When I took my first step, I should have fell backwards.

It would have meant failure.

But it wouldn’t mean being here.

On this neverending staircase.

I walk up and up, hoping to find a door, or a hallway, a path.

Yet, just more steps.

Each step is a milestone which in the end leads to…

Another staircase.

Scared to move forward

but scared to look down.

Looking down may cause my madness to spiral out of control.

It may cause it to continue..

to lead me beyond the staircase.

To a pinewood box.

I can’t go back.

Secretly I know what awaits me at the top.

The very top.

You.

With a grin that matches the Cheshire cat’s ten fold.

I climb the steps.

to my past.

to my past lover.

to the reason for my insanity.

My neverending staircase.

"So. Why a robin?"
I picture us fighting, my neck hits the back of the leather arm chair. It hurts and you apologise. You are still pretending to get mad whenever I say I love you like you are not willing to hear it. You know I am going far away and whether its university or life we can't work without one of us making the other miserable. And I am still folding our hands to origami swans at 3am wishing for a second more with you. It goes futher than taking the scenic route home, dragging my feet and prolonging the front door, pretending we don't know how this ends.  We have the same conversations over and over, you apologising and joking as you think about what you'll turn into//me wondering if I'll even bother to make it that far. One day you might not remember my name, think my face isn't mine because didn't I used to blonde? We are not even perfect on paper. The government wouldn't grant us our bursary because they knew we are too self destructive. My poems for you were pretty when flipped to the ceiling but we think too much, wound ourselves up, and the folds in the pages won't come loose anymore. The words don't sit right. Somewhere on a fence in Carlton sits two robins. And life gets so hard when you realise you can't actually help another adult with their problems, you can only make them a cup of tea. Not coffee. Their brain spins in it's swivel office chair, controls broken. A dictatorship sinking fast. Their heart races - the more coffee you drink the more likely you are to experience anxiety//undiagnosed depression is hard to get rid of, it knows you want to acknowledge it and it waits for you to stumble upon it, it feigns surprises behind a pinewood door, but life doesn't get much better after you notice it. You still want to die and you still think every day about the one in three anorexia sufferers that don't make it. How really you don't know what "making it" is. I found a boy that I imagine smells like fire. He has these crazed pinpoint eyes that are not like yours and I don't know what to think anymore. He is an artistic genius and I want to run from my bad dreams into you and I don't know what to think anymore. I don't think anything is real anymore. I think we hit an iceberg. I think my fingers are caught in the ice, splayed hands grasping still like curved talon ends and I don't think I can get lose but it is cold. Think. Your warm hands on my ribcage holding me on an axis. Pedestal. You told me I don't love you last night and it felt like hot wax cooling in my throat. I can still taste it now. My hands are cold. I'm writing poetry about you again but I don't know if it's for you this time. Yes, there's a difference. I felt something gut wrenching today when I found that the great barrier reef had died. Is dying. It lived for 25 million years and the human race killed it. Like a toxic relationship composed of a bad survival climate and corporate waste, like us killing us. Big red buttons looming closer. I would compare us to the death of the great barrier reef- I don't think we were as beautiful, and we were killed by ourselves not climate change. So I am writing us an obituary before we self implode. I am writing the nights I have not spend crying on the kitchen floor an obituary before they are even over.  I don't think I can breathe underwater and the pressures are getting to your head. The colours are fading and the plants aren't breathing anymore. The backs of my eyelids are freezing over. You are the only one who knows about the two robins on a fence somewhere safe. You are the one I tell my nightmares to, the ones where I wake up and I can't breathe without you. The ones that I don't have anymore because now my fingers are inches away from the end of the rabbit hole. I can feel the breeze at my fingertips. We deserved more than a bunch of flowers cellotaped to a lamppost. More than a game of hangman. More than this is how I say happy anniversary. I wish we hadn't killed the great barrier reef. I wish that there had been better ways to say happy anniversary.

