the memento

I go about my day, leaning where I can, because physically I actually need help. I actually feel weak when I listen to my lonely heart. I have to hold the bench or door frame, shower wall or sink …. I often get swept out to a sea of overwhelmingly hot confusion. I love being able to miss you & glorify our epic ability to actually make this work. I think we rock (hardcore) but I also think we’re effin mad! My physical weakness & mental blackouts at time shock me. How good a parent am I being if my body is kinda slapping me back into realty from time to time? I am driven by love. Keeping love the theme for everything the kids & I explore, the base for what we, as their parents, are trying to achieve. LOVE for each other in this case, that has survived the years & lane changes, adjusted to career moves & interstate stressEs, has reduced itself to a low flame, proving that nothing, full of hard core flames, can last. The slow burn is so industrious & sensual, so real and recognisable. Like a huge menu that demands to be read & spoken of before ordering. We have a buffet of stories & lessons — but nothing, NOTHING is as drenched in learning as this meal on our plate right now. This offering, this choice. This situation we have chosen. Were all the options rinsed out. Were all the plans thought through? Did we truely discuss what pulling the pin on it would do?? Pulling the pin. That’s what my heart wants to do. It wants to run away and hid behind tombstones, waiting to be found in an afternoon game of hide n seek. My heart wants you to turn up at the door with all your things & say ‘that’s it, I’m done! We are starting over!’ My heart wants every weekend to be soberly walking new dirt with you. My heart wants to fall asleep beside you each night, knowing we will stir with the others dream cycle in the early hours. When it rains, my heart wants my hand to find yours. When the moon is halved, my heart asks my words to be those that invite you outside to view the drenching perspective.
Right now my heart wants to give up being brave & just wants to wave a little white flag … no one else has to see, just you. To know deep down that no matter how big our plans are – without you by my side they feel so small and futile.
Without you, no story, no journey, no meal, no drive, no clean sheets or fresh paste mouth ever really matters. It’s just another thing I do without you.
Without you, I can’t live.

Aching heart

Longing arms

Lonely lips

Patient love

REM come

Maybe today I can 
ingest something 
& let it digest 
Instead of fingers 
forcing it out 

Eyes watered 
Hands soapy 
Heart frail 

Maybe today I can 
get through the hours 
without diazepam   
softening all sharp 
& callus edges 

Body languid 
tongue tied 
mind blank 

Remembered childhood 
like the wooden floor 
scratched by the dogs
never clean 
never not unseen 

saturated days
endless skies
minus religion 


Suicide stole her answers 
as if they needed 
a home to haunt 
screaming & banging 
forcing wake into eyes so tired 

you’re where
Sleep drifts 
REM come 

Dreams bring her to my street 
wandering to the edge 
of Redcliffe beaches 
in plastic shoes 
& Fluro earnings 

Laughing nights 
Filmclip mornings 
Jaffle lunches 

Sister you felt like 
the future 
stretching before me 
learning everything 
yet nothing I should tell 

makeup sessions 
boyfriend sneaking 
car stealing 

When ‘the Indian’ passed 
we never spoke 
of morphine 
or your fear of seeing 
her dead 

sick lips 
mediation tapes 
support groups 

How ugly I felt 
at your funeral 
no advice from you 
like I had at hers 
all alone 

Little sister 
no longer 
eldest gone 

Grief slalomed into today 
as if I’d invited the team 
unprepared 
I fell to the floor 
unclean, so seen 

screaming fear 
bleeding memories 
holding heart 

maybe today 
I can get through 
without stealing anything 
from those untouched 
by the ugly truth 

life strikes 
death waits
love’s everything 

The cold nape

No one else’s arms

are welcome

around this waist

No one else’s hand

is wanted across the nape of this neck

No one else’s eyes

are invited within my intimacies

You are the within

The one I want around

The one I brought

across the bridge to me

The one I tested in many a sea

of confusion hurts and difficulty.

