Pasta Mnemonics

Matilda Tjäder

Have you ever tried
dreaming with someone else?

Is that the wind?
Or is it just one of those giants breathing again
Pumping their bodies like inflatable bubbles
the rabbit asks the hare
as the winter
tucks all the flowers in
with a frosty kiss
—a little on the sentimental side
The hellebores responds to it
‘Let's be romantic’, it says
Pouts a little
Kiss kiss, you know they don’t call me
Frostkiss
For nothing

Wake up, wake up

II: Just like a dream, I don’t want to escape this :II

We’ve now buried our dreams
Together, forever
Along a path
Of ear-shaped pasta
Next time we close our eyes
We dream together, forever
Floating
Like in a pot of boiling water
Below the surface
We thrive

We’re like bubbles
That sail away

II: Just like a dream, I don’t want to escape this :II

I wake up soaked in sweat
it’s the middle of the night
but I already sense the brooding heat of the soon-unfolding day;
I’m like an astronaut
gazing through her thin veil
separating me from the starry sky
I wouldn’t call my bed a vessel, that’s a bit lame,
I kind of more feel like one of those people
in saunas  

who once they enter
and sit down
they freeze in their pose,
apathetically welcoming the heat
to scale off their thin skin barriers 

Sweat is like tears
it cannot be contained
in extreme situations
some people love crying in showers
I love crying in the sauna

Scaling (whispers)

You cannot furnish a dream
It’s destiny
my friend tells me
I shake my head
Look, I’ve got all the materials we need
Destiny won’t build this house for us

But perhaps they are a little right
These things we dream up together
Are like bubbles
First when they’ve popped
The excitement bursts into reality

I feel like dancing
But this espresso is taking its toll on me
My eyes are blinking real fast
Hey look at me

Flirting with the espresso machine

I’ve just woken up from what best could be represented
in broken verse
But I don’t feel like poetry
I don’t feel like capturing it this time
Rather I want it to encapsulate me
Here, in this bed made of ice
I feel like the only person on the planet
Like as if darkness was all I knew,
I attune myself to its shades
A solitary moment and immersion
into a world that cannot be shared past the experience

OK you win
This beauty contest
So I conserve you
Here, in this bed made of ice
I can see you through it
You remain just the way, I see you
Once animate now just pure, image
It’s a cycle of life
In the wind
Or breath of someone’s
There’s the passing of a secret
You know what they say;
The lower the voice,
The higher the stakes

II: Words, recovered, nurture your sacrifice :II

Some people love documenting,
Frame after frame
After frame
frozen kisses
Build yourself a world
Created from
a frame
I just fall asleep
Not to forget
But to forage
Because breathing,
secrets into life
Because pulse
slowing down

II: Words, recovered, nurture your sacrifice :II

Look, I am just as scripted as you are
The fairy tells the little gnome
Over a cup of tea
In the deepest of valleys,
I’ve ever traveled to
Always halting,
Just barely tripping
never longing,
always believing
In what to come
to come

Just lemme fly for a moment
the little gnome asks the fairy
A tiny bit pushy
And as the fairy reaches over
To hand the gnome their wings
They pop, just like a bubble

II: Imagine darkness :II

A child sees the circle of light
And asks for permission to join
To become one with the swivel
To swirl too

‘You must not,’ the child is told
‘Or they will make you sick,
Make you loop until your soul leaves you
Dance in their circle so that you loose your grip’

Crushed into a million
Samples, or frames,
Here’s one;

They may breathe on you
Dust from their bones
It too, shall make you sick
Your bile, intestines,
Soon in the forest glade

‘See those mushrooms, over there’
Multifarious, luminous
‘They are deadly’
That’s why the creatures dance around them;
it’s their survival
their potion, your poison
It’s beautiful, isn’t it beautiful
To watch the sacred
Hold my hand, and you’ll be safe
From these devil’s creatures imitating light
They look so free where they dance
But the illumination conceals
their ropes,
holding them
oh so tight
In bondage to our belief
As they dance in the artificial light
You may never believe
or think
that you can be like that
This light will guide,
But you may never yourself think that you yourself
can be the light that guides
Instead—you may bribe them
With milk or honey, and they will give away
See that’s our potion, our survival
The loving priest says to the child
As they stroke their cheek
Ice cold is the wind that now sweeps over my dreams

Perhaps our dreams carry the flavours
we dare not taste
And as we wake up
they are coated in some bitterness
washed away in our morning routines
Your dirty tongue, at sleep at night, gathering filth
I like tongue scrapes
in copper
How about you
What do you do,
in our department of reality?
You know the one behind the glass door
Over there
Like that warped glass door
The headmaster’s office, with the beige door frame

Don’t take me too seriously
I obviously wrote all of this
When I was asleep
Forgive me
If I’d tell you something absurd
Within the framework of a dream
I’d be forgiven real quick
Bit too quick
But if I told you something
Without the shield of the warped glass window
Of the headmaster’s
The unsentimental sadness of a cold bed
You wouldn’t laugh,
You’d just look—
Waiting for a relief
We like relief
Relief after suspension
Our dreams are like our most real BDSM-moments
Body in bondage
Tongue in ropes
I know one or two things about this,
The rabbit tells the hare
In another frame
Leaning over to purse their lips, to whisper
Because I dream a bit too much

Their words are like
tiny tiny
fluffy clouds
Wake up, wake up
Let’s fly our times like arrows
Through this linear madness
So that the broken verse can continue
At dawn again