Tonight

Sitting around 

waiting,

for the anxiety of the night,

to wane under 

to fatigue.

Pummelled by 

blizzards of traffic, 

noises flying through the night,

carried on,

by load-bearing snowflakes.

Tonight I dreamt of;

hundreds of lady bugs,

Korean skateboards,

and visits from old friends,

I no longer know.

Tonight I strechted into the darkness

and found it filled

with still more things

I don`t fully understand.

Waiting for it to break,

to shatter - black slivers of glass -

in the reflection of the dawn,

A pungent grey hue, 

of an early morning

finally arriving,

just in time 

to send me,

back to bed. 

Unfashionable

Doing battle with,

the building blocks of human nature.

Condemnation,

and feelings of pity

and failure.

And all the lies!

That,

coagulate and breed,

spinning out pieces,

of dirty thread,

that bind into place

the spirit

and the questions it asks.

That cast into a battle,

with itself,

the prodigal one

trying to climb,

despite the greasy web.

But ultimately falls,

back into place.

A place of longing.

Of need without necessity.

Of desire without love.

What is this place?

Where time stands still,

yet races on.

Where you are always just,

one step away,

from having it all.

Chasing down ghosts,

of a seasonable colour.

While bound,

to a sinking ship of envy.

A single blank page.

Two simple words.

Fuck it.




 

The View from Here

Chased by

invisible ghosts

the sounds of the past

hurt 

and pain 

and failure.

love 

and beauty 

and solitude.

simultaneously

because all at once

we are living

and we are dying

and we are calling out for attention

by being alone

waiting for

the twisted hand of fate

to act,

once again.

once again

seeking freedom

once again

asking the question

to know life

to know oneself

lost inside

the sickly sweet,

pink hue

of an evening sky,

rotting,

like forgotten cotton candy floss

melting over the horizon.

it's different

in every place we've been

yet disturbingly the same.

enough to make you loose your mind

on a Wednesday night

just to figure out

what it all means

and where to go

from here.

Happy

I don't have any words edging their way through my lips, 

desperate for the light of day. 

Here, now it is just me 

and my contentment. 

Real contentment. 

Not through wealth

 or status

 or love, 

but all these things,

in the exact measure and type they are supposed to be 

for me right now.

Everything is perfect. In its imperfection. Including me.

No languishing fears, 

no deep psychological disease. 

Just me and the sunshine. 

Passing our time idly. 

Trying everyday,

a little more, 

to eek out progress, 

in one way or another, 

compounding pieces 

in aggregate, 

towards a life of success.

Funny though,

with all this sunlight

how much you can miss the dark.

Dusk Melodies

Dusk.

That grey creeping dusk that settles on the city like dust, 
countless particles of night.

And all these night creatures, 

floating around their concrete fish bowl. 

Gangs of chain-smoking hooligans,
 that paw and cough and troll 

through the parting crowds. 

The dread-headed ring leader, 

the hangers-on 

and that guy,

who 'happened to grow up with them,' 

an allegiance that will flicker and wane over time,

 as they all take,
 to their respective paths.

It's the smell of hamburgers,espresso and diesel.

My city.

My chaotic, self absorbed nation of capitalists, 

opportunists

orphans

 and refugees. 

My demented little planet,

 and the joy of its obscuring nature. 

The music of your vagabonds, 

the promise of your towers. 

To drink in the Promethean pleasure of a Friday night, 

jumping and taxiing and staggering,

with drunken sores for eyes.

I glaze myself upon you.

I cant stop.

The perpetual acquisition of love.

Like little bits of tinsel I hold onto,

to light the trees, 

as the dusk settles in, 

through my sparkly forest.

Darker and darker now.

Down it goes.

Till you're choking on the blackness.

Till you're gasping for air.

While my lungs burn in the encroaching darkness,

I hide in the street light,

because I know

that the darkness brings with it

my deepest vulnerabilities,

and memories

of you. 

The Memory of His Love

I loved that man from the moment I laid eyes on him.

God what a cliché.

But he we was, thick chaos incarnate. He was sloppy, messy, unfashionable passion. He was raw hurt, with a smile on. Though I would spend a long time pretending that my attraction to him was meaningless, a passing incantation of my ability to love anyone, time is the ultimate leveller. It proves truth in remarkable ways. I am still unable to escape the visceral gravity that pulls in my heart towards him. His memory wins me over like Christmas, how long after you stop believing, does the memory of joy and anticipation linger?

