Listen to the rhythm of the beat

Love can set you free,
if you let it,

love can also nibble away at your flesh,
if you’re afraid of it,

the ghosts of my unexpressed feelings are haunting me,
perched on my shoulders
with the weight of three rhinoceroses,
clinging to my collar bones
clawing my skin
each breath is a gasp

*Thump*

Safety tastes sweeter,
or so it seems
*Thump*
when love is a whisper
fading into the dry autumn breeze,
a sour kiss
sealed with an expiration date
*Thump*
let’s not rush this,
I say,
as to hold onto us inside my mind
afraid it may slip away if I let us be more than a thought
*Thump*

these ghosts are getting heavy,
I choke on the U and the I
every time
we’re together
we’re apart,
I think I’m afraid
these ghost-feelings are heaving and shifting
*Thump! Thump! Thump!*
*Ouch!*

the streets have more colour when we’re in them,
the flowers look bolder
the grass greener
the street lights glitter
the moon glows upon our beaming faces
*Thump*
I catch a glimpse of how wonderful we could be,
but these ghosts are creeping up behind me
*thump*
the streets are dark and murky
when we’re apart,
every alley looks like a graffitied-up, rubbish-dump death-trap
the trees and garden beds whither
beneath the darkness
the heavy heat eats away at the colour

*Thud!*
*Hmmph*

the ghosts pile and pile upon my shaking aching trapezius ligaments
this doesn’t feel like a miraculous circus act,
my knees are faltering
bearing the weight of at least five rhinoceroses
beads of sweat drip drip drip down my cheeks
tickling my jaw line

*Thump*

you stretch out your hand
I grasp it and the ghosts begin to spill out
“I… I… I… Lo…”
I choke and spit
these words don’t come easy
when you hold them in for so long

*Thump*

the salty beads soak into my flesh,
you’re right there in front of me,
for a moment I catch my breath,
the sweat evaporates from my chest
the particles of hydrogen and oxygen separate,
the silent breaths shared between
warm smiles and eager eyes
say what our words cannot,
but I still can’t unlatch the ghosts
from my shoulders

*thump*

“I… I… Love”
for a moment each breath comes easier
for a moment there’s much more air than water
for one more moment there’s an incredible lightness

*Thud! Thud!*
*Thump!*

my knees give way
my shoulders are aching,
oh no, no,
I’m still afraid

*thump*

I can’t feel any of my ligaments now
I feel dislocated
I’m all out of sorts,
the weight is stacked so heavy
these ghoulish feelings engulf every breath
*Thump*

so close but I’m still gasping,
my heart is aching
thumping harder than I could ever imagine,
feels like it’s being beaten with a meat tenderiser
by my own admission with the words
I can’t seem to spit out
*Thump*

I’ve only got two feet and sometimes even two feels like too many,
sometimes I wish I couldn’t walk,
it hurts too much to fall
*Thump*

no. That’s it,
I can’t hold onto this any longer,
I’m becoming the ghost of unexpressed feelings
that’s it,

I stand up again,
the weight subsides,
I turn to you
“I love you”
the words echo in the sound of your voice,
no longer blinded by the ghost-fears that have been weighing me down,
our lips touch
my shoulders fall back
“I’ve been waiting so long”
the words echo, again

a whole jungle escapes me
the rhinoceroses bound through green grass and warm mud,
butterflies flutter from our ears,
leaves and petals and twigs and feathers breathe around us
through the rose-infused citrus air,
I can breathe again
lighter, lighter, lighter,

I’m not afraid anymore
or at least I’m getting there,

Love can set you free, if you let it

knife’s edge

there’s a typewriter concealed to the back of my mind,

ink blots stained into my fingers and palms,

crinkled papers beside me that I pulled from the bin

trying to forage some peace of mind through the routes of it all,

to salvage and preserve with only a few rips and wrinkles,

but these words’ll never spill out of the pages if I can help it,

yet there are some out there who paint weeds as blooming roses 
and crows as cuckoo birds

it’s not beautiful to glorify madness,

romantic ideals of cooped up lives

and estranged hearts led by dejected minds,

pretty pictures of disturbed realities only drag you down

reality isn’t easy,

that’s why no one promises security

the weight of the clouds

it’s easy to fall in love with a poet,
particularly if you’re also a poet,
waxing lustrous through heavy breaths,
whispering blades of grass into the bedsheets,
planting tulips into the mattress springs,
birds tweeting
while the bees are busy pollinating,

but there are secrets our lips won’t set free,
there are labyrinthine maps in our hearts more entrapping than any spider web,
but this is not a survival method
this is not a game,

simply two people
having a good time,
no need to overcomplicate things with convoluted confessions
borne out of your loneliness,
which writes a script, belies expectations and sets a code of conditions,

let’s flow like ribbons in the breeze,
folding and falling,
clinging and unlatching,
trilling about in a fleeting symphony suite,
trailing through city streets and upstairs bars,
breathing cathartic chaos through open mics,
cradling broken limbs in foetal position after dark,
catching shards of obliterated bones and fallen eyelashes
with the dust around our heads,

the view is kind of skewed from this cloud we’re sitting upon,
cushioned and cosy,
always a stable 21 degrees-C,
the breeze combing our hair,
malting bird feathers fall and tickle our interlocked fingers,
ever so much as drifting and back to merging,

you cannot designate a cloud, though,
see,
clouds were never meant to be solid stagnant entities
but reshaping, drifting, combining and separating
clusters of individual particles,
if one is to get too heavy
it does not settle, more is not more,
thunder asunder into
droplets of cold tears
striking the pavement
soaking the grass
replenishing the soil
and reinventing it’s form,
reinstating it’s place,
its surroundings and the elements it merges with,

grinding my teeth
as to chew through this questioning,
why can’t this moment just be this moment,
it seems a treacherous path
that you tread
ten steps ahead
before we’ve even touched the ground