One last time I drive past the pinewood
On the fogged road washed with rain
My eyes misted up in melancholic brood
If here I would ever come again.
The winds passing through pine chains
Bid me a whispered farewell
Sulk in silence the clouded mountains
In parting grief somber and pale.
In time afar on a forlorn night
If my dreams soar on wings
Bathed in milky moonlight
They would fly to Darjeeling.

first came the tree
and slingshot

then came the silence
and breathing hmm

then came the waves
and science

last came laughter.

You can be my pinewood forest
and I'll wander through your mists
ducking through
your hollowed out trees anytime
I'm your huckleberry
bushes growing
under your treetops
and you can eat my berries anytime
Recall that
huckleberries only grow wild
and so do I.

A moon disc moves around in space,
beaming white with shades of time
as the pupil of a cosmic eye,
an aperture of the mind.
Its clouded iris billows,
evolving mountains in the sky
as textured fields of cirrostratus
caressing what's divine.
There's a copper sclera of diffraction,
as concentric rings of luminescence
enjoy, for tonight, partaking of this essence.

Do the pinewood teeth serrating mountains
not speak for want of a tongue?
I know they sigh sometimes with longing
when they're moved before a gale.
I hear your storm has started calling,
as the wind whispers me your tale.
The rain's a heavy harmony,
strumming straight on panes of glass,
and those rivulets of running water
walk patience to the brink
as the eddies of a circling mind
whirl cogs which make me think:

*I see your face in scattered strangers,
your form behind the rippling of skirts.
I hope your restlessness will soothe itself
and you feel at home, here on this earth.

On a frigid night I am
the lone resident in my house.
Not a whisper sounds from
the mouth of the biting air outside.

Alone in my house I am at ease
for there is nothing around
to interrupt this time left to me.
I can see things differently,
like the face of a Picasso painting.

With a lessened tension I
have a deeper sense of recollection.
My thoughts are a ceiling fan,
constantly spinning and circulating
the sentences of these lines
like the air throughout the house.

As I listen to the warm air
rattle from the vent in the wall
I am reminded of the days
spent with my dad working
in the basement workshop.

My purple, gold and white
Pinewood Derby car for Boy Scouts
was a piece of work to be proud of.
It may not have placed, but
it had a special place on my dresser
for several years to come.

It’s memories like these I
know I’ll never forget because
even after thirteen years
I can recall it like it was yesterday.

The smell of freshly sanded wood
and sore fingers after long hours
of hard work perfecting the shape
was worth more than all the
money a rich couple could
spoil their children with.

She laid beneath
dew and cloaked pine
her hands slight with curve
toes in agonizing arch
eyes barely reflecting
the soft green moss
that entangled auburn strains
the pitter patter in the distance
echoed a stillness in the wood
it surrounded her winter body
even though the estival air
was dank and heavy
as I stared
my eyes reflected back
a story of winter
laying with summer
in harmonious still lust
a statue captured
in this moment
is hidden in pinewood
I remember thinking
“How beautiful”

We were pirates then
dueling swords of picket wood
on summer days when backyard pools
were Caribbean seas

We swung from frayed and creaking rope
tethered to the stolid limbs of shadegiving trees
plundering the ships we made from cardboard
and splintered pinewood crates

We laid siege to sandbox fortresses
with cannon fire from garden hoses
muzzled by the ends of our thumbs

Our shipmates were the tabby cats
and german shepherds we dressed
in tattered sheets pillaged from
lines strewn across the lawn
and patches held by rubber bands
covering bewildered eyes

We were pirates then
dueling swords of picket wood
on summer days we buried
in coves hidden along straits
we marked on weathered maps

Surviving still and sometimes found
in the darkest corners of the night
and the cloudless wonder of the day

Our reflections on a brass doorknob .
A skeleton key would slowly turn each tumbler ..
Dusty pinewood flooring , antique trinkets ..
Propane space heaters and fresh coffee balm private , erstwhile collective memories . A matriarchs kitchen , well water aroma and cross stitched towels , her flour tinged cotton apron , cast iron skillets and brass tea kettle with porcelain service ushers spirited times of conviviality over a simple oak dining room table ..
Hand made breakfast nook curtains , the majesty of tall Water Oaks
with foraging bantam hens and roosters ..
Dirt roads would tell of visitors long before they ever arrived ,
fishing for shell crackers at the old bridge with cane poles and and dough ***** , leftovers from cat head biscuits at breakfast ...
Pecans and crabapples fed young anglers on shady Summer afternoons . Feeding tall grass to black angus and hereford cattle through barbed wire fence , collecting afternoon eggs and walking the furrows at Dusk ,
days I'll never forget ..

