the accidental tourist

i am guessing your phone was in your pocket when you called me now.

it took me a moment to realise you weren't going to speak to me, that you didn't know i was there.

you were instead in the middle of teaching a class, or playing a game, i can't be certain which.

but i could hear screaming kids and your voice sounded gruff like you were in character. perhaps you were a troll or a monster.

i wasn't on the line long.

but loved hearing this fragment of you unaware.
i'd never otherwise have been able to be there.

Stung

I found you dead
in the middle of the road
and I risked my own life
to try and save yours,
move you to safety
to die in peace,
in one piece.

I didn't stay to watch,
I didn't feel brave enough.
We never do.
Not even the toughest ones do.

I felt stung by you.

By Heart

I took
deep long breaths of you
before I opened you up,
as though you were something delicious
and I wasn't hungry
enough to devour you.
I could feel your weight
in my hands as I held you,
your perfect folds willing,
you opened up
to me and me to you-
my sweet love letter
in an envelope
marked by hand.

A Farther Father

My boyfriend's father is dying
and I hate myself when I comfort him,
hate the sound of my voice,
hate that I am in the room. I want
to remove myself entirely from this position-
from here I cannot help
either of them.

My boyfriend's father is dying
and I relate to him
in all the wrong ways:
a childhood rabbit being eaten by a fox,
the days I kept vigil by the phone
waiting for news of my sister giving birth,
a grandmother hitting her head on the slope
and never waking up—

back then my own father made the call
and woke me up from an intense dream I was
having in a different time zone, and so for days
I thought the terrible news imagined.

(Whenever my thoughts become critical
of my father, I think about this phone call
and how difficult it must have been
for him to make.)

My boyfriend's father is dying
and for months I wanted the news
to be better. When his father was well
there would be an outing
planned for him and me
to meet, and so I waited for the call
to hear of a recovery, of more
energy, and an upward turn I thought
was on the cards. The call
to pretty myself, and spend
too much time only wanting
to make my boyfriend proud.

A good impression would be great.

My boyfriend's father is dying
and my boyfriend is too brave,
too strong, you would never detect anything
was wrong, so kind you'd think
he needed nothing
more from life than what he has.

At night his dreams are black
I wipe his brow
I rub his back
I kiss his neck
I wipe his brow
His dreams are black.

My boyfriend's father is dying
and I do these tiny things
because I can't bring him back.

All I Never Found

I was wrong
when all those nights
I lay hours with my eyes
too well adjusted
to the darkened room
thinking of myself
as impatient. Thinking

it is true that I am anxious
to find all I have never found –
but happiest yet I am
in the dream and design
of the moments before I do. Eventually

inside I am, I am
inside these enactments I hum
silently like a prayer
I am in no hurry to realise
I will answer on my own. Eventually

In the morning
I am not the same
I like to think
I am, but I am not.

my friend jennie

featured in my dream last night. she was teaching me to sew a skirt for an anonymous child we were both fond of.

even though we were holding separate measures of material, we were working to fashion a single skirt for a small girl soon to receive it.

i was sitting next to her on the lumpy couch so i could watch and copy her skill as her hands moved deftly as they did.

i looked on at her, as she looked down at her hands weaving thread, stopping at times to show me how they lay loose and limber, yet always in control.

several times i attempted her ease, and pricked my fingers with the point of the needle beneath the cloth. i didn't show or tell her i had, because i didn't want her to see me fail, nor did i want her to think of herself as anything but a wonderful teacher.

we spent an entire afternoon happy this way.

and when i woke i checked my fingers for bruising and found only this dream in their clutches.

In this memory

In this memory I have blood in my nails and when I bring my fingertips to my mouth they taste like somebody else's.

In this memory I am not ready. Not oven ready like the laws of science that dictate the knife will come out clean.

In this memory I am fumbling through a bag. Perhaps my own. I feel the cool sharp of a set of keys, the stabbing point of a pen, I feel the bilious cushion of a receipt-bloated wallet, I feel sunglasses a notebook and some loose change.

In the next memory the light appears soft like forgiveness, the kind you offer yourself before anyone else. My hands feel down the wall in front me as though I am wiping them clean but when my hands come away nothing is left there to mark the wall. But my palms now sport visible scratches and the bumpy skin mirrors the landscape of the wall, patterned like my legs with fishnet stockings recently removed.

In this memory I am scratching a pock-red bite on my upper leg, it feels wonderful and the more I claw at it, the more satisfaction I feel. In this scene I try and stop myself before I break through skin, but I have not enough will to withstand the immense pleasure, and I bleed.

And so i return.

