I ran away with the alchemist

There was something about the morning’s light

a lust hung heavy in the air
it tangled itself through the gumtrees like persistent wind
and it sat as a stone between my lungs

I watched the butter melt
and my feet swell from the heat
wriggle my toes
a distending restlessness in my chest
that moves me, I rise up from my chair

I knew where to wait
where he would find me

I stood in silent fever,
purpose burdens my brow
a bundle of possessions upon my back
tonight, I was running away with the alchemists

I met him where the sky crowded with furious grey
and the air thickened
and held us fast
a summer storm

‘I see something in you’ he said
‘something I feel in the earth beneath my feet’

My pulse quickened as I watched his steady hands
he held my arm and silently
traced a line down my wrist
he held my hand out
and I stretched my fingers wide
‘you have hungry hands’
he said

We wandered through towns
sometimes by foot
sometimes by train
we travel for a few weeks, or is it a few days?

I do not know where we are going
this alchemist and I
but this recklessness feels like the most truth
I have ever known.

I feel things deconstructing inside me
superfluous things
the pieces crumble and the wind catches them
they float away for someone else to cling to
I breathe each new day deep into my lungs

We reach our destination on a cool day
there is a bite to the breeze and my skin prickles
it is a crowded camp
with groups of people scattered
in perfect disarray
some whispering, some laughing, some playing
music fills the air
and I feel the ground warm beneath my feet

‘welcome, hunter’
my alchemist whispers to me

he wears a comfortable smile, he belongs here
his sandy blonde hair that falls across his eyes
his gentle steady hands
his quiet independence
I follow him and we weave slowly through buzzing crowds

My first night I sit quietly as everyone congregates
people talk in impassioned tones
about what we need
and how to hold that close
and what is beyond that
what should fall away

‘what we seek
we find
in seeking’

I dance with the children
I teach them to stamp their feet
in syncopated rhythm
and leave their hands to wild chance and caprice

They braid flowers in my hair
and we run barefoot
with bells around our ankles
to herald the joy of journey

they run naked and free by day
by night they grow quiet
a sombre awareness of the sanctity of ceremony
they sit in circles and listen
eyes wide and resolute

The night I first saw you,
the fire made patterns across your face
as you sat drawing pictures in the dirt with your hands

We lie naked together, I draw circles on your belly with my finger

in the distance I hear the toll of the bells
a steady implacable rhythm
I watch your lips form words
that I feel in my marrow
did you know that with your words you touch me in my bones?

I watch for your consonants,
how the heavy ones make your lips touch
I stop hearing the consonants and
I listen for the vowels, open and wide
I feel the space they create inside me

When we kiss we make heavy consonants with our lips
and soft sibilance with our tongues
and you breathe your vowels into me

The alchemist and I walk together

we talk about feeling things course through our bodies

and burst from our skin

I tell him about my firelit lover

he tells me quietly to be careful

that she only belongs

to her dreams

Time passes and my lover turns away
her forehead is heavy
and an absence grows between us
maybe it was always there
she looks at me as if she always knew I didnt belong to this life

I plant flowers and tend to them with desperate hands
but they wither in the heat,
as I wither with emptiness

I walk alone through this tent city
this palace of fabric
the night is dark and silent around me
but for the warm light of lanterns
hanging limp
my step steady with fortune, with fate with the demise of my dream

It was a childish dream
what once felt like a liberating truth
is now anarchy for my body.

I leave this place, 

it drops from my skin
and scatters on the floor

like leaves

like burning embers

like crumbling charcoal and smoking ash

I find my way back to the old life
to purpose I know is contrived

but I know that I need

I still plant sunflowers in a row in the front garden

I still open my windows and fill my house with light

I feel the dirt between my toes 

clench my eyes shut and throw my arms wide

for freedom I can find here

I carry them with me,
every gleeful child
my alchemist
and the woman who shared my bed
I foster their spirit of seeking
I cradle it in my palms
let it run through my fingers
and spill into my day, my home
my life is both settled and free

summer #2

summer is pretending my underwear is bathers

summer is licking my lips and tasting salt

summer is strong arms, sandy and freckled

summer is for eating a whole mango with my hands

summer is for feeling womanly.
for dark triangles, for wholesome curves, for stretching arms, deep sighs

a letter to my ex

you always were so nervous about cooking, you never would do it. You had such a food schedule. Every evening was regimented, the same thing every day, every week... there was no room for spontaneous experimentation. So when you figured out how to make something new, there was such a fanfare. I remember vividly that bean salad with corn and gherkins. One time I had come over while you were at work. Remember how I did that, I used to do that all the time, catch the train and the bus and walk to your house in the dark, just so that I could be there when you got home. I can still remember how my heart ached when we weren't together, even for a few hours. And you had made me a bean salad and left me little notes all around the house. And you came home from work, smelling of fish, in your work jeans and white polo shirt, and I ran to you in the doorway and wrapped myself around you and breathed you in. That smell, how warm you were after work, your hair stuck to your flushed face. We would stand in the doorway kissing for half an hour.
I cant remember how many times I told you I did not like corn. You still made it for me on my birthday.

a moment under the mulberry tree

I have come here to write, strung between an old fruit free and a new fruit tree, in heavy blue and red canvas, swinging in syncopation, because i want a conclusion. I want to write something solid to stem the sadness. To attenuate the frustration.

We have such beautiful trees here. If I tilt my head to one side, all I can see are trees. Different shades of red and green.

If I look up I can see a bower of mulberry leaves, the sun peeks through when the leaves get blown about by a desultory summer breeze. The fleeting warmth makes me sleepy.

I used to come here when I was younger, the deep dark womb of our garden, and climb this mulberry tree. Fresh faced and dreamy I would stand on the platform Dad built and cling to the branches that would sway threateningly in the wind. The wind, the heavy back and forth of the branches would make my heart race. I would read, i would watch the sunrise, when I was thinking about an idea of God I would come here to see if faith would present itself to me. I named this tree at one point. I cant remember what, surely it involved alliteration. I had named all my favourite trees.

Joshie #5

By the time I got home it was almost as if it never happened.

Us standing in the middle of Tyler Street

Me gripping your shirt, resting my face in the corner of your shoulder. 

(I always find a space in your body that part of me fits in)

You brushing your cheek against mine.

By the time I got home, heavy in bed, anxious and sad, the lightness had left my heart.

Except that I could still smell you. Except that my mouth still burned for your prickly chin.

I got in the car and you walked away.

How am I meant to be without this? Without looking at joshie. Without not-kissing joshie.

He always waits for me. Even when I bring my lips right to his. 

There is a space under his nose. I can see it in my mind, the curve of his chin. The way that empty space feels against my mouth.

He put his forehead on my forehead, and his nose against my nose and there was a space between our chins that i knew I had to fill.

I have spent a lot of time feeling too big. Too impulsive. Too intimate. Too intimidating. Predacious, even.

But Joshie

He stands at my car, and waits. 

He is not scared that looking at eachother silently for ages might lead to complication.

He is in it. In that moment.

And he waits for my lead. He puts his cheek against my cheek and smells my hair and waits for me to decide what happens next.

No one creates a space for me like that but Joshie.

