Holes

I always find it hard to pick up after I’ve stopped writing for a time

There always seems an absence in what is missing

I never know how to explain

There should be something, and I never know how to say what it is

That hole

And where I was before I slipped inside

I am not where I was. Appointments with a new psychologist- always trying. There is a sizing up of persons and problems; what is there to treat, it’s prognosis and yours. I am not always most patient; I do not want to be only a patient. In the end it comes down to you and them. This time it’s a match, but these past two sessions have laid me bare

I’m not even sure what’s there to make me shake and cry and fear

We spoke of acknowledging this void as a place where something did happen; accepting that I may never know what. To me it still feels like a quantity I need to know, and a certainty I may never find.

I’m not sure what it is that makes me shake and cry; disappear into my own shadows to a state I can only see, but not act within

I remember the same room I watched television; coloured in; where my sister and I played with a new technicolour walkman; where once my mother held me by my hair as I writhed and thrashed and screamed. Until I understood that like with most things I lacked the words to say what was. Then somehow I forgot….

I could not reach the ground that night; I feel similarly in this quandary of what; I do not know:

Why I go back to that bedroom where I looked for pictures among the shadows each night; that hall, with it’s illumination of the iceberg glass by the night streetlights; that loungeroom with it’s mottled seventies carpet and so much fear I don’t know

I do not know why I am so frightened

Last appointment’s undressing we spoke of the possibility of this permanent limbo

These hole which break me apart

They flash like the shadow picture memories

Perhaps the whole time the only fear I had was to have absorbed the caution of it all

Of a fearful mother, a father who took his role in writing excuses for disability which missed who I could be in spite of it all. Our whole life, working to fit the gaps

But if that is so, why did it end there?

Why did it not travel to the new mudbrick home?

I guess it did in a way: In my childlike attempts to avoid the cracks; to remain smaller, perfect

Like I never felt I was

I wonder if I’ll know one day

These holes, and the substance of their darkness

For now I’ll rest and hope for no bad dreams

Arm myself with battle rose, and try to tread each step with kindness, never mind the cracks

This will not necessarily fill the hunger of these things I do not understand

But may mean I don’t leave the same marks on others

I am frightened

That in the end I will emerge

Something with no relevance to anyone I could know or care about

I guess that’s the gamble

And the hope I will not is love

A temporary care for all these holes

In me

 

 

Limits: Overflow

These past weeks have been a combination of survival;

Scraping the dregs, lugging my bones;

Dragging, stumbling, rising

Even when I don’t know why anymore

I think I am the sediment

Left of myself. Not the endless optimism I appear

This weekend I am glad of an escape

Crushing; grinding; roaring; black and studded crowds of metal

Timeless meandering in the city.

So many people I pull my music in tight around myself, like a protective hoodie. I always feel so raw in the city. I rub and erode in crowds of people, all striving for anonymity

I always try to meet a few eyes. Bus drivers, shopkeepers, homeless people, fundraisers seem to be most of my lot.

From a bus (I rarely ever catch in the city) I see a cacophony of people, protesting for clean energy. The span of age and people hearten me. This is something many care for. Later, on the train home I see power towers balance on forested ravines and think that while cities gobble excess power, it is our lives in the country encroached upon by barren mines, transformers and tangled wires

As though they cannot understand or bear to leave our fresh-aired freedom

James and his pictures don’t greet me at their usual post. He’s ill he says but as usual refuses help. I feel frustrated but understand. It’s what I would do. I miss his world of pen, realism, intelligence and dark humour.

I’m grateful for a coffee and banter with an ex, now again a friend. We talk life, philosophy, experimental drugs and psychology, study, family and share our dog stories. I mention Joe and he doesn’t flinch, He would be fourteen now. I think of him every day, his shell would be tougher. I still live in hope and we browse books and talk music. We part ways again on good terms.

Lost and walking I see an Italian pirate blowing bubbles in the park and a boy trying to catch them in his fedora. Rain, shelter and so carefully carved yet misunderstood pictures of “Aborigines” and founding federators locked in iron. The doors to the state library. I sit on sandstone and try to read Stephen Fry’s interpretation of  Greek mythos

Next, another friend. It’s so complicated, the roles we take on in our groups where everyone knows everyone, but not necessarily everyone’s business. I’d guess she does not understand why I speak so fondly and my understanding has it’s own tinge of ardour. That’s the reality of friends, students, teachers and lovers. Anyone who truly touches our lives closely. It’s only a part that you can choose them- they have to choose you back- lead role or something less, sometimes fondness still follows.

I could feel incomplete about it; pain; malice?