In this memory I have blood in my nails and when I bring my fingertips to my mouth they taste like somebody else's.

the rule of belief

"keeping your fingers crossed makes it difficult to hold a pen, but i must say, it's worth it." lorrie moore

i was born cursed with a belief in everything.

except for the giddy of new love. i don't trust that, even if at times i believe in it.

a person in love gives too much.

away.

never trust a person who says everything with a smile.

you say my belief is openness you can see in my posture.

you say you can tell it's me before you can see it is me.

coming.

behind closed doors i lose the right way up and find myself clinging to the roof like a fast-food pickle.

my posture belies my belief in the lie down.

my posture belies my belief in the get go.

and the let go.

my best-friend at uni said my curse was to destroy my food with too much salt.

i believed her.

but then she had a boyfriend for three years who lacked a libido. she could count the number of times she had sex during her under-graduate years.

with her boyfriend that is, there were times when she sought "fulfillment" elsewhere.

never become your boyfriend's sister.

even though i believe that, i didn't tell her.

and now my beliefs are under threat.

i hope.

there are times i hope so much it makes me squint like it's sour.

or makes me straddle both sides of everything.

and even though i know all i can know from the life i have chosen, and the one i have been honest enough with myself to have believed down the viewfinder of what was best, or best-fitting, or best meant, i still try and surprise myself - arrive home late and enter via the side gate to see what else i might be doing.

belief is a one-eyed man who will challenge and eventually stare you down.

Mine on My Mind

The book I am writing is on hold.

I love telling you that.

I love telling you the things I would otherwise never share with anyone.

The things you know if you are close to me.

You need to be close to me to know these things.

Sometimes I think these things aloud and you have to be close enough to hear them.

And sometimes these things are whimsical and won't be true as soon as they are spoken. They will not be no longer true because they are spoken, but because there are truer things to follow.

Truth is relative rug or blanket, depending on how desperately cold you are and how you plan to position yourself to sit or to sleep.

I am writing my book again.

I even love telling you that.

Close is too close and can terrify me when I sleep.

Close is not close enough and doesn't hear me breathe between scenes.

Close is you on my mind endlessly and perfectly interrupting me when i

let the decisions decide

i don't know what to say.

i don't much like being interviewed.

words feel remote and impenetrable like pain.

sentences sound overly rehearsed.

i say my own name as though it is something i am only now learning how to pronounce properly.

i am grateful i am not being asked to write it down.

ymlei, milye, elimy.

i feel on the outside of everything, and everything feels on the outside of that.

even the details i usually keep closely guarded on the inside are suddenly a flimsy non-protective sheath i want to shed like a reptile on the run.

like a rodent on the run.

a scared mouse. the blind kind.

see

how

i

run

i hear myself speaking and i feel like i do when i'm walking home at night afraid, watching myself from the outside being afraid to walk home.

i'm enacting a reenactment of the event as it happens.

and as it happens, it happens.

Out of one eye

Tonight I watch the entire movie out of one eye.

My head rests on your chest and I am too comfortable to move for an unimpeded view. When you take a deeper breath your chest blocks half the screen, and for those moments I have only the corner and the soundtrack to go by, and even then the audio is distorted by your sometimes heavier breath and racetrack heart pounding round it's steady course.

Your body is a marvel, and I feel jealous of how perfectly that word fits your curvature.

I want to be this perfect for you.

Your limbs were designed to fit neatly into their tidy joints and to get in the way in precisely THIS way. Fashioned to lie lumpy while lying perfectly flat, so your girlfriend can rest her cheek to your chest as you, propped up on her princess pillows, have the perfect view and aim to kiss her pretty head by.

How could the watching of a movie be more perfect? I am hoping for a double feature.

killed by kindness

if i don't start again you won't know i started this then.

started this before, started this at all.

coupled with my curious fascination with the unenviable, i have a penchant for the unknowable.

it looks like this:

a reputation for drama & how many is too many?

i am tucked into bed with a book the right way up in my hands, and a hard day under my mattress.

it looks like this:

meandbooktherightwayupinmyhandsonthemattress.
niggling.

you call me on your way over and this is how the conversation never unfolds:

"i cried today, today i cried. sent myself home so i could cry alone."

"you cried alone?"

"on my way home."

"oh baby cakes you cried alone."

"mistakes i hate. i hate mistakes. i really hate the mistakes i have to make."

in my dreams there is another car door just beyond the car door i swerve to avoid.

in my dreams i drive the car and ride the bike.

in my dreams i am grounded and airborne.

but when i'm awake i make mistakes i have to make.

you ring me on your way over and this is how the conversation unfolds:

"is that you babe, are you on your way?"

"yes my love, i'll come right up."

