running to leave something behind
I don’t know

love, my love,
will have to stand for itself
on its own
I have nothing except love
to give you

do you believe me?

is it enough?
it will have to be enough

I look back only in the rear view
my naked eyes
and naked heart
cannot bear to see

all of what I do feels like carnage
the carnage I create is just loss and desperation

but I hope you will look back
whichever way you please
and see me waving,
calling out
see you soon
I love you

I love you

Wide awake at night,
waiting for sunrise,
I wonder and wonder...

Do I watch the clouds
in wish for rest?

I slip into my dressing room
and close the door behind me

I take off my people clothes
and rub my people skin

I am people too

So why don’t people feel like people?
Why don’t I feel as people do?

I wipe off my people face
and look into my people eyes -
I often forget that I look like a person
and what that person looks like

So, I sometimes spend
secret minutes staring
at this people person
and wonder why

a people person
is not really a person at all.

cracks in the pavement
stepping with my eyes closed

the ghosts under the dinner table
have nothing on
the skeletons in your closet

have nothing on
my lack of superstition
and the squid ink you deposit

over oceans
around me

say I never could, so I did
say there’s no such thing as love
so I go ahead and make it

I see the way you seethe sometimes -
would you ever hurt me?

There is nothing to see in a mirror like me -
I soothe as you seethe.

in the edges of my vision,
writhe the snakes of murky dreams
turn my head - vanish
shake me free of leaden sleep
follows me
down lanes and streets
dizzy at the prospect of the journey home;
heavy legs to bring back
and lay along the bed
with pragmatic tenderness
for I am ponderous as a stone
please wrap me warmly in
sunlight and clement winds
to send me off tomorrow
to do it all again

I walk myself slowly to the door of myself,

so I can let myself out,
so I can be with you, my friend.

Life is such a joke;
the least meaningful of things
become figurative inside.

My mother never did like me
to have people over, so

I chat to you in the front yard
of my heart,

I pretend to see warmth
in your marble eyes -

please, may I have the eyes
I glimpse between laughs?

I find it hard to face you,
my house front is a backdrop,

it should be more of something -
whatever ‘something’ is...

My silences - inadequacy,
my comments hog the stage,

I know up in my mind
you never see me that way -

this is just something I have to say.

I’m sorry that I
always feel like I’m stepping up a staircase
which is climbing ever higher, yet descending into earth,

sorry that I
think I can tell you how it hurts
to be blood and flesh and bone,

sorry that
the words never reach anybody,

sorry that I
like to pick apart the pain
and show you the results,

sorry that I
sway between “all of this matters”
and “nothing ever does”,

sorry that
the whole of me
does not feel whole,

sorry that I
really am sorry
for the whole of me,

sorry that I
keep saying sorry -

****, I’m sorry.

I do not go anywhere,
I do not collect anything -
I do so little of everything!

(but string together spider threads
to make up fluttering spider webs
of the temporal doom inside -
then, in these webs I reside.)

Little by little,
one step, another

I step, and I step, and I step

These brushstrokes are anxious,
but I have time and patience

I once had a steady hand
and I will once again

A step is a leap
in increments

A step is a sweeping change
in slow motion

I am worlds from where I began
I have whole universes ahead

So I step, and I step, and I step

There is such a pleasant sweetness,
like melting honey and citrus juices,
in the balm of early summer’s midday.

Freshly cut lawns -
fragrant green, green, green -
and to sit on the back porch

in my socks, singlet, and jeans,
just scuffing my shoes
for the season

like countless others before me
in this timeless tradition.
I am alone - yet

none of this feels like
alone -
glimpse the shadows

of the people before me,
doing just this,
feeling just this

exact,
particular,
state of strange bliss.

Today I saw Van Gogh
and he looked right through me
with his cold painted eyes
and the words he wrote in French

His stiff arm detached from his side
and slowly he reached out of the canvas -

(They really meant it when they named
this exhibition) so I had to ask him -

How did you know how
I would feel today, back then?

When I saw you today, I understood
that sunflowers lived in your heart
the way oranges live in mine

And I felt less small among the stars
because you paint stars with so much yellow
and yellow is such a joyful colour

because the existence of stars
makes my life small,
makes my life fleeting
and endable,
and so,
precious

I thought you were tragedy
but oh -
the hope and the wonder
you saw!

