So many lines and laments
scribed in ink and feeling,
for the girl who is the ocean

but she is a swell and surge
too dauntless and wild,
for a lover whose bones crave the shore.

She craves the squalls and gusts,
and cast iron skies,
a worldly drift to sate the salt in her skin,
the deep pull of currents in her blood.

She is chaotic but not reckless,
she is fickle, but not feckless.
Love her boldly or not at all
her bones belong to the sea
but she will always return to the shore.

Why do you still occupy
the nooks and crannies of my head?
Drifting up through the cracks in the plaster
bent nails and poor construction
hammered hastily into place

How do you fill
my vacant minutes with shadows of you?
Your outline walks beside me on the street, wound up in my headphones
the echo of your daydream touch
a humming static on my skin

How still do you fall asleep beside me
when I am wrapped in the disquiet of a restless night?
How do you ease yourself into my brain like its nothing
and hide among synapses that try so hard to lose you

And how still to lose you?
When the thought of you occupies the wasted time
that escapes order and control
and slips under the floorboards

And in that quiet and that dark
is where you and I occupy,
held together by the wandering nature of thoughts,
that find their way into the nooks and crannies of my head

The thought of you is indifferent to my hasty plaster work,
and
the thought of you is intoxicating.

world-weary,
we sipped coffee,
one black,
one milk and sugar
brewed tentatively by hearts not quite unbroken
in an effort to mend the damage.

As usual you are fluent and fluid in words my tongue could not replicate,
You are a waterfall when I am a drought.

One day, maybe you'll speak to me, you say.

One day maybe I could tell you,
I held earthquakes and landslides in my bones
and clawed my way above the mud and debris to breathe again.
I emerged the sun of my own universe
and I am afraid to ever let that go.

Unzip,
new skin quick
neutralised Freudian slips
A spy game
so slick
well placed mortars sinking battleships

new suit
cover skin ill-suited to do business with life

find a life that suits your business
before you cover your life with a business suit.

The first time I kissed you (again),
we were sitting in your car,
under shadows and street-light orange,
and the impression I was going inside.

But then I found your NERF gun,
which you said was for robbers and slow drivers,
but proved more entertaining for girls
who like to sit in your passenger seat.

So we broke into a scuffle
in pools of orange light
abandoning  seat-belts and any pretence that I was leaving
to wage an epic war
inside a parked car
over ownership of the polystyrene darts.

The end came when a missile was lost to your backseat,
and we both reached for the NERF gun,
and that kiss I'd been waiting for since I'd first put on my seat-belt
materialised between the space above your handbrake
and a little plastic gun.

At dawn on my twenty fifth birthday
416 pilot whales beached themselves,
in the shallow tides at Farewell Spit.

I woke to rain on the wooden roof
of my new flat
and confused myself in unfamiliar blankets and
the words of your message,
written heartfelt and wobbly
in the early hours before morning,

caught in the marine ebb and flow,  
that stranded us too.

Through the house
smoke is drifting
You're a ****!
No you're a ****!
cheerful exclamations mingling with the smell of salsa and the clink of beers.

It's 3 am when you wake me
with cold hands in the shape of chords,
breathing stories and whiskey
spilled on the p.a by a guy
asking for songs.

In between saturday and sunday
you tell me about the  bikes
in town for the rally,
lining the streets in rows of inert thunder
while their people drank
and moved to the music you made.

It's 4 am
before morning finds the bluff
to light up the world's earliest hours
good morning you say
before we fall asleep,
laughing at your own joke.

Hello you say as
you saunter through my door  to
flop onto the couch and
fluster me with a lazy grin.
got any food?

I am elbow deep in a bag of nachos
why?I ask suspiciously
and you smile wider.
Because I'm hungry, you say
and
kind of fried.

Of course you are
and you
laugh and grab the bag
your fingers brush mine amongst the
crinkly chips and
the artificial cheese dusting.

Who, you ask later between
crunches, is hotter. Gerard Butler or
Johnny Depp?
I nibble a chip in
consideration distracted
by your arm sneaking
around my waist.

It is obviously
Gerard I say because of
reasons I forget when you
start to kiss me.

The nachos suddenly lose
importance because
you taste like
smoke, cheese
and a friday afternoon.