"just in time, tonight you are mine."

tomorrow we belong to the morning that will not let us sleep.

paris for the weekend

i am deep in thought.

i am looking through a virtual photo-album i feel obliged to peruse after being sent the link by a friend i have been tardy in my correspondence with.

famous landmarks and picnics and pretty places i have been to, but don't remember being anything like this.

the phone rings.

i am ssstartled to the p-p-point of spillinging my w..w..ords in a stutteryry nervous mmemess the stranger on the other end may think is my nature.

today it is.

i manage to answer the query. i hang up the phone and return to the smiley pictures making me trip up on the inside.

the faces express nothing.

this contact removes me. no, no i must still be confused. this contact makes me feel removed. remote.

yes.

these photos sent to my address, jammed in among a wad of others, makes me strange.

argh, makes me strange? no ... er ... think ... think ... what is it?

i am more remote and removed from my friend than i was before i clicked to be redirected.


dear jimmy, you look so well. fighting fit.

and amy? happy on your arm.

europe in the fall is nothing like i remember. still.

still, these aren't my pictures.


save as draft. save as draft.

this contact is a fake flower i understand for its sentiment, but gives me nothing more than a chill, a scary clown.

we are stranger strangers.

Try this at home

Tell him you work full time, and have a full time job, and that you love both equally.

Tell him you don't read junk mail but can't bring yourself to put a sign up on your door above the slot for letters saying so. Explain that you like to hear the catalogues and direct marketing delivered because they offer the illusion of mail.

Tell him that's also why the arrival of bills doesn't upset you.

Tell him your earliest memory is of a smell and not an event. Screw your nose as you recall a sandy dry weed beach smell you've not smelt since.

Tell him these small things first like you are laying down cushions to break his fall for later when the heavy stuff lands.

Remember his favourite words and hear them ring like tiny nursery rhyme bells when they are spoken in every day conversation.

Get caught smiling by your boss when he says one of them in a serious meeting.

Lie awake for hours after he falls asleep and type stories and thoughts into your phone so as not to disturb him with the bedroom light on.

When he reads to you make inaudible purring noises and think about licking the backs of your wrists to your cheeks and brow.

Make secret mental notes that you can't help but tell him with fresh-out-of the-oven excitement.

Give him the best bits you've saved especially for him and then let him give them back to you when he insists.

Carry on like you are not fussed to see him and then pounce on him as soon as you are alone together.

Tell him you'd do anything for him and surprise yourself with the words as they arrive.

Memorise his perfect and imperfect skin in the dark and daylight so you can conjure his memory when you are not with him.

Become embarrassed (or pretend to be) when he catches you touching yourself in the dark when you think he is asleep.

Try not to be jealous when he remembers entire conversations you can only recall parts of. Then be glad to have the whole memories restored for later visitation.

Twirl his name around your tongue like bubble gum and blow bubbles with the vowel sounds that punctuate his full name until they burst.

Straddle your legs on either side of him and wonder if anything has ever felt this good under you.

Buy him things he loves because when you try to walk past them you can't and have to go back.

Imagine the artistic representation (animated) of the imminent moment when your feelings for him outgrow your tiny frame.

Constantly update your files with his newest facial expressions and the noises you've never heard him make before.

Feel like the time without him is light and heady, especially when you get to talk about him with no particular relevant context.

Get up and wander down the hall to the kitchen several times in the night to enjoy the feeling of finding him in your bed when you return to your room.

Get dressed up and fidget.

Stand before him and look down at your feet pointing at his.

Feel momentarily self-conscious and forget what your hands are supposed to do when they are not holding something.

Touch the flat of your palm on his shirted chest before you look up and into his eyes to tell him you love him. Because you do.

up in the air

when i wrote this to you i forgot to say how beautiful Sydney looked as we landed.

how the promise of an unfamiliar urban sprawl was even more welcome as we came in off the ocean to land.

Sydney is constantly breathtaking.

but has no you.

i forgot to tell you that too.

forced to fall (emily's word)

emily says the pain is worse today.

she says that's the thing about pain. she can rate it on scale from one to whatever you'd like her to - say five or ten or even a hundred if that's the scope you're used to - and she can tell you that it hurts real bad (like lost love or love that she never quite managed to get a proper hold of), even if there are only superficial scrapes and bruises to see, but you'll just have to take her word for it.

her pain will always be her pain.

her threshold may be higher or lower than yours, or than others' who are in it or experiencing it or nursing theirs or having theirs tended to, she might be downplaying or overstating, and she supposes hers could be entirely imagined.

imagine that.

emily has to type differently today, has to get dressed with greater care, and is nervous to get back on her bike despite doing so minutes after she came off yesterday. she swerved to escape colliding with an opening car door.

emily had her faith falter and restored in the time it took to be forced to fall and then beautifully cared for. the best part of all.

you'll just have to trust her on that one.

