Category: prose-poem

54-word story

“Will you blow into this colostomy bag? Will you scratch an itch from under my arse, before you breathalyse me? I’m over the limit of the black stuff I drink. The coffee has gone to my head.”

She winced a smile from the side of her mouth, and waved me on my way.

Diary note No 9 – Captivity

I was born into captivity, into a family, they were in charge, set my daily routine, administered my food, decided when I was heard, what I should see, my destiny.

Those gaolers sent me to an institution that held me captive, defined my agenda, put me in a room, decided what I should learn, when I was good enough, when I should be let out

into another ritual, and on into another asylum.

Gradually I was made fit for an open prison, condemned to a life sentence immersed in a language I had no power to design.

Moment by moment, my thoughts sucked into solitary confinement within a zeitgeist that disguised itself as an dreamscape, shaped with illusions of grandeur.

Captured & captivated, imprisoned & impressed,

As if I was an ant that thought he was a free spirit

As if an elephant that loved to be tethered in a circus tent

Even my imagination ring-fenced.

I was bred in captivity by a family that thought there was a key hidden somewhere safe

As if it could be released in time to avert what is to come.

The ants face extinction

Elephants are shuffling into an abyss

The key never strong enough to turn the lock, and release inmates

These marks, letters, phrases, are a sentence for some and a sentence for all.

The eyes of the wild animal that roves over paragraphs & stanzas are focussed on straight lines.

I don’t see what I don’t see in my captivity.

The mystery of history.

 All is not yet Lost

The white man with the toothache complained

“The death of truth”
“The demise of fact”

as if One Truth ever lived.

He wore red hair,

“Subjective trumps objective”
“Trust lost in slipstreams”

as if post- modern chatter
arose blind from ignorance

and there was the matter of his nonpliant feet.

“Authorities pushed aside”
“Authors born at every corner”

and no more news swallowed kosher,
we’ve seen gods sit on cracked toilets.

The white man’s ears were bent

“Let us respect disrespectors,
honour the heralds of doubt.
smash panes of glass with Apps and axe,
shatter the gorgon’s mask,
inhale medicine of liberation,
assassinate a holy trinity,
mend faith in next generation
of wordsmiths, dentists, and fools.”

The red man cried.