My friends and I got drunk tonight
it feels like there are fire alarms going off in my head
but it doesn't matter because tomorrow there are bacon sandwiches
******* bacon.

Once when we were kids
Mum had fun throwing a dinner party.

I could tell because
there were stains on the tablecloth
but no one was crying,
and the food upgraded from sausage rolls to Sushi and Olives.

I want one-
-You can't, Mum  said they're for adults-
I want a Olives-
     said the back of my 4 year old sister as she went to try the
New Thing.

The Olive was carefully chosen and examined with 4 years of culinary expertise,
swirled around a gummy mouth and
promptly returned to its post.

It was yuck -
she informed me and her breathless twin from the safety of the veranda
after weaving her way through the adult legs strewn around the Good Lounge without even so much as a
'woe betide you child if you're in here again.'

So we sat and thought about parties and Good Lounges and woe betides
drinking juice,  
and watched our Uncle fill his plate with sushi and olives,
singing tonelessly to ABBA
before spilling his beer on the floor .

You were taken from me before we were born
and so I floated and grew alone in a room for two dreaming of moons and sunlight

What are you if you are a twin,
but never had the chance to be one?

I'm half of a whole made up of two people
but now I am  all of what is left,
with a ghost
hidden in my peripherals  

Sometimes I feel I am the moon,
the moon and lunar tides
which means you must've been the sun and shores
to tie me to the earth

Because when I am alone, you are the phantom beside me reminding me of warmth,
and you are the unexplained loss I feel
standing in the sun

Please say something, you implore
wearing a halo of uranium based fallout
lift the silence wrapped around your ghosts
hurt me
hate me
hit me with it.

Silence never volunteered itself as a barricade
it slipped its way into gaps left
by broken plates
broken bones
broken homes.

You are not the first to implore me
nor the first to disappoint me
but mutually assured destruction is a two way street
and I can't reverse the nuclear winter in my bones
just to appease the guilt you feel
for bombing everything we had.

Taking a seat near the door,
Curiosity sits politely through a church service
not to scoff or sneer, but to observe
Faith.

With a nod, a smile and a reassuring touch,
Faith walks quietly through the congregation,
but never quite reaches
those sitting politely,
in the last pew.

Sunday is church day
said childhood, Mum and Mr. Jesus

I agree
said university days, a late night and a hangover
Sunday is a day of rest,
and there are many ways to keep the faith,  

like staying in bed.

Hiya what can i get you?
fingers tap on the polished wood
of the bar they sit in front of
Their faces sag
like the coats they shrug off
lowering their old bones into chairs

two jamesons please
gentlemen hands fumble for wallets
for money
for the sweetheart
easing an old mans' troubles
with ice and a measure of whiskey
behind the bar

that's nine dollars twenty
thankyou my darling
a crisp new note in a weathered old hand
thats an old hand at weathering life
you're welcome

into the whiskey they sigh
away an old man's aches
I polish the glasses
while they polish
their glasses
and polish off
glasses
of whiskey.

I wanted to write
something to unravel what is going on in my head.
Lyrical sentences to explain madness.

But then I  realised,
FINALLY realised
that you are an *******
of the cruelest kind

and you don't deserve
the time I'll waste
forming my disgust at your immaturity
into beauty.

"Hey Critter,"
is how Jake greets me.
About that  dude-
he said-
he's a child.
You deserve a world better.

I was telling my
Mate Jake
that you're coming over
and he said
"good."


You don't even know him yet
I said.
Yes but from what I've heard
he said,
he's "good."

So today I was drinking whiskey and juice
and playing pool.
Then we went to a friends house and
watched the boxing.

I don't think
watching people hit each other
is exciting so I
smoked a lot
of cigarettes.

Hey Critter
Jake said,
and I know he's got my back.

To an astronaut, it's full of planets
To a keyboard warrior, it's a weapon
To a stoner, it's a state of mind packed in a cone
In a race, it's a split second of opportunity

But to me, it's just where you're missing.

You stood awkwardly in my doorway to say Hello,
hiding in shadows
and my mouth formed shapes made from the stunted conversation
of strangers,
while my fingers fumbled with the light switch.