the **** came out from Egypt,
like a pyramid...
i'm, literally, not here...
i'm, not here...
            and that's a the end
with many more post-scriptums
coming from the kid of god...
kid, yes, baby goat antonym,
and no point using fingers
in the most weird arithmetic
counting to: that! it..
           or, i! the: obscure ref.
   to what's airy and prone to disperse:
                     a, and subsequently
without, i.e. a-,
           i don't under the point
europeans with european women pampering
to rich arabs, and why egyptians are
involved... there's enough hate
to sell another Holocaust,
    wasn't the last Holocaust so denied
as to not sell it?
  it's selling, right? what with Rachel Weisz...
the holocaust is selling hot, so what's
the argument? the Poles didn't even get to sell
the holocaust, they were partly to blame for it...
   so what's the problem with holocaust denial
if holocaust clap-clap is about endorsing it?!
   oh look here! the title got you,
what's missing? the articles, benefits of a, god...
lamb of god sounds like the right tame,
the worthy cliche...
                         there's always a devil, and the devil...
ha ha... but there's never a god, and the god
is monotheism... lamb of god, kid of devil...
baby goat... d'uh!
                                   teeth!
gnats and the crocodile bite-snap!
                                  well, trans-gender euphoria...
woo! hoo! youth day with the pope gesticulating
******* into it for a ****** cream advert!
woo! hoo! chug! chug! chug!
      wonders... and god does indeed work
in mystifyng ways... last time i checked, he
didn't include the encyclopedia in his genesis...
beginning with day 1...
                  but i'd expect Peckham to be on the list
in terms of gaff...
       shame it's never article bound with god,
but always article bound to say: devil...
it's not you even say a ****** of being godlike
by saying ***...
                    as you apply to devil,
and say: the devil... i really do believe in holy
matrimony... whether sealions have harems
or whether swans prescribe monogamy and the lonely,
wandering, widower...
            sounds about cello or male ******* slapped against
a tennis-racket crap to me...
don't know, were you expecting a narrative
of ping-pong?
                   well, the i is in the huh; that should be clue
enough for you.
        lamb of god is never as restrictive as kid of devil...
somehow g fakes being a consonant unlike the d...
               why does kid of devil ask for the or a preposition?
i'm almost crying... why does it need atheism in between?
                      can't you think of anything more demeaning
than being crucified?! how about being impaled on a pike?!
how about the blood eagel for those who transgressed
      the nordic social code... how about the iron maiden?!
you have to be ******* kidding me to epitomise being
crucified... they didn't crucify the son of god,
no more than they crucified an innocent man...
                    the ******* must have done something
to compenstate being a Jewish woman back then...
i'd establish being impaled on a pike to be more painful
than being crucified...
  and so we behold the least original form of execution
as our heart-rendering feeling toward keeping
a stranglehold of the throng...
        we had much more ingenuity come our way
in terms of how a human body would be mutilated
if allowed capital...
it's such a shame that i am left with this dust...
         but it's still a case of: lamb of god...
       and not kid of devil... atheism always pokes its
ugly head through... no one says: kid of devil...
there's nothing definite or indefinite about it...
           yes, kid, baby goat...
            no one bothers that with kneeling and
repentance...  you clean the language up,
   as it looks, the unearthing of the nag hammadi gospels
mostly read by western psychiatrists is no help to me...
    the transgender movement is a lazy way to say:
i really didn't read a lot of poetry...
because these people didn't!
the land of the pronoun is a wild west of what's
typically english, asexual noun appropriation,
   and general liking toward custard ****:
my my, it really does splash a bit about the place.
                              they decided it was easier to
do the genital chop... than read a poem...
                     i'm stating from year 0...
because there's really no point in asking this
Jew raised in Egypt to take us anywhere else, other than
here... if you can make as much money from
other people's ultimate miseries, as the money
made from the holocaust... good luck to you,
i somehow never see money as translatable goods...
too much a priori static... it's like you're not
expected to, but do so nonetheless...
  a right old need in asking for a bollocking...
          and here is nowhere... and i mean:
    i have no geneticists' bias to preserve the human race,
or that argument that really, really belongs in a museum...
  atheism is so lacking motivational convo,
  i'm almost starting to believe it... ****! i have started to
believe it! look at me! dodo haven bound!
           i'm about to get flustered and ask for
a balding swan to fuss about its feathers when
i ask: which way to the toilet, devoid
of toiletries? it's ok... really.. i have a sun tan;
what? isn't that enough?
       will schindler's list teach me anything,
will it teach me to hold your hand more gently than
my own?
    i have no respect for people making money
in making others respect it...
at least the old tesatment people put on a ******* kippah...
you just keep up with your religious
hollywood ******* of many ****** movies
and i'll make enough of them foundation
for the next pyramid! Belial unto Balaam sooth!
i have enough gravity to drag me beneath the seas,
  and make sure that the earth eats me whole,
enough crematoriums to remind fire it's chore...
   and enough air, worthy a ****,
  and a comic gag to choke on turning words
into fishbone, of that pinewood needle refined kind:
neunzig-acht rot bollons... needle... pop...
     ja, minus ein; papa apache made me do it!
gott... mein goot ęglish achtung!
                 we really did stand & deliver as
                       adam & the ants told us to do...
we obviously didn't spawn any babies...
to keep our body motivated toward a beyond a grave...
no matter... T2 came out... and
no sight of Arnie Schwarzenegger.

