Growing

And that is how 

the people that you know, 

become words upon a page, 

and all those summer days, 

drift away. 

Breathing in and breathing out.

The Act of Being Human

I must have known at some point that all this inward journeying, all this abstract introspection, would have to lead me back here, to the pampered confines of my middle-class existence, ravishing and admonishing the treat of normalcy and routine from which I feed life back into my exhaustion. Even now I’m not sure it will ever be enough to return the vitality once had, the energy and optimism of youth, that immense sense of possibility born from the inner labyrinth of ignorance.

Playfulness is no longer an act, but a secret memory.

Yet I hold out hope that maybe the night will revel itself to be young again and the dawn will wink its shimmery eye at me from that distant horizon and speak its promises. In these hollow empty streets, lit up from the inside by dozens of neon razors, I might find myself welcome once again, find an autumn air which is not yet ice inside my nostrils and breathe it with zealously and compassion. Rediscover that old familiar sound, the crunch of grit in the heart of the city, a city with no bounds, no confines, only roadblocks of ambition and bravado. Nights alight in the cold stone whitewash of the moon. Edinburgh, London, Paris, Rome, Madrid, Dubai, Sydney, Tokyo; once the siren songs of the twisted mind of an adolescent girl in conflict with the sanctum of her windowless soul. A girl dared to tread a million miles, through a million hills and down again to find out the meaning of it all. There is no amount of gold or riches, love or power in the world which rivals the need for a journey written into the heart of a child. A child who fighting for the will to speak in for a world which turns inside her in all the emotional hues of the greatest symphony. It was a desire to see greatness in grit, joy in fear, and the meaning in struggle. To bear witness to the god that sighed oceans of tepid coloured rain clouds into her mind. To understand the perfection of the imperfections that weave the web of serendipity. Which is to say, it was to know oneself. To feed on the caress of your own past and  spit the ashes of old selves into the fiery eye of the setting sun. 

To believe once again that you can and should live, boldly, unashamedly and  for the sheer inexcusable pleasure of it. 

Simply because,

that is what we do.

             

Smoke Signals

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He rocked side to side with a cavernous grin. Red wine lips, stained teeth with the gaps in-between, sliding his words like refuse from a cutting board pulling them down down piece by piece to land in a nonsensical pile. I sat glazed and numb at the endless stream of passion and misery–like a vacillating rubber ball bouncing between complete insanity and borderline genius.  It seemed in so many ways that my days had never been so empty. Devoid of any real meaning they spun away, one by one, into the past behind me, never to be seen or thought of again. A strange type of limbo had rolled in on me like a storm from the sea and cast my days in a haze of putrescence and mendacity. He pulled me in close like a deranged boa constrictor and I held his broken fingers and strong arms like a baby, sick with lacking, sick with fear, sick with a pervasive neediness that coursed from vein to vein. Rock me gently, rock me slowly broken man.

I was a series of incomplete satires of a functional human being. I remember all those humid sleepless nights, caught inside a thought, spinning my way from room to room. Tea, or hot coffee, and a sunrise, a brisk jog and a faltering start towards adulthood. Perpetually manic and hungry. It’s hard to comprehend just how something so meaningful and driven could collide with such emptiness and drift. It was almost unbelievable. To the point where I half expected some wild boar of inspiration to come charging through the front door and drive me onwards to some great destiny. Instead I just waited, chasing the clouds away with respiration. This is how you get caught inside the demented worlds of deranged men and wayward children’s fantasies. The emptiness sets you free, but it also makes you directionless and malleable. Free to wander in and wander out of anywhere, to decide without hesitation to become a ghost on the lips of any other outsider. That is what travelling is mostly. Removing the endless tourism and any connection to your previous self to dine on the nothingness every night; be it a quiet peace or deafening silence.

