Month: April 2017

AS TO THIS HARVEST

As to this harvest,
your name tills my fertile field
plummeting deep into the earthen core of my heart
turning this silence of organic surrender
into the proud and patient
seedling of enduring
love
.

ELK HORN

My second sight
is now accustomed
to washing the stains
of misshapen understanding
from the elk horn
of your bound leather axe
plunged deeply into
the heart that continues
to love you: mine

LEVY

i forgive you
for not wanting
to spoil the darkness
that consumes you
with the love i bring

but surely

the toll for dishevelment
is worth the expense
to climb out
of its jaws

NOT IMMUNE

i am
tormented
by your need
for distance
but not immune
to this burden
of recapture

SILENCE LIKE WINE

it is not okay
to spill silence like wine
into my emptied heart
for it is already filling with emotion
and the hungry spaces in between
are not for getting drunk

VACANCY

i am being crushed
by the weight
of your absence
and if it does not lift
i may never
stand again

IT’S OVER

let it go
because breathing
is more important
than not
–
holding tight is for arms
not lungs

REFLECT

i see a path
so clear now that
these tears only serve to
magnify the sight
when

once they would have
drowned me for
my lack of vision

AND THEN WE WEREN’T

we were pointless once;
that is to say
we were always in growth
and there was never a time
when what we had would
stop
to be what we
‘had’

our map didn’t come with those flags to pin that say
– this is us –
or
– we are here –
we were the whole map
we were every map
and then we weren’t

now
we are no longer pointless;
that is to say
we are ‘that point’
the marked X
(without the treasure)
the one that simply says
– here –
and my heart is this map
and it is pierced and leaking
and all that it contains
will run like ink across the world
our red flag standing on end
and flying alone
to remind me

SEIZED

I
am at
II
a complete loss
III
to understand the
IV
inner workings of your mind;
V
the cogs that turn to
VI
wind your clock
VII
have seized, and
VIII
the only hands
IX
that pass time now
X
are mine
XI
alone
XII

SECOND PRIORITY

Second Priority

Love is not being second priority on a list.

HUMAN BOOKENDS

It is here
in this bottle-necked existence, locked
into days captioned by ticks and tocks
where time resides in each of us
until it stops,
rotating the same hands
inside the same third dimensional clock.

It is here
where every breath exhaled is a universal kiss –
it is simply one moment and
the space in between this
that binds together our journeys, which,
as uniquely defined as we feel each is,
are all chapters of the same book
we write to reminisce,
primed and painted with the same theme we
create to self-exist,
scrawled by the same pencil, held
by the same hands as we persist . . .
each of us artists
with the same precise and leather-bound twist.

It is here
where we long for real purpose or true faith –
to believe that something
‘other’/ external / majestic
awaits . . .
but in nothing we trust
yet, cry blame for our fate –
each a different monologue of the same hate;
the same distracting soul state;
the same periodic and prolific bait.
God would not want us, at any rate

It is here
in darkness, arms around each other’s back
that war hangs overhead in stasis,
circling, cycling on a track and
wearing thin our patience
while it leaks like yolk from all our cracks
(we watch it drip indifferently as we huddle tight within our pack)
S
I
L
E
N
T
L
Y
preparing
for the next surprise attack:
we, like wolves, insane
and seeing red with every flash –
our lonely pain inciting hunger,
our deep abyss as black.

It is here
in this cosmic explosion
and it is now just as it was then,
that peace is nought but a tragic parody
of the dreams of passing men –
and nothing changes but the theatre of stars
in lines, in queues, end to end,
enemy to friend to
ENEMY
for decades once again,
consuming pain like greed as our bellies, full, distend,
living every angle of the lie like it is money we MUST spend,
the broken tales of each of us
portending, true, our end;
dangling one more burden
like a dog-tag for a past we’ve penned,
at rest beneath a headstone
in a yard of human bookends.

I NEVER GIVE UP

Why now, at this peak?

the one we climbed like we were foraging,
like the treasure was ours, and
like we were owed the magic;

the one we promised to ourselves,
like the challenge spoke to our needs
– like spooning, and completeness –
like the familiar sound of Soulmateship;

the one we both ate hungrily
like cheesecake and strawberry sauce,
like viking sex and the sound of rain,
like the walls called for our skin;

the one we privately rode
like thunder and like history,
like couch kissing at 3am,
like the pre-cum that belongs on my lips;

the one our lives changed for,
like losing everything to win,
like the years mattered more now –
like purpose was our new team;

the one we physically yearned,
like this distance made us lovers,
like the words we longed to speak,
like our eyes smiling in perfect silence;

the one we learnt to master,
like the Gods of old had promised,
like synchronicity was our call,
like the prophecies had written us;

the one our dreams showed us,
like we undressed our karma,
like it was destiny we could touch,
like we had angels for our guides;

the one we paved and craved
like the path was suddenly clearer,
like the bumps were sensual touches,
like the signposts contained our names.

Why now, at this peak?

the one we fall from, both alone,
like we have forgotten we had a bond,
like our chemistry now parries –
like our freedoms matter not.

MOBIUS

He said those words
– I can’t –
and my heart fell out of its pocket
like there was a hole in my
chest and
that very last stitch
heard him speak.
Our mobius strip
lay suddenly flattened
– I on one side and he on the reverse –
like destiny and distance
were the same bridge
too destroyed to gap.

Now I wait for life to end
as I lean down to hold
what’s left in my lungs,
my final breath leaving as
I fall beyond the edge
where
by some miracle
this leap of faith might save me,
felled atop arms that wait beneath
where
the only strip remaining
is the one in which
we remove each other’s clothing.

JEZABEL

My cat just died in my lap.

