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