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.  

a ‘caithris / the wake

 
This morning, awake i hear your tones, not

as a whisper, nor sunken dreamscape.

solid reality struck a chord, as i reach

out to touch known. expectant in explicit

connection. skin to skin. but you & 

all your rhythmic shapes, so full of energy

are absent. 

from my chamber. loss [rings] 

out. i know this place, the darkness recognises 

me. tomorrow screams and

sounds it’s memory in constant vibration. time

pays no heed to emotion 

lost, tears hit the space between.

objects remind, that you [were.] your watch

sleeps silently ticking in another land, beside

my bed. i touch connective warmth into

it’s face, the face that saw you live to ritual.

there is a stain, on my heart i can’t wash out.

drunk on vinegar, it remains

shadowed by the day after. when the world was

new to me. the first fall of snow, chilled boned

gutted rooms. i buried the daylight with your

leaving. boxed love up. that night i 

burnt summer in the backyard. ashes to ash,

& fed the weeds with love. all trace of us gone,

i wait for your return. i know time will

[wake.] recognising me in your face, 

sensing movement, inclined gravitation 

offsetting the [un]balanced, times hands will

[move]me on.

©Copyright Karen Bain 2017.All Rights Reserved. 

Smùirneanach / Particles

 

Last night as the world was fragmenting

Deconstructing in fractal microcosms

everything out of reach

Alien to me

sound and visions rippling

from my grasp

Echoing on into the midnight dust

breaking up and multiplying

Replicating as it flowed..

Dissolving slowly as we inhaled each particle

and each other..

I had the surest strongest notion

that Nothing was real

In time and space..

that we were all but as a dream

and all around a particled dreamworld

within a constructed dream

in a future nightmare’s frozen vision

of a self replicating speck of dust

Echoing on into infinity..

through all the universes unknown stars..

That we were Nothing

we were as Dust and Dirt

but..

we could finally fly…

©Karen Bain 2016.All Rights Reserved.

 

 

Neo-làthaireach / Absence

Absence

Nothingness

unbeing…

darkeness

Unseen

 

Spiralling down

undone

untowards anything

Dis-connection from

Undoing…

Unexisting

un self past born

 

Wrenching

past the twisted pain

of unliving never more

to unbe

Un holding on….

 

 

©Karen Bain 2016.All Rights Reserved.