Narcicist .

I recently had the pleasure of sharing private messages with a narcissist. By pleasure I mean soul destroying energy draining horror. I wouldn’t normally choose to communicate with such a person but in this case my eye was off the ball and before I knew it he was under my skin. I blocked him. Yet his presence has continued to annoy me. The fault lays entirely with me my intuition screamed at me that there was something wrong about this person, but this clashed with my beliefs that we shouldn’t judge a person on first impressions….what the fucking hell was I thinking! I communicated with him for just under a week and in that time he shared anger, gas lighting, manipulation, obsessiveness, a desire for power and control as well as an ability to wield that power and control. All of these emotions convert to energy as an empath I pick up on that frequency of energy….the problem with this is that most other people can’t , so his public posts just appeared to them as harmless, quirky as us writers are, but harmless. Of course in his pm’s he was able to explore my vulnerabilities with more vigour, but it was also there in his public posts and replies. I should have been able to shake him off but the reality is his clear disrespect toward me has highlighted my vulnerabilities and taken me into a place of questioning. Amazing how quickly a narcissist can get in and fuck with your head. In short he disrespected me as a female writer, us females are already fighting enough stereotypical crap as it is we don’t need individuals to play along too. He did this in a number of ways, covertly communicating in such a way that he expected me to not notice. I did notice. The vulnerabilities he highlighted have been dominating my mind and pushing me into a corner to clearly stand up and define who it is I am as both a person and a writer. I guess in a way the situation has made me question whether he didn’t take me seriously as a writer, because up until this point I haven’t taken myself seriously as a writer.

Over the next few weeks I plan to explore the different ways in which this person was able to disrespect me as a writer. I could of course sweep it under the rug, shrug it off and pretend it never happened, but why the fuck should I, my writing style pushes the boundaries and I often explore topics that allows society to stereotypically label me. This is the problem.. I am who I am, I am not the words on page I am the spaces between them and for that alone I deserve respect.

Deceit of a poet.

Emerald skies of burning blue as white tufts of wisdom float past on the rays of a flaming sun. Inspiration woke me before my eyelids fluttered and this mattered not for my eyes have not seen, truly seen since the last time my soul screamed from the other side to look. Ownership is the materialistic economy of a rich mans world and I am poor in possessions and rich in ownership. Floating particles of death shimmering in the morning light, freely rising, freely falling unaware of any fear. Words caught on the tip of my tongue that beg and beg to be spoken and if destiny is true if our map is drawn out in blotted ink before our soul even contemplates this life, then why fear unsaid words? If all of life’s fine events happen for a reason then I am free to utter thoughts of fantasy and reality and own my day. I am free to own these intrinsic words I splatter across the page that I pull from the empty wardrobe of lost hope covered in webs and crawling with spiders. Hearts break on the beating of the roach’s wings and shattered dreams are scuttled onto a breeze of dark shores. A poets self deceit cuts deeper than any mans lies. The creation of a story based upon a false prophecy stretched beyond the realms of reality searching for the nicks, nooks, crannies something to hold, to grab to elevate the soul toward the summit. The glorious summit, and I wonder why it is that I fight this need for the summit. A thousand definitions can be formed from the utterance of thoughts based upon chemicals. A million different ways to be and I have never been A typical. Blue is red, red is green and all the colours need to be seen and my heart beats. My heart beats and beats my stomach flutters as a swarm of bee’s buzz through my soul and I am okay with this. I do not fear living. Personal autonomy and the thought tank of morality hand in hand coding for that predestined reality. Free me. Put a label on this box and clarify the meaning of interactions. Thoughts, a maze of indifference in a storm of magma a molten mass of dissected words, cut and pasted letters, broken images from a a black and white stills devoid of colours that will one day become igneous. Rocks of life. Beaten down beneath the feet a thousand life soldiers, ground into the dust of oblivion and lost deep in the outer realms of space among the dying lights. But some, some have the power to become, to be the flattened stones skimmed across an ebbing tide, to be the crystals held close to our hearts, to be the stone we never throw and never look at that attracts dust the way it attracted you, in multitude in broken thoughts and fears of unknown origins.

333

The universe is all up in my face,
Repetitive numbers all over the place.
Orange skies where pinks once lay,
Songs whispering the words I need to say.
Opening doors and closing windows,
Poems to read with perfect flow.
They’re in my dreams the calmness I feel,
As I wake and realise it isn’t real,
But that warmth lingers on my skin,
A hinted touch of what life can bring.
They do not guide me they intervene,
Which by the way is a little mean.
Places I have to be,
Sights I need to see.
Hidden treasures to divert my attention,
I’m moving now with apprehension.
The universe is all up in my face,
Whispering that it’ll be okay.

Between the seconds.

In the few moments of empty space

before time ticks leaving behind no trace,

in between the seconds and as the minutes

connect. My thoughts become suddenly erect.

A wandering fantasy with the key to my mind

for you there is no waiting in line.

Emergence ocurred as grains fell between

the moments of time seen and unseen.

Curiosities of a mud filled sky.

