the clay / an crèadh

what we are is illusion

and all around a construct

of a dream or of a hell, dependent only on whichever end of the microscope

you’re looking through, been granted

access to. capitalists have

no power and yet hold all. full of false delusions, no insights, no light, no infinite—no witchcraft coursing through their hearts.

if indeed—they have a heart,

if indeed—it is possible for the hollow man

to have a soul, in which a heart resides and grows to bloom.

inside

a crumbling pile of dirt

or earth,

the clay —which is too natural the source of

life—for any hollow man. what is the earth when it dies ?

the plant that is deprived of light and life,

restricted in its growth, starved of nourishment and of the sun

and yet unlike the hollow man—it feels.

the earth brings forth and nurtures life, supports.

even the dead moon has a purpose,

comforts us in its light, shining a way out

through the darkness.

©kbain2019.

priob / flicker

suicide is an animal,

growling. irrationally snarling

back at you,

on hollow days. agitated,

hungry to

extinguish the pain,

clawing at the surface

soil, looking

for flesh laid bare.

the raw memories you can’t

quite see or hold. the fear

you buried deep,

the coldness of past pain.

the silence that your

soul remembers sleeping,

dreaming inside

a life, before the light

went out.

©kbain19.

fuileachadh / bleeding

I sat, still. gut wrenched, holding.

Nib to parchment scraping. cutting.

tracing veins that would no longer quicken.

until I vomited you. out. bleeding the past. the way out through the buried box.

contaminating the air. singing

as a newborn.echoing through the darkness.

afterwards. raw. eyes wide. finally awake.

flooding, senses heightened.

I knew. I was alive.

©kbain18.

briseadh / breaking

my mother is gone. no longer
can i call her on the phone, hear the smile
in her voice. i sit in the dark 
thousands of years away from that moment 
and picture home. watching the waves & the
wild of the sea quietens me, in my mind
something stills, just for a moment 
the anxiety stops. the thoughts never stop. 
my mind is never silent, turning over the strangest things, thoughts flip. 

glass is really a liquid. i used to stare at
windows in between sentence & fixate, on this. 
glass is molecules. it exists in the space between water, and structured reality. it is amorphous, like our bodies. it will warp, but can bend more than us 
before it breaks. eventually everything shatters.

once i broke down. i was absent, missing 
vocal sound. i have thought & thought 
about where i went that year. i have no answer.

walls are still, but they hear & see 
everything we do. i drop food on the floor, 
see particles in my mind decomposing. breaking down, pulling away, radiating outwards towards the point of absorption. rotting skin, ants, worms, writhing maggots move all around. i feel them crawl 
spreading over me. 

i can’t stand to be. here, anymore. 
my brain is malfunctioning. decomposing 
from the second we are born, we are withering. dying from the inside 
rotting out, like my mother. 
i close my eyes. she speaks to me. she is gone. she is gone. she is gone. the reality of her absent form repeats,
she sits beside me.

©kbain2018.

bàthadh / drowning

love has been an unexpected found, lost for me before i dared to open the hands that clenched, trying to contain. bloomed confusion obscured inside the shadowed hurt of childhood. before i unlocked the door to inner self, found you outwith.

love has been the cold reflective, steel blade. understanding, giving. unforgiving. the release of who i am, my path back to you.

the path to emotions shuttered room, where i pray on tired knee. beg to die, beg to live, to come alive. to feel renewal inside, energies light, birthing the summer sun.

the fight, to barter with emotion. life’s metronome unbalanced. the constant flux. the unexpected found, the unsound. the fight within, to understand the eternal source, that drags me down to the drowning pool.

©kbain18.

sgèith / fly

E s c a p e [myself ]

o u t r u n myself

get o u t of myself

in and out of myself

r u n n i n g through

away and from this[self ]

out fly myself

out-time and space

myself

declassify the

pain filled space

within [myself ]

the cluttered messy

mistake[s] of myself

the mess within

the core of myself

inside

the madness within

the brain

that creates this[self ]

the s o u n d that R o a r s

past

silence inside

the volume within

my[self ]

the voices telling

me what

i need to

do

to [myself ]

the slices of life

I’ve taken in

H a t r e d of [myself ]

all the time

not

e v e r

there for

[my]

self..

