sunrise

she's so mischievious, rising so early
so bold and audacious
I really have to want her
really pursue her
and she knows it, and i do
I want her in my bones
and i chase her
a thief of daylight
she's got a hold on me
that sweet, wayward sunrise
has got a hold on me

lemonade (for gen)

after our outdoor lavender bath
she had gone lemon picking
and I ensconced in letters and liz

she comes waltzing in the kitchen
split stance
chin jutted forwards
eyes shining
mirth dancing teasingly across her face
because we know we are
communicating in our own language

golden brown skin
salt curled hair
dark blue denim dress
that ties at the nape of her neck

'talk about utility value' she says
as she plucks a lemon from
one big pocket
'ONE LEMON'
flourish and exclaim
'THREE LEMONS'
flourish and exclaim
'FIVE LEMONS'
can you beleive it?
that dress paid for itself in pockets

in moments
in laughter, lemonade and shining eyes

reckless

wrap myself in a mood
an unsettled colour
allow restlessness to sway my step
pursue it for the sake of candour

feelings rumble, swell, distend
an urgent need to attend a moment
an insistent muse

it physically moves me

topography

in delight I behold you
enthralled by your entire
intrigued by each part

your details are delicious to me
your intracacies thrill me
I want to trace my fingers around your delicacies
hold your complexities against my cheek
lick around your pieces

I am ravenous for you
I want to feast on your colours
dappled and pied
light and shade

I want you to paint me
with the lines on your fingertips
their angles and shapes
texture and patterns

together we make trembling shapes
I want your fingerprints
to stain my skin
I want your geography
stitched upon my body

the art of looking
of seeing with my whole body
to swim in your topography
your creases and crevices
let your lines soak into my bones

(I wrote this poem after Liv asked me to write something about fingerprints. I think she was steering me towards the unique print we leave on the earth. But when i stumbled, restless and unslept in the dark to my desk at midnight to write what was in me to be written... this came out. I think it sounds very physical, but it wasnt my intention. I just wanted to articulate the very intense capacity to desire the people in my life. To know them intimately, all of their parts, so that their lines, creases, shapes, are stained on my skin)

the first poem

'i've got something for you'
it was wild, wild risk
it was sublime silences
your voice thick with new discovery
warm upon my ear

i crossed my legs
closed my eyes
tilted back my head
you flicked through amy's
new poetry book
hunting for more for us

we marvelled at her boldness
the power of such complicated
big things
manifested in such few words
so that they shuddered for nearly bursting
they tasted wild on our lips

we had been talking about needing silence
loudness - an exigency of distance
and we know me
my dichotomy of needs
my restlessness and frustration
the fear of not articulating

but we swam in the silence
which grew
tangible, tactile, tastable
intoxicating

it was your idea
for the rest of the night
we could only feed eachother
15 words or less


(This is a very special poem to me because it was the first time i wrote freely, of a moment, without expectations or restrictions. The feeling that i got during and after creating this was unparalleled happiness, a deep life happiness. It was the first poem i recorded in my new poetry book which I decided was a vessel for free creation)

the first feast - final thoughts and reflections

I've always been afraid of restrictions and requirements and expectations. I feel they mire my writing, hinder and shakle my creativity.

But lately I've been reading a lot of Dorothy Porter's poetry - and her style is very terse. She writes of a moment - a few words, a few lines.
It always seems so... truncated... but somehow, whole and complete
I found this was so evocative and suggestive.
Terseness and brevity imbued the few lines with intense energy. Her poetry was cloying and addictive, with a thick, dense, sporadic style.
like liquor. I found it intoxicating.
I felt that her poems were so full, they said so much in such a small space that they shuddered and burst.

We chose haiku as our first form because neither of us ever wrote with any attempt at confinement, at rules and restrictions. And thats what feasts of fancy is all about... trying new things with our writing and seeing how we respond.

Our endeavour thus shaped, we set off in pursuit of restrictions.

In my research about the haiku style I read a line that opined a similar thing.... brevity of expresson is suggestive: 'overtones, potentials and implications' (a note on haiku - garry eaton) And that this brevity fostered a relationship with writer and reader to be cooperative, respond, fill in the poem's empty spaces from their own experience and imagination. 'Elegant restraint' my research articulated - so that it was 'vibrantly alive with suggestive possibilities'.

this was something i was so drawn to about haiku. That unique, vivid energy from tersenss and brevity. the sporadic suggestive rhythm. It was new to both Liv and I... we both value freedom from restrictions so much that our writing is... effusive... torrentual. So i loved the new feeling of this new rhythm.

