Poems by Camille Daytona

#posted January 5, 2023
blurred stone
each steering wheel I sleep behind,
each flower I forget to smell,
I lay down my body amongst the stones.
I become a stone, discoloured,
one in a dozen, in a thousand, in a field.
my echo is plain,
naked and obvious, every way I stand out
is accidental.
#posted November 19, 2022
I couldn’t tell you
how it is. I entered a room of
of frost, icewhite frost. even the flowers
are ice. I moved them three times, from the hallway
to the counter, to the sink, to the floor.
for a man
to put on that face, that broken wretched face,
and ask for me to see it, and beyond the blunt despair,
for a sulking child
thirteen years my senior,
for a bull that is a goat that is a crow that is a dog,
for a hexed wish,
I freeze my bones.
beware of your garden, before I tend it,
cultivate your weedy mess
before I come,
before I come and live in it.
on internal harmony
I want to know a feeling:
to wake up from
the deep sleep I, sadly,
never reach. Or instead of
Destination Unkown
to have some sort of security -
but the arms that feel secure
are seldom really so.
but Destination Known would be a bad song
and these months I hurry from
distraction to disguise.
lately I like to agree with myself.
it goes like this:
- I’m such a good girl.
- exactly, I’m right. I am such a good girl!
- thanks for agreeing with me.
it’s like softfucking a mirror.
I highly recommend.
horse show
I
sometimes I think up names: Mia,
Scarlett, Sam.
but I will stay a childless mother -
better than a motherless child.
my current lover has no sense of smell,
which he did not choose, but with his
bold and able mind he did choose this:
to never reproduce.
I don’t know yet if his body is
supposed to be my pillow.
there is a very specific way
a head fits in a shoulder notch.
a fist fits in a fist.
II
my Mia would be crooked and tall,
an unapologetic star. she would be so tired
constantly having to shake the crumbs of her mother’s
life off her sheets.
III
a sleepyhead may give a woman such a look,
the look of slight disinterest that some men
perceive to be sexy. lucky me,
lucky pageant horse,
bows on my braided manes,
standing so still, inspected,
no rearing, no jumping through hoops,
no nothing.
springclean
dedicated to j.s.
I put things back in order:
my skirts sorted by hue.
your clouds next to mine, yours are more aggressive,
but you are not the agressor,
you are not the ballfisted
beast in this story, not who I made you out to be.
train tickets in the trash, the cat food with the scoop,
the pill closet stays closed.
I thought to leave the city, the same but somewhere else,
same coffee, same joints cracking.
jack stauber said that today, today / is one of those
days / stuck between
yesterday and tomorrow,
and I don’t need to know his face to love him.
I don’t need a hand that pinches,
I need the limpest of hands on top of mine,
no cracking, no urge, no clouds,
only the broadness of time
and the hand of my beautiful beast declawing.
my purring, snoring
clump of a beast.
#posted April 10, 2022
Escher’s stairs
look, the sky still has mercy
after all the sickening slander
it still stretches its limbs out wide.
just like I do for you,
a widely sprawled angel for you.
we don’t always see release coming,
or know how many corners left
to lurk behind.
life, stupid gleeful
serpentine of life,
an endless string of corners,
forever awaiting you,
forever on Escher’s stairs.
#posted March 6, 2022
pink swan
the day had a silver air to it.
between strolling and fucking
and reading and fucking, there was still
my weakness seeping through.
but we took big breaths and sought out
the best of the best of chairs
in order for me not to
swoon.
we passed by a ballet gear shop.
I pointed towards a baby pink
cross-body knit, said
if I were alone now,
I would’ve gone in there.
if I were alone now.
my words age badly!
I would’ve ripped you apart if you let me.
heck, I would’ve eaten your saliva
off a plate.
#posted March 5, 2022
mimosas on saturday
you get so sad, so sad. I hear your sadness
first thing, last thing. firstly, lastly.
you meow all the time now.
*
there is a machine inside me.
it signals to and from my bedroom.
when I walk blindly, it tells me so.
just like you, I had to learn how to rest.
*
my mother! she gave me a cutting.
a cutting of a flower. it traveled with me on the train.
on top of all my stuff, in sheer plastic.
