Deep blue spring night in my lungs
filling my chest with blossoms of content
Despite being down to poo-change
& back to shining headlights on my life again
Tonight seems right in every detail
the cyclist cruising by on tiny friendly lights
this huge gum stirring above me
a white haired couple with tobacco coloured skin
who have grown alike over more years than i've experienced
Tonight makes me want to walk with and towards good company
to nowhere in particular
And I am on my way

You plumed filthy fascinating mess
gave rave hillside hair reviews
hated the monkey at the zoo
cos your mum liked him better than you
medicine ball bladder & hammer smash face
tiger glitter warpaint
sleeping it off
had a dog outta 10
living the tent life
the stars were spread out
but you're all fall-back shut-eye
thinking of punching your kidneys
wishing for crowd voodoo

I feel as though i had a soul mate
and i forgot them

Whoever it is, i miss our fun times; adventures, games, autumn leaves and hidey holes out of the wind, projects, enthusiasms, unexpected visits, your wacky plans, a sense of possibility in every moment, as though we could cross oceans

The days before i feared my own freedom,
before my clothes stopped making sense.

Looking in the mirror tonight

I am 24 years old

I don't know what to make of myself
Pointed chin, seashell ears, hair wet and arcing
forwards from my shower

I'm wondering about my 25th year;
will it be a year of wonders, a golden year?
My left eye says no

It's distrustful, mirrored and shuttered
so all you get back is yourself
endlessly

There's a siren and a dog howling counterpoint:
seems omenish

My right eye looks more hopeful,
like it'll wink conspirationally at any moment

Better to have a star for an eye than the moon,
anyday.

Shave your hair
Grow your beard
Make it scraggly
Stop riding your bike
So you put on 10kg
Drink more coffee
And whisky
Change your cologne
And stop showering
Take up smoking
Don't brush your teeth

Thanks, much easier now
Yours Sincerely

See love's reflection
Gazing on my lover's face
I want nothing more

I smell. . . .
horse ****.
It's less offensive than the
*******
i've been seeing lately
They say it with their
hands, mouths, eyes
Desperate offences in defence of the indefensible

Tonight i sat in a safe space
where we clicked to show our appreciation
Heard resonations of clicking when a poet spoke words
that darted through our foreheads
And lit something there.

We knew the responses:
"This is new ****"            
NEEEEEEEWWWW ****?!
Clap the poet, not the points
the points are not the point

We knew we were offered

hearts

more than words

Their rhythms and awakenings,
arrhythmias, overflowings, and
midnight ponderings.

So we put our own into our palms
and beat them together for every poet
who dared to touch that microphone
to their chest.

Of past loves and temptations
the horoscope did warn.
But how dispel those faces
Who from my heart's book i have torn?

I find the first two now are faded,
all those recollections jaded
down to barest bones of memory
they are worn

The others yet torment me
in these visions that beset me
If some days i don't know my own face
I'll surely see theirs 'fore the morn

In the end this one's a coward
though spirit on him I showered,
another faithless, the third brimful of scorn.
The last saw me disempowered
before independence flowered,
Yet their absence oft finds me still forlorn

When I said your name,
leaned in to kiss you
At the touch of our lips
an O grew on your mouth,
rippled out over your face
So i saw you through tropical waters
for a floating moment
Until you turn to me,
and we're in the fishbowl together
Sharing air
Candles lit beside my broken lamp,
your face as I imagined
grinning joyfully down at me
Hair released to curtain
your beautiful face and freckled shoulders
So much laughter strung throughout,
and all your battlements fallen
To my soft skin

It feels better
than space-cakes
You're spotlit
in my sight
When we
are 'we'
we're so fine

It's not
special
you're not
special
we were
never special
It just felt
that way
for a time

Now I
close one eye
find you
diminished, dry
Then
the other- you're
special, mine

The inside
of my head
is winking
And I still
can't see you
in 3D

              Misaligned

Call me Ramona and **** me senseless.
It's a name for wearing your hood up
regardless of prevailing weather conditions
Changing your hair for something to do
Skipping every song on shuffle after 30 seconds
For being lonely
For hating the company of everybody
including yourself.
A name for indulging poisons-
what's a little more when you're already toxic?
Call me Ramona,
it suits me.

It's the kind of night
An ill-wish could take flight,
like a darkling arrow
Where leaves and fronds make
come-hither rustlings,
and choke you down to the dark cold earth
to nourish their roots
The moon is a suspended yellow eye
half-lidded, watching with sinister intent
Though all the dogs are silent
their suppressed howls prickle
along your skin.
A night to watch your step.

Days pile
******* in corners of car-parks
So we drown these sorrows
delve our senses
into some sweet distraction.

Now you weren't what I wanted
though my body disagreed
I never liked you all that much
But you have something I need

We admired as we wandered
Shared stories in the deep
of nights in beds not our own
Our private fires we'd feed

High on sunset hillsides
we smoked a little ****
Your hand a fleshy tunnel
where our exhalations meet

I danced wild one night
only for the church to see
My hair was freed to toss
like your hands upon the keys

Now you weren't what I wanted
and I confess that I'm relieved
the road swept you up so sudden
before we fell & did The Deed.

