an empty page

An awful lot

Whenever I am out of

this world

I find

that there is silence and

there is shouting,

there are sunstorms and then

there is rain:

as if the need to breathe

outweighs

the inward pull

towards

the lost future:

So I surround myself

with vanilla

yellow,

and wait for the

winter blues.

the eyes blink only

when you are watching

We place land mines

in the corners of the rooms;

the experience is to make us stronger

In this world,

a short distance really is a great deal

And that is to say

an awful lot

And that is to say

too much

To have

To have so much love

to give but

to be unable to give it –

and I don’t mean

there being someone

who can accept

that these unbidden

minimums are

enough;

nor that the memory of

the one great ocean

we should fall upon

as if it were

just another place to lose ourselves –

I mean effortless

love.

We will know when

we are healed.

Everything will be traversable.

And nothing will feel like

too much.

for that long

It should be such a very simple thing

to believe in something

that will reveal you

to this world. But

the sunlight falls as a curtain.

And standing

under something impossibly heavy,

feeling not just able to shoulder it

but to own it too:

That has proved to be

the most achingly accurate way of

coming to know

oneself –

though collapsing under

is equally as valid.

So you are always younger

than you think you are, you see?

And in the context of

the universe

you are always older too.

And so you see

you have not been gone

for that long

Must have

We do what we do

for money

We do what we do because

we must

(most of us).

And people say

love doesn’t exist

and I say

they are probably right

but

that it would

if only there was

anyone who could

make time

for it

and

in offering you my hand

“we must have time

because we have this”

Laughter

If I knew my mind

I would have found a way

of closing it shut,

by now.

I would have perhaps been able

to lower my guns,

perhaps

been able

to wander the paths,

where happiness grows;

but in the wild and

under the weather and

knowing the things that I know,

I have never.

The connections I make

are a web of ways

I’d never choose.

The streets I must take are

all named after

legend

and I’m lost in their world.

So what is it I am after?

There is nothing I could take from here

that would ever compare

to the things I would lose

trying.

There is much

to be afraid of;

and the screaming

sounds like laughter.

Long forgotten

True.

In the sun I knew you better

than I knew anything

else.

But then

there always was

the winter on our horizon –

always those midday nights;

it’s like

we never really had a chance

to lose ourselves

in that garden of runaway colour,

in that season of

highs after lows, and

in those friendships

that now grow

in on themselves,

encumbering us with nothing

but roots.

These days, we only have the world

inside of the world

to explore.

We only have

the blue light to herald

the failing dawn.

We only have our secrets,

our locks,

our windows, our

doors,

and those long forgotten summers

Undersides

I wish it was easy.

Don’t you?

A stone thrown into the wind.

A tree of laddered limbs.

All the branches of the diagram,

all at once ,

in the palm of your hand.

You could make love.

You could

destroy it.

You could fix me,

with your stolen gaze, I could

take your hands and

draw life from them;

and none of this

je ne sais faire.

And I ask you:

why does everything

have to have

its explanation

written in sand?

Where are the

undersides of

the unknown galaxies?

What is this weather?

And why is it raining glass?

I guess the closer the chaos

the nearer to life.

That’s what she would’ve said to me.

That’s why I’ve spent so many nights

staring

far into the distance.

Affirmations

I am alone right now –

and somewhere, the sea is wild;

and the magma beneath my feet

pulses and soothes;

and in relation to such things

I am a child.

And the air moves,

which reminds me

I’m breathing.

And there are stars beyond stars,

beyond the darkening sky.

And in the maelstrom of

my eye

I am dreaming

and I hold you.

And together we lie.

I hold a cup

Faraway from the world,

in a timeless corner,

where my mind finds rest and ruin,

I hold a cup

I wish to drown in,

a cup I wish to hide behind, drinking; and

a cup I wish my wishes

I could pour from.

While over ice the spirit flows, and with

the acuity of someone who sees

all endings, I accept

the state of truce: as

this is not

the future or the past;

I am not a story;

and in the act of solitude, I might forgive

the lie that stands

before me.

It is always both

too late and

too soon

to be walking out

into the fire

of the moment.

And so I breathe

(and so the breathing goes).

And so

the air does fuel

the torment.

In a month

You will be happy in a month.

That’s what you would tell yourself:

(maybe once today has been forgot,

and yesterday, and

the day before –

You need only to live,

hour by hour, until then

and, then … )

You will be happy

But always tomorrow becomes today,

and the next day

the same, and

so on and

so forth,

until

you are here, asking yourself:

how could I lose so much to time?

It’s almost as if

you could never

break free from your dreams,

nor

fall in love

with the mundane, nor

trade your better nightmares for

real life

and always,

you’ve been animated

by

the lightning

of

the ever after,

and always you’ll be waiting

for

the thunder.

Breathe

I used to breathe unconsciously

– when I lived in the world

that forever forgot,

before the messages in

the bottles had left their shores,

and I had learned of the tides

we are all lost

on.

Now, I live in a cage called paradise.

And my hand lifts the world

into my mouth

and my mouth tastes the free air that

I have stolen.

And every breath is

a confession.

Half-mind

We may not have much

to spare

or maybe we’ve hoarded life’s promises,

and lived for them –

by day or by streetlight

– and found out

this is what

the great emptiness feels like;

this is what is waiting,

from the surface to

the deep down,

where all are hurting:

where there are fissures over the arches

and networks hidden

beneath the fabric of lifetimes, and

green flames spill over

the waste pile

to illuminate the ones

whom we have sculpted from light,

in our half-minds.

And I couldn’t be missing you

more

if I tried:

not if you had stolen away

upon a memory;

not if you had been taken from me

along with

my last fragment of imagination.

not if you were the hook

and I was a melody.

Not even if you

were real.

He says

This is not the end, he says.

There is still a fire

on the horizon;

and there is an island

of circuitous paths, which exists,

like an oasis

of lost causes, where we may

live life.

And I will take you there, he says:

past the ravages of those

golden

roadways;

past the pitfalls

and subliminal flashpoints;

past their designs.

And

you will feel it, he says.

When you arrive on the air that

has brought you,

and you have travelled

to that place, without moving.

And it will be

fine.