I’m the joke of inbetweens
Take time away from your girl with me
A couple of months its all you need
Get back with her when you please
Leave me dry and high all alone
You’re getting high that’s how I’m told
Move on, move on try not to think
Or else you’ll lie in bed and weep
I did and now what else shall I do
Just drink and flirt until I’m due
Due for another cry  all alone
But months pass by and I get well soon
A year goes past and you’re still here
Cheating with me on that girl you swoon
I hope she never feels this pain you have given me
Since I'm not as strong as I should be
When you’re done and you have had your share
I will finally meet someone I think is swell
But my life is full of maybes please.
I'm not what you apparently thought I might be.
I wanted to tell you all the things I thought.  
But you already made your decision ****.
Now you’ll never know what I wanted to say,
since you decided I wasn’t good enough to play.
But I’ve learned a lot, like not to trust
because the past few years no one’s gave a single ****.
And I’m sorry you could not wait to hear the simple words I’d say...
like how beautiful you were running after that...
well I won’t give it away

I placed you in a boat of pinks and blues with a smooth white satin sail and let you lie beneath the sky so pregnant with infinite possibility that the night might tear at anytime and unleash a loveliness so heavenly it would turn us to a pillar of sugar and whip us up into candy floss beehives for the angels to play dress up with.  We are the multicoloured whispers, each one a syllable in the cacophonous swishhhhhshhhhhshing melody of the dewdrop chiming, petals kissing rhyming, intertwining of all that is beautiful uniting in the crescendo of the wind.  The soft sensations of angels breathing warmth on skin, shimmering shadowing of the ripples in the satin of a sail brought to life as if to hail the glory of the universe.  Water and wind and the will of the world gathers momentum and movement to wrench down to the depths of our heart and I feel the unfathomable maul to our caul and begin to tear us there in the place that has held us for so long.  There is no flood of blood pooling at my feet on the just forming glistening path being marked with frost and crocuses and the knowing that you are not here but that we are still we.  You are drifting into the inbetweens, where reality is a ***** word and your story, our story still unfolds in the pitter patter merry dance of keys and tongue beating our being into a rocking chair and a lullaby.  I have dreamed you almost to life, and though not alive, we are five.

I think I'm going to blow away
And see what happens as the moss turns into trees.

I think I'm going to run away
And watch each river incandescently freeze.

But when the time comes to accept the end of my mobility,
I will tilt back and wonder about all the other inbetweens.

In a hologram
I am the man you would like me to be
not real
but you see
it is me,
so
why do you want to know
who that I am?
but the man that's an image
a man you would pillage
and keep for your own.

Pictures that grow up and slow up,then show up just who that you are
an image that's far too inconstant
a solent
a side by the sea
aside from you and me and the oceans that we see
there is only a halogen lamp which tramps out these scenes and in the inbetweens of our dreams
I will be forever
the screens on the doors of the more that you want, and the more that we need,
the more we will seed the cameras with film.
and developed could it be
that we see so much more?

when the sun loves the moon
the chase never stops
forever apart
the golden light
and the silver shine
never side by side
forever making colors dance in the sky
the warmth burns
and the cool chills
the world pulled between
forever in symphony
the never-ending love
will never fade or dull
but will never touch
forever longing for the inbetweens
where they are closer than they seem

All of my friends were there
and their friends, too
and the friends of my friends'
cousins and their dogs
and their all-seeing aunts crammed into
ill-fitting blouses with
their husbands in New York or L.A.
and their inbetweens sending them
***** texts and someone, I think it was
my mother, she said, Why don't you
lay in the river
And I said, Of course
The leaves fell
The birds sang a four-note phrase
and all my friends, the best ones,
they tossed half-empty packs
of gum, flower petals, quarters, pens--
anything they had in their pockets
As I passed by them I said, Remember
when we ate the poison berries and
said our goodbyes. Remember when
I played pitcher on our t-ball team.
Remember when Drew took the electric
fence to his crotch. Remember when
we threw Josh's library book into the rain.
Remember when I learned to ride a bike in
sixth grade. Remember when I kissed
you on the backseat of the school bus.

And they said, Yes. And they laughed.

Those were good times.

My brother, he was there too, he hopped
in the river and gave me a push, said,
I'll see you around the next bend.

Life number two, I said.

Life number two.

