you exist, i'm sure

but only in the spaces between breaths. a bond built on a lie means you have to keep pretending it's something it's not.

what is it, exactly, we're pretending it's not?

on any other night

this isn't a love-hate relationship.

it's just love.

tossed around on stormy seas, a sullen strand of seaweed fastened tightly around its wrist.

DYI

"you'd feel better", he said "if you weren't so self-aware all the time"

"really"

"yeah! i suggest dumbing it down a bit. it'll help.

"really?" is that what you do? is that why you hardly ever have a feather out of place?"

"no. i'm just naturally stupid"

"oh. cool. so i need to just stop thinking then"

"er..yeah..what are you doing"

"oh, just a little lobotomy"

definitely reccommended

dancing Shakira style to the delight of your bedroom mirror.

things to avoid

placing yourself
in inverted commas.

things to acquire

a little more brain in my heart, a little more heart in my brain.

i was sad

when i thought i'd lost you.

quotations

"well that was a total rocking, kick-ass blast, and i'm not even tired! woo! let's do it all over again in the next life. that being who you really are thing i decided to do when i was thirty-five was some serious good shit!" ~ capegirl age 99.

addiction

i never thought i'd ever drink less coffee. but then there are a lot things i didn't think i'd ever do. like push-ups, and letting go of you. it's never been the object - it's the feeling you're looking for. i just want different feelings. it's work i'm happy to do.

unbearable lightness

my desire broke and fell. scattering into a million prisms. down and down and down and down. deeper and deeper until the colors became your name, sang your name, spiralled into you and melded into a single glowing, desperate light.

and then

my skin would taste the sweat from your skin, and trace hearts across your pain.

until

the pearls that nestle
between my breasts
wait for
whispers from
your heart

special offer

and he gave her the night and the moon and the rush of blood and the sense of succour. batteries not included.

and each time the boy appeared

rapunzel let down her hair.

for a good time call:

somebody else.

unless you like your girls covered in Vicks and sneezing paroxysm-style.

a boy and a girl saw stars

they were brave, they were determined. and even though it hurt to look, they did.

intimacy

its all in the hips and the sweat and the hair, you see.

and the lips and the whispers. its in the hard and the fast and the sweet and the slow. and the being and the aching and wanting. its in the toes and the knees and the biting and the rough and the gentle and the exquisite and the plain.

its here in the heart and here in the brain and here and here and here and there and everywhere and everything. its in the 'where did that come from?' and the 'i knew that was coming' and the 'let's do it again' and the 'i've never done that before'.

its in the bucking and the swaying and the heat and the breath and in the moment that isn't and is and isn't and is. its in the passion and the tears and the inside and the out. and the neck and the need and the taste and the feed.

and in the more and the madness that words can't measure.

gut feelings

shall we dance, sweet pilgrim? or should we remain just so with our backs against the wall? i enjoy you so much it hurts. right where it shouldn't. but such is the way it is at times. the scales are oft dreadfully unbalanced. ask any chinstrap penguin.

today

a news broadcast tells us 18 people were thrown from trains this week, that there is snow on the mountains and freezing temperatures. that people are freezing on the streets and hungry and wet. icicles stick to their foreheads and the cash-strapped salvation army is all that stands between them and more misery. houses are flooded and hailstones the size of duck eggs batter already tattered homes. it's another day in south africa. another baby dead, another corruption trial. another dark night. somehow it feels hard to crack a smile.

what they tell me, what i know

i have a brain that sometimes doesn't work too well. it has moments of fogginess - much like a television with too much static. my senses on the other hand are an entirely different matter.

sometimes

our best friends are the ones that call us on our shit. not the ones that hide in the dark with us, talking about tragedies.

william part 2

courtesy sinead lohan ~

"We went down to the edge of the water
You were afraid to go in
You said there might be sharks out there in the ocean
And I said i'm only going for a swim

I was swimming around in a circle
I wasn't always in view
You said we might get into red flag danger
And I am alone when i'm not with you

But I am no mermaid
I am no mermaid
And I am no fisherman's slave
I am no mermaid
I am no mermaid
I keep my head above the waves

We were swinging from the centre of the ceiling
You were afraid to give in
I said I know i'll always live for this feeling
And you closed your eyes you said never again

We were dancing in the middle of the desert
You said we'll burn under the hot sun
I said i'd rather be the colour of pleasure
Than watch like you from under the thumb"

~ and that, my love, will make all the difference.

truthfully

put away your long-stemmed roses and red, silk scarves.

i don't seek the kind of power you long to possess. long before you were a gleam on the horizon, i watched my father with a keen eye. there is not much i cannot guess about a man. daddy was a player like that.