So, for the first official meeting of feasts of fancy, we met, underslept, not very organised, but with boundless energy for the endeavour. a meeting of minds in a shared pursuit... what could be more delicious!?
Liv was running a bit late, and then i was running a bit late... the usual. To Voyage we went, there was no question about it really. familiarity can be fertile and faithful inspiration.
Liv brought her notebook of sporadic scrawls and sat feverishly asterisking haikus riddled throughout the last months writing.
I had a bundle of scribbles and drafts, and pages haikus, written, re written and then grouped into vague categories, a little list of our 'agenda' (in the spirit of my new resolution of organisation) and a beautiful, large black book of thick, unlined pages... blank and inviting, for collecting, collating and recording all of our feasting.

over soy milk and scribbles, we talked through the journey of our thought process, interspersed with sharing poems.

because we chose a form, we left themes open... its so interesting to see what parts of our life bled into our writing. liv wrote a lot about physical connections, I wrote a lot about physical landscape, and we both wrote a lot about how it felt to write haikus.

something i noticed about liv's poems was how tangible her relationship with words is... i can see it and feel it through her writing and especially hear it when she reads her poems aloud.
its this beautiful delight in language and its uses. I especially noticed this in alliteration and sibilence ... it was very physically evocative.

We both noticed that paying attention to syllables made us paid a lot more attention to rhythm. Usually all i pay attention to when im writing is letting the words express wholistically all that is in me to be expressed of a moment, and that is the nature of my relationship with words.
But it was interesting and valuable to be forced to pay attention to how the words and poems sounded spoken, rather than just how they tasted in our minds.

What i found the most valuable about the endeavour was how it transformed my perspective on writing. I used to be so overwhelmed by what i wanted my writing to be that i missed so many moments that were worthy of unwravelling, worthy of being created with, worthy of expressing. because i didnt think they were important enough to write about.
but with haiku, every moment is a potential poem.
an abandoned tea... a potential haiku
eating watermelon... a potential haiku
writing haiku ... a potential haiku
and that was one of the things i wanted to get from feasts of fancy. seeking inspiration everywhere.
it was also made writing and creating so achievable. 3 lines... one moment.... and youve created. youve satiated your procreant urge. youve achieved. its all about fostering this feeling of creating comfortably.

so now we are ready to start recording and making our feasts of fancy book look beautiful, and launch into our next feast....
theme: body

sinusoidal

i always oscillate so dramatically from intensity to intensity.
i don't know how to live life any other way
(and i don't want to. It's my natural state of being. so i surrender to it and be in it with all of myself, in pursuit of living honestly)

life swells within me.
life swells around me.
I ebb and I flow.
and that movement, that rhythm...
its this shape that i create by living fully and honestly
and that shape stains the ether around me

its like my life is a sporadic sine curve
erratic, vertiginous, capricious

josh pyke says 'if you're freezing on your left side and you're boiling on your right side then i guess you might be warm upon the line. and there are many ways one can divide a life and i've got mine'

I let myself be.
I let myself be in it.
I let all of myself feel it and embrace it

because knowing myself intimately
is what i seek from my life
vigilent self awareness
to know each part, each colour, each subtle intricacy

walt whitman says 'welcome is every organ and attribute of me... not an inch nor a partical of an inch is vile, and none shall be less familiar than the rest'

I trust in that self awareness, as my unshakable foundation.
and I know each oscillation will pass.

it manifests in different ways.
sometimes giddy
sometimes sequestered
and often, unarticulated

But it always leaves me
dizzy and breathless

intimate sleepy morning scrawl

here is my intimate sleepy morning scrawl
i have come down to the river to spend some time investing in and engaging with this evolving idea of you at a distance

on my way down here, i walked past the lake, my shoes damp with dew, the cold air citrus fresh on my face.

imagine, that sublime stillness of the morning. that esoteric, resplendant almost shimmer of the almost dawn. the world is waking and little forrest spirits are sleepily, mischieviously dancing around paiting light and colour. with grace, with levity and with mirth.

i must have disturbed the flock of birds resting on the water because as one, they took to the sky, a cacophanous thundering flurry of feathers
it made my heart lunge in my chest.

I am in a tacit conversation with the morning.
I'm watching everything move subtly and slightly with the breeze. The leaves of a particular tree are rustling effusively. There's a beautiful uninterupted flow to it, a rhythm. Like... oragami being unfolded and refolded over and over.

(For Gen)

entropy

defiantly
insouciantly
i capitulated to
my entropy

haikus inspired by a picture of a boat

sturdy and supple
macchiato brown pine wood
i built us an ark

an anchor oscillated
swining loose and free
with an iron will

haikus about seeking

wine and dim lamplight
writing late into the night
a delighted hunter

collector, hoarder
of curious intricacies
things that catch my eye

thieving fingers clutch
inexhaustable resource
to delight myself

sometimes destructive,
sometimes ecstatic, sometimes
mereticious

what is this colour?
always learning and seeking
to know of myself

brazen seduction
a voracious feast of life's
delicious details

i can never be
fabricated or contrived
i am visceral

what i cultivate
ferments, grows and bursts from me
centrifugally

3 haikus of an infinite moment

open up to light
torrid sun scorching my back
burning to my bones

i painted myself with mud
wet and warm patterns on my body
staining my skin

usurped by rhythm
that i felt but could not hear
my hands danced wildly

vividly visceral

I want to write about how my perception of writing has changed in the last year. Writing is one of the most important things in my life... a deep life thread....
I had a big shift towards the end of last year, a big change in perspective