Yet I’ve found a ledge to tread with stoicism and a shelf of safety within my world while I fight to be the asker- or the answer. Perhaps many things between.

We talk so much, my mind is alive. There are so many connections. They have been hard-earned. That’s what I long for most with people. And my loneliness in the city.

I know too that with the spring from my toes and optimism I am often a target of the ridicule and anger so often directed at those who try so hard to keep their head above the waves. I feel full with our speakings as we part. I begin to walk again.

I have no music tonight. Batteries depleted literally and metaphorically

In the tunnel the sandstone is soft though brightly lit and there are people sleeping in bundles, even a man reading a book. I ask to pat a dog

Bundy is his name. He saved a man called Josh from suicide. Josh sits, smoking and the words that fall over each other, my words and the words of Naomi, who sits beside them both. Josh is lost. He has lost his kids and slurs his words. He fears the vindication of his ex. I think of Joe. We talk. I ask if they have enough for tomorrow. Naomi is if not content, complete. Josh says no. I give him what I have crumpled in my purse. I know what Simon would have said about fakers, booze and cigarettes. I wonder what would have been enough for a man so alone his dog barked and whined to stop him gassing himself in his car. Whose voice cracks when he speaks of his family. He only speaks of family. I hope he makes it. Maybe his girls will too. Maybe they’ll find each other

I remember a poem from Zimbabwe about the person you become after living so long under the boots of everyone and Naomi comments on my rose. It’s pretty, but it is my flag and battle-shield all rolled in one. I wish I could share how dark it can be in my world but perhaps they already see. I wish it only to let them know there is a way out. They send blessings and speak of angels, but I am not. I hope the angels do help them though. I say their names over and over as I cross the road near the bus shelters, fearful of forgetting. I think in the city I’m so small that I hope a simple memory from someone can stop me floating off into the abyss. Perhaps they do too. I don’t know that it will.

I walk, and with some trepidation over fast food and past ghosts I step into an Asian restaurant. They look ready to close, but bring a menu of welcome. They fill my drink bottle and though they are not cooking I pick  some delicious cold noodles and a Vanilla Coke. Like always that Coke makes me smile. They are patient with my shoddy chopstick skills, eating at a table alongside mine and bring me out another small bowl with egg and tomato, they tell me. I am grateful and enjoy their friendly foreign banter, the chipped purple rose, the rice paddy hats and kindness. I clear both tables before I thank them and go. I feel for a small time a part of something

I run completely out of batteries in my iPod. I am flagging too, but full of words and hope and ideas. Without music they are my soundtrack and buffer against the city. As I walk I note that Oportos is not gone as I thought last night. But if I’d eaten there it would have been with so much more anonymity and that frightens me here

The city at night smells of rain and rose geraniums

The light is on when I get to my sister’s flat but I am still alone. There is so much still to wonder. So few answers. I wonder where the questions left unasked go. And where their answers are. Are they like our conscious energy?

Do they find a place in the world to spread their potential?
Maybe that’s where they all wait, as I feel I am waiting.

I think about what I want to make. My words here are inadequate; my attempts at art laughably imperfect (in my eyes). I guess that’s why I have so many words jumbling and bubbling inside, unsaid. I think again of the protest against coal I saw today

The music shop

The Italian pirate blowing bubbles

The morning quiz with my sister and brother in law (it’s not in the paper, but on Istagram now). There is always so much inside to think about, but I need badly to clear my clutter and keep moving

When I write I’m so fearful of pretentiousness and bullshit. Perhaps to move I just need to be without fear. Either way, I am what I am

I Was The Protector

A friend died a few days ago, the day before New Years Eve. Cancer

Like that explains her all

We grew up together. I was six when she was born

We played Pirates in the tree house and picked rations of ‘Banana Passionfruit’ and mandarines filled with seeds; me, my sister, her and her sister. We came in that order

I remember the mixture of lightness and dark in their house

Crinkled sunlight through the old, frosted windows; dust and shadows by the piano; political cartoons about Kakadu in the loo and old postcards; the warmth of sun on their enclosed verandah and picking flowers together in the garden; bike pants, sneakers and gap teeth

When birthday parties came and our families joined together, us kids playing on the twilight hill of the bowling club while orders were settled

I was the eldest

I was the protector

I remember when Maree began primary school, then high school- six years between us, two more than her sister

I was always far ahead

I remember her pony camp and when she wanted only to be called Elizabeth (though it wasn’t her name)

There was a comfort to afternoons we spent wandering their block of land etched in rainforest

I moved away for university

But we still did things in the holidays

Inaugrual birthdays and often Christmas day. The talk was different and the ‘games’ not the same

I used to write to her on Facebook when she started uni. She came Dux of her year and chose engineering

She seemed happy

Later I remember a first boyfriend

I came home less for holidays by then but we still caught up on birthdays

The common tie was home.

