we are (insert metaphor here)

she smells like honeyed storms –
meaning: we are all a mess of light,
we are bitter and raw; a drunk train,
a daring locomotive, a dream ship;
we are also summers and bedsheets
and nectarines and rain, old maps,
deep with creases, but also brittle,
paper like moth wings, easily torn;
we are fast like wax, lazy like roses,
full of madness and malice, of motion
like clockwork; we keep those faces
and hands because we are not in time;
we are in-understandable –
meaning: we are all in a mess of infinite,
we are limitless; an acceleration,
an unwinding expansion, a runaway,
a struggle; we are all in a mess;
we are the holy that you will not find
in a temple or church or stained glass
or ancient passage; you will not see us
in any book, or on walls or at windows
or along skylines or across seascapes;
no, we will not be findable at all –
meaning: perhaps, just this; perhaps,
that is the way of the metaphor.

Altruistic Apples

James T took this, popping up from between steel bars of his staircase, turning the camera around on me, making me see. I think he can do that without realising it. Can someone be an accidental hero? Can you be an oblivious lifesaver? Maybe helping someone, hearing someone, seeing someone, showing them something they didn’t even know they needed to see so that they can know what they need to know- maybe those are acts of altruism that do not need to be motivated by intention. Because if someone sets out to do something that good, and that important, the moment they encounter the realisation of what it is, that altruism- that immeasurable, unfalsifiable and arguably non-existent thing- which had until then kept its shape, undisturbed, suddenly falls away like ashes do when you touch them, soft but now not even the silhouette of what it used to be. I don’t pick friends for their good qualities, to fill some sort of quota, to tick boxes, or to admire them, or to surround myself with good things. It just so happens that one of mine happens to have shown me empirical evidence that altruism exists. So thank you, Herr Professor. Thank you, I will come down from your shoulders now. I have my own apples. How do you like them apples? Anyway, I didn’t pick them. I think they picked me.

every reason to wonder

i. If nostalgia were tangible, it would not be in receipts or borrowed sweatshirts but in decorations that embellish memories out of moth-eaten blankets, floorboards, framed paintings and lampshades; the props list of your past.

ii. colours: pink for the pajamas and floral print leggings, yellow for the middle of a daisy and the guest bedroom and for learning sacrifice, blue days when I was calmer and then white days when I was not there at all, like blinding light broke a way out of a broken brain and finally the many hues the sky goes through night to day- it is never the same colour when you look at it.

iii. there are roads and restaurants marked with muscle memory, just like studying books and the piano my fingers alone learnt to play. In some places the heartbeats come faster and faster because your heart and lungs recognise where you have been.

iv. then there are the names that, if spoken, fill my mouth with shame, regret, wanting, wishes, with hope, with love, with missing, with space.

The Desert

Figure I.
The first time you see the desert. That first time will be too much. You will be looking from the passenger window of a car the colour of sea-glass while there is someone you care about talking in the backseat about something you no longer want to hear. Mostly because the world seems to be losing its music and it’s mostly because the people in it aren’t listening. Not the way they used to, not the people you know. We know. Further down the road, everything else will be too loud or too distractingly important and there will be no music. Fearing this deafness you see in the people you grew up with, people at the same point on the road, with the same shoulders, the same bus passes, the same alarm clock calls- they don’t have to be the same any more than being in the same place- this makes people think sometimes in words that are not kind but they are true. You would give up three years of your life to be the desert.

Figure II.
Someone says thank you for being here. You turn back your head and swallow the paper ball, swallow it like it’s prayer when god isn’t watching.

Figure III.
Well sometimes it’s okay I mean they said I was too destructive too sensitive but I mean how can one person be both, if we are really just one person each? It won’t be forever no not the rest of my life but it is then I need to get over it if I am ever going to do anything or be anything or is that the same thing too? I’m sorry to bother you- go to sleep you are my favourite person I’m okay.

Conclusion.
It’s all terribly loud. Did you sleep last night? Are you comfortable? Would you like to leave with me? Stay with me? You are enough for me. The desert doesn’t care if I am not enough when there is so much space to exist.

This isle is full of noises

Tender and illusive, thirty thousand beams of light.
She had a cherry pit heart and the bitter-sweetest bite.
Pinpricks and clumsy kicks and a head just like a cave.
Sleep so thin and far too steep collects all it can save.
Nothing made of sound that’s real; ideas grow absurd.
From the seeds of perception- what is seen or heard?
Or how does it feel to hold on tight to the hems of mad?
Suffocation becoming softness and good becoming bad.
No one ever speaks of him, the prodigal son’s brother.
Who else gets forgotten in the shadows of each other?
If the streets were to empty and all people to disappear
How long would it take for loneliness, after relief from fear?