It would be easy to write it all away, to create some beautiful allegory about our differences but, despite which aspects of it would be true, what I felt for him was what I had been searching for all of my life and didn't know it. Now watching it disappearing from sight behind me, as this unnavigable ship drifts on, I ache not for the companionship or the support, not for the alleviation of loneliness, or loss of friendship, no, all these things will find me in time; I ache for the discovery another human spirit worth beliving in. I ache for the moments when I believed, in the realness of love.

I have believed, as it becomes easy to believe, that love is a fallacy. That it is the contrivance of greeting card companies and pampered women and disillusioned teenagers. My values have always been cast and recast again upon the echelons of intelligence and privilege and I have believed that that you should never need someones love. That all that matters in this world is to be somebody, to be something, to create and say and do something of a higher and higher merit, depth and understanding. Those are the values to which my life was ascribed. Love, like life after all, was for the taking  because I deserved it. Because I was in some way - particular. This genealogical hypothesis, this innate moral compass of destiny is a burden and a curse; as much as it is a pillar and a touchstone.

And then it happened. 

Wrapped tightly in his strong embrace, sheltered from the cold pattering of ceaseless raindrops, huddled together in our small patch of solitude I found something, something I didn't know I wanted and something I never believed I was meant to have. To be home again, in the fragrance of his movements, the subtle wit of his grin, the grimy taste of his hard days. To be the thing, the one thing in his life that burns so bright and so sweet that he could lick his lips a thousand miles away and still taste it. I knew he was always there, deeply embedded in the fabric of my body, from the nights we spent lying together our minds interwoven in tangled whispers of past lives and future aspirations. But I was stuck, woven into the failure of my anger and mistrust. Stuck in the reassuring fortress of my stubborn defenses. I thought I was dancing around, what I couldn't see was taking me alive. With the melodic sizzle of a pad of butter down a hot pan I slid into his arms, into his life and further and further away from all the hopes and expectations I had covered myself in. All the hard edges of my past, all the whaling cries of 'girl misunderstood' melted away, because I was the girl loved by him. Loved with ferocity and tenderness. Loved until the light shone in the night and the moon and stars lit up the days and I didn't know what was up and what was down and where I stood, all I knew was the deep, calm, levelling force of his presence; and the way his eyes drooped when he was tired and the way his voice sounded when he was happy and the way he tied his boots and rolled his cigarettes. I knew the feel of his last kiss in the morning, his proud heart, his dirty finger nails. I knew every inch of him and the time between each beating pulse. And I knew how much these things frightened and excited me. I wanted to drive myself into the cliff face of his being because he was beautiful and I wanted to be beautiful too. Lovely in the eyes of someone who knows no motive, has nothing to enforce and nothing to prove. Someone whos loves, truely.

I know that in time I will care less and less. As the memories fade and grey, the thought of his eyes staring back at me tear my soul to pieces less and less,  I will convince myself, as we all do, that I have no regrets, that I did the best I could at the time. I will convince myself that it was never meant to be. . .

And I will be wrong.

And if I never find it again, 

I will die with those thoughts in my head,

and the memory

 of his love.

Toothbrush Pen

 I grabbed my toothbrush,

thinking it was a pen.

It's a funny adult thing,

carrying a toothbrush

though everyday life.

While the trees go on,

playing shadow puppets on the ground

and little shadow leaves,

ride bigger shadow branches,

into battle.

And under this cool winter siege,

I remember being young

and thinking about the freedom

of dirty teeth.

The freedom when,

I could run my little tongue all day 

along their grubby veneer,

and nobody cared.

All that freedom.

And no one 

to tell me what to do with it.

Now I am an adult

and I carry my toothbrush,

back and forth,

back and forth,

to a job

that nobody cares

if I show up to.

Down a road

nobody cares,

if I take. 

And on I go,

rubbing my tongue

against the worlds grubby indifference,

and wondering;

 is this what freedom feels like? 

Everywhere to go,

everything to do

and all the knowledge 

of its crushing irrelevancy.

You do and you don't.

It comes and it goes.

Nothing but,

fluttering little morsels of passion

to lead me down

another dead end;

with a toothbrush for a pen.

The Grip of Love

For a girl who,

words always held such power,

 to persuade and convey

to emote and reform.

To know now,

that her words 

are powerless;

powerless to fix anything.

To change,

anything.

Powerless to bridge

this impossible divide 

that grows within us.

How far we've come

to be this far apart.

To be so hopelessly lost,

from each other.

Too many sun bleached promises,

and dry cracked memories.

