I will never put in
to this piggybank world
more than I have had to take out.
So I’m getting out.
At first there’s a thrill to finding commonality.
The initial blush of relief
when you know you’re not alone,
but seek those moments sparingly.
How terrible
to unveil every facet of yourself
one by
precious
one
and find them all reflected
as you open to somebody
who could,
after all,
be a mirror
and then what are you.
and then what is left.
Rain, rain, here to stay
I’d have it no other way
like an old familiar song
it makes me feel that I belong
orange shining off the wet
in that way I can’t forget
sky is dark, a muddy brown.
Tell me why I love this town.
Rain, rain, soft and sweet
holes in shoes and soaking feet
makes me cold but soft to touch
guess I shouldn’t mind so much
Now it’s falling harder still
dripping on my windowsill
How does it get through the wall?
Got a cup to catch it all.
Rain, rain, I do find
it can soothe a troubled mind
wash away the fear and strife
it’s one constant in my life
and I hope that one day
it will wash me all away
everything that makes me, me
will flow until it reaches sea
Wouldn’t that be for the best?
Melt and muddle with the rest
Ice and river, cloud and rain,
then falling at your feet again.
In my grip I hold a strand of golden thread,
and in my hand, and in my head it wraps around.
Tonight I’m bound in golden thread.
I can’t quiet all I’ve said, I’ve seen the ocean meet the sky;
I’ve seen the sun so sweetly die,
its final shining line a lie.
I’ve shown the brightest things I’ve known
entwined in kind of holy strings,
but I can’t find or follow threads,
in case I find the morning dead.
She took my poem
and she read it
and she liked it
but she said it kind it tailed off at the end.
I said yes, it is about you,
and we didn’t speak much after that.
I always bring my bible with me, every time I move.
Not sure what I hope to prove.
Perhaps that some things never change, although I know they do,
and my tattoo of a cross would no longer be true
if I’d ever gone through with it.
Given the time, all rocks become sand
so build your house on whatever land you will.
There’s no virtue in standing your ground as it crumbles around you,
unless you want to feel the waves
at your toes.
Tell me then if it matters which I chose,
When we all strap our packs to our backs again,
head down the dead dirt tracks again
to a promised land full of cracks and floating pages.
But it’s still nice to know that they’re there,
and to snatch one from the air,
to love it for what it was to me,
and then to let it go.
I don’t know how I got here, but I’ll take it as a sign
to disregard the world outside and damn well make you mine.
Whatever miracle it was that brought me to your side,
it’s a gift I don’t intend to waste. My reticence has died.
The phone and the alarm can ring, someone can knock the door,
but nothing’s going to keep me from your kisses any more,
and with a touch and with a look in silence I will ask,
Will you meet my eyes, and will you rise to meet the task?
Outside of these four walls, there’s not a soul who knows I’m here.
With each firm stroke and soft caress I’ll make my meaning clear:
You fit me, like a river fits the riverbed it carves.
You know me, like entangled photons know their distant halves.
And though we may deny each other our own selves as whole,
We’ll still be touching deeply, soul to skin to skin to soul.
In stolen solitude, I’ll claim the parts of you I’ve earned,
and walk away (in body) when the morning has returned.
Uncommonly for me, this poem was born in an instant.
I like the theory that goes:
we are all the same soul,
reincarnated time and time again
and some day you will be Ryan Gosling,
and once I was the toothless old lady playing the guitar with two strings outside the post office
and who’s to say who’s the happier?
And one day I will be you,
and then I will know why you do what you do
and maybe if you think back,
you’ll remember why I stood here tonight.
It’s a nice idea, and that’s another kind of true.
I like to think that the last of us,
the final incarnation,
will have a moment of clarity before the lights turn out.
That’s all I ask,
just a dawning realisation.
I just want things to slot into place
I want to look back at every life ever lived,
and say “Oh!”
The sun rises from the wrong side like a secret.
I haven’t been to sleep yet.
I roll to check the clock again
and another two hours have fallen away,
another night without a moment’s rest
from the worst and the best of my stress at this mess.
The part of me that longed to fly free
must have done so.