a perfect picnic

it was busy on the father's day roads and i chose not to drive for that reason. instead i lay on the back seat watching the sky move further away. upside-down till i was dizzy and sick.

an orphans fathers day picnic with my friends whose folks live overseas - or over strait. the weather behaved, and i read poetry and dozed as the frisbee was thrown overhead. it made me think.

perhaps that day i meant to tell you otherwise. over breakfast i meant to say something else. at Ray that morning i wanted to tell you that it isn't my flaws that make me, but instead that everything i get wrong makes it more my own.

happy fathers day, labor day, spring is finally in the air...

eau (building bridges of her own)

my lucky number

when the train arrives i 'm the first to get on.

according to schedule the train will wait at the station for thirteen minutes after it pulls in, but i want the first pick of the seats - more than likely it will be driver's side, one by the window in the second compartment - and i'm the first to get on to make sure i secure it.

i read in a novel that this carriage is less likely to come to harm in the event of an accident, and whether this is in any way based on fact is incidental at this time, the only information worthy of note here is that this thought offers me a sense of calm, even if only with a placebo-like effect.

i grew up in a large family. large by today's standards. back then we were a family on the block like any other. i could illustrate what being a bloke with four brothers and one sister meant using any one of dozens of stories that would flavour that time with comedy and a touch of greed, but the truth is, it means nothing now. i grew up in a big family and so know what it means to make a play for what i want. i have not since ever been prepared to fill my plate with leftover cuts.

or a seat in a second-class carriage.

and i'm used to this stretch. i know exactly where to stand on the platform so when the train comes to a halt, i'm there, perfectly in line with the second door to the second carriage.

my lucky number.

and i have nothing to wait around for, and even if i did have someone seeing me off, i'm not one for drawn out goodbyes. not the kind that take a long time to exchange, nor the kind that make me miss the seat i might not even give up for my girl.

yep. i'm the first on the train when it pulls up, and the first to find a seat. it stops, all nine carriages, and i'm the first to get on.

carried away

i realise how crazy this sounds, but i often define myself in terms of the house i grew up in. the family home i lived in growing up.

and by this i mean it's physical structure- from the foundations, to the green-tiled roof so drastically aged, it scarcely protected the inside from the outside; not from the elements, nor from mine and my sisters’ determined suitors scampering their way across, and the more persistent ones, through.

so how to explain? how best to tell you how there are times i become my childhood home?

well, see there are some days i feel cold and inside, like the dining room located first door on the right as you entered the house, number three half way up the hill.

i don't know if you're wondering, but it is more than my mood i'm describing to you here. on those days i don't feel the way that room used to make me feel, i'm not describing an emotion elicited from a back catalogue of memories evoked by certain things on particular days, i mean i feel like i am that room.

my head is the south facing window, just like those in the room right above it, my childhood bedroom incidentally, the one i shared with my older sister before we renovated and i had one on my own.

oh, are you still with me here? i can get carried away.

my eyes become the couch-bound cushions i dared never to remove from that room, not because the patchwork was hand quilted, nor because they bore any historical significance, nor because there was a fragility sewn into the ornate design, though there was, but because i swear to you as though they were complying to scientific law, those cushions would invariably find their way back to that room if ever they did momentarily stray, which i never even once in my 24 years saw them do.

so yes, i suppose you could say i perpetuated my own obedience by leaving the cushions that were always there left, but it was the way my eyes saw it back then, and the way they become those cushions as they see them now.

and what of those walls?

my flesh becomes those walls. my skin tingles with the texture i can only describe to you as i felt them back then, navigating my way hands outstretched in the dark, on the nights too hot to sleep in my own room, (you would have found at the top of the stairs turning right), lucidly cool and idiosyncratically goose-bumped; i could effortlessly feel my way across the flaws to the other side.

by day the surface of the walls was a landscape neglected by the imagination- mission brown, lacquered by a tradesman in a hurry, flawed not by design or purpose, but by oversight.

i only think of this now, though even this strikes me as implausible. i could only really know it now to have known it then.

i must have known it then.

but there are other days of course, i feel my belly heave up its driveway to the front porch, the rickety cast-iron door is unlocked - it was always unlocked - and if my heart is inside, it is the kitchen bench, waiting for my mouth to arrive home from school with stories that only just escape between treats gobbled down.

my heart is that now.

rapid eye movement

i have come to the quarter to five mark in my day and was mid-way through my eye fatigue exercises -

look at a close spot, focus on a spot far away, look at a close spot, focus on a spot far away - repeat to fade...

and wanted to tell you that just then my eyes started doing these weird saccade like movements (a likely tautology).

and when i remembered the word 'saccade' i was so surprised, and found it so secretly useful, but was worried i would never be able to tell anyone of the experience.

i looked at a close spot and thought it is you or the blog, and you won.