He is a big deal. He gives me so much

generously and fearlessly. 

some dreams 2

In my mind you say yes

You look at me with laughter in your eyes

Like you think i’m so silly

But you love me anyway

And you hold my head in your hands

Like i'm so precious

Like all you’ve wanted to do is kiss me

And so you do

some dreams

I think about making tea in your kitchen without pants
I think about being the thing that delights you

faciliating reckless desires

I know what it feels like
to have my heart pounding out my chest
to be so afraid

to be so thrilled
but to know with usurping certainty
that this is what I need to seek
to give to myself
and so i do.

intimacy

comfort, warmth and unwravelling hearts.

In that intimate space i yearn for, 

of sharing and vulnerability,

that we grow from. 

In friendship and in ourselves.

Eyes alight, candid gestures.

summer #1

summer is for that unique Australian beauty

for the sound of galahs - a shrieking skirling cacophany

for a special rough weathered beauty.

a soil rich beauty

a relentless heat beauty

What Dorothy Taught Me

Write like liquor

Short and thick

Dense and cloying

Terse and teasing

Toxic and intoxicating

Sporadic and addictive

Write physically.

from your stomach, from your legs

mosaic

Sometimes i cant tell the difference

Between ambivalence and inspiration

I cant tell if a muse is fabricated in me by the desperate hand of my soul

Or if it presents itself to me

Fleeting

In rudimentary form

For my cultivation

And i miss it

Because i fear fabrication

What do I clutch at with thieving fingers?

What of this inexhaustable resource

is worth stealing? 

Do I tessellate the pieces together

those fickle fragments 

with those vivid and visceral diapasons

like piece-meal 

like kids craft cut outs

an array of adhesives

for my mosaic

but what do I do with the spaces?

sex-lexiography

Pleasure

They spell it with a capital “O”

But they are wrong.

it is every vowel

Its every sound we make

Its satiation through exploration

Lust

They spell it S-E-X

But it is the texture of your gaze

The shape of the space we make

Attraction

They spell it G-E-N-D-E-R

But it is engaging

It is the part of me that swells

It is the distance between us

Its that i recognise something in you that i am drawn to

Competence

Its measured in centremetres of flesh

In millimetres of liquid

But it is connection. And translation. 

No edits

Kafka says no edits.
not here, not for your soul.
so ironically we implement policies and rules
to facilitate freedom

And I am a mess of intimacy

I should pause. Consider. Placate.
calculate, truncate.
I should mould myself into digestible pieces
I should learn that communication
is not a mess of intimacy
not indulgent details
not visceral self expression

I should learn. Adapt. Mould myself around apathy.
I should not be so bold.
I should stop intimidating people with my feelings

I should not be so impulsive
not be so intimidating.
not be so intimate

I should be less

I should not demand of people my desires

I should wait patiently for their rich pickings

I should placate. Negotiate.

Sophie says I should abandon my shoulds.

But there is such an ambivalent interaction between my desires and my fears

For someone so determinedly brave, I can impose such limitations on myself.

Friday Night Philosophy

I had a conversation with a man on Friday night. We stood at the fridge clutching beers. I stood side on to him so that I could hold my ear close to his mouth. The music was loud, the talking was loud.

He was talking about chance. He told me stories about moments where people he had not spoken to in months or years, he thought about randomly, and who then contacted him that day.

‘I’m like that’, he said. I think outside the box a lot. ‘What’s it called again? Those conspiracy theories? About planes and chemicals....Do you know what I am talking about?’

Yes I do.

I did not mention to him that someone had mentioned that to me, a few hours ago, it was the first I had heard of it. And here I was talking to him about it again. For the first time, twice in one day. That would have corroborated his argument. But I wanted him to substantiate it himself.

‘There’s more going on than what we see’, he says.

We talked about solipsism. And birds eye views.

He had an interesting tone. As if these stories of chance, proved that there was no point to the world. Somehow.

I responded with my usual quasi-socratic, quasi-existentialist ideas...

Does asking questions about the meaning of life, the purpose of life.... how can that alone convince you that life has no purpose?

Cant your own individual purpose of life be to ask these questions. To examine life.

Can that be your ‘eudaimonia’, your ultimate design and end of flourishing: A worthy life of examination.

Cant you be whole in your seeking of answers. Cant that process of seeking itself be what fills you with purpose?

And if there is no purpose of life, no collective order running through all things, that can be a premise, that gives you freedom to create your own purpose.

He did not seem to have much patience to consider my questions. I think that he decided my questions meant that I did not understand what he was saying. ‘no, let me explain to you again’ he said ‘this one time someone i had not spoken to in years, i thought about randomly and they contacted me that same day’. Yes I understand, I said, don’t fret sir. I just want you to think more about what you are saying. If you believe something like this, and then draw conclusions from that belief that mean that life has no purpose... ask questions. Substantiate it. Be able to have a discussion with me about it and answer my questions. Questions don’t invalidate your argument, they just fill in the colours.

I asked him if this ‘something more’ that was going on, which was evidenced by these moments of random chance, if he believed they were caused by something internal or external to us. If it comes from us, was through our volition, the fact that he had thought about someone caused them to then contact him. Or if it was the world responding to his thought. Or if it was all the way the world moves around us. This idea of ‘fate’ that we cannot control, presenting itself to us.

It was an odd conversation, but it is something I have been thinking about. It is in the back of my mind, these grand questions of fate. of how we interact with the world around us. what dynamic forces or interaction exists between people and the physical and metaphysical world around us. 

Don't lose the muse

Don't lose the muse
inspiration disintegration because of
disorganisation
clutch at passing wisdom
it won't linger
it'll slip through your fingers
the cracks in your filing system

Joshie #4

Joshie teaches me about silences
whole and full and rich

his quite comfortable presence
his eyes, his eyes, his eyes

Joshie gives to me
silences
so full between us
that they fill me.

when he looks at me we create a space together around us
and for those moments it is just us
just his eyes
just the smile that creeps out the corners of my mouth
lights up my face and makes my jaw ache.

i carry that with me. the space Joshie makes for me. what he gives me.

in dark noisy bars we stand in the middle of a room
people moving around us
and we look at one another and are still
because he moves me to stillness

i wonder if people around us can see, i wonder if they know
how much is created, how much is given and shared
in that space, in that silence
in the middle of the bar.

Holding his face in my hands, so close to mine
breathing together
pressing my face against his chest, my nose against his shoulder
breathing him in
touching his wrists
Not kissing Joshie in friendship is probably as thrilling as kissing him in friendship would be.

fables

Come fableing with me

Fickle friend

Lets knit together words

Of ambivalent ambiguities

Lets attenuate our deficits

Those deep life longings

We cannot ourselves fulfill

(not for lack of desperate thought or fevered determination)

With a story or two                   

your name's sake

There was no question
we had to have the ocean,
so we threw off our clothes and inhibitions
and we ran into the freezing water
the evening demanded it of us.

for a few moments you swam off
'mesmerised by the sun' you said
I celebrated the independent pursuit of your caprice
like your name's sake you were
taken by the sky

we emerged from the water
dripping, stumbling and unclothed
wet hair clinging to our flushed cheeks

we wrapped ourselves in picnic blankets
and sat in a row facing the sinking sun
bore witness to the waning light,
the melting sky

and as I sat there
eating sandy oranges
that you peeled and segmented
with your long dexterous fingers

you spoke of Sirens
of ships being drawn to rocky shores

did you know
you that you enchant me?
winged woman
red feathers and golden limbs
did you know that your presence draws me in?

notes from degraves

Adventure

I didn’t want an adventure
not tonight
I just wanted to spend the night with you
I just wanted to feel safe

Of course
Of course I understand
it's me. that is what I do.

