Mum says
they’re just jealous!
But it doesn’t
stop them
from treating me
like dirt
The teachers say
just stay away
which is easy
if I was invisible
or didn’t mind
getting hurt
© Kait King, 2015
Mum says
they’re just jealous!
But it doesn’t
stop them
from treating me
like dirt
The teachers say
just stay away
which is easy
if I was invisible
or didn’t mind
getting hurt
© Kait King, 2015
Sometimes I wonder if you were
ever really here
Somehow I know what’s true
when you were always there
But as life returns back
to a more even keel
I can’t help this wonderment
this dreamlike existence I feel
You are gone yet you remain
and as the world lazily spins on the same
those 70’s and 80’s – a very different look
maybe just a new chapter in my new story book
As you are not really gone
I will sing your same old song
And I will die at my age and my son
will turn the next blank page
© Kait King, 2015
Meet me in the middle
and I’ll take you to the end
Tell me that you trust me
and I’ll let you be my friend
Promise me the world
and it’ll fall at your feet
Run the faster race
’cause it’s me you have to beat
Don’t believe in rumours
and they won’t control your life
Believe in what you want to be
and step into that light
© Kait King, 2015
I cry
I cry and I cry
for what I am not
What I am perceived as
is not what they got
I grieve
I break and bend
for what has a future
that already knows the end?
© Kait King, 2015
Look at me
waffling on
happy as a bee
Look at me
skipping through life
thinking I’m free
Look at me
that wistful child
once so wild
and now independent
and grown
Look at me
with 3 under 3
and a house I don’t
even own
Look at me
shared weekends
if we’re lucky
And I know you’ve been
sucking
someone else’s cherry
lip gloss
Look at me
bitter days
long nights
spent watching crap TV
Never to be
free –
the very unhappy
divorcee
© Kait King, 2015
Yes love,
that’s exactly
what you do
Dust yourself off
once you’ve
pulled yourself up
and sing
dance
stand tall
Honey if you
think about it
it’s not the first time
and be sure
it will not be the last
You know the rights
from the wrongs
Don’t ever let them change
your song
With a Nelson Mandelian
grace
and a dignity dug
from the deep
You will triumph
and in a cloud of
dust, like a rolling
Pig Pen
You flagrantly walk
your walk into
another opportunity
© Kait King, 2016
Crystal Meth
An addicts’ breath
Inhales a
smoky dream
In reality
You’re never free
Just a brains’
endless scream
Crystal Meth
Talk in depth
Required by any means
Close to death
That last crystal breath
It’s not as great as it seems
Crystal Meth
Families bereft
Bury a loved one, crying
Cold caress
This Crystal Meth
And our children
keep on dying
© Kait King, 2016
I knew I loved this family
from the very start
It felt like I’d always been there
and we’d never been apart
With our delicious little secrets
and our family photo art
Boisterous family dinners
and cheeky, jeering remarks
Mum’s delicious orange chicken and
her cinnamon apple tart
I knew I loved this family
from the very start
© Kait King, 2016
I remember being only
knee-high to a grasshopper
and you would twirl me around
you let me stand on your feet
and danced with me
while I clutched at your
chino trousers or
the creases on your business suit
You never minded
we always danced
I remember pouring your drink
two fingers of Glen Morangie
two fingers being my index and little
but not really
I mixed that whiskey with two blocks of ice
and a dash of chilled water
I remember how you would savour it
in the South African sunlight
at the end of your day
I remember the love of words and animals
you gifted to us all
your funniness
and sense of justice
I remember you telling me
to eat my crusts
so that I would grow hair on my chest
and I did – eat them, not grow hairs on my chest…
I remember you used to type
business letters on my belly
and I was an old typewriter with a runner
and a “ding!”
