We walk in dimming worlds of solitude

Sparks blink out, lanterns fade -

You call my name.

Thudding heartbeat

My gaze stolen from the floor

We paint the air with shattered conversation

Wrapped in strands of shimmering lights

A collision of gently burning flames -

30 seconds at the most.

You’ll have a thousand collisions of attention

A million tiny shards of shared smiles

I am the smallest leaf on your flourishing vine of acquaintances

I watch, silent and cold as stone

As you shine bright enough to block out the shadows

My lantern that has guided me has nothing to keep it alive

I walk in my empty world of solitude

Silent and shaking

I will make my own path in this dark winter

& you will learn two people can only collide so many times.

A poem about my dog :)

The God That Sits On My Couch

He looks up at me with those round brown eyes of his,

Asking, what offerings do you have for me today?

I laugh and drop a piece of cheese for him to eat.

He happily accepts the offering.

It’s a small price to pay for this unique camaraderie.

He holds his head high, sitting on cushions

Covered with shed hair.

He knows this is his throne.

Those curiously intelligent eyes watch us,

Hear the laughter and shouts and tears.

We puzzle him, I think -

Not quite equal, not quite worshippers.

What do you mean when you call me “family”?

He carries himself with the regal air of a king

(Except when he is excited).

He was never able to be tamed.

We are strange creatures, ones of element and emotion,

There is so much he still does not understand.

He always seems confused when I dance.

How can sorrow and joy exist so simultaneously?

I have the feeling I will never truly know him,

Finding myself foolishly asking, “who are you really?”

Who is this being before me, in a coat of fur and floppy ears?

He is youthful and ancient at the same time,

As if he is immortal or has lived countless lives before this one.

He gazes as if he has witnessed both birth and death, life and pain.

I scratch his belly and his tail wags furiously.

He looks at me with a tilted head, an endless unspoken question.

You have given me this warm blanket, a full stomach,

And more love than you have to offer.

In turn I will protect you, stay by your side as long as you need.

Top!

If I slipped away

Like a silver strand of smoke,

Sinking in reverse, sucked up by the heavens

I wonder:

Would you seek me out?

Would you fret and ponder,

Even if for a precious few seconds?

Would you wonder whatever became of a good friend?

Or would you not care,

Simply forget; out of sight, out of mind, after all? 

Perhaps I worry my memory won't outlast me,

Or that I too might lose others,

Slinking from my mind until they become a distant whisper,

A half-forgotten 'other,'

Just someone that I used to know. 

I worry we might be as fleeting as unwithered

Sakura-blossoms in the spring. 

And yet I also wonder,

Why existence holds such little clear meaning. 

Swallowed by the Earth herself

Yet fight not, fear not

'Tis the inevitable,

And a sombre fate you may as well embrace.

rain is only nice when you're looking out of a window,

listening the pitter-patter on the roof of the garden shed or watching droplets race each other down the window pane.

it's hard to say "dance in it"

when you're standing in the middle of a thunderstorm.

people are kindest when they're happy

they only say to dance in the rain when the sun is shining 

like edith said to mary--

now you're happy again, you'll be nicer for a while

(it's kind of harsh, but it's kind of true, too)

(i find that the truth is often a harsh thing)

but when you're despairing, desperate,

the entire world is painted in shades of gray, a

shaky daguerrotype.

you don't have the bandwidth to spare a smile for passers-by,

too swallowed up in the black hole of your own heart to spend time

fixing theirs.

when the rain is falling, the last thing you want to do is dance

all you want to do is go back inside and drink tea and read books and wait for the world to look more encouraging

but the truth is,

we have to go back out there

& brave the storm

even if we lost the umbrella and the wind is howling hard enough to shake the shingles from the roof.

because, if we wait for the sun to shine

it'll sink again soon

& we'll find we've missed all our chances to dance, even if our only ballroom is a tear-soaked sky.

snowflakes remind me of soft piano music. 