Pause for a moment…

Stop feeding your soul with your own propaganda,
stop telling yourself that your life is inadequate.
It’s not.
There is no expectation, no failure,
no middle-ground and no ends within your soul.
The more you starve away from the things you like
and feed off what you tell yourself you should like,
the more you’ll gorge on commercialised media
and trending products
that profit off your anxieties
and perceived inadequacies
by illuminating them,
framing them, contextualising them,
then providing an instant, purchasable solution.
If you do purchase this product,
as a means to quieten the deeply fused demons you locked inside, you’ll only be poking them, not letting them out,
and to prod the devil is to provoke pain,
and the cycle will scale beyond any previous heights.
Put down your devices,
go for a walk,
sit down,
now write.

…This was a ‘lil note I wrote to myself, maybe it’ll help you out too…

You get to choose the cycles that circle your experiences
which then piece together your life. A life. The only life you ever get to navigate and toy with.

A Procession Of Unlearning

it is the awakening spirit
that summons the stones that
bare sorrow, lonliness, jealousy and rage,
and accepts these toxic granules that are borne from the body of the Earth,
for it is here that one can fully realise elation, solitude, gratitude and understanding,

without the harsh winds and the grinding currents,
the stones would not
take such wondrous shapes and gleam with such contrasting,complimenting
strokes of light and rich colours,

the beauty of the soul resides in its wholeness, its oneness, its way in which it encompasses the entirety of human emotion,

this completeness of being is what we already are,
we must unlearn those thought patterns that
drown us like a torrential flood swamps a city,
we must drain them from our insides,

this passage of unlearning reveals us to ourselves
as we ponder the path,
consciously lifting each foot,

we are all souls, caged in separate vessels
of many shapes, colours, sizes, sounds,
it is the spirit which can and will transcend the physical entrapment,
over time, variety of context, across continents, time zones,
mountains, valleys, skyscrapers
and trailer parks,
jungles and swamps,
death and life,
becoming nothing
encases everything,
freedom,

when we cultivate that which can only be felt and experienced –
that which cannot be touched nor heard nor seen,
the fear of death dissipates,
the prison of time crumbles,
any physical ailment or chemical imbalance unlatches their clasp,
a soul is set free,

the you – that cannot be contained in a tiny dress nor tight jeans,
a three-piece suit, nor draped in silk,
the you – that cannot be contained in a wooden box and lowered into the dirt,
that cannot be impaled, nudged, slapped or cut open,

you become endless
– as you were when you were born,
when you first learned how to walk,
how to tie bows on your feet,
and how to ask for milk without squealing

Fresh Orange Juice

Your demons gnawed at my skin and gnashed their teeth at my fear-filled eyes,

my perpetual self-doubt cyclops squandered my gut-driven doubts,
but I kept quiet,

couldn’t let it out,
couldn’t let people know
that I was suffering behind that beaming grin,

the bell kept ringing
through my skull,
through my limbs,

things are not as they seem,
things are not as they seem,

our love was proud,
our pain was in vain,

we woke each morning
disguised the night’s piercing eyes,

me in a summer dress,
you behind a guitar,

with eager grins and cheeky winks
spilled into a glass of fresh orange juice,

every morning
we woke
again,

I will never let this happen
again.

We are not islands

We are not islands
colliding,
we are shipwrecks
intermingled
we are obliterated panels of wood, copper helms, rods, sinks and detergent, spilled wine, lost passports, shards of smashed crockery,
burst pipes, torn blankets, mildew-covered shower curtains, dog-eared book pages, misquoted passages and jumbled names.

We are not islands
clashing into one another
we are fragments of mirrors, seashells, rock formations, running streams, clumps of clouds
merging
forming
and re-forming
push and pull
push and pull,
press against me
as I press against you,
pull me closer
using just your eyes and your breath,
let me clasp your trembling hands
in my unsure stance
until we are united, settled, calm, peaceful,

let us sit with our sorrows,
our anger and our outrage,
let us plummet into the depths of our deepest darkest monsters
so that we can tear them out of our souls and rip the damn leeches off our pulsing veins,
until we can breathe again
without our bodies convulsing on the exhale
until we can see again without the heavy film of a foggy perception blocking the way,

let us be
right here
just here
in this shared space
as we hammer and drill and sew and scrub and varnish and paint and tighten and wring and stir and toil
until it becomes second nature
and before we know it
we become expansive coral reefs and sailboats,
together we become sharks and orcas and jelly fish, sting rays, seahorse, plankton, coral, crabs and tortoises,
currents, movement, time, wind, waves,
rain droplets dripping into the vast blue-green ocean,
spitting out of a twilight sky,

we become everything and nothing
we
become
endless.

Stop searching,
you’re already here,
your soul is waiting for you
to catch up,
take my hand
trust yourself
you are worthy
you are precious
you are loved
you have purpose
you bring light
and cast shadows
you are necessary
you belong,
the world needs you,
come along,
I’ll take you
to yourself.