She moved to Newcastle for work

Still had her boyfriend

I remember a few years ago my mother told me she had been ill

Eventually it was cancer. We hadn’t seen each other in a while by then. I hoped she would get well

Life was busy. It was for her too

Her status updates showed travel, friends, family

Her hair got shorter

But she still looked beautiful in her wedding photos

She glowed

This Christmas my mother told me the doctors said there was nothing more they could do

A family Christmas, she was sitting and looked swollen in pictures

But so content. With all her family there

She died the day before New Years Eve. I heard after work the next day

I was the eldest of us. I still am, but there is a hole where she was

I couldn’t protect her. I sent love to her mother and sister through Facebook- funny how times change for a family who lived so long without the internet, or even a television

It feels inadequate and foreign with distance

Clumsy. I guess death itself is a distance  and the people left behind must find their way too in grief

I still remember when we were young

But I couldn’t protect her. As the oldest I always thought I’d go first

As I always had

But in time the natural order frays

Births, marriage, death

Anyone is fair game

Image-in

There are memories which feel almost tangible

They weigh heavily like stones

Like the dark moss carpet

And the night shadows through the frosted front door

Different to the friendly figures I might have imagined on my bedroom walls

It feels as though I’m waiting

I remember feeling that intensely

Held deep inside. Waiting and fearful

It was almost superstition

My life

Try to be good. Not to anger, or anger them

Not to be bad

And I felt so hideously wrong

Filthy

As the memories come flooding back

The white mottle of the street lights through the trees outside

I spent hours awake watching those walls at night

Why can’t I remember?

Why this fear, blistering every cell?

What came in those shadows I feel?

It’s uncanny after such trepidation of touch

To long to be held

There used to be such a burden of filth and hatred in me. Thick and screaming

Rarely have I been able to let someone hold onto me among these whispered shrieks

I flinched at every impact. The room

Felt too near my childhood

It’s a calculated leap

And I am ready for the fall

Nobody leaves at the worst times

It’s later as the sun fades the night away

Perhaps, as we have long since learned

The gospel chanted and scribbled early on the walls of those young years is falacy

But still nobody stays

It’s not the old wounds that smart and sting

But the new, raw skin still longing to trust their exposure

Maybe there was love then

But now it is different

I still want it, despite myself

Too Still Life 13th November

Been too long

Afraid

Doesn’t cover the reality

Or evade

Flashes of boldness

Fade too fast

It’s a sin to stay

But Cowardice for going?

Guttural, breaking, almost a sob

Tearing me to shreds and I am

Nothing

But nothing’s

Still here

And it could be so easy

The distance is palpable

Fingertips touch

A lifetime away

It’s like a looking glass

And there are faces

Places

Space on the other side

Space for me?

Away from my confined shell

Hell

But is there enough

If I leave behind

Am I enough

To pack it all away

Go or stay?

Longing so deeply for my own foothold among others

Paths

And so independence is farce

So much could or could not be on either side

How can an

Ending begin elsewhere?

My Grandmother’s Plates

Last night we ate dinner on my grandmother’s plates

I have used them since my parents gave them to me on the weekend. Sturdy yet their history can make you so afraid

They cannot be replaced. They are unique

So am I, yet my vitality and beating heart make me sure that each second I waste

Changes made can be undone

Or altered besides. We are cocky as we breath in and out and navigate from one day to the next

Yet are those changes might never be undone

Whether they are needed or not, life is relentless like that

Memories of my grandmother’s room are so vivid

The varnish and wood smell of the cabinet beside her bed; the books she kept inside

Her soft wrinkles and the hard, sharp sound of her Londondary voice

While I was with her I felt loved in myself. I remember her tight and bony cuddles and I did like them

Though my own comfort in the embrace in others has come at a time closer to those plates coming to live in my willow-patterned cupboards.

It is perplexing the way of our hearts opening

And painful

Lonely as they have the right to choose

And not choose us

Frightening

As understanding unleashes a tide of memories

Their fear is palpable; lurking like shadows in the hallways of my mind

Vivid. If I still had access to the parts of me that still felt that filty worthlessness I would want nothing more than to tear away every shred, skin, soul and memory

But that voiceless waif is gone

She can question, however tentatively

Hold her own self

Not to waver, quaver, run and fall

However all enticing those memories in their fragments

Like my grandmother’s plates I can choose a new path

It might be so far removed from any experience they, or I

Encapture

I might be so, so frightened to use and taint them

But if I let them gather dust what will that prove?