We shot the movie
in chrome-based Black and White
Thinking we were '80's hipsters
with a sharp postmodern overbite

And three days later
we were cracking up
in the editing room
over a three-way monologue
on horrible lighting
in midday TV living rooms

Well that was July
and now August is ******* us off
My fashionably long hair is turning mulleted
and I've picked up
an off-season cough

And now you're somewhere in Brooklyn
trying to catch a break
Your hair's been cut
into a schoolboy's bob
and your new friends all
look like fakes

I'd never thought it'd be you
when I'm staring at a screen
it's funny how later in life
we focus
on what we once thought
were inbetweens

Our old friend is working like a robot
trying to make the weekend fit
I guess he supposes it's better
to be lit up just for christmas
than for the constant party graveyard shift

And I guess I'm supposed to believe you
when you tell me
"it's all still pretty fun"
eating beans for breakfast and supper
and spending Saturday nights on your own

But maybe I'm just jealous
there's probably a lot of truth in that
I suppose i'm just getting nostalgic
for the days when I was the only boy
who could make you laugh

The three of us never cut it off too severely
so I'm banking on that long weekend
were we'll meet up in some ex-undergrad hangout
and pretend we're all still best friends

"If we were born five years earlier"
Remember, I used to tell you
"We all won't be so cursed
I guess you were right in saying,
"our lives are going to take on the plot
of Metropolis, but in reverse"

To look at him u can be fooled .
Charm charisma, a smile so sweet, and all the inbetweens.
    A well dressed tall young  man  .
Well mannered was all part of his plan. I must admit he was my friend.
      He lived the life of a gangster Never shy on claiming his hood. For sure
And his hood is where he stood. And on the corner is where he was shot .1 shot 2 shot 3 shots he's dead . But not before he released one to his enemies head
He lived by the gun and he died by the gun only 27 so so young ....

You were my first girl
we said, let's give it a whitl

I knew on that night
we were doing something right.

Who'da thought I'd like you
No longer we'd have to be blue

The, somethings occuted
they made everything blurred

we went awhile, not talking
no longer were we rocking

but now soomething has changed
my feelings, they're rearanged

because when i think of you, I think of me...
and I can't let that be

I've avoided these feelings for long
between my ******* like a thong

just crying to be free
but then people would see

I'm not sure what this means
and honestly I'm scraed of inbetweens

I'm not trying to pull you a long
but I don't know what's right and what's wrong

I'm just trying to be honest
it's you're I've thought of the longest

So today the 17th of October
I'm saying forget her

It's without you
that makes me blue.

I love every stretch mark on your body as if it were the last atom of hope to roam this universe
And the theory of the multiverse never made any sense until this sky couldn't hold all my love for you
And society is stupid, let's run away from it
To a place where you and me are all that exists
To a place where our kisses birth flowers that never feel the need to contemplate death
Where midnights spent with you
Will show a side I never knew
Two hands will hold a love so deep that the ocean will be be jealous
I will kiss your promises
I will love your inbetweens
I will care for you with the same carefulness I care for the flowers
I will write beautiful poetry about you  
I will kiss and I will hug and I will cry till I can't no more.  
This time I won't wish I would've done things differently

give me Tuesday morning's and bed sheets
skin kissed by shadows and tangled feet
give me a love that chooses me
sober confessions and forehead kisses
and maybe we were never innocent but this is romance in it's purest form
and know that you are more than everything that I settled for
love me and all of the ways I've mistaken them for you
and I will choose you every midnight and Monday and all of the inbetweens

you’re staring at a wrench display
in a failing sears 10 minutes before closing
and don’t recognize the reflection in the stainless steel.
you’ve been here a million times,
run your fingers along band saws a million times,
memorized the store’s playlist, learned “Love Hurts" by Nazareth
but you’re still trying to find something that connects,
something to retrace the steps to what pushed you out the door,
placed cold hands in empty pockets, made you stop
to buy cigarettes and brought you here again.
your blood pumps slower in places of transition,
only walked through to get to the mall
or back through to poorly parked cars
and you know a lot about
being used to move on
but left behind.
an employee asks if you’re alright
and you say yes
because you know they’re running out their shift
and don’t want to deal with your ****
and how could you tell them
that today, your skin feels foreign.
maybe you’ll find something in
winter coats and blackout curtains
but until then you make a home
on a display mattress
because you only live in liminal spaces.
you’re only grounded
between phases, in inbetweens.
you rely on uncertainty and in this economy,
the sears might be gone before you realize you’ll miss it.

I hate waking up because everyday I wake up in the future
When every night I ask for the past
I spend the inbetweens dreaming of little things I would change if given the choice again
And how massively different those decisions would cause my life to be

If I could be aware of just what little I know now then?
Then I wouldn't be typing this.

I'd spend every second on happiness and trade all my sorrows for such.

I'd dream of the future, rather than variations of my past

I'd live in the moment, rather than anticipate it's end.

I'd be a better man, son, brother and friend.

