Imagining the insanity of a billow-cloud eternity
Over some uncertain undefined finality and ending
Years of a life summed up in a pop-up book pages
Peekaboo
Open/close, one page to one year
Or like a bleak puppet show in a tired amusement from many years ago
Playing the part of a character, dusty with age and wear
going through the inevitable rituals and motions then put back
The sense of an air and time I recall but never experienced
Spines of books upon books upon books
every word, page, chapter worn and pressed from age
There was joy there once, words that came to life from the page
I was spellbound by the colour, the vividness and opportunities they bought
impressed by the almost infinite time in them
yeah I could be absorbed, transport myself into them through some unspoken vortex
become someone else somewhere else some other time some other universe
some kinda parallel – I’m gone but only next door
I’m not here but don’t worry, I can just step through this vortex portal again
and be with you in a flash, in a shout, a blink-you’ll-miss-it moment
and be with you
But these games don’t work, they’re slowly fading, degrading, rusting
and these books, well
they just seem like redundant blocks of paper standing still like Easter Island stones
looking wistfully and mockingly at me, sighing through years of history, some mine, some not
And it’s
like
if
I
knew
which
page
to
start
with
Maybe I’d be eyes open, kaleidoscope colours, spinning round the room laughing
camera looks at me, summer orange light shards through dust
smile now smile now smile
spin spin spin as I stare into the lens
played back years later click-click-clack of tape
wondering how seconds minutes hours became foggy dusty days weeks
months
years
decades
Trying to break down the code of every decision as it branched out into my life
building up these useless diagrams
mental blueprints of a life
mental
blue