This young love
This winter dream
It would seem I am the luckiest man
Alive.
I hesitate to say the words
That sit safely nestled,
nursed and budding
Inside me
The words that speak of love and loving. You see I am falling
Scratch that,
Have fallen,
Am smitten
And calling
Your name
Alongside the name of love.
I love you
I am in love with you.
I am loving
So much love
For you.
This growing colour inside my heart
Is a picture
Still painting
Of you.
A masterpiece in the making.
A priceless piece of beauty tied by
An endless string of dreams.
This surreal happiness.
Nothing is as it seems.
I check myself hourly
With a pinch
To ensure I'm not dreaming
And that this
Extraordinary feeling Is real.
Upside down,
You've turned my frown
Into a smile
And I would walk
Infinite miles
To return
The love
You
Spill inside me.
You stir a dormant bed of leaves inside me
And in your youthful breeze
They dance
a lovestruck storm
In my heart.
I skip through
The street
All smiles
And singing.
I'm swinging
On clouds
And falling carefree
Into the warm chasm
Of your soul.
All fear departs
Free falling
I wait for the soft pillowed thud
Of heart on heart.
Dancing through the street
Your voice
The rhythm that moves
My feet
The way you look at me
The melody.
Looking up
And falling down
Be warned I'm falling
Into you
These feelings
Run river deep
Channeling through me
This feeling of falling
And knowing
That the impact of landing
Could not possibly compare
To the faith I have in you.
You've taken my heart
Which was Surrounded by a 12ft wall
And climbed despite your fear
To be near
To be by my side
You cracked open the vault
And are nestled
So warmly welcome inside.
You found behind the walls
My heart
Locked in a cage
And brought with you
The universal key
You have unlocked me.
With this freedom
Comes love
And with this love
Comes a smile
That stretches
A mile
Beneath my skin.
Until now
I had felt a sense
Of alone
Free roam
Taking over me.
Now,
I see,
Differently.
I am not one.
Rather many
And this single entity
Is plenty.
I am love.
For all my errors made
I am my own undoing
My own repair.
For every solo step taken
I dance for all.
For every crouched and howling boy,
Small,
I am tall,
An echo,
Resounding.
There is strength here
In this solidarity.
We, love, are one.
Together as we are alone.
Tracing patterns
Breaking habits
Pulling white
Rabbits
Out of tall hats
Lined by tall lies.
Lacey disguise
Covered eyes
Still peeking
Seeking
To see without feeling.
To run before walk
To lip closed talk
fill the room with secrets
Exposed.
No song I could sing
No whispers in your ear
Could ever
Amount to the volume
Of language I want
To dance for you.
In me
You lit a fire
That burned through
The stagnate black
And sparked my desire.
I am pyre,
Burning,
An effigy
Charring
In cheers’
to love
and loving.
I am dirty ash
And floating
No more devoting
Naked flame to
This blaze
That burned
For you.
Through
Hands...
I got everything I need
Right here
All around me
Like a shadow
To my body
A paper trail
Free flowing
Behind me
S’all free
Incredibly
Near
And never far.
Sitting on the edge of my tongue
Feel it in my fingertips
Light slips between
The layers of everything
I need
Sitting
Knees crossed
Beside me.
Something sits
Unstirred
Inside me
Something
Dark and resting
Something
Stark and waiting
Bated
Listlessly
Listing
A ship unbalanced
A stone upturned
A lover spurned
A nightmare earned.
There is silence
Screaming
Tongue tied
From the place
Where my throat meets
My clavicle.
That puddle in the skin
Beneath which
My voice
Spins
Out of control
Whole
And bidding,
Hidden.
With this pain
Comes the dull roar
Of rain
Within
The already drowning
Chambers of my heart.
Dryness depart
And all that’s left
Are stale
Puddles
Of discontent
Better left
Drying.
Trying
Crying
Denying
The slow seeping
Scars
That tunnel deep
And creep from one hollow
To another.
One foot
In front
Of the other.
Onwards and upwards
Eyes front.
Quiet tears
Pool within
Heels digging in
I will not cry
I cannot cry
I shall not cry
Fuck knows why
I am swaying on
The fringe
Between
Falling and fallen
crawling
Slowly slowly
Duck n weave
Heart on sleeve
Hiding behind corners
Eyes down.
Tight frown
Eyebrow furrow
I am the badger
Burrowed
The ostrich
With his head
Planted
Quietly
In the ground.
I am sound
And sounding
Calling
Crying
Trying
So very hard
To just
Keep on Keeping on.