How I know

It’s not warm
there’s no want to touch
there’s not much looking
I just think you sort of don’t care
not caring... it’s in your posture
and in your gait

A drunk poet at the Drunken Poet

Red wine

sitting back to the bar
legs crossed
lean back
eyes closed

Theresa

Wore a cherry dress
black head scarf
and no shoes
it should have been sublime

Green car

I saw your face as you walked in
i shrugged my shoulders
you sort of hugged me
you were sort of sorry
we drove home sort of silent
in your mum’s green car

A room away

So you put the sleeping bag on the couch
as I brushed my teeth
and I heard your goodnight
from a room away

Gut

by strong lamplight without pants
Knees bent up near my chin
chest still trembling
with a neglected tea
and words in my gut

How

How can there be so much between us
but none of it I can feel here

Wet Hair

She came over
I wasn't wearing pants,
she wasn’t wearing a shirt
she hugged and kissed me goodnight
she was sorry
I held her close and felt her care
her wet hair pressed damp against my mouth

I needed that from you
I needed you to be the one in wet rugby shorts and a sports bra
with care knitted across your face

Joshie # 3

So many times that night we caught each others eyes

you were radiating, that warm social energy you have when you are tipsy and comfortable and chatty and free.

so much happened around us that night. I was stuck in such turmoil and you knew it, you saw it, you felt it.
But i would find myself with your eyes on mine. And we would just look and i cant help but smile for what you evoke in me. For how we look, how we search, how we give to each other with those eyes. 

Yours are so full.

I remember grabbing your head in my hands and pulling your face to mine. I think I just laughed. you give me such joy. Everything we create in friendship is joyful for me. 

We sat on the couch,

i hardly noticed that everyone had left
your face was turned away
I put my hand to your chin and turned it towards me
i wanted your eyes
i wanted your lips

I think you thought it was about something else, someone else
something else external to that moment
it wasn't.
it never is with you.
You create something for me, a space, a feeling, and nothing else is important.
in those moments it is only about you.

Everyone left and we just lay together. Looking. I would touch your face. It is amazing to me that we feel so comfortable just looking. For so long. That you are so generous with your eyes.

We spoke a little. In whispers to each other. But we don't really need words. 

You asked me what i wanted. I sighed with such heaviness. 

You said i was so complicated. 

I am Joshie, but I so wish I could give you simple and beautiful things.

On Coffee, Bread and Patience

Patience has never been easy for me. I am too headstrong and short tempered. Fevered, giddy and impulsive. But patience has its place, especially in a creative heart. So I like to seek it. Force it upon myself. Hand myself moments, whole and golden to pause and gather and assess and breathe and observe with patience. Not in a vertiginous frenzy.

I can have moments, isolated and discrete but still whole, where I am creating. I am achieving. I am pursuing life. Maybe it is not furiously. Maybe I am not spilling coffee on my dress, maybe I am not eating breakfast in the car as I rush from one adventure to the next. I am still pursuing life. But in the spaces, the silences. There is just as much to be found. There is a natural rhythm to be found.

This morning I went to a cafe and had a coffee while I read some creative essays.

I stir my coffee before I drink it. I learnt that from Gen. So that the consistency is a little more uniform. Not half froth – half actual coffee. The spoon clinks in syncopation against the glass. I pull it out slowly and while I wait for it to be cool enough to suck, I watch to see if the residual coffee will drip. I tilt it on some elegant trajectory and hold it at an angle so the coffee gathers on the end of the spoon and forms a little drop. My heart beat quickens in trepidation, will it, wont it, my eyes are fixed on this spoon and my surroundings are fuzzy. One drop, two drops, and I catch the third in my mouth and lick up the sides of the spoon. Warm metal, sticky amber coffee.

It is mornings like this that remind me of how sacred and gilded each moment is. How much there is to be found in them, how rich a resource, how worthy of attention. I like that sometimes I feel a torrent of moments and it evokes creativity in me, and sometimes i just feel one, with intensity and attention to detail, and it evokes a different kind of creativity.

Like baking bread. I crave days that I have time of a morning to bake bread. It represents to me the idea of slow and comfortable creation. The absence of pressure and expectation and this great sense of haste and hurry. Because creating should be free. You cannot force it, you can encourage it and create a space where it is fertile and rampant, but it has it’s own rhythm. A tricky thing to balance sometimes, so I bake bread, and bread represents my balance. I drink black coffee, I listen to blues music and I stick my hands in a bowl of dough. it is so good to make something with your hands. to spend time engaging in something purely physical (well, dexterous) for the sole sake of creating. it is the most glorious suspended moment of time. with dough warm and wholesome in your palms. it is so good to have hands covered in butter and sticky dough. to form something with your fingers. to feel the yeast alive and growing and elastic. feel it bouncing beneath the heel of my hand. its very sensual. bread. creating. kneading. needing.

and then i just sit and wait while it rises. maybe there is a time for everything and i can just learn to be patient.

I used to add cold water to my black coffees, to my herbal teas and even to my teas with milk. Such haste, such hurry. Such impulsive imminent desires for things. Now, most of the time, I like waiting for my coffees and teas to cool, for that perfect drinking temperature.

I can wait for things to fully form themselves in their own time. There are things I have control over and i celebrate my urgent desires for them. But there are things that gloriously, I have no control over. I can wait for those to form around me, to be ready to give themselves to me. I can work around the rhythm of other things. I can wait.

open

I want to leave my doors unlocked
and my windows wide open
a vessel
for both sun and storm

summer had burned long and hard
the fields had turned to dust
it had been so long
since i had even touched someone
i waited oh i waited long
my body could not last
i felt a storm come rising up inside

save me from what i want
save me from what i want

-jen cloher

a collection of special things #3

black cats with bald bandy legs giving me furry kisses

playing banjo til my fingers callous

feverishly writing lists of secret fears on napkins in the beer garden with sophie

seeing the stars burn waywardly through the gumtrees at waverock

spending a whole day in constant communication with gen, and feeling like she is back here again.

walking through the farmers markets, arms bundled with bread

Dylan's mannerisms, gesticulations, expressions, presence.

red wine outside in the cool evening

dreams about a tall willowy woman as the air changes shape around her

spring # 5

spring is for lazy ambivalence
spring is for heart aches about the future
for fear and for excitement in equal parts
spring is for specific lists of vague delights desires and dreams

spring #4

for green gumboots and stripy grey socks
for white sun hats
for walking down william street
cheeks rosy and underarms sticky with warmth

for familiar men with spectacles and long ginger beards
for peculiar friends
for ambivalent conversations about Steven King over a coffee machine

for Cat's flushed face, not meeting my eyes
for the 'accidentally-going-the-same-way-when-we-kiss-goodbye' dance

spring #3

Spring is for warm days with cool winds
for singing while hanging washing on the line
colourful pegs, crumpled whites that will never be white again,
and it drying quickly, crisp and stiff

sunrise

a smattering of pink
a sensual pink. soft and chalky
a hazy diaphanous smudge across the sky line

uncertainty

Sophie and I had a great conversation about freedom and fate, and whether they are mutually exclusive concepts. It was challenging and inspiring and exciting.The kind of excitement that only learning with and through other people can give me. We picked through eachother's thoughts and offered alternative thoughts and drew on the thoughts of important and smart people.

