Emotion and Strength

ENOUGH, AS I AM

Enough, as I am.
All of me, a star made of silver upon a chest of self-love,
sherriffing whole as I can whilst empty –
lapelled to this shirt like a butterfly with cotton wings.

GIVE ME A MOMENT

There is a power in softness, a rough tremor
weeping through every pore without a
scathing sound – the opacity of white noise
calming the soul with feathery pause.

Release it,
tame at last as passing thunder –
its mane, feline, and gentle,
its belly,
turned upward,
eyes closed.

UNBOTTLED

sometimes
your feelings
have people attached to them

PAPER HEART

paper thin
my wordless heart
mistaken origami art
naked – stark – pristine – unfolded
(chapters lost before they start)
my heaving chest its leaving ark
escaping from the boundless dark
in seas of inkless tears to mark
the day you drowned my
paper heart

STOIC

There is nothing,
short of absence

flocked as well in chasm as expanse;
deplete of all and nourishment
in trance with echoed dance,
which,
farmed as wealth for plunder
wears a cold and faceless frieze;

as lingering and as formless,
it, bequeathed in whole disease
whilst bounded by detachment
mirrored, stale
and faint,
and seized

as broken hearts denied repair
to leak, unprized, uneased

EMBERS

As a rule,
I have learnt to fraternise with dreams for gain,
profiting not from indiscretion,
but in the karma sought within such mindful revenge.

Were it possible
to simply matchbox my raw emotion,
the kindling its casket contained
may encourage wild arson –

but perhaps it is less of a burden
to fuck you while I sleep
than to thank you for stoking my fire
while clothed in its flame.

UNKNOWN

She was not brave,
she was necessary.

LAPSE

She recovered her heart
with yesterday sighs
–
and only her tomorrow smile
knew enough about courage
to forgive the delay

I HOPE WE MAKE IT

I have no tolerance for hope. Hope survives
on leftovers and unwilling loss: a soiled casket of
emptiness for every six feet of paragraph
it wades behind. Hope stuffs itself between the words
and the meaning, loudly camouflaged by
gambling and cigarettes, declining to altercate but
lathered by a demand to be seen. It shuns you,
but needs you desirable, a voyeurist: a
lap dancing ghost to keep it current.
Hope is a pimp
and you whore yourself to keep it primed,
shedding your skin like a puree of missing passports,
onion tears soaking sensibility after raw
sensibility, riding hope faster than your hips can keep up,
because, and after all,
there has to be a better place than this.
Time is just an expanse to harness,
a mount for crossing –
and you must wager everything,
from soul to sex
to grind it hard to a halt.

PERMISSION TO RISE

Am I brave enough yet to emerge
to escape the regret
to dismantle
forget
to demolish the surge of this
plundering ache
to curb and to conquer
and famish the quaking
– this suffering silence –
this violent breath taking

Am I whole enough yet
to prohibit the shaking
snaking my flesh with
its mandible gaping –
and I
an invertebrate
sensing
it
raking
its
claws
like it’s tilling a field in my pause.

– I AM –

I am soul enough, rousing to roar
but will this awareness
alone be the door to implore me to forfeit
renounce and withdraw from
this former attachment
to lapse while I stall
while in fragments
I catch myself falling
before
I submit to this whiplash of
“worth less” and war

mauling through self–harm
rejecting my core

Perhaps in my rapture my courage will capture
the thrill of detaching
unlatching
resolving
forgiving myself for my lack of evolving
for dressing tornadoes I’d wade in
– dissolving –
while anchored by nought but
the grief I was holding
by swallowing pain
– almost framing each frame –
as the slower the memories
the faster they came and the longer they’d last
it would tighten their hold
and the closer they’d weave they would blindfold
and frighten
and once I was frozen and broken
– eyes widened –
they’d leave

Perhaps fate will gift me a shift
from my history to bask in my victory
and mask my past injuries
and race to new mysteries
and questions, unanswered
and answers, un–asked
but desperately fancied
as I take on this task to have finally been caste
to have grown from my hate
to have flown past a place
where my purpose was faceless
to race to a moment I have hungered to taste
in a time I had dreamt of
instead of erased –

to a piece of the peace I deserve
and a truth to embrace

Will the aching forsake me at last
and the healing re–take me
its journey as vast
as the path it will trace to re–shape me
I ask
and will it profess to regress to
a time I could heave less
bereaved less
and
survive long enough to emerge
at my boldest and best?

The answer is ‘yes’

A GLASS HALF FULL

I am a glass half full of
everything
I feel seems to swallow me
instead of I
it
is not a smooth rush
down my open
mouth
the words that hurt me again
in ways you will never
understand
what you say before
you open your lips to
speak
through your eyes like I am
trying to do in my
silence
comes in thin spaces
between what you say and what I
don’t
know why it needs to be so complicated
when all I feel is
emptiness
fills me like a glass half full of
impotency
rides you easier than I ever could.

METAMORPHOSIS

punishment
in the language of hope
scorching its way with splintered paddles
down to the roughs of my hungry feet
and teaching me
equally
of steadfastness and self-love
through the blanketing challenges of escape

FUTILE

I tire of love and terrorism;
the way my broken heart
lay claim to territory unknown before;
the way the softness of these blankets
fall like bombs in your wake;
the way the hunger for calm strikes and
starves and
feeds in rations;
the way the post trauma stands guard at closed eyes
and charges ahead when I wake;
the way it loops itself about my mushroom cloud
and belts its breath on my cheek.
I tire of scratching at hope like
hope will reward me for lasting the week.
I grow weary of this kamikaze daze:
my eyes, the reflection of every wound I bare.

I tire of love and terrorism:
the way my broken heart ignites from within,
limp and lost,
from so much exploding without.

WHAT REMAINS

What remains of our more recent differences, those
saturated words fallen from the lacy cuffs of our noble tongues, the
sound-filled garments and raspy lingerie custom fit
for implication and blame – what remains

but the pungency of battered verdicts, the jesters
of white noise and spicy hung detachment, the
midnight winds of halitosis fouling casted spells:
an alphabetic bouquet of gambled persecution,
the weight of which we transport as we fade away

AFTER LOSS

There comes a time when
moving forward is a monumental act
of self-preservation;
walking away,
a feat of rediscovery;
and letting go,
the key to finding true purpose.

WHIP

You are my story
and I escape within these pages
of your unmapped strength
through pauses
and the violence
that collects each letter:
another lash I want
and need
but don’t deserve

CONFUSING GREY

It is unlikely as you reminisce,
that I,
white as your black is dark,
appear largely unobstructed
in your mind
– stark, as my naked is bare –
a ripening contrast of shadows
raining over my image;
and from where I stand I feel
the wetness
as it pours upon my hair.

Muddied storms rise between us
– a collage of painted quicksand
from my toes to my lungs –
my attention taken from ‘escape’
to ‘survive another night’
for another day;
running at a loss from your black
with my concrete feet
to my canvas of white
from the pain of this confusing grey.

REPOSE

I am glad these butterflies my
silent stomach houses feel more
at home knowing you will
never return than when they
were hoping you might.

TE WAIRUA FREE (‘The Free Spirit’)

my spirit needs mending
but I have no coloured thread
to darn these fraying burdens

the eye of this needle lay gaping and empty
and I am standing on its edge ready to fall through

a knot to my ankle, and my fast surrender,
and I’ll fly deeply in to weave new dreams

a fresher self with perfect stitching
– an un-perished disaster –
still surviving in spite of her erupted soul

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

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.

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.