I like plastic, but I mustn’t. I can like it,
I’m allowed to like, but only the way a child likes.
*
so your meow, is it a blessing
or a warning or a cry?
I offer you things: olives, coffee, a
piece of my bread. it does not make you better,
I know.
*
while nothing really does, is
it still comforting to be offered?
candles, cake, a chocolate egg.
or my body - not really an offer,
since there’s nothing to give up.
*
besides the vacuum and the cat,
nothing disturbed your sleep, maybe
only a knife or a little spoon ringing in my glass.
but not impatience, worry or
a hurried pace. nothing, nothing,
no small thing to deny you
safety.
#posted March 1, 2022
confession of a kleptogirl
my mouth is blue from being.
I want to find a when to my ever,
an obstacle in my open field.
a reason to tighten the leather.
to wear it ostentatiously around my thigh.
sometimes I collect stupid nothings
to make me feel accomplished when I get home.
once in the office of doctor fibromyalgia,
whom I don’t see any longer
because I do not have it -
I stole a roll of medical tape because
it made my trip more worthwhile.
it was memorable because it was so secret
a secret among the flat flat truth.
and it was not even truth.
#posted February 26, 2022
my angel
I will always pursue my secret angel.
I will never take her out of my palm.
she collects my whiteness, my rare, rare whiteness.
she disposes of it.
not in a discarding way, no, my tiny little angel
sprinkles my white dust all over the grass,
all over the soil, patting it lightly.
I feel it again, the lurking call. I listen.
sometimes I want to undo knowledge,
wear a shield to protect myself,
do a speedrun, away from this tangled mess
of a world. but I love the modern age,
I love the joy of knowing.
my wikipedia is marked by a red flag.
but again on my angel -
I squeeze and she collects:
working hard in my hand,
tough labor in my pocket.
she collects and collects
my whiteness
and gives it back to the earth.
#posted February 7, 2022
blues (mood ring)
I am accepting the
unscripted, willingly giving up
the false idea of mastery
(but for you,
you feign it so beautifully
as to script my every move, pluck my
petals, as to stop counting them)
I am cherishing my
change in colour, like a mood ring,
I spend my mornings
decorating: a hair pin,
a buttoned dress
to be seen like a star is seen: when you blink,
I am renewed,
my yesteryear still sparkling in,
or despite,
its corruption
then you provide
an entryway: two pillars encircled
with a shitload of ivy, a good old palm fibre
welcome mat,
so I can meet with it, eye-to-eye,
face down
you grant me
your assistance,
provide me with your shelving
I am
building a
pawn shop for my past
my salty revenge
like a pirouette that falters
I cannot fully amend my lifestyle to fit
I sting myself quite often
at the amounts of pills I own
the grand collector they call me
I never touched a real horse -
afraid of brain injury
or that my back is split open again
they did it with such precision
the type of mancraft that is supposed to be a
once in a lifetime thing
(bless your statements!
twice for me)
the sour earth may wait for my body
but I am practicing preservation
drawn back to the waters, oh purple waters,
waters that carry my body like a raft,
bottomless turbid waters,
still
less likely to drown
let them watch while my bones turn brittle
breakable
like their promises
lovely, softly, barely there
there are days when having big hopes is tiring
like pampas grass sitting proudly in a vase,
that once in a while I just want empty, I put it away,
for no good cause but for the sudden
stoic in me
but on you:
we pass through levels of a video game,
our swords lined up
in the corner of our eyes
you snap your iron age out of its container
I pick up the machete, it makes a clicking sound
which you repeat,
as to have the last word
(I’m not a man of power! but nevertheless I toy with the idea
of a kingdom, a ruthless kingdom, but not cold,
a prodigy, a kingdom kind
like a warm body with frozen fingertips)
endearing you, dear you, I think about
our enchanting lowlife
a careful symbiosis, our cloudheads
complying with our feet firm,
knees supported, a gentle fight
never in the brightest light, sometimes I might
just have an existential crisis
‘always take one step back’
I say every month, but don’t
repent
for you I do it all over
# posted May 16, 2021
diptych
lacking physical evidence
I scream
when my nerve endings are glowing
confirmation through
actual sound
is unnecessary.