She was lots of fun when she was young, but then she started to get fat, and then got fatter than that… she got bumpy and her spine curled up and then her bumps got lumpy, and she started to appear weighted down and went less and less on our beds and kept more to the ground when she got too chunky.

She limped and she wobbled and her head bobbled and in her later days her breathing got faster and I didn’t think she’d last much longer, but, nevertheless, she didn’t weaken – it appeared she got stronger.

But clearly I was seeing it wrong. Her breaths became shorter and she stopped eating and kept her eyes open, and all the while she was staring and looking and shaking and no longer interested in the noise we were making as we called her name.

I picked her up many times and she roused from her waking dream but she didn’t seem to want to ‘be’. I desperately wished I could help her, release her, slow her breathing and give her peace and ease her.

And then she got colder, and when I held her it was like I was holding a boulder.

It hurt her to breathe. I could see her pain through her fear and I gently told her over and over that she can pass… I was here… and before long, her breathing slowed and then she spasm’d, and as I held her I knew she was close to the chasm, shaking and numb in my hands.

She tried once more to stand but she spasm’d again and her jaw grew wider and I could almost see right down inside her as she laboured to breathe while her heart gave out.

I cried when I looked through her eyes as she looked back knowing it was her time to die, allowing me to watch her once bright spark in that final moment subside.

I counted to 5 and I told her it’s okay to not be alive.

I’m sure she knew what I’d said as she rested her tired body on my skirt and lay there bravely, blissfully dead; a part of me journeying with her as I stroked her lifeless – but beautiful – feline head.

OVER AND OUT

Here it comes, another one of your excuses… without a doubt you’ll shower me with a thunderstorm of abuses. I bite my tongue and bleed it out in silence, trying to extinguish the fire this time without further violence.

Leave – just fly! – you’re the pilot I tell myself, the living violet, not the dried potpourri, nor the owner of any karmic debt. You have nothing to repay or repent. You (I repeat) are in bloom and important, and not to be judged for being lost and distorted.

I cannot stand for being taken (my craft – this vehicle) and internally shriveled up. I am not that crush you once had, I wish to spew, and I don’t any longer blush from that complicated fad that fed me while I ate of you.

And yet, I refuse to hate you. I refuse to allow myself to hate that I hate you, drowning, as I know I would, in obsolescence. I crave independence now like I never have and never expected I could, and although I wish I was not alone, my future looks better, brighter, right… and like it should.

Most, and I’m not nearly most, would crumble as they lose their footing, always two steps back for every one step they refuse to cease on putting down. I find it sad that most would rather be the clown, instead of simply taking steps to move around and find their way to surer ground. It takes time to get it right, I’ve heard it said, but there is never endless time to wait, and hope, and beg for answers to delight themselves in light bulbs right inside their very head. I shake my head.

So, I’ll push myself to lose the fear amongst the crowd of filth my ears are forced to hear and then erase. I’ll appear to shake, because without the words, the voice I cannot make will take my mind off the matter here at stake – which is to say, the future of our bonding that I need to break. And maybe by not speaking you’ll get the message and find the meaning in what I won’t attempt to say, although I’d be straining to keep my voice at bay because the many things I really wish to say would only explode me, implode my tears, and blow you away… So, lest I do you harm, I won’t arm this throat with noise, this tongue with vibration, and I’ll resist the temptation, “Because,” I tell myself… and then I hesitate, exasperated, trying to find the words to state it…

Because not only do you deserve an empty voice, and wordless words, and eyes that speak a language you could never start to read, but you deserve to leave without another part of me to plunder, and beyond that, you deserve nothing more but to forever wonder what I might have done or what I might instead have said: words falling out of me like bullets to be interpreted with that empty understanding in your head, and then, to be swallowed down like pills that fill that void inside your chest. I know you thrive on pain of any kind – and so, to state it simply, in that, I won’t oblige.

I won’t be taken to a place I cannot go. I won’t be drawn into your game, handing out chances like they’re one and the same because they’re not – and they’ve expired. I’ve expired. Every time you lied I knew it was my time to retire from this place of anywhere but my own space. I knew it was time to reclaim the stolen person I became, and I knew if I didn’t it would hurt, and I knew I’d be maimed… and yet, I allowed it this long all the same.

So, as these thoughts are penned without a sound inside the mind I use to redefine this moment for the final time – and all this while the noise I see you make exits your lips, and every excuse I see you miss and every reason you give that I choose to ignore with a gentle spark of future bliss – I finally realise I do actually see through your pungent purpose. I see you decommissioned and losing the race with my permission, and I – that is, the person you have never known and never will – I do enjoy this moment of lingering perfectly calm and still. I’m empowered by the strength of my own peace throughout your shrill. I have grown because I had fallen out of touch with my own way and my own will and it’s a good thing you came to ruin me, because, without that, I would not have emerged so alive and so gracefully skilled: the wordsmith in me, proud in this moment to be aroused enough to self-compose and finally heal.

KALEIDOSCOPE

With you
I spent my years like money
and what is left now are the shells
of every decision afforded –
the skeleton of time
the only backbone we could manage
not to crumble. Our own had weakened.

For many years
tears would leak like suicide
and I became an expert swimmer,
my exclamation mark of strength
the board on which I’d surf;
later, the oar with which my raft would be paddled.
I cried an ocean
but still could not willingly drown.

Of late
I ceased believing that I lacked worth
and stopped just existing to pay the karmic debt
my reasoning concluded I must owe.
I unshackled and chose to live outside the cage.
Giving up on failure gave me purpose.

Without you
the tangible clutter we gathered gets dusty
and I can’t decide if I should blow it clean
or leave these fingerprints to remind myself why.
In shedding the weight of commitment
I am no lighter, but my kaleidoscope now dazzles like a jewel.