the way you do.

emily at 4.55pm hopes to tell you next time of a close call she had with a phone-call of yours she missed deliberately so that she would therein be able to treasure the message left.

or a dream in which she was talking to you on your side of the fence that may have been more like a wall, say the great wall of china but less long and windy, but just as sturdy though not quite as old.

search by subject

i am alone in my office after hours thinking about two things.

something in my fridge exploded a moment ago but when i looked inside there was nothing to see. just my water bottles stacked in their practical pyramids.

i am thinking about neat things making strange noises.

also, melbourne has been enjoying a run of unseasonably temperate days.

st kilda is a funny place to be when this happens. when the sun appears after a hiatus. people attempt to get around in next to nothing. as though being closer to the beach means they are closer to the sun.

i am still in jeans.

i am thinking about things happening in twos.

post-haste

he and i have different interests. we are interested in different things.

i wait for the week-end to lay my ideas out on the bed.

i am careful not to let them touch.

they are folded and folded in, and have been stored in different sized boxes, one on top of the next, for so long a few have yellowed, and others smell aged.

i look at them now, some still inside their packages.

it reminds me that i have a couple of things waiting for my collection at the post-office. i deliberately did not answer the door when the postman arrived to deliver them, thinking

what if i wait? what if i

wait. when the doorbell rings i will be taken from this thought and will move quickly to repackallmyideasbackintotheirboxes. back into storage in the cupboard.

i do not have time to stack them neatly now, i will return later to carefully reposition them, one on top of the next.

in such a hurry i will not notice that as i collect my ideas i also accidentally gather the decisions we make, differently in our own time.

home and away

i wanted to give you a lasting meaningful piece of me to take with you.

to have me with you.

but that's when i come up empty. isn’t that when we always come up empty?

for some reason and instead i will tell you that when ray moved in two doors down he looked so unlike anyone else in the street – too tough and too well worn – i thought he’d be gone after his first paid month was up.

but he stayed, and was a wonderful neighbour.

helpful and protective.

and maybe that is why i am telling you this now. because you too have surprised me. in a way i didn’t realise i could be, or wanted to be.

you too have moved in. and i am glad.


ray did end up leaving our street the following year, said “the clean” made him nervous. like there was always a trace of him doing something he shouldn’t be.

and so i miss him now. and i miss you too.

salty wounds

what happens to the spaces we don't fill?

i have one left in me for you.

i notice it there and think, "what a waste of space!" and try to move in.

but i am stopped at the gate and realise it is taken.

it is empty, but it is yours.

and i sit down where i am now and feel sleepy.

i send my assistant home early and the phones start up as soon as i do. but i still prefer the silence of the time between calls without her here.


otherwise, melbourne international film festival is over for another year and my eyes are slowly readjusting to daylight.

but i do miss everything melty and choc-topped.

sticky in the dark.

writer’s festival is about to be launched, and then there is melbourne underground film festival, and then fringe. i am sure i’ll not be searching too hard to find culture to replace the missing culture.

feels like replacing drugs with buddhism.

but where are you now, and why do i still have a perfect you-sized space waiting here in me?

i hope it heals before it heals over.

double feature

i listen in the dark
to you breathing, four hours

with interval

i attempt to synchronise
mine with yours
but cannot catch you and
fall, short of each

you do not excite
nor slacken, while
my grip is loose like
a fickle wind

richard ford came to me during one scene and said

“it might seem that i was ‘within myself’ then. but in fact i was light years away from everything”

i hear you
are moving away

the proud cloud

i have felt fear on stage.
and just before.

in the air. on a plane.
in the middle
of the night in a panic.

about too many unclear and uncertain things.
at dawn. early morn.

a boy on my mind. the kind kind.
things to do. or afraid not to.

scared to fall. or of not much at all.
a sudden cloud of paralising doubt.

i got stoned on my own.
like a bad tattoo you can't undo.

--------

robert frost once told me that spring is the mischief in him.

perhaps rain is the rain in me.

last night in the dark

i wanted to wake you to tell you:

i curl my toes in as hard as i can.
i look into the wind till it makes me
cry. i float. i crunch ice
in my back teeth. i lie down
in the front row. i use my hands. i force everyone
i know to read me a page. i panic
when it is my turn. i love the holding
hands stage. i forget
to look both ways. i spit off bridges. i lay
piles of stones at the entrance. i play chess
randomly. i love the character. i love that when i interrupt
you when you are speaking you still hear me.
that your skin changes
temperature when you fall asleep, (to a
soft warm that could have a name of its own
it feels so exclusively yours). my excessive salt
intake and small frame are not related. i would rather
be too hot in a scarf than too cold in a t-shirt. i drop
things even when i am being careful. the most interesting thing a person can do is listen. i love seeing men hold hands. artichoke hearts make mine happy.

