Thursday, February 21, 2008

The Waiting Room


The Pit & the Pendulum ~ Harry Clarke (1919)

The clock strikes forever in the waiting room of changes where I sit impatient for the next instalment - a mere blunt instruments in the measuring of time.
I will not have it said that life was something that happened to me; I will not believe that I succumbed to mediocrity; never took the journeys expected.
I take full responsibility for every bleat of arrogant disdain; every scoff; every step on the other side of the line that’s strung between the holes in my head and the vanishing point poised on the horizon of the day and the feelings of those who I love.
The keeper rattles his knuckles on the ribs of my cage as if to remind me that I have obligations to meet, meat racks to meter and itchings to etch; lesson to lean in this corner of chaos where thoughts collide with compromises and preconceived embryos.
Bail is deposited through letter box lottery slots in the door to the outside whirled away hours in the pursuit of the keys to the locks on my hair-shirt blow-waving seaweed in the currents of crime.
I grin or I grimace a rictus of shame; a sham of a man with too much rage to consume but no grace to submit to the inevitable realisation that what I know isn’t worth inscribing on the head of the lynch-pin that hangs from the boughs of the writhing tree mind that constitutes all that I can strive to achieve but whose bark is out of ear-shot of the longing short lived.
The clock strikes forever in the heart of the tree.
Happy birthday to me.


8 comments:

Yodood said...

"preconcieved embryos"

Words from beyond the vanishing point and back again. Happy birthday, my alchemic friend.

jams o donnell said...

Happy Birthday!

littlebitofsonshine said...

Happy birthday to you and may you have many more and each one like a desert flower a blast of wonderfull color and life when you least expect it .HUGS
be safe walk in peace allways

Anonymous said...

haha, cool blog, ok....always stay cool

Diane Dehler said...

Happy Birthday, Pisces.

I agree there is alchemy in this post and a strain of surrealism. You are such a great writer and very versatile. One can't predict what you will write about next. I am missing RDG and suppose you do to.

Garth said...

Thanks for the wishes folks!

...and for the last time princess: no, I don't.

Unknown said...

It's belated, but I wish you a very happy birthday, Pisces. Despite the darkness in your most wonderful, fantastical, surreal words, may I wish you love and laughter, joy and happiness, peace and harmony - and all and only good things for the coming year.

karoline in the morning said...

belated but still heartfelt...happy birthday pi...live it to it's fullest...

k:)

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