which tickled the hell out of me
“Dear sir” you would type
I’m shrieking with delight
And the photo’s that I have
I remember you Dad
© Kait King, 2015
With love and dedication to my incredible father – the walking Encyclopaedia, the uncapped academic – I miss you, we all do xxx
My eyes feel
like I’ve rolled them in salt
My brain
just won’t let me sleep
I go through the stories
in my head –
blaming myself and
at fault
No one else
sees me like that
although they often find
the broken me
I’m not that hard
to interpret
My body stops me
being free
and my brain won’t
even let it
© Kait King, 2015
Pre-Occupancy
So nobody’s home
Just cardboard cut-outs
posed in my brain
Memories I can’t let go
Pre-Occupancy
A way to survive
Somehow to numb
the pain
Somehow to stay
the child
Pre-Occupancy
Merely a distraction
Something to hide
any connection
Anything to avoid
taking action
Pre-Occupancy
© Kait King, 2017
Jealousy
Please leave me
Let me walk free
from your grasp
Honesty
Please fill me
Set my words free
with that trust
Stupidity
Please abandon me
Let me hear twice but speak
with one voice
Integrity
Please empower me
Take over my mind and body
to make the right choice
©Kait King 2017
She’s beating the
crap out of me
I want to be
retaliatory
But I can’t find a gap
to even try
and hit back
She kicks me in
my side
Everyone there wants to see
me cry
I can hear their
jeering calls
of magnified echoes
charging through halls
This strange metamorphosis
in sound
is my ticket off
the gravelly ground
And I can see myself
lying there
The group of bystanders
shout and cheer
My body, I see
crumpled like
a sack
And I never even got a chance
to throw a punch back
© Kait King, 2015
She’s listing
dangerously –
hair unwashed
no make-up on,
even the Captain
abandoned her
uninteresting,
over-weight and
needy
Stuck in the
iceberg
solid
icy
cold
unwanted connection –
The dark will soon
be upon the wreck
alone
lonely
lost
In the dark
© Kait King, 2016
Touching many
or touching none,
the joy it brings
just touching one –
with a torrent of words
cleverly writ,
from the coolest phrases
in ancient Sanskrit
or perhaps a scribe in
a guttural foreign word
is the sweetest thing
anybody ever heard
And the English language
with it’s redonkulous rules
where no matter how good you are
it still makes you a fool…
sometimes
© Kait King, 2016
This is mostly a true story!!
A long, long, loooong time ago….well it certainly feels like that, I sort of stumbled along into acting and modelling. That had to be said as I was doing some extra work on a vampire movie out in an area I live not far from now, Kings Seat. Typical film day, we had to be on set at 4-fricken-am, and in make up after signing in. So it’s cold and wet and windy. The location is an abandoned insane asylum. Big luminous floodlights are set up inside and outside of the main empty building. Spitting rain plays invisible/visible as it passes through the light – gusts of dark wind causing frenzied flurries – mesmerising, hypnotising, vampirising – so yeah, it was perfect for filming a horror/vampire movie.
A bunch of us headed up to the gloomy entrance of the building – I was desperate to take a look around and needed to find a partner in crime. Somebody else who liked having the begeezuz scared out of them. Everybody clattered into the front hallway and across to where the lamps could be seen and bizarrely enough, the smell of bacon was coming from. Trestle tables were scattered in some haphazard order, if that’s even possible and there was hustle and bustle going on where breakfast was being prepared. The area was huge, with warped wooden floors – dusty as hell, doors hung off hinges as did cobwebs off every corner and chandelier or light fitting. I wasn’t hungry at 5 am but I could do with coffee and anyway I needed to convince someone to come exploring with me. Someone who didn’t mind if they missed getting picked for some opportune moment in the movie because they were missing…
So I settled in next to someone who looked friendly enough and sipped on my coffee – it sucked, it was not real coffee and I don’t do imitation anything if I can help it – and coffee is a miracle and should be treated as such. Anyway, I’m listening quietly to the discussion I’ve intruded on. I recognise a few faces, the “usuals” and I guess I was one of them too… we swap a few early crinkled grins and raised eyebrows as acknowledgement of each other. Fuck knows what your name is but I usually don’t forget a face.
