Where Words Go When They Die

By Dominic Kirwan

In this collection of poetry the author explores the many facets of what it means to live life through the lens of schizophrenia. And yet it is more than that. Black humour, irreverent mayhem and cheerful tragedy all vie for the right to co-exist within unreality’s dark prism. Where Words Go When They Die sways from surreal, bleak

• Language: English
• Publisher: Debbie Lee
• Release date: Jan 14, 2016
• ISBN: 9781760410803

Book preview

Where Words Go When They Die

Where Words Go When They Die

Dominic Kirwan

Ginninderra Press

Contents

Copyright

Where Words Go When They Die

Where Words Go When They Die

ISBN 978 1 76041 080 3

Copyright © text Dominic Kirwan 2012

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All rights reserved. No part of this ebook may be reproduced, distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the copyright holder. Requests for permission should be sent to the publisher at the address below.

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First published 2012

Reprinted 2016

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Ginninderra Press

PO Box 3461 Port Adelaide SA 5015

www.ginninderrapress.com.au

Where Words Go When They Die

The Cage Maker

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When they stopped feeding me

I just got stronger

I ate away the bars of my cage

Until I was free

Then I devoured the other prisoners

The guards and visitors

I filled my raging belly

With entire families

Soon I was bigger than the sky

And I rained down my shackles

Upon them all

My clouds billowed with chains

My mouth vomited handcuffs and mirrors

Over those that tried in vain

To flee

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I dangled the keys to the end

Before the eyes of the cage makers

I drank the blood of God

Till he was no more than bones

In a sack of skin

Still I hungered for more

The stars withered in my shadow

I snuffed the light from suns

Like candlewicks

Pinched between wet fingers

I laughed my way through funerals

For weeping galaxies

I stole the smell from flowers

Broke the last surviving smiles of dreamers

Like twigs over my knee

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When there was nothing left

Just dust and ink and emptiness

The corpses of angels

Floating dead through space

I built myself another prison cell

Got inside and locked the door

Peered out the little paper window

And waited for someone

To come along and visit me

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Eons they are passing

Like echoes

Like whispers

And still I am waiting

In this nothingness

All alone inside my cage

The Underside of the Tapestry

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A grim floral tapestry

Woven by gnarled, sweat shop hands

Reveals greying roses in the death throes

Viewed from underneath

It reveals nothing but mechanism

And impossible pretence

The artifice of disjointed threads

A spot of blood disregarded

From a slave’s fingertip

Carelessly pierced

By someone else’s needle

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Yet there is more to know

More to see

In chaos and its hidden process

Than the completed image

The galleries of