Peter Vries

Peter Vries behind the mirror
Narrow eyes submerged in focus
Above the isosceles knot of a purple tie
White shirt basking in blanketed sunlight
A smile to show for a breezy week to come

Peter Vries in front of the mirror
Red-rimmed bulges beneath wide eyes
Bright sunlight, broken window, brighter still
A sundog poised on each shaft
No tears to spare for a sultry Monday morning

Idiot at work, idiot at home, idiot everywhere
Yet still top of the class, delicious arm candy
With time a mishmash of leftovers, American chop suey
Reaching into the depths of the Atlantic
Right under the flap of his toilet seat

Drained and purified by rats in the sewers
Beneath Amazonian rivers and canopies of green
One boat to paddle and paddled to the ocean
Looking into the bulging head of an octopus
Meeting its lonely eyes sunk within watery life

Sometime flying, sometimes crawling, sometimes still
Like the fingers of Peter Vries standing on
Either sides of a Belgian mirror stolen from
Somewhere in the tomb of a local pharmacy
And thrust straight past the epiglottis, down, down

And back, defenestrated out of Atlantis, a hall of demons
Monsters one and all, covetous losers, give him
His antidote, his tears, the stuff of his snot so
He may sniff and weep and wipe and wipe
Something but the chips off mirrors and geriatric skin of iron

Peter Vries is beside a mirror, inside a mirror
Not trapped but the shadows of one journeyman
Like me, expelled argent minerals on my backside
Silvered and blown and erected and floored
Pregnant with the molten sand to make some more

Groping in hallucinated darkness for sugary bundle
Of wires in my brain, squirming like an injected baby
Away from the howling dogs in my five-fisted walls
Cataplexy in the knees of my beloved Vries before climax
And Monday's night comes on with the blowing of my switch

A Suicide Note Inspired, Ironically, By A Strange Dream

I'm...

Becoming more and more lost by the day.

Do I need a lover?

Maybe, maybe no.

Actually, I don't need anyone.

I just need a cistern of depression.

I need to have conversations that might lead elsewhere from time to time.

I just need someone to enforce my fantasies upon.

To find appreciation for my effort.

To be the centre of attention.

It's not that I would do anything to get there.

I'm not a psychopath.

At least, not yet.

But it does seem to help from time to time if I receive the amount of attention I think I deserve.

I know I'm not asking for much.

When I know that there's so much to be given.

My peers tell me that I dance so well.

But I don't think any of them mean that honestly.

They've taken the notion of friendship, even of familiarity, quite too far.

They've mired it in their own need for politeness.

For gentleness, for care.

To be paid attention to.

Mired it so much that if another being were to ask for the truth, they wouldn't know what it meant.

They'd think that they were saying it.

They'd think that they'd all be like them.

That what was the truth for them would be the truth for everyone else.

It's not the truth anymore.

It's one very big lie.

There was this woman I... loved... some time ago.

She appreciated me for my dreams without even understanding them.

I know it is to be expected, to say the least.

I have to concede that some of my cantatas are astounding.

They are.

But judging that all of them will be is stupidity.

Or is it? I don't know.

It ought to be stupidity.

That's what I think.

If you don't think I dance well then tell me I don't dance well.

If you don't think I'm doing it right then tell me I'm not doing it right.

Why tell me I am doing it right?

Why egg me on?

That's not going to teach me anything.

It's only going to drag me deeper and deeper.

Lower and lower into a spiral of mistakes.

At one point from which I will not be able to recover.

And who will I have to blame?

Only myself.

I cannot blame those who lied to me.

I can blame only myself because I gave their opinions and judgments any weight.

I want to be paid attention to.

At the same time, I want valid attention.

I want truthful attention.

And for that, I will have to be valuable.

I will have to be credibly valuable.

I will have to be incredibly valuable.

And for value to come to life, life must be devalued first.

Devalued first...