Strange Days #1 - Strange Days are here... | Page 10

Charlene Engels
F

or a writer who’s reading habits often coincided with
the works of decadent and dissenting authors, it
seems a natural progression to me that Charlene Engels’
work owes a great deal to those mid-century literary malcontents: the free-wheeling Beats, and their thematic obsession with music, the ‘authentic life’, whether it can
(or should) be attained, and ecstatic self-expression as
an end in itself.
In the best tradition of those pioneers, the work cries
out to be read aloud; wearing its influences proudly in
the service of our own times and the singular experience that may illuminate or provoke. Her tribute to Allen
Ginsberg in particular, continues that writer’s tradition
of acknowledgement and the adaptation of influence to
new purposes.

remind me
that you speak volumes to my muse
every morning
I look around to answer cues of
somnolence creeping behind dawn’s curtain.
Shake off my blues.
Dig through the clouds to
find some sunIt hangs apocalyptic.
The sky is magnificent!
---

Carousel

Morning Song

I stroll along the shore listening
to the waves and
my open breath
deep
inhaling misty clouds of bright
dancers on the horizon
yellow and resplendent and
strumming winged instruments
soaring into my skin
and I blush
blues,
blues blues.

Woke up to another grey sky
6am.
I don’t even brush my hair no more.
There’s remnants of wine
rouge stained lips
the room’s boppin’ to
Coleman’s rizzmatizz slurrr
from the night before he’s still spinnin’
just like my head
I roll over to the mirror and
hesitate. I learned early
not to drink deeply of that which
cuts a spiral through the glass, for
it can only slide

Sunlight is infectious and my hair is golden.

A woman on the morning tube
nearly cried.
Her nose swelled red as
She suppressed the tears
I caught a glimpse of
Her trembling eyes
and saw an imitation of myself
She knit me a complexion to
colour the words I heard and
diminished me like the chords that
poured through my headphones
on a bus down from Edinburgh,
travelling memories swell in my chest heavy breathing
and it’s you who sings to me, conjuring
my innermost pathologies.

Tea-infusion is my brain and you’re the boiled water pouring
posting me through letterboxes,
each one a different song – unlock those memories
send me enraptured
Keep time eternal
Keep time insignificant
Sink into my pores
Slink into my dreams,

I wake up in a dark room with bare walls
no music but a creek as the door swings
to and fro another crack in the floor
cracked memories, fragments – what is reality?
Chuckle with insanity
Picture the illusion, hold up a mirror, what do you see?
What is afflicting you, your search for identity?
You’re just like Harry Haller, I tell me.
You’re sick, you desire a remedy – but
just as the tide fucks the shore
(it swallows more and more)
You want too much, and this you cannot have, so
the cycle returns, perpetual motion
like the Great Wheel of Mockery.
Nature has its way and I cannot transcend.
Yes, this has been the longest year,
and I’m like flickering halogen –
there’s no child playing with the switch,
it’s just me – and my inconsistency.
If only happiness could be eternity!
But this is not in your philosophy, I remind me –
it’s a sure road to complacency.
And the rhyming? Well that’s not me either,
let’s be rid of this fatuity and
slide down the scaly back of life’s endeavours.
There’ll be a flick at some point, to transport me to new worlds
–

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