Too much of the inspiration to travel

to each other,

lost

in endless oppressive days

that pulled us apart.

I, me.

You, you.

Two things,

passing in and out

of the painfully casual,

grip of love.

Close

And as the sound of rain cast over,

the loneliest night,
I had seen in ages,

I wondered;

What were we now,

that the stitches had finally been,
cast off.

Forever sewn between the moments we longed for,

wrapped around 
the indifferent,
 milky,
neck of time.

Around and around and around. 

No more fighting he said.

And I knew it was over.

Because fighting is all there is,

in the war of love.

My fishy gills.

His feathered wings.

And all the space that exists between them.

So much love for one another,

with one eye facing up,

out of the distorting water.

I could have lived,

forever in the moment,

when his laundry soaked my hands,

in the grime

of his hard won days.

Coming clean on the line,

night after night.

And with the rain coming down,

I became less lonely,

remembering the smell 

of skin,

and hair

and blankets. 

Remembering the way

it feels to be loved,

as one loves pure reason.

Sickly.

Powerful.

All encompassing love.

And how close we came,

to having it.

Forward

Amidst these broken towers, these relics of Babylon, a soul lives. I know it through the expressive way it licks the empty remnants these empty eye sockets. The experience of all things as things – and metaphor -congruently hungry, adding sweetness to desire.

Passion is the fruit of absence and abundance.

Freedom is knowing I don't have to protect what is infallible.

Joy and Vision and Empathy.

Running with the spark. Setting fires in the days, extinguishing them in sleep.

Waiting away harm.

Lost inside the beggars pantomime.

Awaiting twilight coolness,

to dim the flame.

I am still here. Whole, complete and unmarred. On foot in, one eye out. Not blind to the gypsy crowd gathering behind me. Navigating new mental territories, still map-less and coming up fine. Lipstick ready on he banks of the Brisbane River.

Better left to let the bleed cover the tracks.

There's no way out but forward.

Around the World with Jami Cakes

I met this beautiful girl in Italy, where she was staying at a hostel I was working at. We connected instantly on our love of food and of solo travel. She spoke Italian and I loved to eat Italian food, it was a match made in heaven. 

It was brief but we have kept in contact ever since, supporting, encouraging and leaning on each other through our respective trials. South America was somewhere we talked about travelling together. Unfortunately I'm not able to just yet, but I hope that you will join me in sharing her fascinating and passionate life through her blog. 

Around the World with Jami Cakes: LA to LIMA AND A SENSE OF FAMILIARITY IN BETWEEN

Attention

All experience is shared, either through experience or knowledge. All human emotions, all human experiences for that matter exist within a range. We can browse experiences but we do not lease their unique DNA for our own. We own the rights to our perspective only.

I wanted so badly to know myself as a unique. A Colorform on a wide and expansive sheath of space, free to stick, un-stick at will. But it seems we are more akin as vassals conducting our lives to pressure, expectation, conditioning, fear and culture; despite my greatest protests.

But what part of me protests?

And what part of me conforms? 

Are they really mutually exclusive?

Or part of a larger anxiety? 

A Push-Me-Pull-You of wanton grief and longing, running between acceptance, greener pastures and the long lonely migratory road between. Chasing that rainbow, despite knowing it has no end and no answer. It is my act of faith, my religiosity, to believe still, despite the evolution infront of me.

No peace in my heavenly doctrine, it is a fallacy of my own making. A fairy tale, that sets me off to dreamland each night and rouses me from its warm embrace, my happy place, between hot sheets, swaddled in the loving embrace of my fabric God; one part sandman, one part Dali Lama.

Where to go from here? Caught in the high clutches of a revealing perspective, somewhat aware of my own stupidity, in yet not quite sure what to replace it with. I don't want to give in. I don't want to give up. I don't want to loose in the game I have created for myself. My try, to walk my colorform ass off the sheet and say something. A grandiose jet fuelled concept, to hot to touch without the gloves delusion on, right hand narcissist, left hand maniac. 

Now let's play with these corrosive ideas. Burning bridges, burning futures, burning potential, fuel for the fire to keep this ego warm. Keep my masses satisfied, all those gathering in the court of my mind, spread the heat, the warmth of my love. Burn this life, for the characters that dance, indefinitely in this grey-space, in step to the bombastic twitches of my firing neurons. Brain chemicals as dry as 19th century water troughs, evidence of last nights party of beggars, criminals and warlords gathering in wait for my moving diatribe.

