Forge Equilibrium

Is what I do equal to everyone else working in any field of expression, including music and art? Am I equal to my counterparts, be they musicians or painters? I've struggled with this question almost all year, and it caused a bit of writers' block as you might have noticed if you pay any attention between the dates between my last and second last posts.

Forge Equilibrium

If I'm a paper mill
and others are workshops of song,
can we both be beholders of light
and shine the same?

Will I be a saviour
just as those who save me every day are?
And with no answer to this question still,
the end of this year is just a deadlock:
a dead end in the road
that seemed to pass endlessly
beneath the wings of birds.

"You can be whoever you want to be".
"You are my son, you can do anything".
"I cried when I read that, son".

Like ropes in my hand you people are: knotted
and bound, bonds across centuries of memory.
Like songs in my head, when I slither out of bed,
these are those everlasting words.

And to hope that someday I'll compare dreams with her
and forge equilibrium
so my thoughts can be safe in sound
is probably the greatest task of all.

Because it signals both the day
I will cease chasing the horizon
and the day it begins chasing me.

"I cried when I read that, son"

Sitting on the Hill

Sitting on the Hill

A higher view;
a new-found confidence.
Friends become better friends
and I shed those inhibitions
like tiny flakes of skin.

I pretend they are in
the sky, floating
further and further
away.

One Year Ago

Tonight was your last night
on Earth, one year ago.

I wonder how you spent it.

Walls End

I wrote this poem about spending time with my good friend Mitch at his place in Newcastle. There's actually a lot more that I want to add to this poem, but I've just got too much other stuff on my mind at the moment. I'm in one of those points in an arc where you swing to the other arc. It's pretty shitty, but hopefully the next arc will be worth it. :)

Walls End
For Mitch


When I pulled into your
driveway (having driven past
already, much to your amusement)
You jumped down from
the hood of your car and
showed me your new tattoo.

It was tribal, just like school was. It
swirled and curled just as your
kind spirit loves to do, even though
neither were yet complete.

Quiescent

I hope this to be the final part of the Mother and Daughter Eternal / Robert's Creek / Genesis saga. This isn't to say I wont keep writing about 2008 and how much of an interesting year it was in my life... I've still got a few more planned relating to certain experiences, but this poem is sort of closure. I'm at a point in my life where everything is working out - I moved to Sydney to do one thing, and I did it, and now it's not so bad staying at all. Things that are dragging me down seem to be keeping at the surface too - a nice balance.

Quiescent

I: Cannon
In summer's haze (blinding associations
and wood-splitting arguments) I gathered
the shattered pieces of 2008 and
crammed them into my head:
I knew I would need them as much
as I needed to breath.

From broken sticks and crushed,
decomposed leaves (the years's
debris) I labored
an ark able enough to carry
me across six-hundred kilometres
so I could hold a candle to her.

II: Peacemaking
Sudden realisation: a final embodiment
I've what I'd came here to do. It was when
She held my hand in that dream as my guardian,
that Robert's Creek and all the stars that clung
to its waters flowed unharboured.

At the close, another thing to do
and another way to be always emerges and
this was more gratification
than I could ever have asked for.

Morning Duties

Morning Duties

The light and I are
chasing rivers until they become oceans:
before that they are just twisted fingers
of water bound.

Oceans are the open palms of water freed.

The mouth is where I
i spread my arms like wings
and dive into the blue-brown undertoe
of the unknown.

The light stands pivotal for a moment,
flickering and cometary until it
changes its mind and lulls back to sleep.

The world could go on for one more day
without light - getting up is too much
of a challenge.

-------------

Drafts

for later:

how we will remain
planets dont last forever
on my days at woodside

The Lone Pine in Front of Our School

Ah, another poem about school. I'll post an analysis later.

The Lone Pine in Front of Our School
For Year 12, 2007

You can deny it,
but denial never
outruns truth.

It was planted
(as nothing else but
a testimony to the vows
that became people over time)
in our home soil the
year before we
rode the birds on fire,
in the new air up north.
We were one hundred
footsteps ahead of it,
but those before it
had nimbly risen, because
the world cried in need for them,
just as we cry in sorrow for it.
But before it got the chance
to seep its roots into
foreign land, someone came
by to tare heedlessly at its
pregnancy and in surely
the least obscure of
parallels:
at the allegiance
of our tribes.

The four
obelisks
of
Mateship,
Endurance,
Courage and
Sacrifice seemed to be just
empty shells
to the empty shells that lived nearby.

Ah, but that was aeons
ago. I remember seeing the
sapling every morning: it was
a right of passage for me
and many others as we headed
to class. With all these
recurring dreams
I can't help but
ask everyone I know
how tall it has grown.

For I am
A growing tree by heart,
I cannot bare to move an inch -
cannot bare to leave this forest,
the haven where my life strikes
like a clock every contrived and blissful hour.

But here I stand,
five hundred kilometres
from the outer edge of
solace.

And so we all are
Something and something
Within The Lone Pine.
It's branches like us:
Bundled together tightly
at propagation, but as we grow,
spread further and further
apart, but still ever connected
by our limbs.

Genesis

So I've been working on this poem for quite some time now, since around the start of the year.
In the book, it'll be placed at the start of 'Part III', right after the last part of 'Part II', Mother and Daughter Eternal. So in a lot of ways, it's kind of like a poetic sequel to Mother and Daughter Eternal, but it has a completely different meaning, and utilises completely different subject matter (for the most part).

