Facial Bookcase

It's handy, having this bookcase in the corner of my room where I keep all of your faces. Each and every one of you grins up at me, right at my fingertips. I don't even need to leave this room with all of the company I need, right here, on the shelves.

But I don't touch you, your faces, staring back at me, would grimace at a touch and a pull from your place on your shelf. It is forbidden.

I don't need to touch or to hear, not with my bookcase stood mightily, over there. All I need is to catch sight of the right face at the right time and everything is right - no need to talk. You tell me things, each one of you, with your unchanging faces and I know it's true because it is there, laying before my eyes. Seeing is believing.

Without my shelves and your faces I would be completely disconnected, cut from the interaction. It is such craved interaction that everyone is here, everyone of you, staring at me from the bookcase.

My face creases into a smile and you all smile back as I sit here, staring at you as you stare at me. We're so together, connected. We never need to leave this room.

Fun House

"It's a fun house where the mirrors all reflect what's real / and reality's as twisted as the mirrors reveal / and the fun is finding out what the mirrors show..."

With their voices they soothe and unnerve, an echoing, disjointed harmony rises from the open lips and their smiles. With the glass there, it's hard to see them as they are. Tall? Short? Fat? Thin? The mirrors are everywhere and the secrets they hold are stuck fast.

A high pitched whisper from the left, a smile of deep, glistening red comes from a gap in between. Forward, you step, to follow that grin but your hand lands on cold. It's a mirror afterall.

That nasal voice from behind, the slow tipping of a hat. Beckoning. You spin. There's nothing there but your disfigured reflection.

And from your right a lumbering, heavy voice. The thump of passing footsteps. But still there is only the mirrors and you, twisting and turning. Lost in the place where reality lives, in the guise of plentiful disjointed images.

In this mirrored box you sit, waiting, just waiting to cast your eyes on the usual - on the you that looks back every morning from the one in your bathroom. But all you see is malformed versions of yourself, leering back at you.

The voices sing again;

"and the fun is finding out what the mirrors show..."

Smoke

Each voice is loud and each conversation drifts in and out of not-so attentive ears - it is the eyes that are captivated, roaming the fence-bound land in front, picking up specks of a forbidden language. A hand brushes, eyes sweep and linger, backs turn and shoulders hunch. Their voices are piercing but their actions deafen. Each one of them a world of reaction and a husky whisper in a foreign tongue. In their pairs, they make a universe, full of words unsaid through tongue and lips. For hours, they could be watched and catalogued, each movement, each subtle wave of feeling placed in the pages of an empty book - though it would be full within minutes.

They stop. Heads turn in one direction and there is unity for a moment -

It's bright, so bright that their faces glow and their eyes reflect an off colour, an inhuman colour. It starts small, then grows with the breaking of wood and the ripping of unread newspapers. Language is lost and all falls silent as eyes focus and stare, nothing moves but the curling of the flames.

But with each stare, a different whisper comes, growing louder as the smoke makes circles in the air and the floating black of burnt paper spirals upwards with the wind. The bodies shift away from the light as it licks towards them, begging and pleading for them to come closer. But they know to step back, every movement mutters a tense curse - some so loud they're shouting.

But they do not hear it with their ears, they just stand and watch the smoke as it mates with the air. Unaware of their screaming, their yelling in the language only the eyes can decipher.

Their eyes stare at the light, reflecting an inhuman colour and the smoke drifts.

Summer

The shine pools in through the window warming bare shoulders and gently caressing a brighter mood. Everything feels better in the sunshine. The hills roll in the distance, like painted clouds, fallen and anchored to the ground.

From the old weather-worn and warped windows miles can be seen, the sleepy villages bedded on the hillside waking with the sunlight and the heat and playing beneath the cloudless blue.

And as the sun begins its slow descent beneath the horizon, the trees sway, dancing to the tune of the birds.

Mine

It's late. It's always late when I decide to twitch my mind towards this chequered background and these winding words. Even with absences it still feels like home - there is a place here, a place connected to my founding organ. The link pulses with every beat, strengthening and binding itself. It cannot be broken. I sit in different places, different homes, different minds sometimes but it remains, here, safe, same.

As I am in transition, between two places and another, it waits. It is kind, forgiving. There is no ill, no abandonment. It is mine and I am its.

It waits here, a constant friend, ready at any hour. It's always late when I decide to come here but it's always waiting for me. Listening.

Cacti

One day it will be all filled with cacti, tall and thin and up to the sky. If you could see the sky. Each visit, there is a new one in a pot on the floor. It feels exotic, though it is everything but. A smile, a soft accent, a new word. Cockahoop. It feels a lot like another home.