When she smiles, I smile
When she laughs, I laugh
When she cries,
the tears also flow down my face

She sees and I feel
I see and she feels
Together we are yin and yang

Apart we are little
And easily subdued
Together we are strong
We need no one else
Man or friend
Enemies beware

Hair like golden rod
With cloud teeth
She floats around the room
Dancing and sining

With pinewood locks
And deep brownie eyes
I join in

She's my better half
And I hers
I am the calm after her storm
And she is the first ray of light in my morning.

5/20/1994
I'll forget your face--
even those hands I fell in love with.
The soft way they grasped my hips
as your head nestled into my chest.
I always admired how petite those fingers of yours were,
when compared to mine, they were inch worms wiggling between the earth.

6/20/1994
I'll forget our first--
even our first kiss that was always our biggest thing to laugh at.
That little parlor, was our first kiss,  
To find out how it would be with ice cream in our mouths
Little droplets of your favorite ice cream, vanilla cranberry.
Surrounded the bottom part of your upper lip,
slightly puckered, bending over the table towards each other.
I started to laugh before we even touched,
accidentally getting some raspberry on that sundress you love so much
Our lips didn't touch that day, but I still consider that our first kiss

7/20/1994
I'll forget our last--
Even our marriage, I can no longer remember what day it was on.
Although I replay that moment in my mind almost every single day,
trying so hard to keep it stored inside me, that even today I prayed to remember.
Your admiration for Swan Lake was obvious that day;
no wonder you had to dress in a black dress, and brides maids in white

8/20/1994
I'll forget the tiniest and the most important details to our wonderful life--
Even the ones you thought I never could:
we live at, 197 oakwood lane, or is it pinewood road,
we have three children...I love them very much

9/28/1995
I'll forget everything--
Except what I promised to always remember.
Dear, to me every day is our wedding day
It's the only thing I've been able to keep
Thanks for playing along with me,
It's been magical to marry you everyday,
to feel as young as we were back then.

'see you on the other side'
but only if the bible told the
truth and never lied
otherwise
it's sayonara, so long, farewell,
there is no heaven
there is no hell
just the darkness wherein
we'll dwell.

The Chinese have got
to me
by using
Lapsang Souchong
tea,
how dastardly,

but they took me
quite easily
after the
twenty-second
cup.