I've loved you since we were children
and now a rift the size of oceans separates us,
filled with small talk and broken ships,
and it makes me seasick.

You confuse me he said,
you with your gypsy heart I couldn't ease
and the reckless galaxies inside your mind
bursting like comet fire through a black sky.

I confuse myself I think,
inside a whirlwind of love and debris
I am growing like a **** towards the sun,
and yet each new flower still holds the embers of an old flame.

Always I look to you as the sea looks to the shoreline,
trace your stoic edges and retreat, leaving seafoam and whispers,
or crash with rage and waves against your certainty
that I do not understand.

Today I am a galaxy, maybe tomorrow I am the moon,
but always I am saddened by the tides that pull me back from you.

I am too hung over for dairy
you said
our ice cream dripped and
dribbled onto the hot chrome
and the sun was blinding me
and i was listening
to the little boy telling
his Dad about rugby
and looking at your freckles
and thinking you have nice hands.

We walked back to my house
and sat on the jesus rug
under the stolen shade of
my neighbours tree
talking about nothing and
squinting at each other because
the sun was bright until
you fell asleep sprawled on my grass.

Then mum came home and
you woke up to say hello and
she asked you about work
and you told her about how
you are a little sick of the timber yard
but it's alright.

Mum went to make a
cup of tea so you
and i walked out the front
my feet were bare on
the hot concrete and
we said good bye and
i could see that twist
in your grin
and i hugged you
so i wouldn't see it anymore.

Sometimes when i dont sleep
i imagine the day
in the yard and your
hands and that grin
and where it would have lead
if i hadn't looked away.

I remember what it was like
to use you as a wind break
standing on the pier at Brighton.

But I don't need you anymore
because I bought myself
a really good raincoat.

First sound before first sight
is the spit and howl of windy sleet.

first sight the pearly water
dribbles down the hopeless window
and Cold sneaks in to hug your bones.

up into the shivering morning
two bodies leap
one earthy flesh one gossamer wisp

the faintest touch of silk
up a backbone  a thousand small soldiers
stand to attention
of the coldest kiss

next and suddenly
brisk warmth over rubbed skin
static woollen heat

the whisper of a touch
up a backbone a thousand small soldiers
slump from duty
and Cold slips and idles away

chloroplasts are absent in a human body
the green ability to turn sunlight into energy
known only by the plants
deep-rooted in the earth
growing quietly on slower time

but photosynthesis
is the conversion of light into energy
and I like to think
I am more rooted in this quiet greenery
than the bustle of a human landscape,

and the feeling of sunlight
on my face and my arms and my bare feet in the dirt,
makes me feel like growing.

There will always be
flour on the bench and
today I've got banana everywhere along
with the chocolate chips
which tumbled from the sides of the measuring spoon
and bounced along the floor.

But once I've sat down covered in
butter and floury hair
and the smell of the cake
is tangible,
its worth the mess
i make to see
friends jostling for
a piece.

Andesitic magma
was leaching from a tectonic collision deep below
and burned itself out
on the side of a newly formed rend in the landscape
A languid lava flow both ruthless and viscous  

pyroclastic madness settled in a cooling atmosphere
forming ash and raining tephra which fell
quietly to earth  
to suffocate the burning
and everything else.

under ash clouds
under grey powder and stillness
no movement can be made.
Each breathe is sulphuric but the burning goes on

Schizophrenic,
the way we love.
your love and my love bind my hands,
a straightjacket ,inside rage is trapped,
a pent up swirling vortex futile against tender restraints.

Yours is the voice in my ear,
at war with the angry noise in my head.
‘Love’ you whisper across the space and dark between us,
reassuring the buzz and hum of desperate uncertainty.

Your hand slips into mine, rescue in torrid waters
Anger surrenders, too tired to howl and rage.
‘Love’ I breathe back, and the noise becomes distant

Don't worry yourself
think of the exploring you'll do alone
no one to drag you down

alone
alone
the word rings around my head
the most depressing decibel I ever heard.