but what do you bring that i have not yet seen? can you stand before me naked, and love without the promise of gain? can you loosen the silk ribbons of your casanova cape and weep before me? will you hear your own heart?

and, right now, before this goes any further, realize you are not the answer to my prayers. i don't pray that way.

residual image

my fathers stout frame
is nothing like my own
but i mirror his stubborness
quite robustly

when there's something weird

i ain't afraid of no ghosts.

sleep waking

these dreams are shouting at me. i wake in abstract wonderment and remember each detail clearly. you are vivid in a way you are not once i have washed my face and swallowed my first dose of morning coffee.

closed doors

tonights mindwalk leads me, via vine covered ground, straight to your door. i would knock if i thought you would hear me. but i'm not sure you're home. maybe you're just out, knocking on your own silent door.

william

of all the places i have ever been you were the warmest.

saying goodbye to yesterday should feel like i'm losing you forever, but i've loved harder and longer than things that have cut me too deep. i'll never feel i've lost you, not like that.

when you feel in your very core, deep into spaces that have never been touched - you cannot live around it, or manage it, or move on from it. you can only live within it and it within you. as i have and do and always will. even as i know that a part of me will always feel the sadness and the joy of you. a big part and a small part all at the same time.

but you were many things all at the same time. and so were we and so am i, now.

i'm not the mermaid i once was. i'm different now and i sing different songs. a lot of that is thanks to you and even more is despite the loss of you. but i always knew you'd be big and so you were. and so you always will be.

like the ashes that were never scattered you and i were locked into something that would never really end. it's not wishful thinking when i say you're eternal because you are here with me now and in everything i do and in the colors that have never seemed as bright as when you were near. and in the colors that i still seek, even though they look a little pale. because while i am loved and cherished greatly, nobody can do it quite like you. but that, of course is the story you wrote me.

these steps

are not small.

amigo

to the friends who have stayed true no matter what changes they witnessed in me in the past five years. thank you - for not being a slave to instant gratification. to those who drifted off because i wasn't as much 'the giver' as usual, i hope you're happy too. we all can be.

magic

there is nothing quite like the sound of a beating heart.

whatever you do

don't blame the boy. if his trinkets caught your eye, you must have been looking in his direction.

silence

is also an answer.

hindsight

i was mistaken

~chicken little

blogs

make effective weapons of mass distraction. don't they?

waltz

i dance an intimate dance with myself. when i am done the sticky sweat seems to indicate that muscle has been stretched furter than i thought it might go. you are responsible for each and every way that you feel. sucks don't it?

dear me

people who write books, write books. i'm just saying.

pulling the trigger

this is a pretty word, followed by another pretty word, punctuated by an intelligent word and an interesting insight. three more pretty words follow. all this amounts to: very little in the absence of action, presuming, of course that you wish to move.

i have it on good authority

that sadness doesn't kill you. it also creates the kind of wrinkles that lend to the face an incredibly mysterious appeal. i quite like it, these days. i see life here, in this face.

to answer your question

that boys heart is so rigid that it's almost locked in a box. to distract himself he almost falls in love, over and over and over again. it's a pity that only he has the key because it's a really good heart. you can see the light shining through the airholes.

resolutions

this year i'm giving up control. i never had any, anyway. it's a bit like perfectionism, which i gave up when i was twenty-four. imagine putting so much energy into something that actually doesn't exist. it's rather elitist.

ar some point

who you are becomes a choice.

bloggerlution

and as they changed, so too did their blogs. some were left behind, their once cherished nicknames no longer needed. some wait in sleepy silence. there is, after all, the possibility of regression. some are in flux, soon to be discarded on a pile of no regrets. some are simply not required, right now. maybe soon.

or soonish.

some die with one posting. perhaps the writer did too. or maybe, instead, he lived.

i really don't care

in which fashionable literary magazine your poetry has been published. i want to see the ones you didn't send in.

where do they all belong?

i looked up and saw loneliness..

i saw it in the girl wearing chagrin like a badge and punching at little things that hang in the air like tail ends of lullabies.

i saw it in the girl using sex like a fishing lure. as though being able to titillate a man was any great feat or a triumph worthy of the effort. surely there must be more to you than your need for attention? and a better way to get it, if that's all there is.

i saw it in the girl determined to be honest against all odds as though losing her grip for an instant would see her shatter like a crystal star against the night sky.

i saw it in the man who thinks his way through life as though one day, one day, when the stench of his fearfulness is covered in answers he will know... anything.

i saw it in the written and most of all in the still to be penned.

if loneliness is feeling like you sometimes cannot relate to the world, then i, too, am lonely. if it means whoring who i am for a little attention, then loneliness may be the only feeling i have ever escaped.

you are all worth so much more.

namaste.