Coral Hull: Poetry: Rose Street Archeology: Childhood Madness, The Lady Bird

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CORAL HULL: ROSE STREET ARCHEOLOGY
CHILDHOOD MADNESS, THE LADY BIRD

initially i thought i may have been a lady bird, the house of the self is on fire & i am fleeing it, rising up in the smoke, the grey heat scorching my wings, once up in the air i look through my crystalline eyes & there is nothing to grasp onto, nothing to learn from although my mind is processing information at the speed of light, so i processed wind & space, gradually my learning process slows down to accommodate the wind that entered it & a light comes to fill in the space that was left by the absence of love, i have nothing to learn from but god, if someone doesn't come soon i will go mad, if someone doesn't come soon, i went mad & found that madness was something left to hold onto, but i am too big to lift off the ground & have recently counted my legs & felt my back for wings, i have tried to attract the attention of other bugs & birds with my volcanic colouring, coming up with nothing, except the fly-away world of insects & more blue sky expansiveness, finally i have come down to land, i do not mind that i am not the bug, it is merely representative of how i feel inside, the passion of its colours, the drama of its lift-off & the panic of the tiny fire from somewhere beneath it, i seem to reflect upon those things that represent me, including the mystery which is what i have yet to learn about myself, i attach quickly & instinctively, set about processing emotions like a moth navigates the night as a fat caterpillar will process the summer into its body turning a brilliant pulpy green, i feed on backyards in search of these tiny relationships, like a garden spider, chewing up the experience, this could be seen as predatory but i am an emerging dawn, dreamy & simply aware of my own pale light, i have been looking into water & although i see myself, it seems as if i am looking at another, is she me? then i know she is, but what does it mean? what does madness feel like? & how do i recognise it? is it the place to drift into beyond torture & what can be endured? when the mind is stretched like an overcooked noodle into absurdity & the heart is crushed, when you are standing on the outskirts & looking into that expansion of distance, that moves towards you like a soft & treacherous tide, that queer even water that never reaches the base of your shoe, like a train pulling out past another train at a station of childhood, you don't know whether you are moving past it or it is moving past you, you are being thrown a lifejacket but it keeps falling short, there are watery stories between you & the high ground where it appears the world is standing with its back turned, but someone up there is hating you or something underwater like a shark will rip your feet off, your legs fall out from beneath you & then madness is crashed upon like a soft mattress behind a door, it is a derelict comfort, to fall into the cinder of madness, my face buried in the mothball poverty of an old coat, into the snoring, farting & rolled-over back of a one night stand, not what you want but better than nothing, when a child goes mad what does it mean? they may sit & stare at green, when anything green enters the room the eyes of the mad green child will follow it all about the place, they may develop an attachment to a plant & if it is taken away the long sulking will start, the child's eyes may have developed a green hue in preparation for photosynthesis, they may simply wilt into paleness & become watery in appearance, or they may develop an obsession with trains, becoming a train, logging through the world with steam shifting from the mouth, that mechanical thrusting forward like a hard metal or a fire-faced engine fueled from the hell inside, without blinking, with the temperament of a train with knee bones clanking together, thundering along the tracks to a shaky adolescence, i myself jump into the skipping rope that is turning, i sing 'over the rainbow, over the sea' & 'the cat's got the measles' songs to myself, but because there is no one around they come out garbled & crude & unlike the language of a child, the messages are not getting through, soon i find that the rope is lying on the ground & that no one has been holding either end, i am jumping up & down on the hairy coils & calling out like a bird would call, with the vibration of its parents' feet upon the nest at feeding time, the parent birds that have all the long day searched the forest & snapped at wings in mid-air or stilled into terror on the silent bark, but nothing comes back, no message from any direction to give any indication of what i have been doing & having no image, no understanding of myself, i walk the big time of my childhood invisible, i catch a glimpse of it in the air like a grey cloud flying away, my tears drop in the dirt like rain, i wait & wait but no one comes, i do not know who i am, initially i thought i may have been a lady bird

    

This website is part of my personal testimony that has been guided by The Holy Spirit and written in Jesus' name.

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