that's it

That’s it.  There is too much new.  Too much time, too much space, too much free.  This moment as I try to strip myself of the old I’m scared that after all I gave away and all I wish to shed there will be nothing left of who I was to mix with the who I wish to be.

I fill the space between sleep with lists of subtle avoidance.  Slowing runs the risk of this novice juggler fumbling and the charade being up as it all crashes down.

Even this tree acknowledges me a stranger.My back does not fit in this place of still.  I have yet to stay long enough to align myself with it and the chill in the air encourages me to wrap tight myself, but Fine is a blanket of too few letters.

favorite thing

Breathe the smell from when the rain has cleared but the heat has not quite been bullied away. You stretch your neck and roll the weight of the world off your shoulders. Breath those rare deep breaths the reach all the way to the bottom of your lungs. Each one lingering there as you feel your body healing itself from this life.

pass

On those days you can't bring yourself to speak. To push words out of your mouth would be betraying your own being. Breaking your own silence would be letting a part of you out. escape. You need every little bit of you just to keep yourself together.

When the thought of getting up out of your seat is frightening. When you would rather sit for an hour than wonder hopelessly about the house with a heavy feeling of lost in your stomach. That feeling of not wanting to be anywhere, knowing that is impossible, and waiting for it to pass. 


You will process the grief from the lost sunshine when you can find room for it in your lap. There are no tears, just a body weighed down by every primary emotion mixed in to make brown.

On those days, I will arch my back and speak up, not out.  So that my words rain back down to earth and settle on you.  Soak into your skin.  Words of love and hope and truth.

Then wait.  I can wait.

rubber stamp

The danger is in believing this is all there is.  Projecting a ‘copy, paste, repeat’ view of the future.  Giving into the darkness.  Losing sight of the day.

tide

I write with a mechanical pencil, like so many things in this world.  But I want to kneel with shells pressing into my legs as I scribble with my hand in the damp sand where the water has been, but the tide has called away to explore distant lands.  That someday I hope to follow.

thin

Life is moving so fast that all I can do is throw words down behind me as I run and hope they leave a trail that can be followed.   I hold my thoughts awkwardly in one arm, trying to select the right ones with the other.  The path splits and folks off til I’m spread so thin I feel like I’m playing twister with the ones I love.  No one gets more than a limb.  Those touched be a hand do better than ones about to get the boot.

seesaw not seen

cold stones stacked tall. dark. empty.  we grew up, they moved away.  now i pass by everyday and sigh.  fleeting in and out of lives, now only i remain.  summer nights spent in mustard yellow and blue; on couches in the dark willing time to stop.  first loves lost.

the ball court where no ball could be played for the cracks in the heat and the puddles in the cold.  we talked for hours until we were caught by parents, who had been looking for us for those same hours while we should have been at home.  a simpler time, before phones on the hip of every seven-year-old, though much harder for a mother searching for a child.  but our parents should have learnt to come first to the place where Tora once stood.  sitting on a tree stump big enough to fit five. 

now the seesaw has not been seen in years, the playground fort but lost.

but the stones don’t hold our memories.  this time before rent and responsibilities lives on in the spark in our eyes when we meet again, and talk about the way the floors creaked as you tried to sneak and how we thought we knew it all. 

ugly sounds

I am a perfectionist. I always have been.  I stopped learning guitar because I don’t like making ugly sounds.  The fact that you are witnessing this is testament to the fact that I am ok with being ok. Ok so I am learning. I may one day look back at these musings and cringe.  At the forced rhymes and off timing.  But maybe time will tell of my journey.  Of the young girl I was who thought I had no right to aspire to inspire anyone if I could not achieve in all.  That girl would not be so disheartened if she new what was to come.  That her daddy would be proud to call her ‘daughter,’ that her daughter call her ‘friend,’ her friend call her ‘lover.’  I hope she gets to the stage she accepts who she is before she is much older than I am now.  It is an exhausting existence hiding talents under baskets, no matter how small the baskets need to be.

I have learnt one thing, though I have a way to go.

I used to think my handwriting was too left-handed.  Too squished and smudged and slanted to be the sort of script someone would want to see in a love letter. But those slanted sentences are the pouring out of my soul.  They are proof that I am. That I think and feel and breath.   Though my letters may not look perfect they sure have character.

poetic

There is something poetic about going to a poetry night with a failing voice.   Sore and raw.  Where it is a struggle to speak.  Then leaving so tired yet so inspired that it hurts to swallow your words.  I can speak with my hands so this shouldn’t be a problem.  I can express my inner most thoughts, secrets and confessions and lay them out in space.  Leave them there as an offering of myself.  But when no one understands, they hang, like a morning fog between us that just won’t clear.

So I have sat in silence for five days.  My brain all a haze.  These thoughts wafting through my head like smoke, slipping through my fingers.  These thoughts that won’t behave, won’t sit quietly on a page.  These thoughts that are not ready to be heard. 