Now and then,
I have a day
of forgetting that I am.

I ride the ghost of this wave
‘fore it crashes to shore
to be built back to rock from the sand,

or at least to make castles,
with careful pressing of hands.

Until surf’s up again,
I must stay on the land.

Until this day returns,
I will do what I can.

I will do what I can,
I will do what I can.

In this winding one-way street,
I sent for the fire brigade,

a couple years too late,

a couple years
too young to know
how to dial a telephone.

You left them all -
creaky tractors
out in the rain,
bring on the rust.

A slippery cricket,
I leap from your hands
again and again,
and you never quite catch.

Scramble for me, dear,
just try to keep up.
Once I see your sweat beading
I think I could rest.

Funny how
you built this house -
no windows to face these fields.

Just know,
I will be here
in the field of your mind,

to shine like a black river pebble,
to show you your face in the dark.

I can’t tell you where this all comes from,
because I already feel like a fraud.

These rivers lead back where
I can’t speak -
can’t speak up -
can’t say...

(that my fear
of being obliterated
is very real -
that sometimes I
would like to be the one
to decide)

And death is many things in us -
it is many things, many ways

And in many ways,
by slowing my spirit,
I have already died -
just to stay alongside
this slow corpse

Now I am seeing everything
for the first time,
for the first time,
for the first time

As though I have seen everything
for thousands of years,
for the first time.

in my eyes, an ever morning fog
since I were a child

I stopped breathing then
hitch in my throat when I must inhale

I hate to

and I see myself living
so far removed

arms, legs, mouth
going through the motions

reading myself the actions
rehearsing this play

all the world’s a stage

dream and wake
days flicker back and forth

summer air hugs my nose in the morning
by night I am slippers, scarves and socks

every day is a Friday, a Wednesday, a Tuesday
every day is the watching of clocks

home again, dinner, then rushing to work
hear the phrases repeat in our talk

I buy next year’s calendar
time and again

from a place that always makes it the same
so I don’t have to pretend

that time is not meaningless -
because time never ends

because time does not slow for us;
time is not our friend

so say **** all the future and planning and done
I would lay in the dirt just to rot

find me happy to leave you the worldly ideas
I am hoping one day be forgot -

in these lasting dreams, and in wake
no feeling, no thought

skin and words - two such different things
both at once so immediate
hiding all that simmers underneath

holding on another week
the smell of jasmine in your sheets
four pillows, two minds, and the light from the street

each alone in our heads,
do tomorrow again
till we’re back here, lying together in bed.

In that secret mailbox
I read back your sorry words

just to wonder
if I still feel
any kind of something
for you


But I hear it now -
tenderness -

and I’m still not sure


(if time healed over,
or if time just made me
a new pair of rose-coloured glasses)

I ask into the air,
I ask, and I ask,
and it comforts me to ask,
questions floating above me,
swimming around me,
like an early summer's
dew-dropped morning

I ask like I breathe,
and am wiser for asking,
regardless - no, in spite -
of not knowing.

Carved myself down
to become the pool
through which Narcissus stares

nothing more
when he found
brighter lakes to peer in

so I lie
in the curves of the meadow
and to everyone who passes by

What good is reflection,
if I do not move on?

And these boys are ever nicer
than he ever was,
that I wish it were easy to love,
instead I hold back

the gut-wrenching bile
that their niceness
brings up

The thing with carving is
once carved, forever gone -
a phantom limb
to taunt with what was,

and to finally know
that no action or word
can truly be taken back.

There’s always someone older,
in some twisted threatening way,
saying "when you're old like me,
you'll see - just wait"

But I’ve seen enough
and now I’d like to go home -
back to the drawing board
where I was better off
shooting for my stars alone -
to write new storylines
that aren’t too hard to be told,
and to one day reap the bountiful harvests
of the seeds I'll care to sow

And so, I find my life
up in my head -
the sparkling visions
I dare to dream beyond
the comfort of my bed,
and catch that bus each day,
and cast far my lines,
and to slowly, deftly, carve to shape
this little life of mine.

writing on the shower door

I cannot wipe clean
till I can get out of my mind

soap bubbles to burst down the pipeline

clean is so tough
over and over

just to spoil tomorrow
to make clean once more

just how long for?

