One day I wont think of you

Till then I hear that salt water helps clean a wound.

One day I wont think of you

when that song comes on.

One day I wont think of you

when my favorite tv show is ruined.

One day I wont think of desperately wanting to hold your face and kiss it, of wanting you to kiss me as if I were about to drift away into thin air. Of how I didn't let myself do that, because I know you wouldn't like it. That self control killed me, because aren't those are the little things that shouldn't have to be controlled?  I had the wrong kind of self-control with you. Now when I need it the most, it runs away and shatters, and then it’s up to me to put fragments back together and build from the ground up.

All over

again.

One day I wont think of you

when I think I see your face on the street.

One day I wont think of you

when my heart stops, falls, and drowns when I see your photograph

"accidentally"

One day I wont think of you

with a glass of wine.

One day I wont think of you

with two, three, or four glasses.

One day I wont think of you

When I doubt.

One day I wont think of you

when I look beautiful, because I wish you could see it.

One day I wont think of you

with every little success a day brings, because I want to shove it in your face.

One day I wont think of you

when I see the gorgeous girl across the room, a natural beauty with big round eyes, pouty pink lips, fair perfect skin, arms sketched with tattoos. Your type of girl.

One day I wont think of you

and I wont have to write all these bullshit poems anymore.

Let me in your room,
I've seen you from point A-Z,
But what's in your room is the deeper  
meaning under those letters,

I know the basics of who you are
and what you do,
What's in your room can tell me who you are on the inside,
and why you do what you do,

I see the black North Face sweater you wear,
The one that I love,
What's in your room can tell me
What's underneath,

I see your beautiful smile,
The one that is only real around me,
What's in your room can tell me,
Why I'm the reason you smile,

I see your lingering pain,
When I am away,
What's in your room can,
Help it fade away.

We are such opposites, you and I
Yet somehow we've woven ourselves into this web
You are a tsunami
Yet I am simply the ebb

Differences so evident, it's almost insulting
Your ink-stained arms push up against my bare, ivory chest
You are so clearly you
While I am only somewhat me, at best

So many places you've been
While I've been sitting here all the while
Circumstances should have told us both "No!"
But that word disappears completely as you smile

So much knowledge I've gained
While you don't bother with reading
You are always content with the simplest things
But I yearn immensely for things I'm not really needing

Your smoke-filled room meets my untouched lungs
Your devilish ways engulf my virgin essence
We can only meet briefly, and so rarely it feels
Your absence is like Christmas without presents

I snicker when you sigh, laugh when you cry
I'm through with rest, yet you sit as I stand
I lay myself down just as you rise
My ghostly form next to your harsh skin, perfectly tanned

Your breast was hollow once
Long before me and you, we, became us
But mine was overflowing with love
That the Heavens knew was meant for you, I undoubtedly trust

They, all of them out there, may not understand
Your roughness and ruggedness holding my soft and clean hands
But I do not care about their worries or remarks
Because we are separate people, but one in our hearts

Almost lost my fingers
trying to get my pitbull
to let go of a yorkie’s
neck. Never try to grab
a pitbull by his teeth,
especially
when his jaw
is locked.

He won’t let go.

My dogs eyes, somewhere else,
the little dogs eyes, somewhere
else, everyone grabbing &
shouting, some guy wedging
a wrench between his teeth,
(I thought he was going to
stab him), me digging my
own hands into his teeth,
trying in vein to release
the effortless death grip…

Following two minutes
of panic at the dog park,
some old queens lady, (70),
came running over to
dump her Budweiser
in his eyes. Her straw
& paper bag fell into
the dirt
& my fingers bloodied
his drunken fur as I
pulled him into a corner.

The screaming girls finally stopped
& the owner and I looked at each other,
both our eyes as big as our dog’s, speechless
searching for who will move first, who to let go
and who will hold on in sheer panic, but us both
so filled with horror, we just stared and felt each
other’s fear, meeting in a school-white room of humility,
until we both say “I am sorry, man” and explain that our dog
was the one to blame, and should not have acted in such a surprising
manner. Afterwards I bought the old queens lady a beer, and she admitted
she knew what to do because her friend’s pitbull hopped a fence and latched
to the chest of a larger dog, ripping skin through to ribs when pulled apart.

We happened to run into that same friend on
the other side of the park, and when the old lady asked
she grabbed and held one of the gold crosses
around her neck & said she did not want to talk about it.
Then she said a prayer in Spanish and gave me a kind smile.

