![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Entry tags:
[poem] mirror//distortion
The chambers of my heart are lined with mirrors
that repeat and multiply beyond perception
each and every scrap of poison gifted me.
Fuck self-reflection. If I were an oyster
I could coat this grit with self-recrimination,
employ it as a scaffold to support some greater truth,
some greater beauty, smooth the lines
of pain, the whispering self-loathing.
Even stone will, with sufficient patience, wear away.
And in the darkness of the empty cavern
drips echo as they filter in through cracks
beyond perception. Nonetheless they leave their trace:
these grim uncompromising monuments,
these fragile archaeologies of guilt and hate.
Or, from some lofty self-assured perspective,
an entirely different metaphor's presented:
cruelty exposed--diminished in its endless repetition, neutralised
through being bathed in light; and stalagmites
are evidence that love, like water, can create
not just destroy, in furious flood;
can fertilise; can bring new shape and life.
Nevertheless. From here it seems
that stalagmites and pearls and hearts alike
are simply evidence of our belligerent last-gasp defence--
the hopeless scars left by our dying dreams.
that repeat and multiply beyond perception
each and every scrap of poison gifted me.
Fuck self-reflection. If I were an oyster
I could coat this grit with self-recrimination,
employ it as a scaffold to support some greater truth,
some greater beauty, smooth the lines
of pain, the whispering self-loathing.
Even stone will, with sufficient patience, wear away.
And in the darkness of the empty cavern
drips echo as they filter in through cracks
beyond perception. Nonetheless they leave their trace:
these grim uncompromising monuments,
these fragile archaeologies of guilt and hate.
Or, from some lofty self-assured perspective,
an entirely different metaphor's presented:
cruelty exposed--diminished in its endless repetition, neutralised
through being bathed in light; and stalagmites
are evidence that love, like water, can create
not just destroy, in furious flood;
can fertilise; can bring new shape and life.
Nevertheless. From here it seems
that stalagmites and pearls and hearts alike
are simply evidence of our belligerent last-gasp defence--
the hopeless scars left by our dying dreams.
no subject
Oh, wow!
no subject
(I will point out to you also that the opening plays with a multilingual meaning-collision of which I am fond: Gift is the German for "poison".)
no subject
no subject
no subject
no subject
no subject
no subject
Stranded in the hall of mirrors
I can nevermore avoid
Images that cannot show me
Something long ago destroyed.
In the darkness, in the distance
In a corner of my mind
Stands a puzzled child in silence
Lonely, lost, and far behind.
In imagination only
In my single mirror see
Clear and calm, the one reflection
Of the person that is me.
(Adrian Plass)
no subject
Those last three lines are killer.