I’ve said so much
and like every word,
gone as the memory of a baby,
the things I wish to be
are as distant as an old pinewood floor;
The one I walk on no more

You heard what I said,
but you said actions are what people remember
How did I make you feel?
It's not so easy to be memorable,
all I can hope is that the past was real enough;
most times smooth, sometimes rough

When the rain falls
I take the time to count my regrets
Blessings are for other people
I don’t know that I did anything right by them
I can’t seem to shake this feeling,
about what it is my worries are stealing

I don’t think you’re waiting anymore
I know I’m not
That’s the biggest lie I’ve told all day
It’s hard to believe I can live like this,
knowing through an open window, what I’ve seen,
was the rain that once washed our hearts clean

The world outside today seemed to be too much for me
the walls keep closing in, i can’t find the room to breathe
i’m left there alone
hollow eyes and aching bones
i’ve laid dormant from dawn
to dusk but now i see the sun
night is gone, another day done
as i lay locked on the bedroom floor
my shoulder blades press into my thin rug
protruding vertebrae finding wood below
the rain smell hanging from poisoned oaks
gray skies hover
endless cloud cover
all pinning me down
these days all I can do is suffer

but the birds outside my window
in a chorus they say
you don’t have to fear today
But the birds outside my window
they sing me awake
it’s okay, it’s okay it’s okay

the sun, the trees the summer breeze
they nudge me saying please
it’s been three days since you’ve eaten, Louise
you’re nothing but fuzzy brain weak knees
get up, just get some coffee
but I remain paralyzed
glass eyes towards skys learning
pattern of ceiling fan turning
whirring and churning
all the heavy humidity away
but my skin will not evaporate
no matter how much i will it to dissipate
i hate to have my body stay
while my mind starts to disintegrate


but the birds outside my window
in a chorus they say
you don’t have to fear today
But the birds outside my window
they sing me awake
it’s okay, it’s okay it’s okay

light leaks in from the swayingcurtain
the storm is passed, weatherman’s certain
and though the sun cuts the grey asunder
in my mind there still lies thunder
my cobwebbed lungs refuse to work
as the heavy thoughts continue to lurk
but breaking through murky background
i hear sparrows start a symphony sound
and with their rounds and rounds of chords  
their song did rise more and more
and my eyes came into focus  
loosing that notion of hopeless
i started to feel almost human
only songbirds’ tunes to pull me in
closer and closer to some reality
through blinding light i start to see
the pinewood  outside begins to dry
my rusty heart decides to try
I reach my head out the window
with eyes shut, panes clutched
i drink the sun’s glow
with all i have,  my ribs force a heave
and i find that,  finally I can breathe

but the birds outside my window
in a chorus they say
you don’t have to fear today
But the birds outside my window
they sing me awake
it’s okay, it’s okay it’s okay

As I tap my fingers against the pinewood table, the strands of my hair droop in front of my face. My eyes start to become blurry of tears, I see nothing but the smudge writings on my paper. The room is cold, I can see my breath, I feel so empty. I can no longer see the sun above the hills. I wipe my eyes and tie my hair in the messiest ponytail. I grab my bag and stuff the unfinished papers in it. I throw on my black leather boots with the worn out shoestrings. The door swings open, all I see is pine trees lost in the musky dark. The stars lead me on. I take steps after steps, the dry twigs and dead leaves crackle beneath my boots. I try not to make a sound. There's a light wind blowing in the air, it tickles my face. My callow green jacket doesn't keep me warm enough. I walk faster and see an opening. Out I come, I see the empty road. From left to right there's not a single vehicle. I raise my arm and throw out my thumb. There's leftover tears still on my face, my hair still in its ponytail. The wind becomes colder, my scrawny legs in my black tights can't keep up with the coldness. My arm starts to weaken and I begin to cry. My face is even colder. I sit on the jagged ground with my legs crossed, weeping quietly. Suddenly there's a vivid light heading my way, I become blinded by its beauty. The light comes closer to me, it makes a complete stop. I see that it's a vehicle. A cobalt pick up truck. I stand up and wipe the dirt off me. The door opens and welcomes me in. I don't hesitate. I hop in and never look back. I sit back and let a smile crawl on my face, I don't care where I'm going, or who I'm with, as long as I'm away from the pain.

where
does
poetry
dwell
in
a
lilliputian
red log cabin
in
the
pinewood forest

It seems to be so close, yet
nobody has ever touched it because
it is reserved only for one person
in the whole universe
who fails to reach out when
there is no time,
- of course there is, but isn't it easier
to paint a picture where
blame is the invisible colour
and the audience is just
a secondary, talking mirror
with a story about the
fleeting miracle
in an pinewood box, located where
only the bravest can find it, but that is
entirely impossible to execute from a
collapsing castle of hopes
stretched out horizontally to reach the ends
of worlds with diverging objectives, thus
the happily ever after is only reserved for
one person, who is brave enough to
open a treasure.

