WRITING

capillaries

you are made up of everyone you’ve loved
they live inside your capillaries
ride your blood river
in tiny canoes
made up of wood
and memories

you notice them sometimes
the canoe attempts the impossible
and traverses through the aorta
that epicentre
of blood and feeling

it rides rough rapids
of turmoil
and regret
sometimes, longing
that terrible longing
the most wretched rapid of all

when your skin itches
that is them expanding
and contracting
touching your epidermis
to remind you they’re alive
and still a part of you

reminding you of the simple truth
we are made up of everyone
all those we’ve loved

a ghost story/
portable mausoleums

There is this hell inside me where the flames are mesmerising
its shape fits your outline
that grows and shrinks every time you walk in, walk out.
Tell you what,
I’ll be the empty house and you be the ghost.
I’ll keep my favourite illusions about us in tiny glass jars
like portable mausoleums.

What do you want for dinner?
I’m leaving you
Shall we watch The 7:30 Report?
You’ll never seen me again
I’ve made your favourite dessert
You can keep the house.

The funny trajectory of feelings.
They rise up, you take note
they fall away
but, some don’t fall away
becoming embedded in your bloodstream
and there’s my only enemy right there
inside me
and no matter how much I vacuum the cracks in the floor of my adult house
my childhood just doesn’t change but, maybe,
just maybe if I do everything the opposite way I was taught
I might survive.

I thought you were the face of that new way,
my very own swashbuckling hero.
After awhile though, getting your hopes up
becomes an extreme sport in itself.

If only i knew this: the best way to keep our romance alive is never getting to know each other.

Refunds for emotional disappointment should be a thing
and weddings should happen under water,
the suffocating non-air can break you in for your future.
You’re working back again?
What’s her name?

You know, there’s a freedom that comes with being forgotten.
I can relax and become a mountain again,
free of perfecting myself
just trying to outshine all your golden girls
competing for the crown in your secret world.

I would cry about it,
but I bought 80 pairs of shoes instead,
It will show up on your bank statement.

when your armour slips

you can weep for 6 years and not even know you’re doing it

it’s hidden underneath layers of obligation

yes i can do that, sure I’ll be there and what would you like for dinner

remember that moment of vulnerability

fearing forever being alone, maybe it was that

or maybe I succumbed to the thrill of feeling fire in the belly

I succumbed to what I now know was a hope

the possibility beyond love’s beautiful beginnings

I made a little compromise out of fear

not having the strength to walk my path alone

I succumbed to the need for another

to replace the missing me

the stringed carrot mirage

My error in short was this:

mistaking everyone i’ve ever loved for what I’m searching for

Sure, we all want love’s beginnings

but are we brave enough for love’s endings

sounds of an empty home

There is a sound in a house when it’s occupants have left for the day and it isn’t silence.

It’s more of a dull collective hum of electrical appliances enjoying the chance to indulge their expression without the need to shout over humans.

There is the echo of words whispered in soft tones and the violent ones exchanged in heated debate, also the screams and laughter and the bark of dogs.

There is the sound of unfolded washing, waiting patiently to be transitioned from unkempt mess to organised functionality in a drawer or cupboard.

Their sound before such a transformation is heavy and unlovable, but once the task of folding is completed, they fall silent, thankful to have reached their destiny this week before their new cycle of destruction of order begins.

Toys, where does one start with the sound of toys in the absence of playmates. Their sound is dependent on how loved they are and how much time they have left before they, like a wife after 20 years of marriage, are replaced by the upgraded model, the new and better version.

But it’s the breakfast things, the things left on the table, half eaten toast and a mauled boiled egg that have the most sound.

It’s the sound of a dwindling life force struggling against its fate to be recycled in the compost, like us.

That sound is a deafening silent scream of a resistance to endings, an inevitable journey back into nothing.

where feelings go

my big feelings for you I have left all over town

hidden in books

of famous public libraries

i love our mistakes together

That golden era

when the sun, at its peak

watched over us, benevolence

cascading on our flesh

as we busied ourselves

with creating our own demise.

