I sit silently
chipping at my stone heart wall;
water greets my floor

From the great depths
words bubble up,
breaching the surface gently
with a silent puff.

Seaweed sentences drift up also,
through saltwater spaces,
from darkness to light.

Thoughts float like blue whales
riding a current,
they moan and whistle
against the massive distance,
looking for another.

My ocean mind is calm now,
shimmering at the surface,
but giving harbour
to poems I sharpen,
seen from above.

There's something to be said
for a sunlit room,
for the shimmer of the sea,
for a lit salt lamp.

But there's value too
in the meditative moonlight
of a mountainside
above the dark city

I’m well, vivid, here.
I can breathe crisp fresh air now
and see bright sun’s light.

Pale faces stared from street side
parked cars crammed
like bullets.

Barely looking where, I drove wide,
brakes were slammed,
I mistook their

impact for existence. Soul-fried,
I made unplanned
turns and twists.

Sometimes when eyes misguide,
leave the psychotic holy land:
senses err.

“Reflect on that, and tell me what comes to mind.”

I pause - what should I say?
My thoughts are a jumbled ball of string
and reflecting might break it apart.

My therapist wants me to set
the sections of string
in a sequence,
and observe them from above, but
every cutting I take makes the ball
a little smaller.

Instead, I want to
take the mess
and dye it purple
and use it to fly a kite
and watch it unravel as I push it down a staircase.
I want to weave it into a delicate blanket
and fasten a portrait with it,
and use it as floss,
and make it a violin bow.

But I reckon I shouldn’t let it grow.
So I set off enough to make my therapist smile,
and I keep the rest in a messy pile
and I learn how to use it to sew.

I’m sitting at the side of the Seymour River,
watching the water
blast by
and I can’t help
but picture the feeling of
being ripped by the flow,
smashing into stones.

Suddenly a fallen leaf floating like a feather on the surface flits by, drifting in
and out of
my vision,
and I think that a thousand careless leaves must ride the river’s current
every day.

On my best days, I let my fetters
float
on
by
me,
but at my worst, the river of my experience
pushes me back into the flow
and I fight the current
and I always
lose.