Though it seems illogical,
So did circling the globe,
I will never stop searching or hoping
Even if this body never knows

"you know, the past
should be kept in the past."

there's a thunderstorm in the window behind me and I've been checking in on some people I used to know; would you call them friends or lovers, I don't know. my fingers can't type as fast as my mind works; or doesn't; do you know what it's like to get shot in the head? there aren't any tears; you're not a debby downer, you're the life of the party; you're smiling and cracking jokes but inside you wish you were dead; you shoot deer but you think about turning that gun around and shooting yourself; gunshots can't be as loud as your mind; to disrupt the neighbourhood would be the least of your selfish concerns; would anyone remember you if you died?; has anyone noticed you left or have they all just moved on without you?; old habits die hard and you just want to feel something, I just want to feel something; who are we?; no one but strangers who once kissed so hard their lips bled; oh how raw and passionate; i can't seem to be able to distinguish the difference between pain, pleasure and passion; but in my dreams I feel more alive than when I'm awake; when can I crawl into bed next?; I don't want to sleep, you are too far but you are too close; perhaps this was all an impulsive mistake, don't you worry about the inbetweens and the afters; worry about now and yesterday; I am forever haunted by my past; your karma follows you and so do I; don't you dare point that gun in my direction again; I'd rather be set on fire; douse me in gasoline in our bed; turn everything you loved into ashes; I will survive because you never really loved me; everyone is moving on and like the sun I am staying still; revolve around me but don't get too close; you can't even look at me without going blind; the sun is not as beautiful as we romanticize her to be; thunder so loud it shakes your room; you shake me to the core; the lightning will strike again; do you know what it feels like to be shot in the head?

I like girls and I like boys and inbetweens-
but boys are so much easier to date.
I know what to expect and what to do-
but girls and inbetweens scare me,
I get so nervous and make mistakes.
They’re the unknown.
But if I don’t know them as well as boys-
how can I possibly be worthy of “pansexual?”
Do I even deserve that title?
Im attracted to people,
not their gender or their appearance,
but I’m so scared of messing up.
I like girls.
I like boys.
I like those inbetween.
But how could they possibly like me?

Fantasize of how you ran, that race of life till now?
Did it paint a living portraiture or pen a filthy scowl?
Did it fill the missing questions asked... or run askance at will,
Did it lead you to utopia or make you grind uphill?
Those conversations held in depth, did they take your breath away
Or leave you mired neck deep in doubt, to seek another... pray?
How so, your stance on God's retreat on where to base belief
Or does it conjure images to seek some hand relief?
How goes it with your silly plan, to take her far away
To resurrect from drudgery, such dullness, day to day?
What was it that you said, back then, when we were young and fit
That marriage to that sultry ***** would leave you in the ****?
How so, your stance on God's retreat on where to base belief?
It definitely conjures images requiring hand relief!
Now were so many spent in sin the Devil couldn't count
Or lengthwise lost to penury wherein he should surmount?
Who so, How so, Why so, Where; Questions forged to seek
The answers to my queries now avoided, somewhere bleak?
Pretentiously avoided though, perhaps, you couldn't say.
Explain now, how your life race ran.... I think you ran away.

M.
Foxglove, Taranaki NZ
25 March 2020

Gloomy days are behind us,
The longest nights of fright,
Sweaty inbetweens,
And uncertain mornings;

Today the sun shine,
On her angelic smile,
Ran around on pretty feet,
And gave the warmest embraces.

I'm gonna tell you about the girl of my dreams,
how each ******* smile pulls my heart strings into knots
and fills my tummy with butterflies, moths, and bees.
The way her head dips into my chest
is the thought in my head on lonely cold nights
when I keep waking up at two in the morning.
Safety, home, mine
are all words that were so foreign until her arms hooked around my waist.
Each day is a talk of future and memory and all of the inbetweens mixed.
Through the tears and the arguments, there is still cracked smiles that scream
"This is my baby"
That she is, so precious and I am so unworthy.
For the working together, the movie cuddles, the secret kisses, the smiley hand holding, the effort, the given happiness, I am so grateful.
She is my whole, my one, my heart, my soul.
I've found what my light has been searching for
and she is goodness, remembrance, astonishment, caring, embracement

grand towering limbs
reach to meet
branches a flourishing keep
twigs to trunks create
a stretch to breathe
crooked seedlings bow in need
live to die, and sow to reap
sewn together a needle to seam
hand to cheek
a means plunges deep
moves a steady pulse to bleed
seeping shallows underneath
beating tree to tree
a hollow quant and sweet

free will drives the darkness
a gesture to greet
the animal unseen
shadows join in to deceive
the passerby and inbetweens
a hunter to a prey
the profile of trees  
dazed in the headlight beams
outline reality as a thief
stealing moments
yet to be
the forgotten trinkets  
hang from trees

a keepsake for a figurine
trapped beads concede
to a broken string
fall along the wayside
finding hope is still free
playing content in the wind
chasing tossed debris
gathering leaves
one by on they fall weak
remnant colors in deceit
raise to a scatter
a boundless retreat
content to repeat
the redeeming sweep


Terry D’Arcy-Ryan