I sit within myself loosely
Like crumpled sheets
Waiting to be made
A song laid out
Semi quaver (dis)chord
Waiting to be played
A whisper
Caught between
Tongue and lip
I am whiskey
Sipped
Then spilled
Time killed
I am paused
Mid flight
A Pheonix
Rising
Covered in ash
There are no words to fill the void between being and becoming.
Trembling skin humming.
Heartbeat drumming.
Stories burn deep
Beneath my skin.
Flattened out layers of panic.
Manic.
I am distress
Rip torn
Heart worn
Tears wet with fears
sawn
From old salt eye
To face
Disgrace.
This being Is my undoing.
The brink of madness
Follows at my feet
Like a shadow taunting
Like a whisper haunting.
A slip of darkness nipping
At my heel.
Urging me to feel
Too much.
Pressing me
Too touch
The beyond
Face first
Cross eyed
One eye on the future
One eye in the past.
Fall in
Fall out
To jump
Blind luck
Into an empty view
In lieu of you
You are me
But you cant see
For the madness
Barking mad
At your heel.
Loneliness
Made himself comfortable in my heart
He took up a chair
Set it backwards
And swung a leg over
With an inaudible sigh
Sat on down
Settled in,
Right beside
The torn edges
And split seams
Started
Picking
Tearing
Scratching off
Strips
Of my damage
Of my out of control.
He smokes and smolders
Like a haystack
Silently igniting
Turns pebbles into boulders
That sink me
Deeper
Tighter
Slighter
Into myself
Until my chest
Explodes
And strips of loss
Scatter at my bare feet
Him,
The lonely man
With the loud voice
And vacant
Laugh.
He can fill a room
With his technicolour coats and masks
And fade the brightest star
With his undying pallor
That is sewn just beneath his skin.
He is the crafty artful dodger
Of bullets to the heart
Ducks and weaves
And falls away
Down the dark
Alley ways
Of this damaged
urbanized
Over developed
Being.
Lonley man.
Pulled up a chair
And made himself at home
In my heart.
Loneliness
Made himself comfortable in my heart
He took up a chair
Set it backwards
And swung a leg over
With an inaudible sigh
Sat on down
Settled in,
Right beside
The torn edges
And split seams
Started
Picking
Tearing
Scratching off
Strips
Of my damage
Of my out of control.
He smokes and smolders
Like a haystack
Silently igniting
Turns pebbles into boulders
That sink me
Deeper
Tighter
Slighter
Into myself
Until my chest
Explodes
And strips of loss
Scatter at my bare feet
Him,
The lonely man
With the loud voice
And vacant
Laugh.
He can fill a room
With his technicolour coats and masks
And fade the brightest star
With his undying pallor
That is sewn just beneath his skin.
He is the crafty artful dodger
Of bullets to the heart
Ducks and weaves
And falls away
Down the dark
Alley ways
Of this damaged
urbanized
Over developed
Being.
Lonley man.
Pulled up a chair
And made himself at home
In my heart.
The brink of madness
Follows at my feet
Like a shadow taunting
Like a whisper haunting.
A slip of darkness nipping
At my heel.
Urging me to feel
Too much.
Pressing me
Too touch
The beyond
Face first
Cross eyed
One eye on the future
One eye in the past.
Fall in
Fall out
To jump
Blind luck
Into an empty view
In lieu of you
You are me
But you cant see
For the madness
Barking mad
At your heel.
There are no words to fill the void between being and becoming.
Trembling skin humming.
Heartbeat drumming.
Stories burn deep
Beneath my skin.
Flattened out layers of panic.
Manic.
I am distress
Rip torn
Heart worn
Tears wet with fears
sawn
From old salt eye
To face
Disgrace.
This being Is my undoing.
Unrest sits inside of me. Scratch that. Unrest riots inside of me.
Tonight I knelt face down in a shower hotter than a Sydney inner city summer day. My skin burned. I hate water. I hate heat. In as much I particularly hate hot water. It intimidates me and steals my breath from fear and a terrifying blaze in my lungs. I often dream nightmarish of drowning in an ocean deep with blood red boiling water.
Still. I figured I could burn away this cold feeling that freezes me from my heart to my skin. If this were frostbite I would be a darker pitch of black. Head to toe. Inside out. Charred flesh and bone, sewn over a fevered mind.
I knelt on the pads of my shins, feet flat out behind me, knees scratching the tub, chest heaving with my hands clasped desperately behind my head pushing down. Arse up, face down, no grace in this morbid search for self comfort. Trying so hard to become undone. My forehead rested in searing water raining down; that puddled hot and dirty beneath at my mouth. I prayed for tears. I ached to open up. One bleeding stitch at a time. To bleed tears of salt water amongst the fresh. Just to myself. For me if not for anybody else. Alone. Uninhibited. A quiet fury unleashed.
