I will haunt the edges of forever,
just to chase the echoes
you leave behind.
I’ll swallow both our silences,
a ritual upon my tongue.
I cannot bear to tell you
the Gods cannot undo
what’s already begun.
Tell me—
are you more afraid of
me, or your memories?
You whispered, “I picked you dandelions,
and you just threw them away.”
I told you, “I’m a realist—
who needs wishes anyway?”
But you knew I did,
I do.
I do.
You probably wouldn’t get it
but I could walk for miles in your shoes,
the soles split long ago
and the pain became my muse.
I hung your clothes out to dry
in exchange, you wrung out
my tears and prayers under moonlight
I guess I shouldn’t have been surprised.
The fabric smelled of salt and soil
and I knew the ocean had
borrowed your body for a while.
Autumn’s kiss wasn’t enough to wake you
I don’t know why I thought I could be any different.
You were Spring’s wind,
and I was afraid of my own reflection.
We never had a chance.
No, we never had a chance.
Who needs Damocles
when you have Aristotle’s lantern?
Dreams are “just dreams,”
and your presence is a phantom.
I don’t need to touch galaxies
to believe in divinity.
Brushing against your fingers
was enough to unravel me,
and I can’t get the taste of you
out of my eyes.
You are everywhere—
and everywhere you haunt me
“Do you ever get that feeling?”
I tell her she’s too sensitive.
The evening lark laughs,
spinning silver through my bones
I push away the irony,
I am not afraid to lie
in the bed you made for me.
You used to love the sun,
and now you cannot bear the moon.
You said the shadows followed you home one night,
but I never asked if they stayed.
I think I took something irreversible from you—
something soft
I find the outlines of you
in the quiet I cannot escape,
I carry you like a wound;
stabbing me with every breath I take.
-
-
My dear, spry Robin
perched between natures door-way
plucky little thing
Gather ‘round tree-stumps
we perform the rite of dreams
beneath falling stars
Moonbeams kiss where Sun-
beams fade. we pass through Twilights
hour, hands tightly entwined
I reach for your warmth
your dreamless mumbles tickle
the back of my neck
We cannot help but
giggle at the company
of strangers’ kindness
Off the beaten track
we find paths that lead nowhere
yet everywhere, both
Beckoned, by sacred
denizens of the woodlands
leave no trace behind -
the waning moon
discharges jasmine-rays overcosmic amniotic dice
perhapswe will find
her one day, gazing towardan endless sea
endless starsendless questions
for eternal unshaven answersi think i see you now perhaps,
it is too late -
I spit the last of my teeth into my palms
and pry them from crimson gums,
trembling hands cup them in d e s p e r a t i o n
offering payment to the muse.
my mind trudges as slowly as a frozen screen— but i
tap and tap and tap
and tap and tap
and tap and tap
and scream through clenched teeth.
i hear about meteorite showers and howling winds,
aurora australis and
fairy wrens in the garden,
dolphins in the bay and
my father brings me home shells
but i never see
or see
or see
my muse. She wounds me, flirts with me.
the paranoia of not writing quick enough
grows beneath my finger nails and nail-prints
embed themselves into my palms
I can feel something inside me changing
and I’m terrified it will disappear.
she dangles fleeting thoughts but I would
sooner swallow the sun than beg
for a star. This fire inside me burns like hell
and to hell with waiting, what if she never takes over?
what if she does? -
I know that I know nothing
I suppose that sums up what this silly little rambling is to be about. That I am aware I know nothing really (truly). I have been pondering today. Considered carefully about my writing practice and what I think the “dos” and “donts” might be. That is, in my very little, very limited experience with the Art form. I have thought about all I want to achieve in my practice, what my practice even is. I do not think I have uncovered many answers, though certainly more questions. Figures.