Due to injuries,
punctures, bruises & swelling,
I am forced to write this poem
without middle fingers. Every
now and then
I forget
until I realize the keyboard
has become slippery.

And what bad luck
for such hands:
today
was the day
I picked
to replace
all of my
shoelaces.

It was after the Second Anglo-Boer War. Some of the soldiers went to brothels and taverns and places as such. It reminded them of the vibes in canteens. One soldier named Jokas took the advice of several of his friends and bought a sex worker. He had been disappointed by the fact that his girlfriend married a lawyer. And so Jokas had his fun, this didn't last though for he still had the appetite for commitment.

So he kept returning to the same brothel - buying the same sex worker. In time they developed feelings for each other, writing letters and sending pictures when away to see relatives... but this wouldn't be as Dennis, a friend of his, introduced his cousin to Jokas. She was nice, had a decent job and was ready to settle. Her name was Anna. So Jokas stopped going to the brothel and opted to start a life with Anna, it seemed the sensible thing to do. Jokas moved with Anna, they both went overseas. Valerie was the name of the sex worker he had feelings for, what Jokas didn't know was that Valerie had fallen pregnant. A few years later she got a job at a bistro and lived in a vacant storage room with her son, Warkos. Warkos was raised in a bistro, there he got advice about life, culture and women from drunkards, thieves, policemen, lawyers and loafers. He had little formal education. He grew up resenting life and lacked a sense of belonging. He started being mischievous when he pick-pocketed a rich businessman, when he was only seven years old.

He used getting into trouble as an outlet for his anger and loneliness. His mother didn't keep men whom he could look up to. Although she began spending a lot of time alone and didn't care much about men, since her prostitution days. At age 14 Warkos met a girl with a strange name; Tellaby. Tellaby gave his life purpose at a time when he was suicidal.

She was a pretty, decent and very respectful girl who came from a well-to-do family. Days in the park with her was his escape, it gave him a sense of normality. However he would go back to the real world, back home his mom had been enduring depression and took up smoking. She was stressed by the fact that her boss kept abusing her (emotionally and verbally). Warkos formed a gang at age 16, he recruited a few dysfunctional teens in the neighborhood who spent most of their time loafing and stealing. His dream was to make enough money to buy his mother a house, find his father - so to find function; whatever that meant.

At age 17 Warkos got arrested for drug possession. He spent only 6months in prison as he had a witness who testified that the drugs were planted. The witness was paid by his gang of course. So he served 6 months for assaulting a police officer. All the while Tellaby got herself a boyfriend, he was a functional, smart boy who had a scholarship to study overseas at Oxford University. Tellaby's family approved of the relationship and pressured her to continue seeing him.

When Warkos got out, he heard the news and attempted to stab Tellaby's new boyfriend but was stopped by Tellaby... When Tellaby chose Eric, her new boyfriend, over him it was the end of his heaven and sense of normality. Drugs he found too dangerous and started researching fraud, he met a few intelligent con-men and together they forged cheques. In just one year he had about R500 000 and bought a nice cottage for his mom in the quiet small town of Andbury. This earned him prestigious status and he met with his gang again, had his mother's old boss murdered and took over the business. He ran three brothels and about five bars in three towns. He was only in his mid-twenties when he made his first million. He had a vice, to heal his pain of not feeling loved, and to forget about the pain and the void of not knowing his father he used heroin. Of course prestige comes with a price, there was a mob which was government-owned (secretly of course), it didn't like the growing competition, so when Warkos was 27, he was shot twice in the chest, once in the shoulder. The assassin was not found when the police investigated and he left few, if any, traces. Warkos survived the murder attempt after he was rushed to hospital, the bullets missed the heart but wounded his ribs.

Being housed was no longer safe for him so with his convoy, they moved from city to city, robbing banks and restaurants. At this time his gang earned notorious status. They were dubbed The Notorious Warks by journalists. On one heist he got shot on the arm and leg but this inspired him to earn even more power... A month later he funded a Black Resistance Movement, in papers they wrote about him as, "Warkos the Invincible Horse". Funding this political movement enabled him to expand his power and fight the force that was against him. He provided guns and grenades to a sect within the movement to attack government officials and invade and batter their homes. This moved to hijacking their cars. Soon this sect of guerillas had enough power to do crime in the cities, however they secretly met to be independent and not be under Warkos.