Sophie had such clear and thrilling ideas about fate. I just had to read it over and over again. they were sublime, i wanted to gild them to my windows.

it got me thinking about something else though. I have been thinking about this a lot.... How I feel about uncertainty.

A few years ago I was so certain about this. About how I felt about freedom. There was no room for doubt. doubt was weakness.
But now i am just in the process of asking questions. It frightens me to be asking questions. I long for certainty that i lost. But I am sure I'll find my way back to certainty, but i’ll have a much stronger foundation for those questions.

I envy past Fiona and her unexamined certainty. There were, still are, so many things that i believed were implacable. This is what i feel, this is who i am. There is no scope for error. For mistake or uncertainty.

There were these things that i believed were so foundational to me. Never being less than free. Never doing something that i doesn't fill me with joy. Never having sex with someone i am not completely physically enthralled by. Never doing something without understanding what my motivation was, or without being comfortable with that motivation. I thought it was conceptually impossible. Physically, fundamentally impossible. My body would not engage. My heart would not negotiate. My soul would resist.

I am in this place now where... i need to know its ok to be asking questions about what i thought was non negotiable. I need to know that its ok to have feet of clay sometimes. (here’s a random bit of poetry I always remember - from the bible, of all places - ‘This image's head was of fine gold, his breast and his arms of silver, his belly and his thighs of brass, His legs of iron, his feet part of iron and part of clay.’) I need to know that there is strength in identifying weakness. That i don’t have to be stoic and strong 100 % of the time. That there are parts of me that are uncertain and uncovered and thats ok because life is about learning. That doesn’t frighten me anymore, that thrills me.

There is a penumbra around these things. Around certainty of values. There is scope for mistake. There is always scope for learning. Its ok that i am not fully formed (got that one from clare bowditch) Its ok that I am relative (sophie got that one from Anais Nin)

Or maybe it is about identifying what you want to be a foundational concept. And then you work hard to make it that way. Is a belief less valuable because it was cultivated over time and determination rather than something that has always been there? Now that i think about it, i think there is much more value in identifying what i want to grow in me and growing it myself. Maybe it all comes back to that idea of accidents vs autonomy. There is value in choice and hard work.

I worry i have tainted this idea of freedom for me. That the very fact that i doubt its implacability means that it is not a part of me. But there is value in me choosing freedom. And actively seeking it for myself.

when i did something that i did not understand why i was doing it, which is a big deal for me... it frightened me. Because i thought it was a fundamental value. Unshakable. Inherent. But now i think... its ok that i have learnt that through trial and mistake and questions and decisions. Its ok that i will spend time deliberately entrenching this as a chosen value in me. It has more strength for it.

So i don’t really envy past Fiona so much. Because she didnt ask questions. because she was afraid of learning. And I think asking questions is brave. I think examining life is brave. Was it Socrates that said an unexamined life is not worth living? A very strong thing to say. Im not sure how i feel about it for anyone else, but for me it rings true.

So this is the context that I am thinking about fate and freedom in. The context of... asking questions about things i once accepted was certain and being ok about that.

And also... finding a balance. I find myself charging ahead with such certainty about what i think, and then life stops me and challenges me and i have to re assess. I have to consider alternatives and soften my iron clad views. I have to balance the elements.

Like, for example - I am learning to be ok with the fact that i cant be for myself every thing that i need, that i might need something outside of myself. I need to balance, i need to soften.

Certainty in freedom.....For as long as i can remember I have felt these words to be so true. That i am free. That I was never less than free. So when people challenged that, when i let people challenge that and in turn challenged it myself, it is super frightening. But I am balancing. I am asking questions and considering and exploring the penumbra bravely and when I do come to a conclusion it will be stitched under my skin with all of these background colours and textures. 

I am dusting off my feet of clay and continuing to march along.

and celebrating wondering. 

Alpheius and Arethusa

Three times I saw you
woman of the land
three times you entered me
the capricious sea
three times our bodies were one

From the moment that I felt you
nymph, naked and wild
when i felt your toes
in my muddy banks
I understood
one day again I would surround you

The first time
You bathed in me
Your body
soft, brown and reptilian
lithe and limber
slender and svelte

You bathed in me,
in my erratic body
my tumult surrounds you
my rising tides push up against you

For glorious moments
so consumed we were
not even air could invade
your spaces that i filled
most private, most intimate
i breathed you in
and you drank from me

Together we rose
wilder and wilder

But you rose from me
you shook your hair
and walked away
for you dwell on the land
and I am the sea
But, my love, I am drawn to thee

Your footprints remained marked in my soil
and I remained a vestige dripping from your skin

The second time I felt you, my love
You ran by me
throbbing with life
your sisters shrieking
giddy from the hot sun
you splashed, you played
and i swelled around you
simmering with your freedom

Ripples resounding
your love will drown me
Implacable was my desire once more.

So here i wait, cavernous and capricious
For you roam the land
wayward and wayfaring
and i am that which mires you
that to which you will return

You have feet to walk the hard, red earth
and I am the swelling, surging sea
but I am bound to your body
and implacably I will pursue thee

The third time I met you, 

I was rushing through Ortygia
fanciful and free
raging and ravenous
and there you were
by the hand of Artemis
no longer mortal
a giggling, babbling stream

I watch for you
i search the seas, the brooks, the springs
i listen for your laughter like bells
I feel for your skin, now soft flowing water
your wayward feet now thunderous torrents

There is a current that runs through me
a deep and entrenched destination
without deviation,
without hesitation
without alteration

I am bound to your body
as you, rivulet,
are now bound to the sea
i am bound to thee
until we merge
boundlessly

I surge through Syracuse
a thrum of determination
I find you there waiting
a thrum of anticipation
we mingle our waters
a thrum of satiation

I press against your banks
your columns of soil
of mossy dank pillars
here i dwell in your warm cavernous body
I shape myself around your creases
I flow through you, i surround you, i swallow you whole

Finally, my love, we are emerged.

letter to my ex: part four

I avoid going to places if I think you will be there.
Because I am so scared to be around you.

Because I am scared of you.

One time I saw someone from behind. She had exactly the same physique as you, she held herself in exactly the same way. the angle of her head, the position of her shoulders, her posture. For a few moments I thought it was you and I felt paralysed with panic. my heart slamming against my ribs.
It was not you.
But the fact that someone's posture can still have such an effect over me is frightening.

I hate that you still dictate where I am physically.

morning moments

stretch and wriggle. shake off sleep and let new creaky morning energy reach all your limbs.

open your mouth and yawn. make noise, you've been quiet for 8 hours. yell as you stretch. let loose whatever morning noises are in your throat. YAWP.

open the blinds and let the fucking light in. Grab the string, bend your knees and pull em up. WOOOSHHH.
 
pad around in bare feet and no pants. laugh at your bed hair and then remember its what it looks like all the time anyway.

