Wilder Creatures
They say that these people have unusual features
Thin foreheads, small chins, narrow faces.
Compared to the “normies” they’re wilder creatures,
Much harder to put through their paces.
Like cats, they will jump at the tiniest noise.
Soft wool can scrape like cut glass.
And their species’ female’s friends with the boys:
Pariahed by the rest of the class.
Those hornet-nest dances of sociable lies:
She tries so hard, but she fails.
She copies each movement, the best hoverfly,
But it’s simpler, the fight among males.
Even they, unlike her, can filter things out:
Those granules of vain information.
There’s no sound or thought that she’s able to flout:
Her world’s one of magnification.
One word out of place, all changes direction,
Like a forest engulfed by a fire,
Resistant to logical, reasoned dissection:
Her heart thumps, her hand shakes. She’s tired
Of the lack of control, of the sulphuric swirl,
Of the barbs, from both pupils and teachers,
On how she’s a “selfish” and “difficult” girl:
Autistics have unusual features.
Her forearm’s embossed with a whitish-mauve mark;
A vagrant once branded for stealing.
She felt in control of her life as that spark
Enflamed and reached up for the ceiling.
Time seemed to stop, her heart seemed to race.
That moment she felt like a child
Pulsing with pleasure. A smile crossed her face.
They’re ever so slightly more wild.
The Rosehip
Modest oval fruit
Nestled among the roses,
Fragrant Chanel suits
Of conventional, delicate petals.
The Country Garden spring:
Some Alba, white, cerise.
What draws me to this little thing?
The rosehip.
The rosehip isn’t “plain.”
Is it, somehow, unassuming?
I don’t want my words to pain
Her, unpretentious beauty.
Like an Amish in her bonnet
Clopping past the knee-length skirts,
It’s she who evokes the sonnet.
Winds blow away the buds.
The filaments, the sepal
Of this tiny “pseudo-carp”
Just seem, somehow, familiar
Like a memory of some grassland
Where you played when you were four,
Perhaps by some pub in Dorset:
You’d played there once before,
And everything made sense.
Originally published by New English Review
The Same as Me and Yet She’s Trouble
The same as me and yet she’s trouble;
My ontological (female) double.
She holds a youthful glass to me
Which gleams, but also makes me see
The shadows in myself: The hate
And fury that just won’t abate,
Emerging in a trance-like state
Where if you irk me you’re third rate.
She’s all in me that’s bad and good.
You’ll never feel so understood,
Such other-worldly intimacy,
Than with yourself reborn as “she.”
It feels like life’s apotheosis
But harm can come from double doses.
The smoldering emotional rubble
She brings about, you’ll see your trouble.
You won’t work as a married couple:
You’re too alike, she is your double.
Lucius Falkland is the nom de plume of an academic and writer originally from London.