Attention! Attention all! I am about to say something profound and meaningful. I am about to change your life, to make you happy, to solve your problem with my monumental skills in articulate elocution.

Attention one and all. . .

Listen

Life is not a class in comparative literature. You do not get to write your story and compare and contrast thematic effectiveness with others. 

Stop feeling sorry for yourself because somehow you don't measure up. There are no answers as to who you are, in the lofty longing realms of desire.

Dream not of someone elses body, but feel and experience your own. 

Dream not of a better life, but how you can make this moment everything you need it to be. 

What you need is an intangibility written into the stars, you just have to reach out and grab it. Not in a song, or a book, or a series of photos of someone else life, but deep within yourself. 

There is a voice. 

Listen.

Failure

here's to mistakes.

here's to imperfections.

here's not not caring what they think.

here's to passion,

sloppy, messy, undone, manic, unfinished passion.

here's to misspelled words.

to underachievement.

here's to untidy rooms.

to distraction

and a lack of time management

to missing the details

others seem to obsess upon.

here's to a disorganized mess,

you can still find something in.

here's to colouring outside the lines.

to running a muck,

talking too loud,

and getting excited.

here's to unwashed hair

and clothes in a pile,

on the floor.

here's to inspiration

when it finds you,

in the middle of something 'important'

so important,

you have run off to the toilet,

just to write it down

even though

you know

you'll never use it.

here's to never being happy.

sleeping past the alarm,

fishing for every extra second,

to being late

for everything.

here's to impatience.

getting what you want

without all the trivial steps.

here's to grammar and spelling

and making a big mockery of the whole thing.

because you just couldn't give a fuck

what people think,

when you're trying to describe

the very subtle sound

the fridge door makes

when it suctions itself together

and how all doors

could benefit

from such a sense of completeness.

so fuck them.

fuck it,

if you don't fit.

fuck what you don't understand about them

I can guarantee you've given it more thought,

then what they have

to what they don't understand

about you.

so here's to taking a piss

all over the word potential

not that you can spell it anyway

they can keep perfection

they can keep right

you'll always have the fridge,

and how it feels

to be

alive.

Mick, one of my lovely regulars and fellow philosopher.

Faith in You

I am hearing the same song in two completely different places. One, a cafe in Paris over a year ago, and now here in this small cafe in an Outback town, still drinking skinny cappuccinos and trying to write a book.

Still in love with my life?

Still passionate about travel?

It seems I can't stop asking the questions. I've already gone down into the impermeable fabric of my mind, changed my own reality, saw the world through divine eyes, sat in misery and glory. I've done it all on a whirlwind, by the seat of my pants, alone and inverse to everything I had ever experienced. I've touched lives and been touched. I've crawled, clawed, drank, danced, ran and cycled my way around the world - to this very moment here. The bottom of this cup, it's warm, bitter bubbles settling in my stomach and this hot Australian sun. The buzzing of new creatures in my ears rides along with the incessant doubt, the persistent unending questioning of self and self-hood, value and values, life itself, people and their fallibility.

Stumbling my way through a mid-dessert caravan park, Stand by Your Man echoing from inside the one of the nomadic tin-boxes, lost to the muggy darkness;

Is this art?

Or failure?

Am I after something deeper and bigger? Or running from the bigger things I can't face? Like the implied mediocrity in 'real life', expectations and potential, neither actualized nor obtained. Hidden in the underlying layers of all my academic failures and all my half completed projects was a sense that one day, one day I would come good. All these ideas, feelings of isolation and loneliness, this competitiveness, the ease in which I spin – am I not capable of more than just creating family? Am I not more then the weight of my sheets, tea towels, Sunday BBQ'S and band practice? Worth more then just a job? Colour coordinated file folders, only using pencil, call backs and out-of-office replies? Or are these just the pleas of an outcast kid, with not a lot of guidance, fighting against the wanting sense of normalcy?

I find it difficult to be alright with myself. I find it difficult to not want everyone to love and care about me. I find it difficult to let go, of people, of the past, of things that don't work. I find it difficult not to get depressed easily. I find it difficult to get up in the morning, to stay focused and passionate life; and when I lose that, I loose everything. Because what else do I have, besides my bare-foot road side gypsy dreams? This is me coming good, and I still have to drag my ass every step of the way.

Maybe that's just the way it is. Maybe I'm not alone in that. Maybe the magic of life really is in the reflection, wrapped up in nostalgia and comparison. The best you can do sometimes is to keep exploring, keep learning, approach the newness with compassion, and even when you loose faith in it, try not to loose the faith, the world has in you.