Emma Magenta
MIRAGE
You can weep for 6 years and not even know you’re doing it
Hidden underneath layers of obligation
Yes I can do that
Sure I’ll be there
What would you like for dinner?
Remember the moment of vulnerability
Fearing forever being alone, maybe it was that?
Or maybe it was the thrill of feeling fire in the belly
I surrendered with a false flag called hope
in the possibility beyond love’s beautiful beginnings.
All the compromises we make out of fear
Just to be loved
Not walk the path alone
Or feel it as a weakness to want another
To please, replace the missing me
I loathe the eye in me
that saw through this mirage
That saw my human me
and not the realised god-self
Sure, we all want love’s beginnings
but are we brave enough for love’s endings?
My error, in short, was this:
mistaking everyone I’ve ever loved for what I’m searching for.
TINY CANOES
You are made up of everyone you’ve loved
They live inside your capillaries
Ride your blood river
in tiny canoes
made up of forgotten wood
and discarded memories.
You notice them sometimes
when the canoe attempts the impossible
traversing through the aorta
that epicenter
of blood and feeling.
It rides rough rapids
of turmoil
and regret
Sometimes, longing
that terrible longing
the most wretched rapid of all.
When your skin itches
that is them expanding
and contracting
touching your epidermis
a reminder that they’re still alive
forever a part of you
We made up of everyone we’ve ever loved
LOST
I’m lost without you. Did I mention that
I scrape my brain cells that hold the memory of you
the way you remove dead flesh from a heel
I keep the skin cells in tiny glass jars
like portable museums.
I carry them everywhere for emergencies
Opening them up at dinner parties
while the normals argue over the cooking method of a spatchcock.
I pull you out from my secret purse
hidden under socially self-conscious tables
I roll your flesh in my hands until you’re real again
while nodding in agreement that yes
thyme and Lemon Jus is a wise choice for a side.
It’s a stupid ritual really
One that only serves to widen the divide between me
and that big chance Buddha moment:
be fucking present
That noble pursuit
Always dull and motionless in your absence
like a train station in those quiet despair hours
between 11 pm and tomorrow.
By the way, if you see a girl running that’s me
and I assure you
it will be from this chance for godhood
what all those new-agers bang on about
the now
That cruel catch-phrase forcing focus
on critical choices made on a whim
all of them now regrettably dumb.
My heart’s a cowboy
too foolhardy with the lasso
that hip gun too
always going off
each time you’re not in view.
Did I tell you, I’m lost without you?
A GHOST STORY/PORTABLE MAUSOLEUMS
There is this hell inside me where the flames are mesmerising
its shape fits your outline
that grows and shrinks every time you walk in, walk out.
Tell you what,
I’ll be the empty house and you be the ghost.
I’ll keep my favourite illusions about us in tiny glass jars
like portable mausoleums.
What do you want for dinner?
I'm leaving you
Shall we watch The 7:30 Report?
You'll never see me again
I've made your favourite dessert
You can keep the house.
The funny trajectory of feelings.
They rise up, you take note
they fall away
but, some don't fall away
becoming embedded in your bloodstream
and there's my only enemy right there
inside me
and no matter how much I vacuum the cracks in the floor of my adult house
my childhood just doesn’t change but, maybe
just maybe if I do everything the opposite way I was taught
I might survive.
I thought you were the face of that new way,
my very own swashbuckling hero.
After awhile though, getting your hopes up
becomes an extreme sport in itself.
If only I knew this:
the best way to keep our romance alive is never getting to know each other.
Refunds for emotional disappointment should be a thing and weddings should happen under water, the suffocating non-air can break you in for your future.
You’re working back again? What’s her name?
You know, there’s a freedom that comes with being forgotten.
I can relax and become a mountain again,
free of perfecting myself
just trying to outshine all your golden girls
competing for the crown in your secret world.
I would cry about it,
but I bought 80 pairs of shoes instead,
It will show up on your bank statement.
BRITTLE SCULPTURES
It’s completely ok to have paper thin feelings
they are a sign that you are connected to everything
and you should never toughen up.
They are brittle ghost sculptures
like a once spectacular spider’s web
now dangling in the breeze, on your porch
the intricacy of all the connecting parts
made senseless by a broken thread
a careless gesture of a human hand
or deliberate, perhaps
in haste to get somewhere by 9 am
that all night effort destroyed in a breath
trampled on by imaginary urgency
of progress, a deadline
profit over humans
those paper thin feelings are what remains
but don’t worry.
The fragile things will one day be the strongest
and the things that are destroyed
will be reborn.
Kneel before the invisible
and you will see the truth of things for the first time
our paper thin feelings are like nature
they will always reinvent themselves
like the web
the toil of the exhausted spider
they will be remade over and over
until our favourite idea of ourselves
is broken, dangling in the breeze
and all that remains is tenderness.
Emma Magenta is an Australian artist, writer, and filmmaker who began her career drawing and writing her thoughts/feelings down on the brown paper book bags and pinning them to the wall in Berkelouw Bookshop where she worked for 10 years. She was offered an international book deal at the front desk and has published 7 books, a SXSW nominated multi-platform animation series and book for The ABC, a TEDX talk "Understanding The Human Heart" and wrote/directed her first AACTA nominated live action short film "Remembering Agatha". Emma is also an exhibiting artist. Website: www.emmamagenta.com
Twitter: @BrainPornNinja