I once had a body of a
hot air balloon, landing in a palace
with yellow gardens
no rocks
outlines of shadows
cast by mermaids
with neon tails shimmering
and crystal rods through their
pineal glands
sitting in the same spot
through the afternoon.
in my kitchens I would keep
mangoes, or
everything
but medicine.
of the heavens and the earth I
know a lot of tales
watch me when I struggle
to remember
watch me
wither in my
silicone bed
extra tender around the shoulders
like me.
# posted May 13, 2021
aripiprazole
it is inside your capsule
that I lie coiled
like in a womb.
not many sunsets ago
I was counting ways
to reach the highest berry
in the tree.
the purple one
was the most sedating
and everyone knows that indolence
is best avoided
at all costs
now I crawl with my knees
scraping against the root
to pick the flavour
closest to the soil
my muted mouth
a purple smile
for God’s witness.
# posted November 6, 2020
there is nothing that holds my grudges
there is nothing that holds my grudges
and I knew my wreckage long ago
as I saw it before it had a name
all the mistakes right before me
it faked a purpose to keep me saddled
the leather is worn where the muscle is weakest
boulders would it carry
happily, but not me
oldest, contaminated wrath
all the fibers picked apart
I organize them by ability to hide
let’s not go over it this time
let’s keep the lid closed
possibly forever
with my quilted blanket
uncontaminated
perfectly intact
serving on a silver plate
a permanent regression
until the space it cannot hold
until it shrieks when it feels my coldness
call me a squeezer
puzzled by the clock
I have to do almost nothing for it
the milking persists
I want to hear the fullest word
but in your favour
I want to hear the most plausible outcome
sugarcoated
held but not squeezed
some sort of resistance
some sort of ignorance
# posted August 24, 2020
pinch poem
I keep improvising a re-enactment
I fumble with something I once felt was real
real real
painfully real
days stretched very far
when I symbolically chose the placement of a sticker
an induced real
a deformed memory
that shifts a grid
obvious
(not having to make a point)
like a golden flower
that sprouts from a rare seed
that stands alone
and when
there comes a branch
it is not clipped to
another one
on my back
i’m sliding back down the dell
with the reverence of a moth
for light,
with deception of a jump
I jump up
to a phone cell
to a hotel
to go into hibernation
to wipe the same spot until it discolors
like a notebook over time
# posted June 21, 2020
U.Z.
the surgeon sped through hallway a few times
vaguely, like a ghost.
he was like a famous person
whose time you could not afford to buy.
on rare occasions we would sit face to face.
he would lean back into his orthopedic chair,
all saggy. I could see his spine bend through his skin.
I had my jewelry on everytime I went.
“take off your weapons”,
he would instruct.
when he opened my back
he could not fathom wat he saw.
I prepared him but he did not listen.
I asked to keep the evidence, which I used
to build a shrine.
now it is scattered:
one piece is in my boyfriend’s bedroom
most of it is in the drawer
where it acts as a magnetic field
to keep the shame out of my body.
it will never decompose.
the surgeon was busy for eight hours.
if I hadn’t been asleep,
I would’ve turned around to see the surgeon’s face
and whispered like they did at my high school lectures:
“why are you all red?”
aide-memoire
the most abominable sight
can be one to cherish after all.
whether it penetrates our eyes like acid,
or not,
it brings forth a truth
and displays fear.
something feels unsettling
when using the word truth.
I would rather never use any word ever again
that summons the idea
of me as a knower.
the sky has to keep amazing me.
when it stops doing that,
that is my quavering red flag.
I would rather submit myself
to a tree or a lion
but I have an agile mind.
I can not sit still when I have to listen.
but I can ignore and ignore
like no other person.
I might do something really silly after all
like studying astrophysics.
# posted March 9, 2020
thinktank
thanks 4 Dewi
and so I sit cross-legged between the smudge
I grub
I clasp to the roots
that peep out of the pile.
every day conflicts with the other
a chain link continuum,
perpetual
towards the glazed bushes in gardens
in which crumpled love notes from teenage girls
lie yellowing
thrown from the top floor window.
haven’t I been that before?
the way my stockings glimmer
is a substitute for void.
if I catalogize my belongings
will the chaos decline?