For so long i felt paralysed with my writing.
I pictured myself at this precipice, a looming collosal free space
toes curled over the edge
I had these vague but overwhelming ideas of what i wanted my writing to be.
I didnt know exactly what I wasn't doing... but i knew how desperately I needed more

this is always how it goes for me, something I've become aware of, entrenched into my framework
such intense longing, such determination and drive for more from myself, to do more, to be more....
its such a beautiful pursuit, desire.
but there is a fine line between determination and desire for more... and a destructive conflagration of... a fear of inadequacy. i know that I need to straddle and balance this fine line with precision.
Because desire is my viscera. but fear of inadequacy is my hamartia. and it has no place in my beautiful framework.
but this point, this divorce of what i used to think was inexorable, is more to do with broader life views, and i cant do it justice here

So I spent so long paralysed at this precipice, so intimidated by all I wanted... needed my writing to be.

I had this conflicting dichotomy of imperatives. a need for what i create.... to be so raw, so unmasked, so free and not contrived, not fabricated, organic. visceral.
but also a need to create, at all costs.
a procreant urge.

And I think I was so intimidated by this need for my writing to be organic, without any kind of pretense or performance or even forethought .... free - i wanted it to be FREE...
i was so mired in this need, which had turned into a fear...
that i had obscured the idea of freedom (and the concept of freedom is so important to me. its a concept that ive always thought was fundemental. but this has been challenged a few times in my life)
I had bound freedom up in fears
just like i had bound desire up in fears

I was so overwhelmed, and mired, and paralysed, and intimidated,
that i never wrote anything

well i wrote. but it was a farrago of chaos, of frustrated creation and fervent cacophany.
it was unfinished poems from ephemeral fevered moments
it was an effusive deluge of diary writing
it was the ebb and flow and swell of my erratic inspiriation
scattered sporadically
within the framework of my vertiginous oscillating heart
my dichotomy of needs

i look back now and see those as true poems. for me then, it somehow wasnt enough.

i wanted my writing to be this epic, effortless, exhaustive expression of some colour of my consciousness
that i missed a million moments of colour and light, a twisting kallaedoscope of fevered moments

my dear friend and big inspirer Bea sent me this link to an interview with Lisa Mitchell, (who i've always judged far too harshly as an 'insipid indi' and didnt have much time for)
and she spoke about her fears of writing with expectation. and how she freed her writing and simply wrote, and let her songs be whatever they were going to be, good or bad.
it was exactly what i so desperately needed to hear and needed to understand.

writing freely is writing without fear and without expectation.

and somehow I just... unwravelled these twisty fears, all this complicated and toxic revery that had bound up my desires and my needs.

and I discovered a new level of freedom. or maybe i refound, relearned what freedom was to me.

I wrote completely without inhibition, expectation or requirement.

I wrote of a fevered moment, and i let my writing be shudderingly, orgasmically, vividly visceral.

Haikus about Pemberton

‘Open quirky den’

How could I say no?

Hoarder, wrangler, thief

Knees up on the couch

Here is where I pined for you

Sipping thick red wine

Morning breakfast feast

Teeth tearing at melon flesh 

Juice runs down my chin

Bright tawny orange 

Across azure blue sky

Freckled and dappled

Naked morning swim 

Together in the river

Bits in, nipples next

Sitting neglected

Steeped, acerbic, tepid

An abandoned tea

Walking down the stairs

Here is where I wanted to

Fuck you in the dirt

Golden like butter

Softly melting and dripping

The sky licks the sun

Night falls around us 

Our spirits swell within us

Hands pressed to my mouth

In the lake house bed

Tangled and tessellated

While the hammock groans

Thick white trees like ghosts

Withered and gnarled physique

Haunting the highway

Haikus about desire

I want you to want 

Me with the intensity

That I ache for you

For a while you were
Sweetest lover and poet 

My favourite muse

Licking at your ghost
In my belly lives a beast

Howling, hollering

A carrion crow
skirlish moribund dirge
circling above

I am scared to not
be for myself all I need
to be less than whole

I was so aware 

Was dying to hold your hand 

Warm leg against mine

Levels of desire
Moments of intimacy
It is what it is

Share with me your parts
Emerge me in your ether
Stain me with your breath

Haikus about haikus

Haiku entrenched form

Restrictions make me wilder
I burst from the lines

I never knew that

Brevity and terseness was
So damn delicious

Subtle syllables

Suggestive, evocative 

Sporadic rhythm

Every moment 

A potential haiku 

Of five and seven

The energy of terseness
Dense and sporadic rhythm
Words have so much worth