No one to drag you down because
you have SUCH an imagination
how could this POSSIBLY be a bad thing
look in the dictionary under independant; you're the definition.

definition however
finds no hold in a mind made only of galaxies
the expanse is endless
thought can stretch so thin
I lose the beginning of an idea into space
and end up floating in the quiet vacuum of my head

I needed you
to be
the corners of my mind
a framework
to attach my grandiose ideas and give them meaning
to know
that I am more than just synapses
firing at random  into the dark
that I am a physical being.

I needed you to hinge me to reality,
because otherwise
I am just stardust and matter
trapped in a skull.

I laid a galaxy to rest today,
A journey of discovery,

Through stars and feeling and ultimately to tragedy,
It burned out from building planets into nothingness,
comet fire dying quietly in the atmosphere above.

And I buried it in the ground to feed the roots of a new universe,
Leaving flowers on headstone for the Galileo in my heart.

How could it mean nothing to you?
you ask me,
of the way our bodies moved together
surrounded in blue midnight and the sounds of revelry

How could I feel nothing
for your weight against me and your mouth on mine,
wrapped in the twilight bubble we made from gin and hours of dancing.

I feel nothing because
I still stand across the ocean I created
to distance myself from the hurt you flooded me with,
and I refuse to meet you in the middle of it all
to drown ourselves in the love we lost.

That night I felt drunk and expansive
and I missed the way you touched me
but the ocean still remains between us
and we now stand on different shores.

How can I blame you for your broken parts?
for a flaw that was hammered into your bones by another
until you thought it shaped the way you sit inside your skin

How did you get to be this way, you ask
how do you hide your pain to help me lessen mine?
how do you love me, both craven and curious ?

Because, I find no joy in the pain I could inflict
which for only a second would ease the dull ache in my belly.
Because I have welded myself  together from the scrapmetal anger creates, countless times
Tasting only iron and rage
and my bones are stiff from the reconstruction of yet another life.

I forgive you because you are as human as I am,
just as tired of the forgery which has weakened the frame that builds you.
Because you now control the hammer
let it build you,
or let it break you

The minute shift it brought about
helped along by three pints and sneaky tequilas,
was enough
to generate
a fanfare.

For too long I have stooped,
trapped in the exoskeleton of an older world,
unable to move and unable to breathe,
for fear I will shatter the outer plates that hold me together.

But a little while ago,
I felt a crack rend the outliers, and a burst of colour I'd never seen before,
rainbowed happily through the split

So here I am,
cracking plates with rainbows,
with the Old World and an Exoskeleton I outgrew,
gathering new dust on the floor beside me.

And atop a hill moulded from wishful thinking and despair,
stronger arms build armour from a grin,
gnashing teeth and belly laughs.

So try me now,
because I am ready.

Come home,
my mother's voice suggests along 2,581 kilometres of phone cabling.

Come home to the hazy heat
that beats off melting pavement and wilting plants,
to the smell of exhaust
squeezing between buildings
and suburbs and rush hour and neon lights,

Come home to the aggravated traffic
wending its way through concrete landscapes
eight lane snakes placating
the clack and hum of underground trains
packed with people and briefcases and beers and graffiti
spilling out onto the streets like cough syrup glugging out of the bottle.

You sound like you need to come home.

Nah, I'm good Ma,
because I don't know how to tell you
the city makes me feel trapped

a little creature with an anxious heart
boxed in by the tarseal and the fumes and the noise.

I like knowing the borders of a town
that doesn't stretch to the horizon
driving quietly on sleeping streets in the night time
and tracing the coastline with my feet in the water

I need the sky to touch the ground, not the ragged edges of a skyline
to walk until there's nothing
but me and the bush and the birds,
and the smell of mud and dirt and rain.

I like it here, I suggest along 2,581 kilometres of phone cabling,
but I do miss you.

Time no longer falls quietly into order
the minutes and days have unravelled
digging their boots in the dust.

The hours and weeks stacked like rocks on your shoulders
as you drag time wearily along to nowhere.

Oh but to escape this ache.
Pain permeates the rocks and dust
soaking up through your soles
to lie like pebbles in a river
on your heart and mind.

But how do you run?
How to battle Time back into submission?
A solitary figure bruised and abandoned
alone in the wasteland .

Time weighs on you with the strength of ages
while the past snaps and slithers at your ankles.

Fight the claw and crushing restraints!
Emerge ****** and torn, yet victorious.
Tame the fickle measure of life
and send the past yowling back to its murky world.

