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.