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. **** 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 ***** 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.

I am lying on my back
On a quilted sea
Of green and blue.
My eyes are closed
And I can see me
Clearly in my minds eye
A swagger in my step,
A boy, rising,
Full stride.
I am raw hide and
Warm pelt.
My skin is bare and I can feel
The fur of a snail trail
Beneath my clasped hands
Upon my belly.
I can smell musk in the air
A manliness mixed
With the fragrant vulnerability
Of nakedness.
My eyes are closed
And I don’t want to open them.
My heart is burgeoning
My soul is climbing
Evolving
I am him.
Becoming,
Being,
And safely rocking
on this sea of sweat and dreams spilt.
With my eyes closed.

Breathing in,
Slowly, calmly,
For I can feel tears already forming beneath closed lids,
I open my eyes
And cast a shadowed gaze
Downwards
And along the lines of what I had been watching
Within my minds eye.
I cannot lie,
Here as I type,
I remember that sinking feeling
As if I am sinking again now,
I don’t know how
to describe
That ***** feeling
Of being stuck inside this skin
This skin that lies
This skin that hides
What is buried deep within me.
That which belongs to me,
That which is mine.
That which has always been and always will be
Me.
And I cried.
My heart surged,
it plunged into a scared and hurting blackness.
And I felt myself falling
Into misery
I looked down on the body
That was lying
On a quilted blue and black see
And saw me
For what I truly am
In the flesh.
In those moments
I wish I could live my every day
Eyes closed
And breathing in that which I see inside me
I wish I could bury my head inside my heart
And depart from the flesh.
Hide from this shell
This private hell
That wears itself outside of me.

Eyes open I see me for who I am
And I cry
And I want only
Again
For eyes closed.
Indisposed,
Sickened.


I am fit with eyes closed
And all I can see
Is the man inside me.