the diary impulse

It has never been a matter
of wanting to die -
it's just easier, on the lowest ebb,
than being alive.
The urge is a shattered mirror:
the flash of silvered glass is
sharply beautiful, but
the cutting edge quickly dulls.
I should be a burned book, but instead
here lies a shrivelled peach kernel;
too sweet to spit out,
too bitter to keep.
I know you wish you'd chucked me
when you had the chance.
I try and try to quit this
but I'm helplessly in love.
If I could learn
not to write things here
I could shuffle away
and leave you to move on.
There must be newer, better things
than clinging to a lost cause;
I am jetsam
and I only weigh you down.
Sometimes I fantasise
about tears and black lace
and every face a rictus mask
to match my own.

chronos i

'For last year's words belong to last year's language
and next year's words await another voice.
And to make an end is to make a beginning.'

- T. S. Eliot, 'Little Gidding'

I wanted to think that there was a time

when it was neither one year nor the next -

shaving the seconds into finer slivers

until the passing of each one

could not be perceived.

That moment, suspended in nothing,

would be sacred to me;

a space of no space or memory

or aspiration or resolution:

just a moment.

But childish logic failed me,

for time is not a straight line

and it is always one year and the next.