I make myself uncomfortable
on the carpet
and I count.
soon enough I see the images again:
as they come flashing
previously from smoking weed
now from just existing.
soon enough the mist comes,
thickening.
but the dog keeps me in charge:
it checks on my presence when I am far gone.
foreplaying till cows come home
I realize I need a frame.
a lack of boundaries is what,
contradictorily,
eliminates my freedom.
I want someone to tell me what to do,
or cry excessive tears
so it is clear that I am sad
instead of guessing the weather.
the only thing I know
is that my climate is turbid
and lawless like slab city.
I haven’t made it there yet.
maybe a muscle twitch
is a crypted message
to run.
I’ll sell my furniture
and curate my environment.
I’ll conspire a sham marriage.
for B.
how much do you want to stay unknown
or how much do you want me to unsee you?
you know I can’t unsee you
or anything I read about anything to do with blood
I am very afraid of time
I bought a mango which I left to decompose
which I didn’t mean to
sometimes purity has a pungent taste to it
I ask you to imagine this in my voice
while all this time I have bathed and bathed
mostly I like the water to exceed the level of heat that is bearable
where on the scale of bearableness would you place me
strong bones run in my family
my grandmother could build a house in the blink of an eye
she said we took to long to make a plan
or that once you have gathered all the materials needed
you have to act fast
for your willpower not to weaken
I have a plan but I am tethered to a post
and very prone to illness
so I am excluded from this precious piece of advice
you know that but you do not know the severity of it
many of my hues go unperceived
my appearance is confusing
to doctors and to women prone to the evil eye disease
and I had to re-open the gate myself many times
in fact it always closes before it is even fully opened
in fact it is a loophole without an end
December Two Thousand Nineteen
to be receptive is an active verb
it needs me
slightly uncomfortable on the top of a hill
in hiking boots
and an invisible star at the end of each fingernail
spawning the desire
or the will
or both the desire and the will
to stare at an ugly purple vegetable
and to seperate the roots from the weeds
the will seems to be rather the act of toleration,
which is passive
there is a smell to this room too neutral
it makes me not be here
I wonder what clouds smell like
in high school I once smelled a chemical that you’re not allowed to smell
I almost lost my sense of smell
the list of smells without connotation keeps shrinking
I have a new daily challenge
it starts with me opening my eyes to see the same pearl string chandelier
but it is Wednesday
and I have to say the month and the year out loud
and I have to repeat it with a stern voice, as if to convince anyone
that there is no one present in this building
# posted February 12, 2020
the World must be here somehow
the World must be here somehow
at the sight of a dream before it is known
or touched -
with a knife clenched somewhere
and the houses beautifully sown to each other
where we do not live and never will
tragically
mundane
beautiful starfield
when I look inside sometimes it is completely hollow
sometimes there are
tiny envelopes swarming
glimmering promises kept small
by choice or
by destiny
this is the best try of all tries
I blue -
my eyelashes
I think about the past as a different life entirely
I try to touch pictures
they melt in my hands
stay sedated
and asleep
resume your filthy ways of stumbling
in a sandhole
very, very deep
like a tower reversed
meet me at the top of it
the only thing that feels real is rain
with the voice under one’s breath
that whispers
the World must be here somehow
Coney girl memoir
by the thought of getting past this morning
I was pinned
like a butterfly in a frame
and there were pins that went inside the muscle
and they entered
and you came
racing towards me
your smile formed a fountain
and I stood by with a checkered flag
and I gave up on the standing part
and I lay watching
as many many tasks undid themselves
through consolation
through regression
I threw one coin in the fountain to show my devotion
and one for the fun of the act
then one for you
and one for me
I kept throwing and throwing
like through the slot of a coin dozer machine
that pushes through the gold and the gadgets
where children run around with goldfish
this must be the place, I say
I know this state of being
it is accountable for all and every cloud of hope
that fades before the sublimation
sliding on a conveyer belt
back into butterfly being
where every pin lowers the treshold of pain
that is what happens when you put metal inside of a girl
# posted January 6, 2020
airborne children
we are nowhere in particular
we are a
dot on a map
we are a falcon stone-grown to a roof
yet we are still a falcon.
we are airborne babies
kept in recluse.