You are the one I want around

you joined me in truth

during these years of uncertainty

My heart is ever long

stretching to yours

My lips are holding my breath

as I wait for you

My arms ache of a night

from holding everything but you.

Cups

Don’t even remember the way

Your tongue tasted

Or the hot throb I wasted

What about the feeling of being chased

Or cheated on

Don’t even remember the way

My heart kept asking me to stay

Home

Come home

To my practice

the secret I witness

Don’t even remember why I was so easily distracted

What about the months

Of not even one conversation

During our imaginary degustation

The way we never did anything

With words

The way we never used eye contact

Don’t even remember why

To be heard

It was so easy to be hurt

So easy to be ashamed

So easy to be the blamed

So easy to not blurt

Don’t even remember why

It was so hard to see myself

So hard to be myself

So hard to free myself

So hard to decorate my own shelf

Don’t even remember why I hated everything you did

Every time you got stoned

Every time your truth was hid

Every time you never phoned

Don’t even remember if I was right

Or if you put up a fight

When I was the evil witch

Finding that you’d try to stitch

Our life’s story in a drunken pitch

Don’t even remember

Our futures huge frame

or why we never spoke of caves again

Why the world sped up

Or we emptied our cup

The canvas on my balcony

Oh careful heart that rumbles

Like a belly once forgot

Are you cut like a vein

Bleeding out across the floor?

Or broke like a bone dropped from a branch?

Many a thing you seem to mirror

If it is only to beat a drum in perfect time

Over to over and over again

Why is it that you ache

like a cold winters night for the sun to kiss across the horizon?

Shall it be that I never know the sweep of wings that make you flutter?

Will I ever be sure that my own song is pretty enough to sing?

And if you stop pumping

Reliable yet not reluctant

Then will I feel you outside these chambered walls?

Drawing me in with your power your precision

Will I dismantle each rib and build a ladder

to reach into the dreams

we whispered to each other of a night?

Will we then be capable of verse

To share the lonely afternoon
Spread our arms around each other’s past.

Careful heart

Cut you out I won’t

Oh careful heart
Like a belly
like a vein
A bone

A mirror

A drum and the poets canvas

You are safe with your crown
There within my balconies.

Love is Increasing

Love is increasing

Love is remembering.

Love changes.

It changes its course, 

its skin,

Its country,

its flavour, 

its reasons, 

it changes its needs. 

Love changes its language. 

The one thing love can’t do, 

Is forget.

Love remembers. 

It never forgets 

The completely unexplainable

It shows the best bits 

like a video on repeat. 

Love gives & gives.

 Even if the gifts are long gone. 

Love changes our worlds. 

When we know

 how to grow 

love inside ourselves, 

the compost of all the love gatherings, 

love throw – aways,

Love hurts, love trash, love -errrs, 

love lessons & love lightnings

When we know

 how to grow 

love inside ourselves, 

the rich diggings that nourish

 a never ending reap

for our love filled life.

Infinite beliefs

I wish the universe could understand

That even though we aren’t all asking

We are all indeed in need of being heard

Can there just be the shitty shift from fear into the brightest of love between us all in a blink of an eye?

For those still stuck in greed & game playing

For those still hurting the sentient sharers of this earth.

For those engaged in battles with the core of this planet, for those controlling the weather stations and the SpaceForce … for anyone trying to bleed on the outside of this internally destructive time

For those losing their sacred ground – universe can we please speed this up?

To a silent day when the shrill call of the wild hums in our hearts and we feel the soaking under our skin of the crystal rains while our toes dance in the ancient dirt while listening in on conversations between trees and mycelium love affairs.

Let our arms reach for each other and hold on

through the darkest of nights

as the wise cultures slowly share their fire stories

with the faces of those

losing power

& their ability to tweet toward a new download.

Let our faces be silent as we learn to respond to the skies.

to rewild our soils, our souls and sanctuaries.

Let us be more like you

Universe.

More awe filled in the flicker of time.

More infinite in our design than we have ever before believed.