THE TRAIN TRACKS: perhaps in some misguided Romantic humanness, I wish for my writing to be connected as all Things seem to be connected. I have not really considered, at least plainly, and stated boldly, that the trains will barrel toward each other inevitably. I think it wise to assume I must keep laying down the tracks until the collision hits, and who knows how long that will take? Why must there even be tracks? Are we always on a path when we do not even seek one? If we walk a path that was not a path before, can we assume that we always leaves paths no matter what? So can there truly ever be a path? Perhaps there are only ever paths. I am sure there is something to be said about the psychology in this. About why-we-are-the-way-that-we-are and our childhoods and adulthoods and maybe we should just shrug off the “hood” part and leave it a jumper. Less strangling, I’d assume? At least when sleeping, that is. I’m sure there’s some psychology in that, too. And we are not even considering the whole path dilemma, either. And who said you cannot start a sentence with And? I’d like to hit them. Anyway, the train tracks. Transformation. Moving. Endless &– [insert whatever you think fits best here].
UNBINDING THE BINDS: as I said earlier, I would like my writing to be connected. Imagine writing a poem *now* that actually connects to a work of fiction in ten years time! Or perhaps the writing connects with some detail from the real world/life (honestly don’t get me started on Reality right now, thank you Ray & Sam). I have been thinking of these things, from an authorial perspective– in the sense that I must construct this huge big-umbrella-mutant-thing and work backwards. That I must know how everything connects before I write about it connecting. I have never thought like this and I don’t know why I am bothering with this process now. In my reality, the best things arrive organically. And (often), they tend to slap me in the face because I was too hesitant to trust the signs earlier. To taste the divinity.
HOW TO STRADDLE THE REALM B/W “NOT ENOUGH” & “TOO MUCH”: That is not to say I wish to be sloppy, or disgrace contemporary poetry with little care to my practice in the good name of “raw” and “organic.” Unfortunately, there must be some kind of call to balance. I have been practising balancing with my eyes closed nearly every morning and every night. I am yet to clock 30 seconds. I am also yet to learn when I am doing too much, or too little. No, it is too structured. It is too raw and sloppy. It is too– I am yet to take a leap of Faith. To rid of fear. But again the paradox of too snaps its ugly head around to face me. Too much fear is paralysing. Too little fear, does not truly push you… but how am I to measure a “healthy” dose of fear? What a scam, sham, slam. I am done with these insipid rules. “Rules were made to be broken” but rules create a standard and if there is no standard or at least, some kind of consideration of the existence of a standard, then why does any of it matter? How am I to write contemporary poetry without consideration of the classic stanza, haiku & sonnet? How could I possibly break the conventions with any degree of substance if I do not know what it is I am even breaking? Perhaps that is what has gone “wrong” with Art.
A Question for the Artist more experienced than Me who also knows they know Nothing: Can Art ever truly be wrong?
Yes, yes, I know. What a truly cruel and unfair question. Well, boohoo. I’m signing off x
-
There is something about the afternoon hour which drowns
me in feeling–it is cadmium yellow and saccharine, it clings to my teeth
nectar-thick and
this shit will rot me to my core, i think
right.down.to.the.root.
nostalgia hits me like a blow–dandelion tuffs trail bubbles
like will-o-wisps–but i welcome the memory with
masochistic palms, split open and bleeding
it grieves me and
weeps out of me and i burn with the high of golden hour
my hair is strawberry blonde because i absorb
all of the light. it consumes my very being and gods do i relish
the tenderness of a sunburn
i offer myself to this inferno. spike my innocence to a stake. just
as long as i can feel the sun
let me re-create scenarios and I’ll live in them forever
this shit will rot me to my core, i think
nothing tastes as sweet as sentimentality. -
~Just my silly internal monologue whilst reading Virginia Woolf’s essay, “A Room of One’s Own” (1929). Here, have some thoughts, do with them what you will. I hate everything xx
I sit here and ponder alongside Virginia Woolf, and I wonder about the women of the Shakespearean century. I think of how discouraged those women must have been. What her life might’ve looked like, indeed. If she were creative. I think about the madness that would have manifested as a result of her confinement. I think about the room I reside in right now. My bed, which I sit upon. The golden light of the afternoon sun warms my rapid fingers as I type and type and backspace. I think about the privileges I have been given. The rights I have lost. I think about how unfair it seems, that now we are allowed to dream, we are still punished for it.