we think we know about these streets and their features
or that we have to move cities
in order to rewire our brain.
maybe it is enough to leave the door ajar
or shower with the lights off.
if you take a shower every day
you never get very filthy.
it is shameful,
all the comfort
that kept us from ever reaching this state.
maybe we have to see the worst
landflood in history
or suffer a concussion.
snowflake bath
before I lay my eyes upon the proof of something - before I do that,
I must feel the fuck out of nothings
what I would like is to stay in overlooked corners
what I dream of is a meta-life
that I can get back to and count the days as a way of keeping them
there are a lot of boxes to be filled
and purged and filled again
I will remove myself out of situations too legitimate
or useful,
to return to him and me in a snowflake bath
with crystals by the window
(and to the things that are very very tangible
like shells printed on paper
or like when something is very old
or odd,
the touch hits differently)
October 14
wherever it lays pounding
still warm and tactile
in sheets of a river bed
we do not go there anymore
we thrive on electricity
we repair and replace in the blink of an eye
where does the light even still come from
be it the core that holds the grit
be it the hold of a hand
which is sometimes an attempt
sometimes a confirmation
be it the surprising capability
of the aformentioned core
be it the sight of the gate that holds something from you
it holds something from you
now I say this again but this without hesitation
September 28
time and time again
turning in a big wheel
with the fossils and the flowers
the fumes and the fuels
I sit in disharmony because I was put on this earth
as a sweet invitation to turn that around
and to kiss and to shatter
and to find shelter in forgetting
without the proving or the affirmations
spinning low in the grass beneath the clouds like a cottonmouth
never having read anything ever
no one else’s nor my own
forever on a silken threadmill
the dots erased before their marking
lurking in their whiteness
declaration
I declare this field outdated
I declare my cortex undamaged
I rewrite the story
I recall anything and everything to be unreal
and replace it with a surrogate
I exist along with the faces of men
undamaged
I fulfill conjoined desires
I fall
I fuck and unfuck
G.
you are the soldier and the sheep
and the rainbow inbetween, the leap towards
a treetrunk where we sit on
faces covered from the sun
the well we unwillingly drank from is blessing us after all
the spools rewinding
back into the lavender and the concrete flowers
towards the discomfort of wetness
the sight of sameness
the sunken sand
neokarma
in divine timing
in all this crap and clutter,
the drum
the blade
between disorder and heaven
that’s where we meet
Imre
when my body is weak I turn to the sight of Imre on the graveyard
when we gave him goat cheese pie
I wanted so badly to take him home and too late, the realization struck me
only a child does that,
only a child takes a bird out of its nest, no matter how bleak in appearance
Imre was the diamond cat
Imre did nothing
it’s easy to pretend you’re being followed
when all you want is a following
with your pointy fingers on the foreheads of creatures
all sizes and ages
to give them names
May 31
you call your dad but he speaks in his 2011 voice
you lie despondent in the same bed
you think you are cemented in a stone wall
you look at the universe while it’s not there
you look through the same eyes that contain it
they pierce through the middle ages and the holy fruit of Eden
they thread a needle through virgin Sophia’s brain
and the tincture of her womb has dissolved in your body
the cleansed solution is within you
chaos is nothing but the white of an egg
May 22
elsewhere than where the snake bites its own tail
lies are sold like candy
empty-handedness is mistaken for void
the greatest occurence of a lifetime is not sweet
but still sticks under every chair we ever sit on
it smashes to pieces our childhood bed
it unentertains us
22
eleven is a nicer word than it is a number
my number was supposed to be twenty-two
because it was sewn onto my jeans
and now I am twenty-two and I keep quantities in boxes
and I loathe the fabric
cornucopian angel
I miss her like that:
when she walked with a spring in her step
and denied the dead probably trampling their daisies
if conscious ignorance exists
then that was what it was, and the bricks she touched seemed supercharged
but she never heard of ego death
the body carried like a lamb
licked in both ears
succumbing softly never knowing of
a skin behind the peel
and still peeling
May 1
what is it that draws me back to the zero point
I like emptiness because it keeps me low
set
to rise eventually
selective blindness works greatly
you let your body do a slow dance
between energy poles
in one room
lateral
sometimes I miss the hospital