Asking For Help
The crowds of central London, slithering past me, hurrying in the wet as if they too flow: like the water from a burst pipe that is no more than two feet from me. I stand back, let them pass me by and then I am stranded, an ox-bow lake of skin and bone. It’s an effort not to howl.
I want to be candy, wrapped up; to be wanted, to elicit excitement, to crackle in the pocket, to jangle with the loose change. I want to be the warmth of chips held in newspaper, blackening fingers with the print; I want to be more than just the person standing here, sheltering from the downpour of tourists, homeless beggars, clipboard-clad kids and blue-rinse wielding grandmothers. There must be more to being alive than this.
Isn’t there?
Listen. I don’t want to shout above the cacophony of voices, cars, diesel engines, so come in close: I’m drowning in smog; I feel like I’m a wound that needs to be sutured. Can you understand? My life is flooding away from me, running down the streets, naked and vulnerable.
All I’m doing is asking for some help here.
6 comments:
People have asked me in the comments and via email to get on with writing something new. No one understands how busy my life is right now. But, I can see things from their point of view. So...
Today, I was busy working and then I visited the blogs of my friends.
While leaving a comment or two I realised I had inspiration right outside my office window: Carnaby Street, London.
This is a story about that street.
purplesimon out...
Nice to see something from you again! And nice to see you too.
Oh Simon, NO MORE PRESSURE!!!
I hope to see LONDON, with my own two eyes, soon!
But, until then, thanks for taking me there!
Take Care,
xx
Sue
btw, like the real you!!!
No more pressure (I double lzygrl), except this one wants to be a poem. It does!!!
Plus its inspiration is poem-like (what's out the window?). And you kind of personify(if I spelled that right), but in reverse; you want to become inanimate (ditto on the spelling question). Lot's of poetic qualities. And then you do personify your life "running down the streets, naked and vulnerable".
But guess who is Tired with a capital T?
me!!
-g+bb
here I am again!
Because guess what I am working on? A poem that started in paragraph-mode. I know what it means to have a poem but its in the shape of something else. while I work on mine, likewise. but be sure to keep the final draft offline because then, gulp, for us mere mortals, it's published.
wave out the window.
-g+bb
oh, purpy-pants, sometimes all it takes is a weensy bit of pressure to keep us movin' on. I, too, get too busy to post and then someone (e.g. Matty) pressures me to write something new and then I type it up real fast. And sometimes it's horrendous, but every once in a great while I surprise myself by writing a decent sentence or two.
This one worked out pretty well, didn't it? The way people are slipping past the narrator like water? And I know this was based in what you observed, but it's funny how the way to get noticed is to say something meaningful & thus to become a snag. Which, each post is a snag.
That's not meant to sound like pressure, by the way. It's meant to sound like the occasional inspiration. You've created a monster, and the monster is your audience!
--ingrimon out.
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