Dad comes running down the stairs because he slept through his alarm and the news has started without him. Dad is the ultimate morning noise maker. he holds his hands together above his head, leans back and yells 'DOO BEE DOO BEE DOOOO'

John comes stumbling out of his room, unfolds his lanky body and hits the ceiling with his hands. He has the most priceless bewildered expression, sleep is creased into his face and he looks around blinking.

Mum floats around like a fluffy whirwind. fluffy dressing gown, fluffy slippers, fluffy hair. She tries to organise everyone's days and lives from her porridge bowl

morning time is family time. greet eachother in silly voices. sing and shout. dad finishes all the coffee. he blames it on the dog. he sings the 'naughty teddy' song.

sit with dad as he puts his shoes on in front of the news. the morning news reader is a milf, and is wearing polkadots and new sunglasses. yell at the tv 'VIRGINA YOU MILF'

wait for your black coffee to be perfect drinking temperature. Get too excited and slurp away anyway.

cook oats on the stove. grate apples. peel oranges, break pecans in half between your fingers, shake cinnamon.

go outside and feel the dirt between your toes as you pick parsley and lemons from the garden like a garden fairy.

a collection of special things #2

dad's special 'boat glasses'. the arms are stuck to the frames with glue.

sewing pockets on skirts

capricious beers, sitting on a crochet blanket, rain falling on tin roofs, indulging in eachother's details

Carob cake made from home processed carob that Nyria stole from a tree on her street.

a loft full of light, with big windows over looking the lemon tree

Blunstone boots

bright lights, loud music, leaning back in chairs, turning our heads towards one another and whispering

a monkey with a drum

spring #2

spring is for perspective
for spring cleaning stale feelings
taking them out,
dusting them off
and looking at them in new, fresh light

spring is for not being stuck.

inspiration vs. dedication (feat. some wise friends)

I am getting distressed by the realisation that I have no joy for uni at the moment.

But, yaknow, the world does not run on the same time line as me. We have different rhythms. And mine is so erratic. So desultory.

I’m ok with sporadic passion. Because when it's in me, when i create it or when it's evoked in me, it fills me. I would rather that than being.... platitudinous.

I struggle so intensely to do things I don’t find interesting, or am not inspired to do. I have such a capacity for what i am passionate about. I have so much to give to the things i want to do. I just don’t have time for what I don’t care about.

And... I have these naive and glorious ideas about what is good for my soul. How I respond to what I give myself to. What builds me and what erodes me.

I feel so uncomfortable with the idea of doing something that does not fill me with joy. Of committing my time and energy to something mediocre. I think mediocrity erodes me.

I think we give to the world, by being whole. By seeking wholeness for ourselves.

But Sophie says we should believe in determination and dedication over inspiration.

That feels really strong to me. I like that idea. It is positive.

Maybe commitment is a building force. Even if what i am dedicated to doesn’t fill me with as much joy as i would like. Yes, that thought encourages me a lot.

Marko said something so encouraging, about gritting your teeth, and then reassessing when you have finished what you committed to. And then making it what you want.

(I have such wise friends)

Now I don’t think it is as simple as only doing what i love to do. We should be ok with ‘building blocks’. With doing mediocre things as a means to some glorious end.

just grit your teeth.

Maybe inspiration comes from determination. 

restlessness

i was thinking about restlessness. it is one of my strongest feelings. one of my strongest forces and motivations.

So sometimes it is... not the best thing. It can make me do reckless things. It can make me so physically uncomfortable. it usurps me completely. and i can feel like my bones will jump from my skin and run away from my body.

But it is always celebrated. Like every other part of me. a walt whitman luscious.

There's a certain kind of restlessness that i get sometimes... a heavy kind of restlessness. The one i feel when i know what i want but cant give it to myself. It swells in my chest. Distending and tumescent. I can feel my bones growing. I feel heavy with its presence, heavy with its impact.

It physically moves me. It makes a puppet of me. I almost cant control what i physically do.

I feel like it... bubbles in me. Under my surface. Quite defiantly and determinedly. As a feeling it is determined. Implacable. There is no attenuating it. No reasoning with it.

I wonder if it was a substance what form it would take. I wonder if it is a solid substance. tumescent. it sits like stone in my belly. in my chest. Or if it is vapour. Gas. Does gas bubble?

whatever form it takes, it must exude from me. It must be a tangible force. It feels so strong. It fills me so intensely, i can feel it coursing through my body and leaking from me. I wonder if people around me can feel it.

It makes a plenum of me.

What i find interesting, what i have been wondering about, is how much restlessness fills me. Fills my capacity.

And i wondered... do i feel full OF restlessness? Is restlessness a substance? Is restlessness the matter in which i am filled with, or is restlessness the means in which i am filled with... everything else. Whatever i am restless about.

Maybe restlessness is a catalyst. Or like a reactive ingredient. Like yeast. And i rise and swell like dough.

It can manifest in so many ways. Its very dynamic. Sometimes it sillyness. Sometimes it is heaviness in my chest. Sometimes its reticence. Sometimes its an intense need to communicate in intricate detail. sometimes it is ebullient joy.

spring #1

spring is for

green apples
and gingham dresses

for arrows
and sparrows

and bitterness

winter #8

winter is for
playing house
for baskets of pastries
for breakfast in a sunbeam
and for gemma's orange socks

and for trundling banjo riffs
for bread rising,
a roaring fire
and a rolling boil of mulled wine

seven

furtively, tentatively
without dexterity
fishing a teabag
out of my scolding, torrid tea

a conversation with Cat

a conversation with Cat
about a relationship with art
addictive
meretricious
sometimes destructive
sometimes ecstatic

I'm transfixed by the way her long fingers move
in nimble rhythm with her words
eyes alight with inspiration
her curly hair falls in front of her eyes

Cat says: 'everything begins
with light and lines'

letter to my ex: part three

Remember how when we slept

We always had to have one part of our bodies touching

hand to hip, knee to calf, thigh to thigh

Remember that second summer

And your house baked in the heat

Remember those nights we never slept

Remember lying downstairs on the cool tiles

tangled, sweaty limbs

remember that week when all you ate was apple sauce

remember that week when all you ate were cupcakes

remember that week when all you ate was me

a girl in a blue dress

circumspect, cautious and suspicious
delicate diligence and determination
a furrowed and fervent brow
brightly belligerent
puffing perfidiously at her pipe
tepidly terse
reticent and reclusive
quietly contrary

twenty

the long road to Toodyay, lined with thick white trees like bones

the sounds of the Toodyay train, trundling wheels, whistling like a kettle.

the smell of onions cooking. that glorious moment when they soften from that harsh white to an inviting heady brown.

writing while standing up next to the stove, a desperate, capricious scrawl

Denise's laugh

Denise has a raucous laugh.
deep hearty belly laughter
a cacophanous cackle.
I think she likes to shock people with the things that she says.
She tilts her head back,
opens her mouth wide
and I can see all of her teeth.
Something happens in her eyes
they light up for a moment
her pupils dilate
almost like she even shocks herself

Zoe's house

Zoe has a cupboard
full of little things she collects
she says she knows they are odd
but she cannot let go of them

i wonder about her eyes
i wonder about the way she sees the world
i wonder about her colours, her thoughts
the way she defines beauty
i dont know the words to ask
so i just smile and wonder

she has two cats
two guitars
a banjo
drums
and a piano

there are colourful crochet blankets around the house
and a yellow and blue bathroom.

