Ballad for the Man Who Passed Through Our Fingers.
(a poem)
hey there. so i thought i’d begin sharing some of the poems in the collection that i recently announced (coming incredibly soon). i’m at liberty to say that i am deeply influenced by olde English and ancient pens, just as much as i am by modern poetic language. i dance the incredibly fine line between the two and it often shows in my poems. i’d like to believe this will land well. <3
Ballad for the Man Who Passed Through Our Fingers.
Desire held its final call, thrust gently 'gainst our lungs. Kept calm by fear, a god's known craft. Is this a soul for searching? A carpenter's refuge, his mother's home, cathedral in the dark, once someone holy to be grieved. Is this a spirit lurking? Anchor-bound, your bellied laugh was Christened at the mantel. Through cartered brick, burnt shut with hallowed blood. There we stood. Amen. Heed me a laboured breath, your palm over my shoulder. Fiction flesh, an apparent air swung high a top our falsehoods. I recognise Desire in that wretched winter shirt. If ghosts are real, then what say you of the heart split on our shelf? Warm Sunday hymns, rusted bicycle rims, still turning in the yard. For as it was, not quite a ghost, but all the same, a Self. For as it was, not quite a dream, but all the same, a Self.
this was one of my first attempts at a formally structured ballad and honestly, i had too much fun with it. the narrative was inspired loosely by a prompt someone published on Tumblr: if ghosts are real. i found it refreshing in the sense that i could go in literally any direction with it and make the most of my obsession with ghosts, as metaphors for the mundane and precious things in our lives. Ballad for the Man Who Passed Through Our Fingers, felt to me, like an afterthought of someone i had once known. it held no semblance of conscious grief, but teetered between ideas of missing someone, being redefined continuously and yearning for death to mean something sacred.
i also got the opportunity to employ Shakespeare’s brilliant use of malapropisms in his play (1598-1599), Much Ado About Nothing. specifically, in replacing the word ‘chartered’ with my own creation, ‘cartered’. though my attempt was not a traditional malapropism, given that ‘cartered’ is not a word, the choice to use it came from the idea of our yearning being founded on the principles of love and the theories of home. it felt appropriate to show just how distorted that foundation was. hence: the home was shaky enough to let an undocumented word seep through.
i’ll be sure to keep sharing more of these with you.
yours,
Thando. x
🎵:
Stereo Colour Code (Shaman’s Dream) - Sampha
Epilogue - Sloppy Jane
Sun Come Ease Me In - The Teskey Brothers