I’ve got sugar and oranges
on the grill -
What can I do to bring you home?
To me?
Candied ginger,
strawberries and havarti -
each year it’s something else,
I try something else
Won’t you just come home to me?
For me?
I don’t remember when you left,
I only know it’s been a long time
Faintly remembered -
memories maybe just a fever dream,
to patch this gape in my chest.
I’m old enough now not to need,
still I ask into the fog of this family,
What can I do to bring you home?
To me?

I give to you
to no avail
just to see you forget your life
for a blink or two
for a cup of coffee
but never to change
anything at all

It will never be enough

I do not know what enough is
supposed to look like

“Go big or go home” I like to say -
and so, I have never really been home

If I could move mountains
I would hand-build your paradise
I would strip my bones to frame your view

You could leave all this behind

And the trouble is
that people say
I’m not obliged

Yet here the obligation lies
in my blood and bones
in the existence of my soul

When I am not trying
to move mountains for you
I am tearing myself to shreds inside

And when I think about
how you have felt
all this time,
suddenly
the good things
go

and I have to search
for birds again,
dancing in the clouds

I have to -

because you can’t look up
for birds anymore

Your eyes don’t brighten,
if they ever did -

I didn’t know you then -
I still don’t now

I forget, I forget,
that we share the same world,
that we’re in the same realm,
because all of your letters
are postmarked from hell

And to think these precious lives around us
breathe your air,
and have smelled your cigarette skin,
and are your next of kin -

oh, what a comical life we live in

And, oh, but you're so sweet,
with your big laugh - you little kid,
I feel so young with you.

The boat unmoored -
My unpainted soul
The weather whittles my wooden bones

Drift into the distance,
Always moving there

The slowness of it happening
Sends me into
The image of an iceberg -

Sun beating down,
Beating me under.

Today the world slows down to me
and I’m still dragging my feet.

I watch the *** of cool water
slowly boil -

a bubble, five bubbles, seventeen, and more

and if only I could multiply,
I could watch each bubble
die as it were born

but I am at the stove
with my two hands, my two eyes
and my one brain, and my sole life

that never seems to make good
fast enough in time

I am tired of patience
I am tired of waiting
for water to boil

I am boiling on full flame
just watching the water giggle at my toil

and if I could simmer down
I would, but I don’t

because I was born boiling
and it will always be so

the bubbles appear and they vanish,
taking thoughts as they go

here they come,
there they go

What you don’t know is
sometimes now I forget you exist
the way I used to forget myself
when I was too busy thinking of you
(and you were too busy
thinking of someone else
to bother with someone
who bothered to think of you at all)

Hey, have you ever thought of moving on?
I’m never coming back
Or is your world so empty, so small?
(You always liked it painted black)

Look, I’m just too busy to bother with
someone who only cares enough
to bother someone who’s better off

Love, I’d write you a reply
except - why even try?
If not to make my feelings known

But it’s not a worthwhile use of my time,
I would rather turn anguish to fanciful rhymes
and write for the fun of it; quite useful for a nuisance
(yes, that’s what we call you - a worm and a fly)

All I know is that life was fully atoned
until you rumbled through it
like a great rolling stone,
and crushed all the soft light
I’d been careful to grow

I’m so sorry to be scathing
(not in the slightest, no!)
just to slight you, and slice back a piece
for my once-starving bones

What you don’t know is
when I’m not forgetting your ghost
I am up in my mind
burning allllll of the photos

with all certainty,
commanding -
like you're all-knowing
when you don't know,
when you're owing

and last night I had another

one of those
confusing glimpses
down the barrel

like I had to watch my back
accidentally hurt myself
accidentally able
to turn these worlds upside down

silly to perceive
that everything could simply shatter
when I wake and I scream
and it still doesn't matter

how it boils my blood
to watch you know what you know
and never reap what you sow

while they shovel a path home
as it snows, and it snows, and it snows

without certainty,
teetering
on dried earth -

to crumble and break
any day now -

will you tell me -
where is my ride off into the sunset?

words for you
resistant behind these ribs

anything for you
I’d do anything

I would
and I did
and it’s over now

and never again
would I

so, words for you
must be squeezed
from this under-ripe lemon heart

cleanses in small doses
words for you

sour, erosive
words for you

any number of
words for you

anything for you
I would do

and it’s over now
and never again

I would never again.