Zoe is so natural. She is very beautiful.
It is the kind of beautiful I am drawn to
with the full force of my heart.

Zoe has freckly skin
Zoe has beautiful arms
Zoe is slender and soft and graceful.

we drink tea, eat avocados
and she listens to me blabber on about life philosophies
because i want to engage with her
and that is the only way i know how.

she says
when there is open space
the opportunities are amazing.

a morning

it was your birthday
so i stole the sky for you

a pack of gallahs soared above me
a heavy mess of pink and grey
a thunderous mess of beating wings

i turned my head.

(for gemma)

On Greek Mythology

What was meant to be a brief comment on Greek Mythology which turned into a number of torrential tangents.

On living creatively

I want to expand my ambit of inspiration. seek new sources, new means. new muses.

I think I am in a perennial (just found out that perennial has two 'n's and only one 'r' - i thought it was the other way around. English is cheeky) pursuit of living a creative life. living as creatively as I can.

I just want to be surrounded by creativity... this ubiquitous and omnigenous force.

I want it to be so foundational, so inherent, to influence every element of my life.

I think I seek a state of.... comfortable creation. I don't feel exactly happy with the way I expressed that. Because I don't want 'comfortable' to indicate that it is not challenging. or dynamic. I dont want it to sound ... lazy. easy. mediocre.

What I mean by creating comfortably is... my desire to create does not conflict with anything else. it is unhindered. and active. that inspiration is closer, and ... redolent... and prominent. Accessible.

Anyway, this is all ancillary discussion. What I want to talk about is something new in my "creative development" (I always wince a little when I say that)

On Greek Mythology

On one of my many capricious solo roadtrips south earlier this year, I found an Encyclopedia of Classical Mythology, tucked in this tiny op shop.

I think I am drawn to old stories. they have a certain ... quality to them. maybe its a physical thing. maybe they are really... bare and exposed.

Maybe it is why I like antiques. there is some inherent quality. it is rich and redolent. something about age, something about time.

It almost feels... religious. ritualistic. you know that feeling of being in an old church. It is religious. not in a constructed way. in a glorious renaissance painting of a naked woman eating fruit kind of way.

it's interesting to see... values, concepts, that transcend time in a historical context. I think there is a contrast there, it produces interesting light and shade.

Greek Mythology is... so big. there is nothing meek or mild or mediocre about it. Nothing is held back, nothing is reserved. Actually, no... I dont think it is about NOT reserving, I dont think they had a concept of holding back, a concept of humility, a concept of what should be said, what should be done.

it was all very instinctual, very physical, very visceral.

maybe because it was earlier society, less social construction, a less developed a less constructed idea of morals.

Rage was apoplectic. passions were usurping.

and unhindered pleasure was celebrated.

It is such fertile and faithful inspiration.

I am drawn to things that be to their capacity. and Greek Mythology has an unapologetic capacity.

So I have been reading through these amazing stories and myths, and writing poems about the characters or situations I am drawn to. Like... Eos, the goddess of dawn, who is doomed to desire, and carries people she falls in love with away on a winged chariot. Who wouldn't want to invoke that, for a moment, for the time and space of a poem?

On seeking new inspirations

And it has been great inspiration for me. A totally new experience too.

Writing is very visceral for me. very solopsistic. I write for my own truths.

And I always thought I would lose so much if I sought to write with any other purpose. That it would be somehow diluted.

But I have really enjoyed writing with a new purpose. Writing to seek someone else's truth. Or maybe... to explore that truth in myself. To let it come out to play.

On everything being relative (thanks Soph)

I like that what I thought inspiration was is in flux. I like to think my sources, my muses are expanding.

At one point in my life, a few years ago, I was very frightened by the idea that I was not entirely aware and certain about every part of me. I knew exactly who I was thankyou very much. I was completely developed and there was no uncertainty in me. For some reason uncertainty about myself felt like weakness. Felt like I was somehow less than complete, less than whole. 

That was a long time ago, but something Soph said to me a few weeks ago made me think of it again. She said: ‘We are relative’.

Heraclitus says ‘verything is in flux, the way up is the way down’

Sal Kimber says ‘gotta move like a rollin’ wheel. Gotta trust in that rollin’ wheel.’

(that’s a nice friend-philosphy-folk farrago of quotes)

Anyway, further tangential torrents. Basically, Being in flux, having things evolve and swell within me and around me... it does not scare me anymore. It is very exciting, on a deep foundational life kind of way. I love that how much I have to learn overwhelms me. And I don’t think it means that I am any less than whole. I think there is wholeness in seeking wholeness. I can be whole in my seeking of myself.

Teddy

Reasons why everyone should aspire to live like my dog.

1. He takes naps in sunbeams.

2. He has a boundless capacity for excitement.

3. He fills his capacity for excitement, frequently, unapologetically.

4. He doesn't just wag his tail, he wags his whole body. He feels joy and excitement with his whole body, all of his limbs

5. He is so generous with affection.

6. He asks for what he wants

7. He knows what his job is - to guard the house - and he does it well.

8. It is very easy to win Teddy's affections. He knows who he feels comfortable around is very free and exposed with them (literally, he lies there on his back with his legs in the air)

Eos and Eros #2

I would have come for you
tantric with trepidation
for the desultory dawn.
I would have stolen you
a winged and wondrous thief
and carried you to the top of mount Olympus.
In pinioned and prurient pursuit
I would have come for you.

And there
untouched, far from the sight of the world
I would take you
we would have laid in the sloping scree

laid among the debris

the stones falling like heavy rain
the crags, the carnage, the chaos

the very mountain side would erode and crumble

beneath the force of my passion
we would clutch at the detritus
we would moan in the dust.

Eros

A prurient prisoner, a salacious slave
I am doomed to desire
it's heaviness and lightness
it fetters and frees me
it delights and deludes me
Eros, bittersweet, ebullient, exalted

dilettante

delighted by
desultory desires
fickle fleeting fantasies
and vacillating
vertiginous
vagaries

words of disorder

words of clangor, carnage and chaos

tumultuous
vertiginous
oscillate
erratic
obstreperous
rampant
torrential
mercurial
apoplectic
catatonic
balkan
synesthesia
vacillate

A poem about sex.

I love that you have stairs in your house

I love your giant book case 

I love your nervous hands.

I love your quiet intensity. It makes me blush.

We talked about Chomsky and Satre.

And I jumped cross legged on your bed. 

It was raining outside

And you fumbled with my buttons

And it made me laugh

Even more thrilling 

Than than the rhythm of urgent tessellation

Even more thrilling 

Than a collision of hips

Is the curve of your elbow,

The angle of your shoulder blade

The space of skin between your neck and your chest.

A collection of special things #1

conversations about life defining moments in your red car
conversations that are life defining moments in your red car

the way my heart flutters every morning. how thrilling the mornings are. how much it excites me to be awake.

My brother wearing a giant scarf on his head. His 'incognito' look. Maybe that would achieve its intended purpose if it was not the loudest scarf I have ever seen - red and polkadotted.