I want [so ] much

to l e a v e

myself

while

there is s t i l l

some [self ]

and — f l y — to You.

©kbain2018.

aig toiseach-tòiseachaidh / in the beginning

my father reached out

spoke to me in the instant

before death,

lost inside the earth cores deepest

sleep, held inside the silent

mountain, i held his

hand. sing out. life is all

reaching, if you’re doing,

falling, failing,

getting up. living in the

joy & inside the saddest river.

life is present, being.

inside life’s pain

we stretch to live, all trying,

lost within the dying & the ends.

mute swans sing out

in their dying moments.

a story told in days, reaching

into tomorrow, carried on

from otherworlds,

upon the backs of birds who travel

in between the song of sound. the song the

living cannot hear unless we dream.

birds speak & understand the minds of man.

we have travelled together,

watching inside darkened

centuries of history in

muted communication,shaping time,as

shifting sound. listen. the dreaming

understand the song of death,

the journey into the screaming universe.

the shifting shore where our first words

were song,

held within the blink of

night hawk eye. swans sing inside

their joy to die, they

call out to the darkness that sings to

them. i heard my father

in his dying breath. his song of loss, speaking forgiveness, a song

of pain. the messenger walks

between the sound of worlds, he

whispers, listen. know in recognition,

the going home, the roaring dawn ahead. the end is the voice of understanding.

©kbain2018.All Rights Reserved.

bàsachadh / dying

my love is a broken door, breaking

you, over & over. until it’s over, and

i don’t want you to go, but i am

glad for you. i push away. there

is ice water filling up the scars holding

me together. submerging emotion.

blunted, pain cuts through obscure ice.

the submerged room i am trapped in,

i can no longer stand, i sink to give.

the pain is endless.

i open the dark box of nothing.

inside thoughts repeat

the voice of self annihilation,

as written on the walls, in the blood

of yesterday & the day after. emptied i sit.

knowing i get back to this, guts me.

i stare at the black void pool. reflection

of all my living fear.

there is no door out of this room. i am

sealed inside my mind. memory ruptures

through sinew. i leak. blooming on,

aching through night born, seeping into

the ice floor shelf, it adds

to the blackness, it will swallow me up.

i am the death mattress whore.

i plunge, submerge.

empty of me, wanting more. your face the last

i see. always, i see you, staring back at me.

mouth open. eyes gaze into

the face of all that is unknown.

you are dead. i am always dying.

our love is decomposing.

©Karen Bain 2017.All Rights Reserved.

gun rabhadh / unannounced

voices come to me unannounced i  
answer them. they offer unfinished
questions. i have incompletes to give
spoken, in the language of broken. 
mouth sounds, garbled out sync
from a time before, the out spark misfire.
they hover near my face, sometimes they
bark, i am the one begging. they slide into
me as i become. disappear at my bidding 
back into the porous wall, the white noise sleep, 
the shutter, curtain to the overwhelm,
offered up from the land of never born. i sink. 
i am the stone, recumbent 
under ice river, white numb bone. 
the water goddess ice shelf 
washes over me.
i drift to sea. no dreams live underwater.
blanc nothing, buoyant in loss. i am 
absent. existence ebbs & flows 
inside the undertow i was born into, that keeps me
down. i kick, twitch to surface spitting.
lashed incomplete, inside confusion. 
drying out, thawing, i will remember who i was,
next,
time.

©Copyright Karen Bain 2017.All Rights Reserved.  

fosail / fossil

sit with me inside the night,   

i am holding the blue black 

of loss. its river of tar & fossil flows   

through me. flooding all senses. submerging  

my footsteps i walk through myself.

darkening isolation’s hollow 

tree. the wolf call

despair, minds wilderness entangled forest. 

I miss who i used to be. sifting 

through the ashes

i will remember, if i find substance

in the ground, buried deep as fossil fuel. i seek

connection, an end to suffering.

i am looking for my way out,

through the pin prick light ahead

of stars already dead. I reach outwith.

let them live within me. i long to find

the measure of my release

merging into the night forever. one

with the stillness of the 

blood moon. darkness reflecting cold steel,

on the river that all roots lead or bend to twist to.

our journey home.

©Copyright Karen Bain 2017.All Rights Reserved.