Might be too late

When the disclaimer asks
if you’re affected
Do you need guidance
Have you ever considered?
Call this number
Contact someone who cares.
Let me disclaim
That since I learned step truths
About being the shunned
About being the judged
I claimed myself back.
I stepped into new truths
Found I was being a child
Longing for her father
His approval
His pride
His joy
Not his wife’s conversations
Not his step daughters love
Longing
For something real to start
When all the steps fell apart
Trauma we went through together
Understanding will never come
Why
pretend it never happened.
Why
Talk of other peoples lives
Never our own.
This sacrifice of heart
To look like you have it all together
Why
Pretend it’s all ok
Water beneath a bridge
I know I’m meant to see
See it all go
Watery dancing fluid
I stand there – rigid
often
& breath
Like an adult
I wait
Like an adult
Waiting for
Jumper leads
start
Me
up
So I won’t be late
Like an adult with it all together
Will there be holly water
At your funeral
Will you be glad
To not invite us
to your very own wake
For the steps to come full circle
To lead us all back to that
Broken moment
Her funeral
Your daughter
Hung
Dead
and
Gone

I am affected
I do need guidance
I use to consider Suicide
I used to vomit instead
I used to obliterate myself
I used to avoid realty
With everything outside my head
your daughter long gone
Do you wish it were me instead
me that looks like my mother
Do you wish I didn’t act like her
Her that crushed your heart
Because you didn’t know how to love her.
Scold her all you like
Scathe her still when old hurts alight
I am here
I am your daughter too.
I am an adult
I am that 4yo still
You should have got to know me.
I came back from London
To your wife that hated me
I wanted to be seen by you
Instead each wrong doing was notched
Each tough time judged
You were judged by them all too.
You still are.
Because of me
Because of Your son
The one you don’t know how to be proud of
The one you let grown men belittle
The one you guided with loveless arms
I wonder if we will be late
To your funeral
I wonder why the Christians
Can’t forgive
I wonder now
As an adult
I wonder why they pretend that Suicide is just a call away from forgiveness
Someone should call
Because we might be late

Spider

Out there with the dark

The twinkle glitters of

love

along the web

Our families sticky,

spidery web

Holding us all together

As each of us swing in the breeze

Drops of dew

dance mysteries

Weaving intricacies

like snow flakes

Darkness comes too soon

Light feels

Can’t you see

It’s everywhere?

I see you

You feel it from me

Like a hand in the hall

Long & dark

Tickling the back of your neck

Quickening your steps

My hand brings the light

A warm hold to bring you in

Lessening the tap

Tap

Tap

Of fear

Fears from dark

From loneliness & hurt

Darkness gifts you light awaiting

Look to the edge of our web

You’ll see light

On the horizon

Reaching out for you.

It Rips

LOVE

It takes everything you ever owned

It rummages through every thought you have

It races across your heart

Stampedes into your routine

Lifts you higher than you can see

Dances into all the loneliest places

Colours the walls of your heart

With thick and gooey feels

It gives and gives and gives

And reminds you that there is nothing but honesty in those words dripping into pillows

Everything that scares you now pulls you from the seat

Throws you into the ring and shoots at your feet

You’ll dance and dance until the circus empties

You’ll call and cry into the stars

And wonder why you never saw it coming

The burn that strips away your essence

The fear that mounts in the throat

You can’t swallow it away

You can’t wash it down

It sticks

It rips

It repeats all the fuck ups you wished could be wiped

There will be tears that never end

There will be questions never answered

There will be armies of friends to you hold up

There will be all the sunny days of your beautiful soul

Dancing all on its own

Perfect & stunning

Strong & proud

Gifting you the power greater than before

Then

Like a warm Spring breeze

It

Something

will come

showing you it’s time to try again

And you will

You will forget what you own

You will let

butterfly’s dance across the delicate sand of your heart

The ripples of their wings

making your stomach empty

and eyes crave.

Longing

Relentless longing

For the lover to return