When once, the art of dreaming. The art of thinking, questioning and curiosity were celebrated– held in the highest esteem. How the highest order of education is a doctorate in philosophy. Philosophy. Glorified overthinkers. I think about how unfair it is, that the moment we could write, if even “semi-freely,” it was no longer regarded as brilliance or intelligence. I think of how we are now reprimanded for doing the work of scholars so long ago. I think of how angry they were, when they realized perhaps we could do it better. I think of how angry they still are. How it has burned through centuries. How we have burned because of it. And perhaps this fear, if a better substitute for anger in this instance, led them to commit such atrocities. They took our names (they took more than our names). They called us hysterical, emotional, incongruous.
Maybe it is our fault that we let them (why do we take false accountability all the time?). It is no wonder women are so good at writing romance and fiction. It is their disposition to be such things. Emotional and without logic or reason, it is surely an unfair advantage they have, and not at all a reflection of [their/men/you can’t group all men like that, Maddie] own inferiority. Masterful magick a looking glass can be. I consider who we laminate as some of the “greats.” I consider that we still continue to regard these men (who some, were mediocre at best) with these labels, and with such certainty. I think about how this will likely never change. And I myself, are angry. Very. fucking angry.
That my confessionals are regarded as nothing more than childish. But Rousseau is regarded with such awe. As though my ‘big thoughts’ can never possibly be as loud as any mans. As though I will forever be an inarticulate wench, incapable of thinking anything worth the slightest test of pause. Of consideration. As if, nothing I can ever say will inspire such a change in thinking. And I am angry, too. I am angry that I am now granted a room. And yet, I have no use for it. I am granted a room. And I am confined to it. I am now granted a room, but the language is dead.
How Woolf would shake with violence at my naivety. How she would tear apart my mediocrity and tell me I have disgraced her name. But I would deserve it. For I have taken for granted the room she has given me. But does she realize that without the pressing need for a room, there is no pressing need for my voice? One will always create a room should she need one. And currently, I do not. At least, not in a way that is as life-altering as others. Everybody needs a room. But not everybody knows how to occupy the space. Not everyone is aware of how to continue to fill the room, without glimpsing somebody else’s, and seeing that theirs is better. Perhaps more stylish. Modern.
My room is littered with scraps of frivolous anger. No real action. Perhaps they are right, and I am nothing but emotional, hysterical, incongruous. Perhaps I am nothing at all.
-
~[Dreaming & Wanting & Wishing & Yearning & Longing & Imagining & Hoping]
I dream of a little hobbit life sprinkled with big grand adventures– I dream of the finest foods- artisan crackers, vintage aged cheddar and crimson Pepperjack. I dream of my belly being sore from uncontrollable joy. I dream of reading my silly little books, spines cracked & margins scribbled, in my own silly little library. I dream of drinking coffee every-morning with the love of my life. I dream of leaving letters in strangers mailboxes, unsigned. I dream of slowing down and not allowing a shred of guilt to nip me. But those grand adventures watch me with curiosity. They demand…
exploring and diving and breath-TAKING as well as breathtaking. Pause on the breath-taking. That’s what I want. The hitch in breath. The little flips in my chest. That fluttering, dancing shiver of pure undulated excitement. I want a warm little smile plastered on my face because I know the secret origins of a stupid grin. I want scars to tattoo my body; stories of close-calls. I want stacks of photographs to be my poetry, when I eventually run out of words. When my weathered and withered hands can no longer pick up a pen. I will remember. And I…
hope that it will be enough. I hope that it will be enough for me to say that I did live a life. I hope that my soul will no longer flinch at the start of something new. I can do nothing but dream of this glued-together ceramic world. I fear the cost of yearning for something so grand. The pieces of me it must take in exchange. I am a coward. I do not need to have a story of my own- but I fear not having one all the same. So I am learning how to explore, and dive and hold my breath. And gods do I hope that I feel the fall. I will master straddling the realm between the living and living. It is all I can…
wish for.
-
One of my favourite things
is leaving my phone
unattended
and coming back to find the
very many photos my friends
have taken, and bombarded me with
and perhaps they dont realise
or maybe they do, that i always do it
on purpose
That Girl Books 