So it turns out, besides an abandoned insane asylum being creepy enough, it was haunted too. Haunted with psyche nurses who had killed themselves apparently in absolute despair. Now there were two kinds of people sitting around sipping crap coffee listening to the ghost stories. People who get more and more creeped out and just want to cling to the fluffy teddy-bear image they have of life, and then there’s people like me. People like me become more entranced and fascinated with a bad, never done before, you will never make it, you can’t do it, story… and I was sold. When you’re wired like this, you learn to pick out others who see the sick fascination in everything bizarre, unusual and usually incomprehensible. And there they were – two of them who seemed to know each other already. I had never seen them around any of the other jobs I’d been on. So I kept quiet and watched and listened and learned. They were funny and adventurous, curious and tough – I liked them and we all clicked as soon as we started chatting. I introduced myself and as we chatted away and started talking about the creepy old place, a very effeminate, obviously gay man dropped into the conversation and also fitted in perfectly with our twisted fascination of ghosts and things not of sound mind, or body for that matter.
So we slunk off to have a look around at this grey stone, intimidating building. We were in one of many – there was a place where only children were kept. The bunks lined the wall, not two up – but three. The bunks were so close together you would have to be a pretty skinny kid to squeeze your way down to the floor. The so called play ground was a fenced area with one dead, leafless tree or a twisted skeleton was sitting sadly in the middle of a patch of dirt which had become mud now, in the drizzle. The area seemed way too small for all the kids that might have filled all of those bunk beds at one time…even half of them would be a crowd. You could almost see them standing in the rain, clothes dripping, hair clinging to their unloved unwanted skulls. A great sadness hung around this area and it made us all pause and be grateful that we were on the other side, even though Kings Seat was empty – even though it didn’t quite feel like that.
Behind us was the building for the criminally insane. Razor blade wire sat on top of a chain link fence glinting dangerously at us in the flickering lights from afar. I wondered how many desperately crazy people had dreamed of being able to slice their arms on that wire and escape the hell they were in. This place was for those charming individuals who danced around with their mother’s skin draped over them in the moonlight – naturally Ed Gein springs to mind.
We held our mobile phones up to see where we were going and to read or look at things that caught our attention. We moved up to a general patients building. Were they just generally insane? Or did they generally behave under medication? Generally harmless? There was a broken window at the back above a walkway area – possibly made for wheelchair access. We all managed to clamber in after chunking bits of glass off the windows’ edge with a stone. It was incredibly dark and scary. The four of us clung together like shit to a blanket – I didn’t care if I was the blanket or the shit, I just wasn’t letting go come hell or high water.
So there we huddle, like a pack of startled rats. I wanted to make a circle out of us, y’know so we just could shuffle around but our backs were always protected. This started out as a good idea but became obvious very quickly that it was impossible to move through doorways, use stairs or get down hallways with any stealth or logic. We file behind each other and end up in a big open room with huge dormer windows. Bird poop, dust and time had smeared the windows to a level where it wouldn’t have mattered if the sun was shining, nothing was getting through those. The rain against the windows didn’t even manage to make a running pattern against the concreted bird shit and grime. Scattered over the floor were pictures, pictures that had been drawn by the patients who had once lived here. As we wandered through the open room and our eyes became a little more acquainted to the bad light we could see pictures still pinned to the walls. Tendrils of wallpaper hung around the pictures pinned indiscriminately with sometimes only one pin. The paper was yellowed and brittle, the pictures childlike – perhaps used as some sort of therapy. The room looked as if someone had just torn loads of pictures off the walls or out of cupboards and scattered them over the floor, leaving just the odd cluster of those who had time to be pinned. As I looked through some of the pictures I noticed some that were drawn in black, red and purple crayon – angry, hurt drawings. It was weird, standing there, looking into personal demons of strangers. Wondering why there are so many stories of the people who care for the crazy ending up crazy themselves or worse still, dead.