ernest 'papa' hemingway

i was curious about his suicide. and his father's before him.

so i read.

his suicide made ernest question his father’s courage, (the one value his father had adamantly held so true), and in the end made him feel as though he had failed him.

hemingway became known as “papa” till the end of his days it is said, in an attempt to become the perfect father his own had failed to be.

in an interview hem was asked about his creativity:

“why a representation of fact, rather than fact itself?”

and he said, “why be puzzled by that? from things that have happened and from things as they exist and from things that you know and all those you cannot know, you make something through your invention that is not a representation but a whole new thing truer than anything true and alive, and you make it alive, and if you make it well enough, you give it immortality. that is why you write and for no other reason that you know of.”

creativity and family.

choosing not to become the person your parents expected is painful.

you leave them.

you leave them and their lives in order to make sense of your own.

and then in time you return. to them, offering you the chance to measure the distance between their world and your own.

to see if the distance is as far as you'd remembered.

choosing not to become the person your parents expected is painful.

no more however, than eventually becoming them.

like a bowerbird

the motivation for movement?

my art.

and motivation for my art?

if i think about this a moment i can reply to your reply with a proper reply.

mostly i just love writing. music.

if it is there all the time i don't hear it. if it isn't then i hear it not long after it is.

like gardening - not weeding, but pruning.

like nesting - gathering feathers and twigs and all things blue.

i rest a while in the clearing.

my foot taps contentedly.

if i cannot capture this time, i will remember it.

it is at this point that i think of the bird on the other side of the valley being a bird.

i love where i am.

reminded of a place i am not stuck in, but settled--

during a time of collection, not reflection.

this is much more beautiful for being true.

carver

Happiness

So early it's still almost dark out.
I'm near the window with coffee,
and the usual early morning stuff
that passes for thought.

When I see the boy and his friend
walking up the road
to deliver the newspaper.

They wear caps and sweaters,
and one boy has a bag over his shoulder.
They are so happy
they aren't saying anything, these boys.

I think if they could, they would take
each other's arm.
It's early in the morning,
and they are doing this thing together.

They come on, slowly.
The sky is taking on light,
though the moon still hangs pale over the water.

Such beauty that for a minute
death and ambition, even love,
doesn't enter into this.

Happiness. It comes on
unexpectedly. And goes beyond, really,
any early morning talk about it.

Raymond Carver

every letter of every letter

i had a drink so i could think
i had too much and i lost touch

the trouble is my nights think too much

i am not a fan of jam
i'm thrilled by film

i have not seen snow
and thought i'd write to tell you so

the trouble is my nights think aloud

a delivered letter left unopened still stains and fades
the way a hand held too long begins to ache

letters are safer written on paper

the trouble is my nights think they are days

save as draft

i’m not going to write you an e-mail.

there are things we tell ourselves in order to consider that they may be believed, or adhered to, or filed away under “n” for new year’s delusion.

we all strive. don’t we?

i hope so.

some for perfection, others for easy sleep. the kind that comes and stays. easily.

perhaps we drive to be driven, and are flawed to be floored. take an imperfect body. or an imperfect body of water.

take a name misspelled.

i had intended to tell you about an article i read yesterday morning in the financial times about choice. that we are given too many. as a result we are forever searching and eternally questioning.

restless. not choosing. obsessed with opportunity.

destined to forever be foraging in the undergrowth of personal development at the expense of commitment to any one thing at any one time. so ultimately, at the expense of living, we don’t... choose. i.e. ironically, experience and existing are as much or more about choice and choosing, as not choosing and not having the choice to choose.

but it feels less relevant now, so i won’t.

and then i thought to tell you that sometimes when i am typing my name i write emilt instead of emily and sometimes i even write e-mail. stoopid, but funneh.

or maybe that i just got all excited because a stationery order came through that i ordered this morn and i quickly unwrapped the box and realised that i had only ordered fax cartridges and a highlighter.

nothing can prepare you for something you are not prepared for.

i really love that.

but that's a whole other short story...

cloudy but fine

the things i cannot do, i do not do.

the storms have made travel more difficult. have seen branches and their branches impede movement. have forced us indoors to indoor activities and cupasoups.

i like mine too hot to drink.

my path becomes a mangrove swamp i wade through in boots i hold on to with my toes.

incidentally, how delightful is the mallee root?

my parents used to burn them in the open fire-place of my childhood home. i knew that a new one added to the flames meant a later bed-time.

they take many hours to burn.

the storm will force me to stay indoors all day. i will pile things too high until i cannot reach the top of them without a chair, or a ladder, or a pair of shoulders on which to climb.

and when i can no longer pile, i will no longer climb.

