yet so different

The raid is ineffectual,
No unwary travellers from faraway lands
To take advantage of.
They slither from the Sargasso Sea

Like a mirror facing a mirror,
Both kingdoms reflect one another
Olympian opposites,
Poseidon passes no judgement on Prometheus Point.

The waves try with all their might to reach
The sky deals them a weighty blow
Driving them back

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Nautilus

Sleek, burnished
Black, beaten metal to quake
The predator’s
Natural shell
Crisp, silver and practical
Like every ugly species

A spinning coin of gold
Dropping into the darkness
Pulsing, shifting
Artificial whale song
The only warning system

Bristling like a blowfish:
Armed excessively
But necessary
Extremely necessary
They say…

All warfare
Is mathematics
Probability, grids and calculus

Not here.
Paranoia deep as an ocean
Trench
Cold war on an abyssal plain
And the hum of fragmented orders, transmitted from a nervous
Continental shelf…

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Elemental

Crackling tongue whips
The air
Smoggy ash chokes the hair.
I do not know what fuels your flames
Perpetual paraffin from a jealous mind

Embers doused by pacifying words
“Calm down.”
Pouring icy water on a burn
Trickling coolness over the temples
Too cold,
Painful, in fact

Twisting, bent and hurled
No chance of staying on your feet.
Seaweed hair in mouth
Booming sonic sound wave.
Luckily, I couldn’t hear you in the gale.

Split lips, cracked brow,
Ruddy hands,
Shovelling through the irrelevancies.
Let’s get to the facts:
You shouldn’t have caused such an
Earthquake