You could almost see a body hanging in a doorway, someone scratching on a wall, another rocking back and forth in some vortex unknown. We took our leave and headed back out through the window and out into the dank dark morning. As we crunched our way around the weed riddled gravel roads we came across a pen type building. There were hoses attached and metal bars that looked like they would pin a human against the wall. We all agreed that this felt like a place where people had been forced to be cleaned or washed. It felt desolate and wet, cold and unforgiving. As we moved through the property we found ourselves in a very oppressive place. We walked through a heavy metal door, we didn’t want to touch it and all of us managed to squeeze through it’s unwilling opening. I stood in the dusty darkness, I felt like I couldn’t breathe. I was in a narrow low corridor, about ten rooms ran opposite each other with steel doors on each. The rooms themselves were all made of cement – the floor flowed into a cement bed, up into a cement wall and a grater type covering sat over a small oblong window. You wouldn’t be able to put your face up to it or look out onto anything. The whole room was cement, nothing movable. I could feel so much pressure on my body it was weird. As we walked down looking into the rooms we found sad memento’s of those forgotten. A filthy comb on a cement bed, a piece of hopeful rope, a blood smattering, or smear in just about every room. These dungeons stank of pain, sadness and death – death of spirit…
It was so oppressive we all became desperate to get out, panicky – overwhelming stuffiness and cloying glue air. Clambering and squeezing through the impossibly heavy door we fell out of the corridor into an open room and looked at each other, exclaiming how awful that was. We had all been frightened by this creepy old building and the grounds. We had all felt the sadness and suffocating oppressiveness but for some reason it was overwhelming in that close, dark corridor of cement rooms. We made a hurried journey back to the main building, strangely quiet in the slowly iron grey morning. Once we got there amongst the lights and bustle we kind of relaxed a little. The thought of anyone being locked up in those cells made of cement, like a tomb, it was incomprehensible. So with a hot drink in our clutches we tried to warm up a little. Some of the people who had been chatting to my new found friends came over to our huddle and asked us where we had escaped to. After telling them in great detail about our scary travels around Kings Seat we were all called to set and had to stand around for a while in silence most of the time – very tiresome. Anyway at morning tea it seemed that a little tour guide gathering had decided we were going to take them to the creepy tomb-like cells where the insane must have thrown themselves against the walls, clawed at the grater windows till they bled, banged their heads against those concrete walls and some would have killed themselves in there too, no doubt.
We arrived at the huge concrete and steel door into the corridor to the cells. We couldn’t move the door either open more or closed so those who were able and willing, slipped through the gap and into the squashing atmosphere of the tomb. There were lots of ooOOoo’s and aaahhh’s – a shriek and giggling. Slowly people dripped back out of the tombs’ corridor and into where I was standing, unable to go back in after the way I had felt there. No one seemed to be too fussed, I think there were too many of us to feel or allow anything to feel.
We returned to the main building – the adventure had been creepy and mysterious to all of the others but they had not felt what we had felt. The four of us had made surreptitious eye contact, realising that no one else had experienced that suffocating horror, or silent desperateness to get out. None of us had spoken while we had been in that corridor, looking into the cells – it was almost out of some religious or spiritual reason or respect that we were unable to do anything initially and then just want to escape a split second later, with absolute needy desperation…it was strange.
We continued filming after the morning break and lunchtime rolled around. One of the research guys from the crew invited me to sit and have lunch with him. We had met before and he always knew what was going on and when. So I told him what we had been up to and that I thought the place where the psychiatric nurse would have committed suicide would be in that tomb room that the four of us had felt strange in. He looked at me with a slightly confused look on his face.
“Which psyche nurse was this?” he asks
“Well, I think there was more than one who committed suicide because of the patients…” I said, trailing off. He was shaking his head. “Uh uh…that’s not what happened there. You have the wrong story.”
So I ask him to tell me the real deal. Apparently that cement cell block held the most dangerous patients – and was generally full at any one time. The ratio for patient and nurse was one on one due to the nature of the beast. Somehow one of the patients overwhelmed his nurse, a male psyche nurse and suffocated him. He then stealthily crept to the next cell and helped the next patient kill his nurse and so on and so forth until all ten severely violent and disturbed psyche patients were free. As the gathering group moved down the cell block the killing became more and more frenzied as they realised there was nothing that the nurses could do when there was seven of them and only 3 nurses left. Some patients threw bodies against walls and smashed the victims heads open, dangled brains over themselves and ran around screaming.
No one would go in there. The staff believed they would calm down when it came around to meal time and the nightmare could be dealt with then. Well the patients managed to hole up in there for 5 days, eating the bodies of the dead nurses. Then they turned on themselves. That is why there is no Kings Seat Asylum for the Mentally Insane any more – they ate the staff and the clients – real bad for business….
The End
© Kait King, 2015
Your soul is you, your possessions aren’t…
Kait King 2015