meeting my match

there are days i cannot write.

today i cannot write.

today people make me want to be without them.

when satre said "hell is other people," he meant you and me. and we mean him on days like mine today. and yours on days a little darker than today.

darker even than yesterday.

you had hoped for a closer game. because it gets lonely when you are left to think alone. but i admire the way you barrack.

today being close feels closed. so near it echoes.

today you take me aside. and i am learning. not on the bench this time.

i am happy for the better side to win.

asleep at the wheel

i had a dream last night that i fell asleep at the wheel and still arrived soundly at my destination.

i wake now feeling as though there is something important to remember.

maybe in the words. perhaps in the sentiment.

the way things look when my eyes (finally) adjust. the time it takes to trace. white. toes for balance. the reply.

because now there is seldom cause for movement. not even a hand to brush my hair aside. because it will pass. the need. the desire. the will.

i will wake when i arrive.

and the rest you already know firsthand.

absence minded

i have always been so preoccupied with all the things i have left behind.

so i drag them around with me.

i take you out, i take you home.

it is true that i picture you exactly as i left you - bearded and smudged like a memory aged and too well worn.

now each detail you provide in letters i imagine you writing to me from the branches of swaying trees alters you momentarily, and then reverts you to the original image i have of you under high frescoed ceilings i believed i could reach.

you take me more than three hours of knowing, and years since of not knowing.

endless hours at my north-facing window, and now at my desk. you are here with me and thousands of miles away, a franked postage stamp - historical and expired.

Something Nice For Me

You teach me to go
out of my way for people,
you go out of yours
for me. A kindness
like the rim of a glass,
or the edge of a biscuit-
a lake I bend over and kiss
with an open mouth. I roll
my tongue around your
simple gestures endlessly
hoping they will never end.

There are fishermen
watching you go ahead
to prepare for my arrival.
They notice my child-sized
footprints retrace, bury
and sink into yours - though
I am not too far behind.

They see things we do not,
just below the surface.

Love Letter

I study my hand
still on the paper, and resting
in a way I find foreign.
It is hard to look
at your own things
as unfamiliar.

Nothing makes me panic
like old love revisited.
In a dream he enters
again, making me
believe we are good.
This time we are good.

But reasons will betray you
when you turn your back,
will make you find
the strangest things nostalgic
and weighing a heavy cough
on your chest.

Like an angle these things appear
changed and new and
at times unrecognisable,
until they move from the page
to remind you.

emily after

i don't regret not being able to applaud.

i stood at the back in the dark trying to love every moment, but came up empty, gasping for air.

and it could not have been more different from being inside a song you want to be stuck inside.

in my mind i was breaking dishes. and telling you how i was trying.

i was trying. i was trying.

and i thought i heard you tell me that there are some things you enjoy at the time, and savour as you devour. but then there are those things that you leave for a later you.

to come home to, to come in to. in a room full of no-one else.

it is more and less like that.

it's not the photo...

so much as the memory of that time.

it was about two years ago surely... no not quite... i hadn't even reached poland by that time.

had you?

everything feels so long ago - even age is an indeterminate measure for a state in which i feel myself passing from the instant i arrive.

by and by i come.

i laugh in loops and the original sounds like an echo. as though the present is so fleeting it must be reminded of its actions. it comes back to me in circles. in shallow afterthoughts - that i am happy because i hear my laugh.

twice i have thought so.

anonymous flowers

the trouble is, the number of times i can ask who sent them to me is finite.

"did you send me the flowers?"

"by the way, did you... courier me a bunch of almost-open tulips?"

yes i was called to reception to collect them, yes i left them there an hour after i'd been told they were there, yes they were more magnificent than i'd hoped or imagined.

but i don't want to carry this question with me.

not even for an hour.

so thank you, i am sure you want me to feel special and curious.

but if i could, i'd return to sender.

address unknown.

i am not waiting for anyone else to arrive

i woke up so many times in the night and this morning that i scarcely remember ever sleeping. even in my dreams i would wake up again and again. sometimes to the alarm sounding, and then to feel the wind on my face and the curtains rustling. each time i would see you moving boxes. like an escher print in HB lead, you moving in unending circles. like tetris or mario to the boxes falling as quickly as you move them. each box you unpack sending you packing.

this is how i came to realise you are going. and maybe this is in fact the change. it is not a newfound maturity at all. quite the opposite. it makes me want to go back to bed.

and i blame the boxes, all boxes. the tupperware and empty ice-cream containers. fuck all storage.

if only i could have confined my love to just one of these empty spaces.

