I cannot write.
I can write. I can begin only to
stumble, crumble before completion.
A sketched outline of a world remains monochrome,
ink drying before I can saturate it with colour.
Characters damned as eternal silhouettes,
corpses hollowed out by my failure to breathe life into them.
And so. I cannot write. I am a butcher without the bloodthirst.
A baker short on yeast. A wickless candlestick maker.
Taunted by mountains of incomplete stories,
Head bludgeoned from banging against the block.
Trying to extract from the chaos of my mind a finished thought.
Willing it to conjure clarity with the same ease as it does excuses.
For then, I’d be flying. Instead. I march.
On and on, eyes raw from seeking meaning.
Pools of sweat or blood or both, between my toes.
Willing every footpath fissure to spurt inspiration.
The breeze drags by a crumbled Solero Strawberry Twist wrapper,
looking decidedly dejected,
And I clamber for a metaphor.
This sorry sight, a representation of the human condition?
Of our disharmony with nature? Of our ability to transform
something sweet into landfill through
our insatiable appetite for consumption? Before it can solidify,
this spark, like the wrapper, is wafted away.
And I march for days and hours through snippets
of stories, flashes of scenes, past unvoiced dialogue,
hushed tones never reaching ravenous ears.
Perhaps I’ve wrung my life dry. Sucked from it all
the tales I can tell. Vocabulary exhausted. Nowhere left to go
but right to the edge of the human experience. The precipice
of insanity. Towards pleasure, distressing in its
toe-curling potency. Agony so spine-chilling
it erupts into euphoria.
And even still, I awaken again in a pile of tatters,
coated in the sticky filling of half-baked pies.
Remain enclosed within the unbudging walls, bricks of
doubts cemented by panic. And so,
I relent.
Let the white flag billow as I lay
my pen to rest. Ink-stained hands tossing on it
fistfuls of brittle soil, ensconced with tales
that will remain eternally untold. Unheard. Unfinished.
Set them up in flames and grieve them with a cigarette.
Tar sizzles my lungs, offering fleeting relief
as it tingles the void behind my eyes. Smoke rises
from the smouldering tip, spreading and gathering
like a dance, as it scatters slowly into feathery particles.
Every exhale, a unique pattern that is carried away,
unconstrained by expectation. Formless, dancing mist.
Stirring in me is the impulse to cling to it. Reshape it into something tangible.
I do not.
Just watch instead.
Absorb how it seems to move with the rhythm of the city.
A symphony created by the orchestra of the mundane.
Billowing of the breeze in my ear. Dull murmur
as the underground shudders beneath.
Ambience of a building site,
clanking, drilling, a constant grating backdrop.
Hubbub of voices, foreign words spoken,
storytelling in languages unfamiliar.
A musicality to it all. Rising and falling in euphony, sounds swell
into a climax, then retreat just as quickly into a pause.
A flurry of action, A breath of calm.
Frantic fluttering of pigeon wings as they take panicked flight.
Eruption of shattered glass from a nearby restaurant
followed by the whooping of a raucous crowd,
precede the sad scratching of broom bristles and swallowed apologies.
Fuzzing of beer. Clinking of ice. Tapping of fingers upon a bench.
Occasional explosion of high-spirited laughter that slices
through the humdrum.
I am an observer of this dance of existence. The trees that groove,
swaying like an entranced crowd at a festival. Animals darting, sniffing, scurrying
amongst the blur of bodies. Walking, running, stretching,
standing, waving, flinching in fright, doubling over with laughter.
The people, all actors. Lost in the performance of the characters
they created. Whole lives expressed through posture.
Hunched shoulders, he limps by, looking like he might at any minute,
collapse under the weight of the world. Her strut,
the street her runway. Devouring every step.
Some desperate to be seen, others to be swallowed up. The ones that learned
the rules of fashion, and those who learned to break them.
A narrative in their being. Moved by objectives, evident
in actions. The father trekking purposefully,
miles ahead of his dawdling family.
Already worn by their company. The half-hearted
admiration of a tourist attraction. Barely concealed
underwhelm as visitors rattle through the obligatory box-ticking
of praise, like it will unlock access to their preferred activity.
The husband, two feet from the group. Arms folded,
lips pressed thin, tight nods, as his social battery dwindles
in the face of his wife’s endless goodbyes.
The forced cheer lifting the cheeks of the tour guide,
as he pantomimes the same lines, same quips, same gestures for
the dampened amusement of his sweaty audience.
All encompassing.
The world is a canvas. An immersive blending of visual media.
Of paintings, movies, still images. Doodles sketched into skin.
Loaves lined up in display, so fresh the crust crackles with a glance.
Ice cream dripping down fingers, thick swirling tears of dairy.
The architecture, jutting corners, towering monuments, ancient bricks
juxtaposed beside futuristic symbols of modernity.
VR headsets in the Apple store. Billboard displaying cryptic AI advertisement.
Across from me, two benches, side by side.
On the left, a row of men. Sit sullen. Lips pulled down,
eyes glossed over, deep in boredom. Or rumination.
On the right, a row of women. Discussion flowing,
all perched on the edge of their seat, poised to pick up
the thread once it’s dropped.
All art.
And above, the immeasurable mural, always in flux.
Expertly manipulating light and shadow, clouds like ink in water,
contorting beyond themselves. Tufts gather into slow-moving
slabs of grey, then spill into spindly strands like chewing gum
stretched through the sky. And beyond, and beyond.
Limitless, unimaginable expansion. Constellations creating universes
of psychedelic speldor. Incomprehensibly, unflinchingly creating.
And I sit here. Swept up by the simplicity of it.
And maybe there does not need to be a story created from everything.
The narrative need not be sought in subtleties,
exists already in the being. Plot feels unmalleable
not due to the absence of story, but due to the abundance of it.
Because existence is the story. All story.
All encompassing. All art. All real.
Thank you for reading x