Cold, wet earth.
Grey clouds and droplets of rain.
Daffodils already through, garden readying anew. Transformation begins. Vibrational reflections felt, heard and required.
Even in winter, I come here when tired.
Damp dirt to awaken my spirit.
Life’s cycle, clearance nearing completion.
Spring will bring new hope.

If I keep moving I can avoid detection, walk unseen on the streets of distraction.
I can run through alleys of fear in darkness, not looking where I am going.
I can avoid eye contact, no one need see my broken spirit.
If I keep moving, impulsively I can heal, band aids of despair I no longer care.
If I keep moving you can’t see me and I can’t see what it is to be me.
If I keep moving at speed and refuse to take heed, I can transform, I can become the mask, a sanctury at last.
If I can keep moving, I can forget, I can fight, I can survive my darkest nights I can endure the sharpened knife in this loveless war.
But this coldness isn’t me and if I keep moving i’ll forget the reason to be.
If I stop moving your light penetrates my dark.
If I stop moving the universe directs my way.
If I keep moving I can outrun the future and create my own, if I keep moving I can sit in peace upon my icey throne.
If I keep moving I can live in the whispered shadows created by fragmants of the moons glow..but oh what a glow.
If I stop moving I feel your light penetrate my dark.
I feel whispers of you on my skin.
I feel you in the calmness that follows our storm, a questioning battle of what I believe to be norm.
The body is purely flesh and bone, flesh and bone, whispered thoughts whislt I am stuck unfucnctionable in that zone.
If I keep moving I have no reason to feel and I can pretend that none of it’s real.
If I stop moving you penetrate my dark.

Karen Hayward 2016 ©

Freshly grated ginger.

A quiet corner shaded from sight,
a peaceful place to rest my eyes.
Ginger tea to warm me through,
as thoughts wander over to you.

Karen Hayward 2015 ©

I never used to iron.

Ironing. For years I refused to be a slave to the mould of hot steaming iron. I refused to smooth away the crinkles, press creases and stand in the ultimate housewife position. Legs spread, board out, piles upon piles of stylistic statements before me, all of them requiring attention, all of them requiring me to become the atypical label. A housewife, a wife a mother, a female, a girl a lady. We iron.

We stand for hours, up the board, down the board, bored, bored, bored. You were in or you out. I was out. I was the black death of womanhood my views contagious, my opinion death like. So I ironed less and welcomed my self induced plague.

I iron. I became the label that society imposed on me. Sickened by my acceptance I remove my bra in protest.

Flowers in the attic where do you hide!

The feeling creeps in slowly.
Panic, as I flip through once, twice, three times. I search the normal places, beside the bed, the couch, at the top of the stairs, by the window in the kitchen next to the heater, the window that shows me the sun as he wakes and the moon as she wakes. It’s not there and not even the sparkling stars in the clear skies can make me feel better. I search inside bags and tucked beneath the mattress, I pull out the bed and feel my heart sink, my eyes prickle and for a moment I question my sanity. What if. What if I didn’t own that book, what if I just borrowed it, that would certainly make sense and suddenly it feels like my world is crashing, I just want to read the book, now, I search some more determined to be sure that the book is at least not here. Emptiness envelopes around me, darkness falls upon my heart, I feel a great void where a story should be, not any story and certainly not a recall from the many times I have read it before, a void created through the lack of pages to turn, the lack of worn out paper in my hands. The emptiness has become me.

The wee mountains forever as I cook.

Memories.

The whole flat smelt
of aged tannin and
a low whistle could
be heard at all times.
‘Tea?’
There was always time for tea, sarnies too.
You might call her a feeder, she wasn’t but some might call her that.
Food was a sign of respect, you went anywhere they offered you sweet tea
and food. I used a cooker
for the first time there
in that kitchen with
windows that looked
down the hill past the subways and out toward mountains, my Gran always laughed and said ‘Just a coupla wee hills.’ They were mountains to my young
eyes. She spoke constantly
in her rich Irish roots peppered with her Scottish life, if I concentrated hard enough my English mind understood
some of what she said.
Her voice was soft,
a whisper a beautiful
melody, she spoke as I grated potatoes, carrots and onion, her smile told me I was doing good. ‘Eggs, Gran and flour and water too.’ I was reading thr recipe from my mind and hoping I had remembered everything, we had cooked them a few weeks before in school.
She wears a house coat,
she has many, a blue one,
a pink one a brown one,
every morning she slips it over her clothes, I have never seen her clothes, I can only presume she wears them. She told me once, ‘wash your smalls in the sink every
night. That way you’ve always got clean.’ I asked what if you needed them…’she laughed ‘Go with out.’
A frying pan black as death and thick with grease
sizzles at my side.
‘Listen child.’
My Mum also says this phrase.
‘When you cook, you cook. Stay sharp keep thoughts out’
I didn’t listen, I burn most of what I cook because my thoughts make me
wander. We sat at
the table, the small
window behind me
and the radiator to
my left, I feel warm
and safe. I don’t
recall what the
food tasted like,
just her smile as she devoured the plate.