Confidence is more a tide than a rising anchor

It’s ebb and flow equivocal to our struggles

Whether that is how we are seen or not

Like my grandmother’s plates I will prevail

Rose Chintz and a determined smile

My grandmother died long ago

I hope she would be proud

Eloquently Wasted

At the end of the day I can’t say I emerged simply

I’d love to

Not to think too much

Second guess

It’s like an elixir

At the end of each day I’m drunk, and at the same time sober

Full of words and expectations

Staring into the cold, vast night sky

But I’m not so eloquent as to find the words I want to sing with

I feel a sense of belonging;

Oneness with the world

But at the same time feel it slip away

Grain by grain

Complicated by the mundane tasks

I dance, trip, weave and

Fall blindly through

At the same time able to see myself always falling short

This is how it is

There is never enough

Of me or for me

I’m a hard person to satisfy

And I can’t settle for simplicity or oneness

There has to be more to satisfy my soul

Always searching

Always rambling

I’m not good at names of theories

But I understand

Their cogs and wheels

I see the intricacies

I see the good

I’m not often a first choice

I love too hard

And fall too far

I want to include to many details

And instead end up stuttering, stammering

Wondering where to begin

Then how to end

I am not eloquent

I don’t know if I have what would matter if it were wasted in the first place

I spend too much time wondering

And never enough in contentment at my own achievements

But I am myself

Tom

Feels like words often fail to catch people

We get lost in the moment and forget and only remember when nobody can hear

It’s cold

Death

Not comfort

Nor a paradise

Nobody but we have the right

To denounce

or valuate

Our lives. However much is left

We leave behind

‘It’s too fucking brief’

They say you had your time but

Who’s counting?

And what is left when we are gone?

Thomas….

It’s not faulty stitches you can unpick- who gets to say you weren’t perfect

In your own little universe?

Just because your frame sits crookedly in your chair

Smile half-cocked and eyes that rattled

Laugh that rolled easily;

Like beads in a pinball machine

There were always games going on inside you

With a banging giggle

You invited us to share. Readily

And laugh you did

There was so little time to prepare

In my eyes I saw your sweet, sleepy smile

Naughty hand- the one which held all the mischief raised

As sleep became you

A few days later only to feel the cool glass phone screen on my cheek

I heard you were gone

Little comfort for us as your fate flies undetermined

I think you’ll come back. Perhaps you have already

Sometimes like a whisper you’ll come to mind

I guess your stay with us would be coming to an end

I crossed your name out neatly in the diary

It’s still written but the line reminds us

Of what has already been done

As you floated away

Your only fight in the final few hours

They told me there were yellow balloons flying at your funeral

Perhaps one was you?

Thud!

Worlds come crashing down

Like sudden rain

Thud!

It makes me feel so petty

When the icecream container was half-empty

Not half full

And he couldn’t have asked

For what he says should be his already

Perhaps it should

But the key is courtesy

And knowing deep down we are the same

Or not so different

For those of us weighted wanderers

Our lack of wings prevents us from taking flight

For those who are short-lifed

Like Thud!

Whose light bones I will pack tight

Beneath the wet soil

Spirit so courteous

It slipped away before I re-entered the room

And while the smell of wet feathers remains

Stuck to your small frame

Thud! like other things has ended this week

But perhaps these things perpetuate

Reincarnate

In other forms and faces

We just see them differently when we know them

 

Drinking half-warm coke in the part

A friend told me she had always seen a person for whom nothing in life could be wrong

Rose and all

She saw an external image protected

In this world sometimes that glassy exterior is our only hope of survival

I don’t know if I felt grief

Or less that she no longer sees a girl with a rose and a smile

For whom nothing could go wrong

But that is life

Thud!

Our brittle-boned reality

Could change at any moment

For myself

I have my hope

All else may perish

But I cannot let go

This is more than who I am

The candle lit against the storm

Can’t Take That Away From Me :)

Every child who walks through my door

Vagabonds of discipline

Though mostly lack thereof

Here for change

But the fight for their own continuity

Good, bad or indetermined

Sometimes torn

At others they are the breakers

Break your ways

They try

Like every person

More entitled to their own way of thinking than yours

And they are victims (in their eyes)

In ways in which their every whim is not factual

And victims (in yours)

As you grieve and try to set boundaries for all the times

Others have not

And they’ve been allowed to keep their ways

Keep breaking

You wonder if they are refugees of a sort

For the scattering their histories and belongings

Never belonging

A transient kind of stranger

You try to keep close for long enough

To make a difference

I will try

I always come back with a smile

They can’t take that away from

Me