She opened the door that day

for me to lead you away from her

into private sorrowful passion

addicted to our own hubris

our reflection together

enough to overcome

the injustice for those

we were keeping in the dark.

My folly was thinking i could arrange spontaneity.

Me, waiting for moments

stolen when we could continue

what should have only been for a moment.

Our first time laughter at seeing the face of God

in a taboo

I knew the Jesus followers had it wrong

when they dropped joy and desire

and surrendered their life force

to colouring in between the lines.

If only i could bottle that first ecstatic moment.

Instead i stood outside myself

watching only flesh on flesh

attempt to penetrate the mystery of eternal longing

for something greater than us

repeatedly

until dissipation of life force

had me holding the rosary

head down like a shameful lover of God

in a sexless church.

Now that enough moons have lit the night sky

and we can face each other

for once, unencumbered

by the ruin we unleashed

on all that we had created

without each other,

I hold that uncertain time as magic,

still tinged with a divine spark

for attempting like a modern day Icarus

to reach for the unattainable

through each other.

 

domestic pretenders

There, I’ve washed and ironed your idea of yourself

a costume used to fool others, that you made gold

out of an early life in mud. and I’m a part of this charade.

“Don’t cut your hair or i’ll leave you”

i just cut a fraction off each day, it gives me something to cling to.

I’ve folded my hopes for the future too btw.

It wasn’t hard.

It’s easier to throw them in Wednesday night’s trash

than watch the slow gathering of dust.

“Dinner’s ready!”

or rather, ‘Let’s watch the worldly horrors on TV while we eat’

Are you numb enough yet or are you ready for dessert?

I can do both. Me too. Wow, we are in synch.

We are such a great team!

The great pretenders they call us, but in a funny way

Everyone knows we both died years ago.

“You’re only with me for the children” i say

“So are you” he says.

falling in love/
poets

There are greater delusions than romantic love, but often our first foray into the hall of mirrors;

life and it’s underbelly, is falling in love.

What a charade that little base jump is

falling in love i mean, because the landing is always the same

like a dodgy parachute forgetting it’s one sole reason for existence:

to save you from death once you make the jump.

There is this invisible terrorist attack on our ideals once we discover that Heathcliff is in fact Bluebeard,

that Marilyn Monroe is in fact, Medusa.

At first we think it’s all a sudden error of choice, the next person will be the one to take away our lonely journey towards cellular depletion and Bingo nights in a forgotten hall in a forgotten centre

the forgotten people who can’t sell romantic love to the masses.

It’s by design, to trick us back into the truth

that the love we seek out there is actually somewhere inside us instead, but i digress.

What i want to talk about is poetry

how 98.5% of all poetry is just a beautiful arrangement of words

about how pathologically codependent the poet is.

If i was a poet, i would write about all the compromises i had to make in human relationships

to create real love,

not Capitalism’s idea of love.

I would write about how all i want is to be a hermit in the woods, walking amongst trees

trying to not ruin my two sons with my need for 100% solitude.

But it’s too late, you can see all the errors you have made by being too much yourself

and not enough of the ideal mother who negates her will, her passion and drive

for a life of servitude and making sure they look like respectable workers for the future.

Live your dreams kids while i negate mine.

Let me put you in this school that will save you from the system that is designed to break your creativity.

I’ve kept them home again because i am a good parent.

But thank god I’m not a poet, because imagine sharing the mundane reality of how much unconditional love shapes you into a caricature of your former self.

How there’s nothing you wouldn’t do for the one’s you would die without. I keep trying to narrow that list down, so i can follow my dream to be a 100% hermit in the woods,

dogs and plants never let you down

but my love for humanity, all of us, gets in the way.

fortress/a summit

Your fortress, a structure spectacular

built with blood and memories

of those who made you loathe yourself.

I was in awe of it for awhile

and then later, bored

with your need to be holed up

with historical demons

and antique canons ready for blasting

new suitors, me.

I know you love a sword fight as well

so come down swashbuckler

and show me what you’ve got.

I have only an open heart, sorry

a useless weapon I know

to bring to any game of love.