I searched for my voice and willed it to cry out. Urged it to break open and spill, a mess of confusion could at least be cleaned up. Without that mess I was still just a disaster waiting to happen.
I answered myself with silence. The only noise I could make was a low, guttural, throaty whine. The sound murmured in the water, muffled. Wasted. Washed away. Just air and water. Leaving. Draining. Just. Gone.
Salt burnt in my throat. More heat. Tears stung at the back off my eyes so I opened them and let the water in so as to coax the water out.
Nothing. Nothing but heat and emptiness.
Scratch that. This is not emptiness. I know emptiness well. I remember the echo of nothing. I remember non existence and its dumb witted mercy. I recall the dull anesthetised blanket of apathy.
This. Is. Feeling. This is being full and riotous. This is toxic and seething.
Appendicitis yet burst.
Even a toxic spill can be cleared, a burnt forest regrown. Degenerative. I feel like I am both sinking and replete at once. Both burning and washed out. Scarlet bright and discoloured. Alive and exhausted.
I am a vacuum through which no sound can travel. Waves of compression travelling through matter. From particle to particle I travel silenced, with no substance through which to reach a listener.
I am not listening.
I am unsound.
Unrest and riotous.
Even as I write this
My face burns.
My body aches and quivers and my stomach turns over and over and over until I stand and reach for my tobacco and roll to smoke to abate this ache that is eating me.
Alive.
I am a thousand words unsaid.
Five thousand tears yet spilled.
Words fall from my fingertips
But not from my lips.
I am the quiet in the storm.
Stilled, Stalled, Appalled by what can only come next.
This skin. Of mine. Is prickly and If I could just step out of it, for the sake of feeling settled, I would. I would stretch and unwind my mind then slowly furl back into myself, ironed out and calmed. Fresh stitches, less itches and the sense of having been free. From me.
Funnily enough, although I’m not really laughing, when the tears do come, when they bite at the corners of my eyes until I feel like my face is about to tear apart, a mess of salt and flesh, The darkness reaches out a cold and unforgiving hand and pushes down. Until the brackish brine reaches back into my throat, slides into my stomach, dragging with it that fleeting chance of reprieve. Then comes the sick. Then comes the smoke. Then comes the still and ever threatening silence.
I am a stranger to myself.
And this is not the first time.
Sitting, restless
In this changeling
Sensation
Of freshness and renewal.
Running
Rat on a wheel.
Each passing day
A different way
Of feeling,
An altered state of mind.
Seeking
To find
A man within the boy.
Hoping to see
The real me.
Alive and kicking.
Hot flushed, this post determined puberty
And the desperate need to feel.
An urgent angst to Be.
Short fuse and temper flare.
I’m not really there
Yet still somehow
Everywhere and
Everything;
Else breathing.
Dysmorphic chest
Heaving
Exigency
In this
Juncture
Soul puncture,
And bloodied bandaids
Cast off
My heart
Once worn on my sleeve.
I am finger skin,
Flesh and nail
Torn
And jagged edges
Peeling.
Perplexity kneeling,
I am deeply lost inside of me.
Begging to be found.
Compund; unbound.
They say that beggars can’t be choosers
Only losers left to dreaming.
They also say
That I may be a dreamer
But I’m not the only one.
I will come undone in this undoing.
Eschewing
A life lived unalive.
Slow unravel
To once again
Begin
To belong in this
Skin
Stitched bleeding riches
To my bare and brittle bone
He is not alone
I feel him
Running
Waiting
Sating disquietude
With an attitude
Unshackled
He is not running
Rather feet flying
A rat inside
A wheel.
Rising
Like a warm loaf
On a slowly turning winters eve.
Sitting. Still. Window sill. Warm sun.
It has begun.
Taking leave
From my
Seated place
Alongside this scenic, arduous
Road.
Kicking out
My legs.
Muscle stretch and yawn.
I am changeling,
Unsteady and unsure
On eager feet.
I am heartbeat. Beating.
I am jarred door.
Unhinged and
Swinging in the spring breeze.
Reading this book
As I write each page.
Dog eared and laughing.
Crushed spine and crying.
I am chapters unfolding
Burnt and bleeding pages.
Edges tested by time.
I am unrest
Settling into itself.
Dust on a shelf
Fanned off by the
Zephyr
Stirring within.
The west wind
Blowing in,
Releasing me.
So this is what it feels like to be free.
So this is life calling me.
And so I rise.
The Pheonix
In the freshness of youth.
Through the cycle of years.
I am reborn and
Being.