Bryan kisses. I will miss these so much. neck nuzzles, feeling his prickly chin against my skin. whispering in eachother's ears. holding his face in my hands and kissing him twenty times on the lips.

winter #7

winter is for facilitating reckless desires
winter is for seeking for myself what i need

letter to my ex: part two

I remember that look in your eye

whenever I was upset with you.

You knew

all you had to do

was slide your hand up my skirt

and I would capitulate

letter to my ex

Remember that time

you told me that

I broke you

from wanting you so much?

Me wanting you was the only thing we were good at.

It broke me too.

on honesty and intimacy

sometimes i worry that i intimidate people with my honesty.
But I just want to be... accessible. I think that is what honesty achieves. it removes barriers between people. it removes pretense, it removes performance. it establishes a vulnerable and free space.
but sometimes I worry that by being honest I have the opposite effect. That I distance people with my intensity, or something. It is a fear of mine.

I just... want to always seek new levels of intimacy. new ways to engage. new ways to explore. deeper ways to learn people.
to be so real, to be so honest, to be so raw.
I want to live my friendships to a certain line. I want to keep pushing that line.
I think being honest, I hope that creates an environment for people to feel very free in, to share of themselves. I don't know how else to facilitate the conversations i desire. the connections i crave.
Because that is what I want, to explore people, to learn them.
details are delicious. stories, simplicities and silliness is seductive.
i want to be free and ... strong... with my parts. with my details. i want to give people that trust. that special trust. i want to give intimacy, with mirth. mirthful intimacy. bold intimacy.
it is so joyful, it is so thrilling. to be so vulnerable with people.
i think such strength is gained from that vulnerability.
from giving so wildly. so freely.
and hopefully it will encourage reciprocation.
that is what i seek from my relationships, that is what i seek from myself, and that is what i seek from my life.

wild intimacy

an external force

Lately I have been feeling deprived. And it worries me, because what does that mean for my pursuit of wholeness? For my pursuit of being for myself all that I need?
If I feel deprived... that means there is something I am not giving to myself.
But I have realised that what i feel deprived of - desire - I can't give that to myself. I can cultivate, and nourish and... just seek myself, belong to myself, be as fucking whole and and fucking full and developed as I can be...
and i do. i feel a great sense of self worth. I don't need anyone else to need me to testify to that.

But I can't give myself desire. it is an external force. this feeling of deprivation... it is not coming from me.

desire is an external force.

So I have identified what I need. and I think I am learning to be OK about identifying what I need, if that means someone else needs to facilitate the fulfillment of that need.

my friend Bea says to me 'a man is not an island, fee fee'

i encourage people to need me. why can't i give them that in return? why does it feel like the scariest thing in the world to need something outside of myself?

It has been a long time since i have felt desire.
I feel... so acutely, 'friendship-desire'. which is.... more divine. the most sublime. i am rich for it. It surrounds me. it ensconces me. The people in my life and what they give me, the way we create together, how we seek eachother... I am so rich for it.
But physical desire is different. and I think the last person who really did... want me, was Belinda. and i was so addicted to that, to her desire. and it was the most destructive thing.

So I don't really know where to go from here. I dont know how to facilitate this need. And I don't know how to do that and protect myself from my weaknesses at the same time.

Saturday at the Hugo's

Yesterday morning Mum danced around the kitchen.
My chest hurt for laughing so hard.
My chest is where I feel all the heaviness,
and it just dissipated with laughter.
Mum will do something ridiculous... and John and I will just look at eachother and laugh.
hearty laugh. belly laugh. a laugh that fills my lungs, that reverberates in my chest. a laugh that rings in my ears and folds my body over.
we are big laughers in our family. My dad has the most glorious giggle. His whole face scrunches up and he stamps his feet. its almost like a series of hiccups. 'a hi hi hi'. it completely takes over his whole body. it is such a joy to witness.
John... has a booming laugh. its comes in staccatoed bursts, in groups of increasing numerical order.
HA. a HA HA. a HA HA HA.
i imagine it rolling around in his belly like thunder.
So John and I laughed at mum. and it filled my chest so that there was no room for heaviness.
Mum is so free. so insouciant. so ridiculous. it is the most positive thing to be around.

I gave mum and dad a poem that I am thinking of submitting to a magazine. Usually mum is funny about reading and critiquing things. I would avoid it, because she would focus on one little detail, and not the whole thing.
and that is not what i wanted from showing my parents something important to me. i just want to share.
but this time, she gave it back to me and said
'it is perfect. i cant believe someone so intelligent came out of my womb. it is perfect. dont change a thing'
My heart swelled. it was everything i wanted. It was all the support I needed. It was so beautiful. so generous.
I was brushing my teeth and I had a mouth full of toothpaste.
it dripped down my chin.

I had woken John up to come with me on a field trip to Theo's. I needed my partner in crime. and of course, as always, he was there for me, there with me, to facilitate my desires. even in its recklessness.
like the time he drove 10 hours with me, to and from Albany, while I went to see Kasey and Shane, and he just hung out at the backpackers.
His generosity and selflessness .... It is unparalleled. He is my hero. I wish i could be more like him.
We went to buy a banjo. I had decided that i needed it. That i would surely die if I did not buy one imminently. So I did. I told Mum, and she was all for it. and John came along with me, bouncing alongside next to me.

We are all seeking special things for me.
It is everything that I need.
Almost everything I need.
It is everything I need to be ok about the fact that I can't have what I need.

Dactyls

We are the Dactyls
sons and daughters of the Master Blacksmith
and we come in half light

We come with the gypsies and the thieves
We come with the marauders and madmen

On swift and nimble feet
we tread lightly
in clandestine pursuit of creation

We spread out across the land
the fingers of an outstretched palm
We clutch at Gaity and her bounty
we hold it in our grasp

We leave little gifts
in secret places
oddities. curiosities. treasures.

We are the makers and miners
the sorcerers and smiths

We sew for the reaping of mortal men

the happiness in sadness

I had a very sad weekend a few weekends ago.
I think I felt it with such force because of something I already know to be true, but I seem to be a slow and stubborn learner.
I should feel what is in me to feel. Let it run it's course.
I am ... aware... of how easy it is to get lost, overwhelmed by all of my feelings.
Which is why it is so important for me to be vigilantly self aware. To identify what I am feeling. To attend it, examine it, unravel it, understand it. To not let it consume me. To not be consumed by a force, a feeling that I do not understand. That I cannot deal with. I think there was a point in my life where I felt so... tangled, by a million unattended threads. it took me so long to sort out that unaddressed mess. To understand the place that I was in.

So it was silly of me, reckless of me, to let such a big feeling, that encompassed so many important things, to let it simmer unattended. to let it grow rampant. to swell and distend unchecked.

But I was so... frustrated about it. Frustrated at this feeling that will not go away. That is having a negative effect on me.
I got a beautiful book in Italy about the greek god 'Eros'. The god of desire. It talks about... the dichotomy of this entity, this force. how it is 'bittersweet'
I have talked before about how much i embrace this feeling. About how much it gives me.
But it is also heaviness. it is heaviness and light.
Thats how i feel about this person. They make me so intensely restless, but so joyful.
And there are a lot of negative things too. there are fears and weaknesses... all in the name of stregnth, i realise that. But as single entities, as ... forces in my body, they are hard to cope with.

