Ducks upon the surface of a lake
Of man-made run off
What great ripples they make
Diving under, flapping their wings
Without asking I wonder
Why for ducks water is water
Glacial or sewer-bound
Backswamp or uptown reservoir
It's not maker but mark which matters
So why is this distinction so profound to me?
Why Nature's acts
     Do I endeavour to explain
Whereas for man's
     I seek firstly to lay blame?

Heart-Pounding,
Beating out of my chest even.
Deep breath in, deep breath out.

Lips Quivering,
Teeth lightly nibbling the inner lining of my mouth.
Deep breath in, deep breath out.

Clouded Vision,
Constant tears dripping down my cheek.
Deep breath in, deep breath up.

Hands Trembling,
Objects easily slipping from my grasp.
Deep breath in, deep breath out.

Unruly Speech,
Unwanted whispers rolling off my tongue.
Deep breath in, deep breath out.

Limited Oxygen,
Panting heavily in a struggle for air.
Deep breath…

Wait.

Stop.

Think.

Why must we always take a breath?
Why must we be forced to push away our emotions,
Masking them with the habitual action of meditative respiring?
Why must we always breathe in, breathe out?

But are we really disguising our emotions?

Are we not just calming the soul,
Clearing the mind of unwanted thoughts and anxieties?
Are we not just providing ourselves with healing,
Alleviation from the painful memories engulfing the mind?

Yes.

Yes, we are.

So…

Deep breath in, deep breath out,
Quiet the pounding of your heart.

Deep breath in, deep breath out,
Tranquilize the tremulousness of your lips.

Deep breath in, deep breath out,
Stop the flow of your once never ending stream of tears.

Deep breath in, deep breath out,
Relax the overactivity of your limbs.

Deep breath in, deep breath out,
Replace your anxious whispers with peaceful meditations.

Deep breath in, deep breath out,
Rectify your oxygen flow.

Don’t mask your emotions,
Regulate your responsiveness.
Evaluate your situation.
Intelligently weigh your decisions.
Dominate your way of thinking.

Deep breath in, deep breath out.

It works.

I promise.

I’ve been thinking about heartbreak
If I should call it heart take.
Because when I think of you I can’t decide
If I want you back
Or just the peice of me you kept.

Exampli gratia:

Here, in the sun, looking straight forward over the green lawn onto the bacciferous frondescence
The space between the building where psychopathology was taught and the building where our intelligence was tested
– buildings made unsafe and marred and subjected to presence –
Here, I just am; there is no absence
As far as my eyes can see, the “where” is here and the “when” is now and I am alone, listening in to today

A bee flies by and draws my eye to the peripheral timescape
Inside the dark window to the left we sit in silence and wait for a pre-school class to walk past so we can continue a lesson that ended a year ago
Behind me looms the auditorium where we partook in curiosity
Beyond this greenth, you own the space
But on this bench, there is no absence
Here, I can breathe, lone as I am

Life is a bittersweet journey.
No way to predict its outcome,
guided only by the cemented memories of the past.
Everyone leaves there mark on this world,
large, small, wherever it may be.

A warm hand, a soft touch,
the gentle caress of the breeze
as I run fingers through my hair.

Through fire, ice, storms, and grassy plains,
I will keep walking onward,
towards the horizon that calls to me.

The path is steep, there are twists, and turns
and unyielding walls that we must climb to our future
but the view at the top-
it must be beautiful.
It'll all be worth it once I finally reach the peak
of the mountain we call
Life.

I'll get there someday,
but for now,
A day at a time
is all we can achieve.

I feel such terrible distress
Like I lost something as precious
As my purpose.
All the screams and darkness
Swooping over me and drowning my senses
Fear is senseless
And reckless.
Fear is helpless
So painful it’s painless.
So dark
It blinds me with its brightness.

This world goes in circles
And repeats cycles
And I’m stuck in the middle
As I cry in my comfortable cradle
Because I am blessed to point out that
my only curse
Is having to feel
And live a life so real
It haunts me in my sleep
And seeps into my dreams.
And buries me in a grave.

Why do I cry for the future?
The present is a cloud
And fate is the wind
And I try to find my silhouette
Reflected within.

I revel in this collective fearful consciousness.
I revel in this confused toxicity and if this isn’t telling
Then I should be yelling.

before him,
i had never dived before

i chose to rest my head
on the banks instead
the safety of keeping dry,
the power of never giving
was enough to keep me satisfied.

now, with him

i dive for pearls,
treasure, anemones; red, glowing
dancing by their own living fire,
in the midst of the pale blue sheets.

yet, like all good things
we have come to an end.
bodies emerge from water,
reality is always only a shirt away,
discarded on the floor.

after,

cooling down, sharing mugs of water
mouths reborn, bodies shivering,
ears slowly start to un-pop,
washed up on the shore, once more.

My greatest fear is not the fear of death
Instead, it is the fear of not being heard
I am often asked 'What is your most defining moment?' and I am asked as though I have given the question a lifetime of thought and my answer means absolutely everything
But I have not; because of the complexity of the question

The perception of the question itself is what I question
Perception is honestly the most complicated when it comes to emotions
My most defining moment? I cannot say
Like the good and the bad
They are there and they exist as a combination of moments that define us
Like night and day
Rain and the rainbow at the end
The choices I make daily define me, not just one moment.

But if you must be given an answer at the time you pose this question?
I will give you one, but only one
What is my most defining moment? My answer would be my birth
My birth is the most defining moment because it is when I began to make choices that define myself
Perhaps I will reflect upon this question and later my answer may change
I dream that by perchance I may have the opportunity to speak to Death
So that I may ask him when my time will come
Not so I may attempt to cheat him
But so that as my time approaches, I may look back and reflect upon my life for that one defining moment of my life