I’m going to love you anyway, so you can relax with your cliche game playing.

Anyway, does a game exist

when the other team decides to stop playing?

That’s me. I forfeit

until you surrender

your need for that tedious control.

All your defences seem a little silly

in the face of such truth

yes, I just want to love you.

You say “Can you love this?”

as you pull off your mask

like  a modern day Scaramouche.

“Easy”, I say.

I love the flaw in all things,

the corner stone of a thing’s greatest strength.

No need to chase summits

to convince yourself that the world is yours

Love your weakness

and let it be your light out

of well trodden swamp lands.

When you acquiesce to the ordinary,

magic happens.

Don’t gather souvenirs to say who you are

where you have been

or what you’ve achieved

It’s just a declaration of fear.

When you hold onto nothing,

you have everything.

i am this

Who I am is not this

not a still lake

jealous of the ocean

it’s expansiveness

freedom to roar and roll

gather momentum

wipe out coastal towns

if it gets the urge.

I am not this

a broken Brumby

fixed in a cowboy lasso

caught and corralled

in a vice for the spirit

craving chaos

not edges tucked in

like an over-zealous housewife.

Who i am is not this

a hero home from a war

of fighting the ordinary

wiping out villages

devoted to secure notions

only to find myself

a forgotten veteran

alone with our silence

in a cramped suburban living room

surrounded by mementos

a life once exciting

now just a string of photos.

that form a prison wall

like bad souvenirs

from a time too magical

to be reduced to just a fridge magnet.

I am this

a speeding car going off a cliff

squealing past others

who are still in love with their brakes

but terrified for me

as i ride off

into the unknown

a leap of faith.

The trick to courting danger

is the knowledge that I have secret wings.

intimacy

Can I be forgiven for my impulsive need to present my love to you

as a viking would after a day hard at work

I’m physical about it

and chaos theory is the dress I choose to wear to seduce you

not those flimsy night-sky black things

or a cliché of words tucked up behind your ear

I’m dressed up in an imaginary beard

with a palm full of unpredictability

that makes you buckle underneath forgotten desires

and we destroy ourselves this way for hours

only to wake up and repeat.

I absorb you alpha and you become invisible

like a woman over 50 who no longer gives a fuck

I’m a force to be frightened of

and you are an empty shell.

Never love someone

who isn’t stronger than your darkness.

You will kill them every time

and spend the rest of your days

explaining the head on a stick

at the end of your bed

to your next lover

it can become tiresome.

But you never asked questions.

You accepted my grit

my madness and lust for emotional bloodshed

so i kept going.

You just waited patiently

to see if the sword in my hand would fall away

in the face of your delicate beauty

unnatural for a man admittedly

more suited for a goddess

speaking ancient Greek from magic lips.

You could have spoken incoherent babble for all i cared

as i marvelled at your fingers

just trophies on hands not from this world.

Again, I’m physical about it

and i saw myself arrange quickly

your internal magnificence

to match the outer shell, so perfect

whether real or imagined

I indulged my vanity that you were mine

washed with your sunshine

every time we moved

into each other’s view.

Addiction to beauty

it’s akin to a serial art buyer

I’d bid my blood to have that prize next to me each night

and that’s all you were to me it must have seemed.

Your love was more than mine i thought

so i could afford to be careless

I was a swashbuckling hero to myself

because i never believed you knew how to be

so just lie there and look the part

and be there when I come home

from severing heads of out-dated ideas

about how to move through life.

Quietly though, you were writing secret sonnets to yourself

about the possibility of our “maybe” love

I rode right over that

like a warlord blinded by personal victories

making my way to a new precipice

another conquest

forgetting with eyes wide open

how to encase another in perfect intimacy.

You just waited patiently

to  see if the sword in my hand would fall

until one night, alone again

you saw the space at the end of the bed

where your own head would stand

and you ran into the night

dancing over misplaced dreams

now scattered all around like forgotten tombstones

as I returned home to my future of regret.

Now this weighty silence between us

has me filling the empty space with love songs

to myself

just to hear us again.