I need to be patient with these thoughts.

can you keep a secret

I have a secret.  I could list every person who knows.  That is the best thing to do with a secret, periodically take a mental roll call of the keepers of the undisclosed. Make sure new names on the list are checked with character references.  ‘Does not associate with other involved parties.’  I can’t let it get out.  This whole operation would fold.  Every time you bring a new person into the inner circle you lose a little bit of control.  You give it to someone else. You strip off a layer of armor.  My heart needs all the protection it can get.  I’m so careful I sometimes keep the secret from myself.  I can’t risk it.  So I will continue to hold my tongue, to keep mum, to keep quiet, to hide the effects.  To keep the peace.

command the sky

The moon stole my breath tonight, though I would just as gladly have given it.   Hung so low and large, shepherd to the stars.  Commanding the sky be still.  His dimples and defects tell of the battles fought and won. Of times long past.  I wished to sit and listen to tales of the things he had seen, with no regard for the ties I had made with the day.  But now to sleep, I will offer up my breath soon again.

awake

let sob

A sob for every realization.  Each one from a deeper part of my chest.  My ribs heave to take in air for that is all I can manage.  Tears fall to page. Freeing ink to run. Escape.  Even it can’t stand to be here.  My hand won’t leave my mouth in some vain attempt to keep my grief in.

There is no resolution. Yet. Though there will.

second hand

I’m not one for New Year resolutions.  I have never made one before. I’ve not made long lists of well meaning intentions for improvement with ‘I will not strive so much’ lost somewhere down the dot points. Though ironically such lists exist. Sadly, motivation of others around me seems to peter out as the digits flip over and increase.  Days. Months. Those who were clinging soo tightly to the belief that with the passing of the second hand across it’s highest point that night the past will be forgotten. Slate wiped clean.  ‘This year I will do better. Be better.’  Soon their backs are whipped by their own whips for failing to succeed at everything they had promised to succeed at because it was written on a ’to-do’ list for the new self. So it must be so. 

To say that I don’t feel the pull to put pen to paper would be declaring a false freedom from all this that I wish I could avoid.  But I refrain.  I understand the symbolism behind a new year being as a new start but if you screw it up you have to hold onto that for much longer than is healthy.  A resolution is meant to be a way of articulating something about yourself that you would like to change but the stakes need not be soo high.  That second hand passes it’s start point every 60 seconds so there is no need to hold on to your own feelings of failure.  By all means pursue your dreams, strive to do better, we were not designed to grow stagnant, but make it your everyday.  Change because you want to, not because a calendar tries to make you take a long hard look at yourself.  Make a decision to change on the 3^rd of March and be ok with the start date. 

dust of artist past

Dust of artist past.  As time moves on a building stands still, a shadow of its former self.  The beauty and elegance dulled by age and neglect.  The shallowest of breaths as to not alert others of her presence. That this once grand lady be allowed to fade on her terms. Alas, unable to flee from the men who seek to remove her heart.  The very heart that once pulsed life through the bricks and mortar like veins... Darkrooms used as storerooms. Playhouse now warehouse. Playwrites lament for they know its not right. The birthing suites of such creativity now abused and left for dead.  The art forms which began their journey here have journeyed on and scarcely think to look back.  Abandoned.  Surviving on the memories of glory past though slowly losing her battle as she chokes on box upon box of stuff.  

gather and glow

I saw angels looking down from above at a dark and barren land.

Then a small light began to glow where believers were gathered in worship. 

writers block

songs scribbled on napkins, scrap paper.  prophetic thoughts forgotten in shoeboxes. lyrics that linger in the corner of the mind, longing to connect and come out, see the world. consciousness that clears in the blur of sleep and wake.

real and unrecorded. lost with the rise of the sun.

why we will the sun away.

As a kid, playing cricket in the backyard after school, we would despise the sun for leaving us as the shadows grew long on the ground; it meant packing up and going inside.  Friends would be collected by their parents and our day would be done.

As I have gotten older my relationship with the sun has shifted.  Although I still enjoy everything it has to offer, life, warmth, vitamin D and the freedom to play cricket (though I don’t), I have discovered a different kind of freedom offered by the moon.

In the near darkness old friends sit around staring at fires, reliving stories no one else would understand.  We don’t even have to speak for it to become a cherished memory.  We are together. That is all we need.

New friends meet in the shadows.

We feel safe to say the things we dare not utter in the light of day, when our expression is there for the world to see.  Fingers search in the silence until they graze and linger, then entwine.  Stomachs knot and cheeks blush.  We will the sun to stay away so we can stay in this moment that we will never have again.

“In the morning I’ll regret staying up this late I bet.

But for now I’m fine cos I’m with these friends of mine.” Carl Jackson

sorrow vs joy

Is sorrow a stronger emotion than joy

if our eyes puff but our lips not be made to swell?

sky fell

The sky held out as long as she could.  A strange mix of day and night hung in the air.  Then one drop escaped and fell to the ground.  Soon the dry earth seemed but a distant memory as she lost all control and the clouds applauded the spectacle.