So among them there was an informer who leaked Warkos' whereabouts, he was shot twice in one shoulder but his men took cover and they escaped. Warkos, 29 years old, was getting tired of this violent life, he abandoned his gang and had a lump sum of money sent to his mother. He even investigated the whereabouts of Tellaby and stalked her for a while. He decided to go back where he grew up, he went to the storeroom which he and his mother lived in... In it was a locker; he opened the locker and found a box which had pictures and letters from his father, sent to his mother... In one letter was a poem written to his mother, Valerie, it read:

I have been fooled by ruling men
You believe in honour and glory
but you do not see the Be Lie in "believe"
and now I feel no better than these thieves
I only find comfort in being with you, Valerie.

At that moment he cried and kicked himself for he felt he had been living a shallow life... He thought to himself that his father was a good man and that he probably wouldn't be proud of him...

The next day he did nothing but think and that's when he got shot by Eric. He had been trying to get hold of Valerie as they (Eric and Valerie) were in the country to celebrate Easter... Eric found out and because he despised him with a passion he got word out to the police but the police feared him so they had to use an intelligent strategy; Eric insisted that it be him who murders Warkos as he will have done his country a great honour. So he came as a paying customer at the tavern/bistro, all the other customers left, as well as the staff. Warkos was unmoved by this, as he was deep in thoughts. This became easy for Eric, never had anyone been murdered with such pleasure... It is documented that Warkos' last words, softly and lazily uttered, were: "Where's Tellaby?"

Nobody is thinking of me
Not them or he or she
Why would they
What can I be
I'm nothing but a thinker
Makes me a sinker
With everyone's mood
No one wants
Me around
That's why I'm at the lost and found
He throws me out
So why shouldn't you
Its exactly what you'll do
So please just go
Leave me alone in this room
Leave me alone to my doom
Where I sit in my thoughts
And stare at the knots
Tangling my feelings
And bruises on my heart
From all the beatings.
I think
You drink
Leave me alone
Just go home.

Treasury  Casino - 2:30 am

From my seat in the smokers section
I can see the Brisbane eye,
the river,
and the  performing arts center.
Streetlights  are mans answer  to the cosmos

"Everything you can do,
I can make better."

Once it was said that we were made in God's image.
Now we can safely say that God was  made in our image.

I am in a quiet place of the universe, the night stretches on
visible through the stately
wonderous
walls
carved of old wood  and sandstone.

I am in a suede armchair, winged for pleasure.
The ceiling in this room is twice as high as an ordinary room.
Circular steel balls hang down like a path of bubbles
left  by a leviathan.

My water was poured  with panache.

Let me set  the scene for you:
I'm in the  Treasury Casino, this building was once the QLD state treasury, it never changed really.
Sitting next to  window that overlooks the river, a glass of water sits to my left. The room is the size of a double garage, maybe bigger. The floor and ceilings are made of old wood, the walls are decorated with a transparent gray fabric that remindsme of smoke. An old marble fireplace sits in a wall studded with tiny lights that resemble stars or candles. Above me is a series of hanging circular light fixtures that resemble a trail of bubbles left by a leviathan.

This room was designed for,  and houses opulence.  
The TV plays Eminem.

Peter Garrett dances like a Parkinson's sufferer.
And looks like Disco-Nosferatu.

We have  killed the night
and neon power
and infomercials
rape the romance
once held
by late night solitude.

She was in Mexico visiting her father
whom she hadn't seen in eleven years.
I was at home,
falling in love with her
about three weeks after we had begun to know one another.
She called me before she left.
Scared.
Uncertain.
I could see her on the other end of the phone,
sitting on the corner of her bed
in her half-lit room,
pondering over an open suitcase.
I spoke to her every truth I knew,
every caring thought I could think,
as fast as they could be born.

By the time she got back,
I knew I was in love,
even if I couldn't quite find the words to explain it
to her.

We had spoken once about our obsession with birds
when we were younger.
So I prowled around the day before she got back,
in the woods behind my house,
through thickets, brambles,
up the sides of leant trees,
in the remnants of abandoned nests,
for a feather
or two.

She got back from her trip,
and we sat in my car,
before the modern saloon where
I told her I love you
She said wait,
I have something for you
And she pulled out a long, brown quill.
Her cheeks florid,
beneath the thin light of the street lamps
that leaked in through the window.

I laughed,
and she grew redder.
Then I too produced a feather
and I saw in those eyes
something I could not possibly explain.
And even if I could,
I'm not sure I'd want to.