something like affirmations & vibrance

(a new casual poetry collection project that i plan to keep leisurely consistent)



a chapter begins with a creek bank and a sweeping uplift
from ochre stained swimsuit to a place anxiously close to the silver sun
but not quite, because this is a memory after all,
and the algae-smooth perches of baked moons (and i say moons
because the jagged rocks only stuck out on the walk back)
keep the perspective precarious

but this is what you jolted me to
when you mentioned the dangers of the river, the seaside, the lake –
they are highways in their own goddamn right, y'know,
full of sand and minerals and barefoot freedom tracks on car mats
that lodge in cracks of whatever youth was meant to feel like before i became this

and i ask
is that when i have grown old: when all the technicolour came before me?

and if so, can i die before i pass away?

a chapter begins with the sun at noon, not because it put itself there;
see, i've learned that it doesn't get anywhere at all
unless i put myself in its way and stick out a thumb

burning is about as enthusiastic as it gets
______the roaring bass drop is out of control
licking the feathers off Icarus mid-flight
___and we are happy and so, so alive, yes
smoking party streamers inside our chests
________popping off like heart palpitations, hurray!
what a brilliant end to a blur of tedium
_____so fast my guts almost exploded there and then;

Illawarra flame trees in bloom

i looked, for this thing called worth,
in the flowered intestines
of only half a mouse
on the burnt bricks.

and, like a botanist, i took its photo;
one day, i would identify this in myself,
and the summer would make no noise.

i broke away to my creek, post-bushfire, post-hail,
and searched for you over the cicada shrill
and engines overhead.
you had taken off your boots here
you had taken off

and i wear myself out hearing of how
murk had parted for your following
of the laughter, which rippled away
the branches caught up in
nature falling apart

i am snagged before i can see where you turned to
where you ended up, who
you ended up being and time
falls apart to the soundtracks you give;

i want to maul them note from note and find you younger,
growing, loving

i wanted to be that laughter again;
but first you need to tell me
why all of this was so funny

poem title: refraction

"she is the loveliest daffodil"
word for word
and in this sway of telling and showing, showing and telling
though i have touched the earth for you in this light air
bent over backwards in a happy sea
i find i no longer wish for a poem to praise me
to cut me down
i need not be syntaxed in a vase to keep me here
those are small dreams
so frugal, so prone to jonquil-sightedness
your words say, "how silly,
that you could not read
how far i bent at the brightness of you,
and for a long time yet"

as a child, i was cast under an enchantment
and i know this because my home is beautiful
the way lonely temples are beautiful
__and it taught me the incantation of the pulse in my head
__so i could recite it back to the pale ceilings
__and grow old and die eternally beneath its Peace

when the pulse stopped, i stepped out in the world

i have a nail polish that overcast colour
and i blanket it on whenever i miss my childlike self:
because i am still there, now
under passive eternity
__so warm, i promise you
__so calm
and so faraway from the youth i have left
so faraway from leaving

_____but watch me leave it now
_____watch me
__please watch me leave

snoring mountains, rising and falling—
echoing each other
and a sad song about dreamers.
but i am safe.
i am safe.
i am
safe.

-

it's been a blur, but the speed bumps even out on the sheets for a moment
and the verdict is gentle from space

You would march into the firestorm in a heartbeat, O brave heart.

But would you fight the battle confused in warmth,
watch your future sit in a car hotbox, like a
kid like a pet waiting, like slumber giving in, saying,
‘This is nice, these moments that forget
what was more a moment ago—

what a strange dream that was.’
Would you stare out at the strange streets and visions
and believe the glass is only as dense
as how brave you still are to think you belonged there?

(A/N: the tenses in this poem are all over the place, among other things, which I'll probably touch up some other time after I recover from writing a poem this long haha) (word count is a smidge over 500 words) d:


poem title: supermoon (07/05/20)

the far side of the moon lives
in the inverted chamber
of each skin turned blackout curtain,
and mine is a forest simulating death.

denial is to be
near in the garden,
so i screamed poems all night
to echolocate primitive names:
this is hell
and the apocalyptic gods;
here is scorpio moon
at the end of all things.

eventually i found the one
called i don’t know.

it lived in a great pale pool of tree silhouettes as the day fell over,
obscured faraway, where i peered alone with God
who floated thoughts to me,
told me_________bring consciousness

ask questions_________feel deeply

you need do nothing at all

__________________a body is worth more when it is alive

_________and your hands are warm


the colours bled out from some fatal wound
as dusk folded and folded like a soft goodnight,
like familiar loss disclosing
more now than etiquette once withheld,
saying here,
let me wrap you up
in my folds that reek
of absolute permanence
to show you what it is
to die from the world.

beyond the far side lives the other side—
my face a silhouette on the water, ink blotted
and obscured by the branches.

behind
i heard my name called by human love (remember the near side).
______‘should i go back?’
there was no fear here, and that scared me.
curtains folded and folded...
i don’t know

______i don’t know

______'i don’t know'______i don’t know I DON’T

KNOW I DON’T KNOW I DON’T KNOW I DON’T

the other side is an absent note
held forever in a pool ripple uninterrupted

never mind

i don’t know who i was

the phantom of a scream wanders near to far
in an expanding universe
and i am not there.

nothing settles denser.
a building collapsed.
and i live within the end of a world removed,

unmoved long enough
for a curtain to ripple: crystal mist i’ve felt for so long,
falling until it could no longer and my sight
comes clear

adjusts

my sight

to another world

my sight comes

and maybe this is all
that lives beyond all
we cannot see:

a veil of loss lifted;

patiently
a grace
waits for our adjustment.

yet
i am
reminded of my body
and warm hands pressed together,

and denial is to be
far in the forest.
i know this. i know and i know so i turned back
from darkened pool to tree tangle in time to navigated myself
(and i ask you if this is
what bravery looks like).

the near side of the moon lives
in the body that sucks in between the tall trees
when the self is at its lowest
and muddles in wilderness darker than it.
it waits
and waits
to be full.

when i made it out,
above were stars
clownishly posed in their not-knowing
of why they are,
and a voice from alight windows
told me to love the near and far.

you have, and you have not—
do not lose either.
i let these phases fulfil one
another until i know
my wholeness.

(A/N: just a little poem idea i had today c:)


148
million
kilometres
and the sun still
hugs me from here

miracles are so often
inanimate yet personified
haloed yet shy

lifeless cancels out life
and what’s left
is infinitesimal and near
but i’ll step out
for my gaudy friend

and we’ll offer
warm graces