Life is just some work in the offing
The banging of nails in your new pinewood coffin
The last drizzling drops in a bottle of wine
And the  final knockings on the edge of all time.
For twenty five years you can wallow in pity
Get ****** in the city and think yourself pretty
Walk through the streets like a neat Walter Mitty.
After another twenty five years you start going to seed
You find that you need a hand up the ladder
Nothing is sadder.
But you struggle along trying to right any wrongs
Your reading tastes change along with the style of the songs
That you listen to now
And you know most of the why's you're just not sure of the how.
Then comes the descent
One day you stand tall the next you are crooked and bent
And everyone looks younger
But you've done all of that and you no longer hunger
For the sparkles of youth and you know that's the truth.
Because that's just some work in the offing.

as i walk
through
a pinewood forest
where the
august light
drifted through
my mind
and
be sure of it

Crows have gathered in a brown field
sprinkled with frosted glitter
Sunshine wanes and flickers with
burst of artistic vigor
Woodland song , bluejay gay revelry along pinewood rows  
Water oaks crowned with mistletoe
Christmas Day adorned with the blessings of home* ...

the scent of rain
in the
pinewood forest
that wash
away my
broken
roads

Cool sheets press against her spine
The sluggish fan does little to shift
The thick air smelling of musk and pine
As silver moon rays struggle to get through the rifts

Windows sealed shut as if to retain in the room
The scent of him lingering in old shirts laid bare
His sweat on pillows and his pinewood perfume
Clinging onto the small bed they used to share

Slipping into her self, into memories so gripping
When the sun shined bright even in a storm
Wishing to dive through the photo clippings
Like portals to a past of kisses so sweet and warm

And run into his arms, feel his smile on her neck
Have his arms slickly wraped around her waist
Pushing troubles into the distance till just specks
Freely dancing to the rythym of hearts that raced

Now all that's left are the ashes and dust
Black clothes resting on this haunted floor
The stench of death seeping through the rust
Her begging to just whisper his name once more

She drinks her iced tea with whipped cream
She fell asleep an hour ago;
Laptop open, mug on her desk
Her cups leave little rings on the wood-
She keeps saying she'll paint over them
There's this garden where she always finds butterflies
She has a photo album on her computer,
Calls it her "real-life fairytale"
She says that the twigs in her hair are "artistic" and that the paint on all her clothes adds character
She paid way too much for that shirt that she tore on a branch the first time she wore it,
But still wore it enough to fade the colours and soften the fabric
We went swimming at the lake: She left it at my house and it smells like her-
It smells like pinewood and eraser shavings and hairspray
It smells like the over-sweetened tea that I bring her for class every morning
I'm always late for trig after that, but I don't care
She makes me go for runs on the weekends, even slows down for me sometimes
She sings songs in a minor key every time she cooks
She makes rice almost every night, but she never sits down to eat-
Sets a formal place at the kitchen stove and plays orchestral music
She reads my text messages at one in the morning, almost never replies
But I can imagine her sitting up all alone, quietly humming or tapping her fingers on the mattress
Her hair just makes sense- she likes to braid it over her right shoulder so that it hangs when she leans over somethings

I traverse the dense pinewood by rote
Through wiry entanglements
Crossing red dirt roads
Engaged to no one , respectful to every
briar , berry and stone
Filled with the music of forest rain
Rummaging fauna , damp floor fora
of bird , sweet breath of multitudinous
country flora , roebuck and windswept
question , hardwood umbrella stops along
the way in timely , unshaken order
Content in where I belong
To close the circle for awhile and belong* ...