I'm not sure why, 

snow drifting down to earth is still and silent, 

very much the opposite of fingers dancing across the keys of a piano,

but they firmly accompany each in my mind all the same.  

fingers tapping out a piano melody remind me of the keys on a computer. 

my hands search the keys for the perfect words, 

a musician's hunt for the perfect note.

a computer keyboard reminds of the needle on a sewing machine. 

when you press the pedal on a machine,

the needle bobs up and down, 

constantly moving, 

constantly creating. 

when you type on a computer keyboard, 

the keys bob up and down, 

constantly moving, 

constantly creating. 

sewing machines remind me of the high notes of a flute. 

I'm not sure why, 

sewing machines are clunky and loud, 

very much the opposite of the sweet, airy sound of a flute, 

but they firmly accompany each in my mind all the same. 

We are toxic

For each other

I can't shut up

She can't stand it

I don't want to go

She drags me down under

I can't breathe

She stomps the breath out of me

I claw at her, won't admit I hate her

She's so lonely, but despises that too. 

~~~~~

Actually about the Ocean, in case you're wondering. 

Carefully crafted melodies fall flat

Upon deaf ears,

And soon existing in the same room

Doesn't seem to cut it anymore,

For you choke the air out of my lungs

And replace it with dust and tears.

I wallow in my drifting island, just barely afloat 

You ask me why I'm crying

Can I bring myself to shrug, say I don't know?

I gather up smashed fractals of the past

But you tell me my memories are tainted by my now,

Indeed in agreeing with the truth you make me doubt

Just how true it could possibly be.

And yet day after day you press me for my forgiveness,

All the while telling me to stop being petty and immature.

Why should I forgive you?

I am a shattered existence,

Hardly recognisable from the stitches and repairs

I've forged for myself;

So tell me again, 

Why should I forget what you did?

You haven't changed,

Sure, the stress is gone

And your inner monster has retreated,

Hiding in deep slumber within your rotting core of a heart,

But it is not gone, nor dead, nor a figment of my imagination.

It is real and dangerous and lurking in your constant presence

So I see no point in pretending. 

I, too, long for the soft flowing motion of

Snow in the silence.

Of course, I don't know what that's like,

Bitter ringing bursts

Into being with a lack of loudness for me

And my nerves seem to

Fray and jitter, longing for movement in

The stillness.

I try so hard to swallow inertia into my being

But she is thoroughly rejected

And I am instead crowned with the sour thorns of entropy;

Mind in a constant clamour,

One step, one snap away from losing all mirages ---

Empty whispers in the cold,

Mere illusions of perfect sanity. 

Indeed I have already

Fallen much to far, 

My life a Sisyphian nightmare, 

Hopeless looping dreamscape

From which there is

No escape.

dreaming too much

i think i dream too much

i lose myself in imagined worlds -- my own and other people's -- and sometimes it takes me a while to find my way out again

when i emerge from a book, for a little while i sleepwalk through the real world, my mind entirely

elsewhere,

somewhere made-up or a fictional version of our own world or its future, but not here

once, upon waking from a nightdream that i cannot now remember,

i looked at the sky out my window and thought that it might be nice to live in an imagined world, to stay forever in a dreamt rosebud so as to avoid the thorns of the real world.

i think truth is important,

but sometimes i want to cast that all out the window & live

on magic, on stories, on dreamtime

(sometimes i wonder if that's madness)

(but no, i think everyone has wanted to go to hogwarts, sometime in their lives)

i want to be a writer -

i am a writer, a writer and a reader and a dreamer,

and i love my stories and my words,

to the point where i think i might die without them.

i need my words in order to understand my world, myself -- in order to describe the things i think are beautiful and the things i think are important and the things i think are both or neither

but i can't live off of my stories, off of dreams,

because in the end, they're made out of wishes & ideas & light fragile things that are easily blown away in the capricious wind

& in order to survive in this world of ours,

you need love and stick-to-it-ive-ness

(which are the same ingredients you need for making stories. but you can only get them in the real world)

sometimes i want to spend my life in a dream

because the world hurts

but i don't think you can live without the world

(not without madness, anyhow)

and i don't think you can live without dreams, either

the one helps you survive the other, i think

today i wrote a world and i read a world and i emerged thinking in poetry, and i am so very tired,

but happy, i think.

----

confusing poetry again !! *jazz hands*

this one isn't so much opaque as very conceptual, but here it is anyhow...