Square your shoulders and lick your parched lips.
March on, you will conquer the wasteland yet.

Please don't speak to me
about the universal movement of time,
I feel as much as the next human,

days marked by solar rotations
restless nights under changing lunar faces
and the chameleon nature of life as history etches a path in skin.

And while time will while away
pulled along by the ebb and flow of currents,
and history is lost on ancient tides,

pull away my new skin
and underneath as always
you remain the center of my gravity

an infinite pull I can't help but follow.

scrub it off
cut it out
**** it up
make it count
let it go

scrub you off
cut you out
******* up
make you count
let you go

scrub me off
cut me out
**** me up
make me count.
Let me go.

You and I went for a drive today
squeezing ourselves into your car
jostling for space amongst five years worth of love and loss
lapping an aimless mosaic
through  the streets we grew up in.

I say I want to clear the air
looking at the  scars your hands collected since I last saw them
and you say it's funny we are both so stubborn
or we would've spoken sooner
watching the road
with the wry grin that has always stayed with me

Of all the things we talk about,
the hollowness you say you feel is what echos in your face
and the steely timbre in your voice
is so different from the happiness of when we first fell in love,
and I can see it  grip your steering wheel
hidden in your broken knuckles
every time that you accelerate.

There's a museum
where love once welled freely,
a collection of relics and odds and ends,
carefully preserved behind glass panes and neat labels
gathering dust and history.

Sometimes I walk the quiet aeortic halls
treading familiar corridors to the echo of footsteps,
to read the plaques and leave fingerprints on the windows
exhibiting the old lives and old loves,
which have traded technicolour for antiquity

the night watchman of my own heart.

I guess                     up
I could trip
the stairs  of
my mind
in time
to find
the line

I shouldn't have crossed.

just to sit in scalding water is not enough
to wash
  human days  off your skin

scrub through the dirt, the worry, the love
scrub until blood reminds you
we are more than organised paper and ink blots.

On soft paws she
comes dancing like a
slip of
silken air
to pad about the room
feigning innocence.

Then,
quick as the wisp she blew in on,
drops her guileless  disguise
in haste
to do battle with the socks
and commandeer
the newspaper fleet scattered
on the floor.

But,
in a flash
the crusade
she won
is forgotten.
because she's found a hoard
of spoils and treasure.

Among the
warm golden spills the battle claimed
on the windowsill,
she lounges,
and rumbles her tiny
lion voice,
surveying her conquered Kingdom.

I could sit here
at right angles
with a computer
a clear head and course work

or

I could lounge here
at whatever
with a computer
a smoky head
and a chocolate bar

I'm building myself a fortress
a tangle of bricks and mortar,
deep in the forest where you can't find me.

There are spikes on every window ledge
and a deep dark moat full of monsters,
and I'm inside the darkest room,
visor down and armour shining.

But all this doesn't matter, you wont attack with force.
The armour is useless and the walls will crumble down around me
without the help of a siege.

Because you don't need to find me,
you've already kidnapped my mind,
I can put up no fight
and so
memories well up and spill over.

All I can feel are wounds made by no swords,
empty places that ache to the bone,
armed for a fight I've already lost.

You disarm me so completely,
all I can do is surrender.

I woke up this morning
to see how your hangover wraps your face
in the creases of a sleeping headache,
last night's cigarettes still traces on your fingertips
curled around my waist.

You fell asleep last night
pressing a smile against my skin
that left me feeling tipsy,
like the beers you drank
before you called me,
to ask to bring you home.

Throw your line down
and sit with me below,
beside the cray pots and the fish.

remember the gifts the sea gave up
the rocks and stories that made their way into my pockets
for your indifferent hands to overlook on the windowsill.

Throw your line down
beside the ***** and tangled weeds,
and remember a single line
is not enough to tame an undertow
that sings arias to the moon.

Sometimes you reach out
through phone cables and the distance of towns and topography,
to tell me you are sorry
for your carelessness
and the barren landscape it created
where nothing could flower

and I add your words to the compost and topsoil I've nurtured
alone
over time and distance
from the heart you broke, sadness and rust and the words you spoke,

to grow my own garden
of flowers and fruit.