And while it is so important to feel all that is in me to feel, doesnt it get to a point where... you need to move on? you need to start taking steps to ... not dismiss the feeling, but encourage it on its way out?
So I just tried to avoid it. I tried to distance myself from it. I was sick of thinking about it, sick of writing about it. So i just sort of stopped writing. Which is a grave loss.

Of course, it reached a point where I could not bear it, where those unattended feelings demanded to be felt.

Of a Saturday, I... capitualted.

I remembered that there is stregnth in identifying feelings, even weak ones, even sad ones.

It is strange for me, to feel sad. i dont usually feel sadness. I feel so fortunate that there has not been a lot of sadness in my life. So it was a new physical experience for me. the heaviness, the pressure in my chest. the swelling, the reeling.

This past week has just been... coming down from that place. And I respond, in such dynamic ways, to strong emotions, to strong experiences.
i think that weekend was stregnth and weakness. it was vulnerable and it was bold.
There was happiness in that sadness.
as there is an element of joy in every experience. In learning. in something completely new. in letting my mind and body do what it needed to do.
Walt Whitman says 'each moment and whatever happens fills me with joy'
So I have had moments of deep sadness, moments of intense restlessness
but mostly, I am very bouncy. i am singing, i cant stop singing. And that happens when i am insouciant, and ebullient.

So this is the space that I am in. Raw and exposed. and i am responding with intense feelings. dynamic feelings. oscillating from one intensity to the next. But I celebrate it. i celebrate it because i know it is wise. and because...
I feel very alive.
I think that is what is making me happiest.

i like the way you push your glasses up your nose

blushes and philosophies
caprices and fantasies
not flirting
just prurient honesty

running down hay street

running down hay street in the cold dark
in a red dress, brown gloves
bare legs and mustard socks

wine and music waiting for me
when i had finished with my moment of ridiculousness

pedestrian ridiculousness
practically platitudinous

three conversations in a bundled bed

Last night I sat in my bed as the afternoon leaned into the evening
My mum makes these gorgeous hand made quilts
and so every surface in our house is covered in bundles of them
you need to wade through them to find suitable seating surface area

So I sat on my bed, in a tangled bundle of blankets
and there were books and diaries sort of strewn sporadically
throughout the different layers of my blanket-cake-bundle
i could feel a book against my left heel
another against my hip
whenever i moved it made a rustling, crinkling sound

I felt comfortable, comforted, ensconsed by what delights me

Cat called with a question
just one single question
and sparked the kind of conversation that i crave
but dont know how to ecourage, or facilitate

the afternoon light was fading into 6 pm
and i thought to myself
how generous a friendship this is
how much i get from this friendship

i wrote some more, i have a new turquoise diary
I am in that delightful mindset
of a ubiqutious desire to record

gen called
and we talked about happiness in sadness
it was just what i needed
the support of talking with my best friend
i dont need her to say anything, no empty words
and she knows that. she knows what i do not need.
the comfort in her voice, the support in that space
was perfect.

and then much later in the evening
I texted,
flat on my back, arms pinned to my sides, with dinosaur hands
to a new friend
about new wonderings
about physical surroundings
and i wondered, not for the first time
about distractions, desires and motivations

a conclusion

i think what makes me saddest
is that my entire capacity to desire someone
to seek them, to be passionately curious about them
in the most selfless, divine way

is not what he wants

that it is either

too much for him
or not enough for him

and i dont know which conclusion makes me sadder

flying over red dirt

there is this...pattern
marked across the land

thick winding paths which break into
many thin paths which break into
more and thinner paths
again and again
seemingly infinitesimal
until all i can see are dots

tracks of shrubs winding and coiling
like a thick snake
like ghostly fingers
like a long gecko with one thousand legs
and a million toes

I look across the land and it looks alive
like skin, like a nervous system
like veins pumping blood
shuddering breaths like lungs

winter #6

winter is for kneading dough
warm ovens
sticky fingers
and a little sprinkling of flour

an element of construction

I scrambled in the dark
fumbling fingers around
pieces of you and me
our body parts, sexual organs
and fragments of thought
fitting this piece with that
tessellating clumsily
and binding together tenuously
with viscous adhesives
from deep inside you

to construct a connection

Joshie #2

I rest my chin upon my folded arms
wordlessly
I feast upon your eyes
what is it
that makes your eyes dance like that?
a little bit wild
a little bit fantastic
my eyes lick yours eagerly
unfolding you and beckoning
your honest and shy beauty
I want it to come and and play

I can feel my own eyes
resplendant
for the excitement I draw from you

how long did we sit there
eyes locked in mirthful curiosity?

until my jaw and cheeks ached
from the special smile that is only yours

savage desire

paralysing desire
you set something alight in me and
it's dangerous

stutter, fluster, move away
occupy my hands with another activity

feel her unrelenting eyes bore into me
unclothe me
burn my skin
and eat me alive

the way she looks at me
savage desire

she moves towards me
around me, beneath me
moulding into one another
heart beats racing one another
the hunter
              and the hunted

I'm constricted in agony
paralysed
              but desperate
what were those reasons again?
heavy breathing
laboured struggle
whispering desperation
lust, desire, yearning
course tangible between us

we do not touch
but for her teeth upon my skin
filling my senses

my lips run for as long as they can fight
the final resolve yields
the beast awakes
and i kiss her
fearfully, fiercely, forcefully



(this is an old poem i wrote about my ex, and how powerless i feel around her)

farrago

this is my nature
intrinsic aversion to organisation
entrenched chaos

this is my process
a determined absence of order or structure

in perrenial pursuit of
living honestly
I can only write freely

unfinished poems
from ephemeral fevered moments

the ebb and flow of my inspiration
within the framework of my erratic vertiginous heart
scattered sporadically by
my dichotomy of needs

silenced by standards...
or mired by delight in detail
tantricly turgid, beautifully bombastic

page after page
of a perpetual deluge
of visceral self reflection
of vigilent awareness and exploration

for me
to be
(fabulous fervent fucker)

is in chaos

what now?
(the question that paralyses me at the precipice)

do I pull together the scattered pieces
stitch them together,
a colourful patchwork

a farrago of chaos
of frustration, creation
and fervent cacophany



(i wrote this last year in response to what i felt completely creatively paralysed by at the time - my dichotomy of needs - a need to create at all costs, and a need to never have any element of my creativity be fabricated or calculated. I needed to celebrate my scattered farrago of inspiration.)

everyone went to sleep but i could not sleep for wanting so i wrote a poem

intense wanting
constricts my body

I think of you here in this room with me

constricts my body

I think of you sitting, still, quiet, watching

I drink some wine. I have just brushed me teeth
so it tastes like delicious poison

I want you, intensely

I think of you coming over here
kneeling next to my tangled legs
taking away my book and wine

and without a word

untangling my legs
and holding my head in your hands
or maybe kissing me
or maybe just looking at me with

intensity

body constricts

heavy breathing
seek me with your eyes
fuck me with your eyes

one long sip of poison

and then
putting one hand on each knee
press your hips against mine

my body constricts with
the intensity that
i want you
to want me
intensely