There's a girl that comments on your profile
You use jokes i thought were ours
It's like hearing the same pick-up line used

I was at an internet booth in an arcade
My expression was too raw for the shoppers
All i could think was "out went my heart's new fire
and left it cold"

So now i sit in a restaurant with hideous buffets
being comforted by the sounds of other people eating
I can barely face a bite
My plum sauce is the same colour as the carrot

I suspect i'm ****** to death by dissatisfaction of fixation

You've got to ride this emotional connection to the end of the line- i cannot be satisfied unless we either take flight or smash ourselves into definitiveness

I want you to want me
I want you to feel with the same intensity
I want you to think of me
When you hear music
When you see a swallow
When you cook bolognaise
When you smell tigerbalm
I want you to feel secure enough
to initiate affection
I want you to surprise me
I want you to suggest things I'd never think to do
I want you to embrace
I want you not to avoid
I want you to want me more
than you want your safety
I want you to be who you are in my dreams
I want you to want me

An intimation
of trouble brewing, looming
between our two hearts

I wish i would dissolve                                                                              & reform into something beautiful

While you were sleeping
the roses bloomed
I stood in my singlet
to serenade the moon

While you were hiding
I heard the noise
of the restless flutterings
of our lost joys

While you were drifting
I restored the sun
I looked for your shadow
But there wasn't one

You were drifting, through all the noon
Yeah you were hiding, you heard no tune
Once i wanted to show it all to you
And still you're sleeping, you'll never see the moon

A little disconnected
not unhappy
Looking at the stars
I feel the distance between us
and refine my wish
After three shooting stars
I wish to be content.

She wanted to write a poem
to sort out her head
and make sense of her life
                .  .  .

something about drowning...
and how living is a reflex...
...disappointment ...   lines...
and how .... they're definite...?

But it didn't ******* work
The End.

Months of words woven
from barest bones of almost-nothing imaginable
I've netted myself
in strands of fantasy
When i wish i could truly want
your grin to fade from my mind's eye
And a new desire take its place
I won't weave a noose this time.

At the traffic light I looked down
and saw you
a scrap of white fluttering by my shoe.
I opened my hands to you and cupped them
over one another and thought
I was carrying your heart:
astonishing, lovely, tentatively fluttering
I whispered between my hands to you
that i had found a beautiful place
a hedge blooming with flowers.
A perfect bower for your moth-heart.

Heart trembles on fingertips, yearning.
To extend a hand: MOMENTOUS
Our continents brush against one another
Later there will be great clashes between our oceans,
ERUPTIONS, our lands scattered and reformed.
But for now, with gentlest of touches
We draw our hearts to the surface. . .

Carole King and crickets
tonight i'm scrubbing the day's labor and auras of others from my feet
and breaking my heart all over again reading love poetry
and Grandma's Keats she will have me read at her funeral

I've still got a coal burning
a hole in my chest for you,
But just give it a little time
to drop through to my gullet
And I'll **** you out of me.

Woke        
                   spitting Crystal
                   wanting teeth sinking lesson teaching
           your burning skin                         my heart
Still not enough               bite my own fingers
                           Til then

She told me about it and the day it went too far and they all realised too late
eyes shut lights out the wolves stalking falling and rising to join the pack one by one small noises in the dark until there's one left knowing she's hunted and feeling frantically at the walls
It took breaking and shaking for the others to realise
Kids are the original wolves, the pack
they know how it works
instinctively

I watched a conversation
about crying, seeing a woman crying outside a meat shop, and how you would go about making someone cry, why you would want to, and kids again- how they do it just to see what will happen, or even less considered than that: blindly following inner promptings.
Another conversation: people who choose not to move forward, and instead are consumed by their own brand of madness.
Some days there's a madness in the air and a tinge of orange in our auras and i remember the horrible things
Those days life seems like a game called wolves

Knowing you're a room away
the hinged hole in my wall tempts me
To curl-backed night wandering, to brush my face alongside yours

I know the paths your hair makes
in tentative trails across your chest
to the outposts of your *******

I know your clever hands
i dreamt of them in detail, of holding your hands in mine
examining them

I know those soft lips
I know how they feel against mine
I know what they are capable of

It's been nearly 9 months since the time when i knew these things
Time enough to incubate a life
Time enough to hold love the way i cupped your dream hands
Time enough to write 25 poems about you
Time enough to shade my dazzled eyes
Time enough to know to leave that door closed.

The best place for a heart is in open hands

Today I knew my life so far
has been a mouse in the grass hiding.
There have been times I dared to cross
a patch of open ground
Where the sun fell on my so brightly
or the rain so softly
that I could not bear to be so radiant.
I have been hiding in my grass-stalk world,
and calling it living.

But now I know
I am the larger self as well as the small
I am the conciousness of rock and swamp,
of fire, eagle, mouse, and grass-stalk,
of all the great abundant earth.

I know through me she sings, creates, loves, grieves
when i hid in the grass I hid from myself.
I know my grief is deep.

I listen to Elders who know how to welcome their grief
They know when they hold it
grief is one face of deep, healing love.

The gleanings of a hiding mouse cannot meet my needs
for life's sweetness, its peace, pleasures, and joy.
This small hoard of treasures cannot compare
to expressing the gifts I am given to share.

The plans I scratched into the dust will fade .  .  .
I can shrug away the straps that hold me to what was
and release the baked clay banks ahead
The first gift I can give in any moment
is to be there.

What does bitter taste like? Kiss me & find out

I hoped it would ease
But it can always hurt more
Now you don't see me

Tears are the overflow of my heart's bitterness