over the ocean

i love the window seat.
i don't care if it is dark outside and i can see only my reflection.
i love to know i am closer to the other side of the double sheets of glass.
i love to pretend to sleep up against it.
to marvel at the wings and the toothpick-like protuberances keeping us air-bound.
i love to avoid the traffic up and down the aisles.
i love to study the water from a great height.
to feel the cool glass against my cabin-controlled skin.
but i will give you the window seat if you will fly with me.

what of the water?

recently i heard a tale that made me laugh and gasp for air just like that dream
so vivid i was a fish swimming upstream
i got confused so suddenly it seemed
and forgot that i had gills and i could breathe
so faint, so full, so foolish

his love found her

she read and re-read his love. she savoured it so that she refused to swallow, determined not to allow the flavour to pass or change.

and she has known real friendships. those that have endured she likes to take for granted, like smiling, no more like laughter. and those that ended on days not unlike today, still preoccupy her . not with any sense of regret or guilt, but curiosity as to why these friendships persisted to float or sink but refused to do both in equal measure.

she found him just below the surface.

oh, and she has known love. yes loves of every vintage. she has hidden some and framed others, and revealed her loves through reluctant tinges of red.

though she had never loved from so far away. and now she is convinced that she sees him at night. below the surface, he is hanging upside-down, free to let the love fall like loose change from his pockets.

i may not...

even be awake right now.

i played a show with liam finn (from new zealand) last night. neil's son, and one of my first boyfriend's namesake - the liam part i mean.

i was unusually calm on stage and felt my whole set unravel around me as though i was the gig rather than being only part of it. typically i perform in disjointed parts, too distracted to ever remove myself entirely from my surroundings.

happy is a girl who gets lost in song.

sleep didn't come easily afterwards and never really came, as though it might erase the memory of the gig, as waking does a dream.

and it was a dream, and one that i'll remember.

hospital gown

The trees have less colour,
not more, against the ashen sky.
We troop to the hospital
in holy twos or alone, as I am
this morning on foot, to administer
cold kisses to the north,
south, east, and west of your face.

You are so graceful
even in decay, your gown
a perfect canvas for the waltz
of visitors announced
by the gifts they bring in
and out, in and out—
my breath adds life this morning
to an otherwise motionless street.

i am glad this winter...

i resumed blogging.

today i hit a speed hump in the process of writing a piece about a boy born during the chinese year of the snake - my symbol too. i was stuck trying to think of the collective noun for a group of snakes.

i hoped it would be a murder, but thought it should be a pride.

a pride of mothers, that would be nice too.

now i sit on the hump thinking i'd almost prefer not to know. in case i am disappointed by the truth.

-----

p.s. a bed of snakes, a den of snakes, a nest of snakes, a pit of snakes, a slither of snakes

*sob*

march twenty

you know the way i am now. the piscean swimming in two directions. what i tell you, and what i plan not to-

but do anyway.

i tell you i will see you tomorrow. will collect you if you'd like, or see you later if you'd rather.

i won't tell you i don't know how to will things back. that when i try i squint my eyes closed hard and hope. the same way i make a wish. more so it is the way i pretend it isn't happening.

i won't tell you i don't know how to let go. that i can't scoop the dead ones from the surface. that i leave them be.

i squint and i rock and i see my body in the sediment, rising.

but i tell myself everything. that i hold things close when i try to let them go. that i lose my way even when i'm paying close attention.

because i am the only one present all the time.

i watch myself from afar, and then up close if i am careful. i see myself parade and excite, goose it up and water it down. and keep hope even when part of me has given up and in.

it is powerful, it is naive. mostly it is anything i want it to be. because i know as much as i tell myself i do, and i will fill in the gaps otherwise.

and i'll be there counting no doubt, or marking it down as a day to remember.

i would tell you

though i would tell you
of my life, love, and loss
my voice trails off
"i was a good wife, i loved him"
but just as the morning wipes clean
any hint of even the most recent dream
i may not have said a word
as none was heard it seems
my tongue now slow and numb
heavy and makes my speech clumsy
"they were good times, we meant them"
there was no need nor thought to invent them

hopelessly lovely

i am forever accusing one of my older sisters of being a hippy. she has this summer-fruit-peachy-glow approach to things. it is actually something i love about her (but don't tell her i said so). her hippydom has now become a running joke between us.

she tells me that she has started taking fish oil, she tells me she believes everyone is a reflection of everyone else, she tells me she is moving to the country. i call her a hippy.

just now i had an encounter with a man who went out of his way to be lovely. just some simple things that made me smile and smile.

and somehow that made me feel closer to my sister.

patience

is a flightless bird.

i thought to myself today as i stood in a queue for a mango smoothie wearing gloves, scarf, and beanie. not quite extinct, but definitely grounded.

being colder in the cold made complete sense today. like being completely satisfied with being asked a question in response to your own question.

who am i to deny myself my own cravings?

don't answer that.