He used to beat me senseless with his words. They flew like big fat globular punches to the face–right, left, right left–again and again until I would submit to the silence within me, submit to calm his angry tirades of stupidity and narcissism.  This man was like a twist tie I found locked around my shoe. On and on he would go, up and down each street, scraping the pavement like an irritating whistle. I felt insane. I felt like I was slowly being rendered, cooking inside myself. I would kick and scream the monkey beside me trying to scrap the shoe against barbedwire. He would only stick harder. And I would only scream louder. And bottles would fly and punches would land. And then it was all spit and spanking and heaving myself into a submissive ball of bones and flesh and indifference. We would hold each other, but only to make the spinning stop. And his eyes would glaze, and his mouth would gape in a tonsil-bearing laugh. And sometimes I would laugh too and wonder in a part of me what exactly we were laughing at. Perhaps it was just some of the absurdity escaping. Little giggles like bits of dust from the unused doily on the side table at grandmas house where she sometimes put candy before she died. But I could never forget the disappointment of that white crocheted circle when it was empty; because it was either Worthers Originals and a place to hide, or Wheel of Fortune on the puke green couch that smelled like Epsom salts and old newspapers.

Adventure

You have no idea what I've seen.

The icy winds,

the thundering waves.

You have no idea the places i've been.

To have been free,

on the wings of adventure.

Even in You

My loving of you

does not make me weak.

My loving you,

despite your withheld love for me

does not make me foolish.

My loving of you,

despite your lack of respect,

and your deep ignorance,

of just how profound and amazing

my love really is,

even this,

does not make me stupid.

In fact,

it makes me incredible.

That I could find something to love

still,

even in you.

Assumptions

I have to be practical.
I have to be clean.
I have to be efficient.
I have to be on time.
I have to be rational.
I have to be measurable.
I have to work hard.
I have to apply myself.
I have to achieve.
I have to succeed.
I have to excel.
I have to contain.
I have to explain.
I have to be smart.
I have to be thin
I have to be pretty
I have to be loving
I have to be kind
I have to be a good person
I have to go to yoga
I have to medicate
I have to have a family
I have to have a dog
I have to love my parents
I have to have a mentor
I have to travel
I have to do thing better than you
I have to compete
I have to get good marks
I have to provide for myself
I have to save trees
I have to recycle
I have to have an opinion on politics
I have to vote
I have to get in line
I have to stand in line
I have to pay my dues
I have to struggle
I have to be grateful
I have to love myself
I have to feel great
I have to have fun
I have to be fun
I have to get up
I have to be a morning person
I have to eat healthy
I have to be strong
I have to have friends
I have to have a partner
I have to be loved
I have to be social
I have to know culture
I have to be witty
I have to be cute
I have to smile
I have to wash my face
I have to brush my teeth
I have to read
I have to write
I have to play an instrument
I have to plant a garden
I have to clean my house
I have to rise to the top
I have to know geography
I have to learn new languages
I have to say something useful
I have to help you
I have to examine my life
I have to spell properly
I have to do math
I have to hear my heart song
I have to be loved by attractive people
I have to be loved by smart people
I have to hate the wrong things
I have to love the right things
I have to nap
I have to get 8 hours
I have to push through
I have to go to bed earlier
I have to get up on time
I have to do it anyway
I have to put my nose to the grindstone
I have to pay attention
I have to play the game

I have to
be authentic. 

I am a series of ongoing, incomplete assumptions.

Aurore

Pierced,
by warming dew,
the dripping leaves
fall,
like the tears of trees.

Echoes of a lonely night,
lost rays,
of dead sunshine,
nothing left but steam,
and cold water
to trickle down gutters,
along with,
the debris and hubris,
drunks,
and disease. 

A diesel engine roars,
and nighttime flickers,
casting an auburn stare,
of panoramic golds,
an inspiring obligation,
for a few old bones,
who quiver and ache,
from the bitter taste,
of daylight.

Oh the the moment,
between night and day,
to be up in the rising swell,
witness to the turbulent parade
mixing our before and afters,
on a timeless interstate. 

Of all the things there are to see,
this is the one,
that will always be precious to me.