It's primarily about me opting for a clean slate after some difficulty in Wagga Wagga - with Uni, with work, with a lot of things. It's about me moving to Richmond, recovering my roots, and just starting again. It's different to the last poem I wrote, in that it entails the beginning and not an ending - hence why I've decided to place it at the start of 'Part III' of Days Chasing the Horizon. It's about me putting my all into making this work, but it acknowledges the guidance I've been getting from the people down here, plus one. I wont go into too much detail on the 'plus one' cause it's pretty evident from the poem who I'm talking about. I don't think I'll ever be able to not write about her in some way, shape or form.


Genesis

I sat on the floor
of my new room, and carved
a circle with my mind:
it soon glowed my favourite
fortuned green (about
the exhuberance of
honey oil)
and billowed in and out
like a beating heart.

Forging a star is
something I've attempted
countless times

(inside one thousand clocks)

but I know
I'll see this one right
through to supernova.

Piece by piece,
I centralised everything
inside me inside it:
every strand of anything.

Then I heard a sudden whisper-
an incantation to set
my outline alight, propel a
world into motion.

I knew she was here,
sitting on the floor
next to me;
but I am
blind to her.
I have been
since September
6th.

But I am not
blind to her
soul, and I know
that I have less
time with it than
I did before.

*

Something between
us ruptured, or
was it rapture
from this minor
reunion.

And then

You ripped at the string
that was tied to the earth
and night collided
into the day. Can
you see you're scattering a
billion colours around me?

And so she was
catching those miracles
in her ethereal
hands, and casting
into the air
for me to bite into.

But it wasn't bait.
It was a third chance.

I want to say it
wasn't her fault
but all her
Pictures slid in my mind
like all those times
I fell on the ice.

Ah, she knew.
She knew.

*

It pelted colourful
illusions in my new home
for days and days.
The shifting curtain of rain
cleansed the narrative-stricken
gutters of my street.

I can still hear you in my head.
I still tell you secrets that
I could never tell anyone else.
You are still my confidante.
You are still my best friend.
Even if I'm hated,
I still believe just
as you beleived.

I suppose it's best
if I set free my circle,
into the air that
wraps around The Hawkesbury:
that place that is our origin
(it is still the bluer
dawn of the mountains
and you are
still a glorious garden).

This star will find its place,
just as I will find mine and as
you've already found yours.

Requiem of the Red Sunset

I intend for this poem to close my book, as I've intended since its original incarnation as Earth on a String way back in 2006. I pretty much lost interest in working on the poem not long after its initial inception, mainly because I thought of the title first and ended up feeling way too limited with what I could write about.

Looking at the creation dates of the two files, I changed the poem from its original title to Requiem of the Red Sunset in April 2007, right around the time I wrote The Sitting Room and Their Nests Were Made of Glass, both of which being about the stresses of the HSC and school in general. So I guess if I had have attempted to write it with a little bit more fervour at that time, the poem probably would have ended up being about finishing school. But since it's now two years on, leaving school being in the past, it just didn't seem appropriate anymore to write about it.

Plus I've already written a million poems about leaving school.

I had high hopes from the beginning that it was going to be a goodbye song. But not necessarily a sad goodbye, but something a lot more bittersweet, which I think I've tapped into quite well in the complete version of this poem.

You'll also noticed the reference to The Wings of Birds in this poem, because it is something of a similar poem, with similar themes and even imagery. I wrote it about leaving Bathurst and coming home to a new beginning of sorts, so I thought it was relevant to involve it someway, somehow.

Only a few parts actually remain from the original Earth on a String draft. Namely:
She was singing
The sweetest carmine lullaby,
Swooning the senses of the brightest birds
To settle on soft Earth.
Down here, I knew they Could hear the
Stilling whispers of an Ancient timekeeper for it
Froze the flutter
Of their gilded wings.

This section makes reference to my sister and her talent as a singer, although this is only looking at things at face value. To go into more depth: I created this section as a metaphor to the endtimes. Not the endtimes of everything, ever, but the end time of a particular thing. A particular stage not only my life, but my sister's, and I guess my family's as a whole (which is what the poem is about).

Except for maybe my brother, none of us are kids anymore. And even Josh isn't that much of a kid. That's the endtime I ended up writing about. All of us maturing, growing into something else, someone else - each of us. Mum and Dad included.

People are ever changing and we are constantly at a pivot point of endings and beginnings. That is what Requiem of the Red Sunset is about. It's about an ending, but also a beginning.

Requiem of the Red Sunset

From the highest high
Of the Riverina
I watched the indigo eucalypts
And ghost gums near my house
Quiver from this new,
Otherworldly wind.
And the shimmer
Was a gleaming curtain draped
Over the darkened forest
My home had become.

Dad called us outside
To marvel at the sky's
Dreamy illuminance:
A shimmer of amber
And azure blue
Blending with the spilled
Clouds.

He was thinking the
Same thing I was:
That this world
Enchanted us even
At an end, as much as
It does at a beginning.

Bruised light drenched
Every wisp of air and
Every pore of skin,
As if we were all part of
The same thing and this
Time it was Mum who was
Thinking the same as me.

That I was
Back forever beneath
The Wings of Birds,
And the home and hearth
We shared was perpetually
Plotted across a lifetime.

And then I fell into
Dream’s hands...
Cassie stood at
The other end of
The veranda , smiling at me.
Inside her,
This new voice was growing
And it coloured her face
Foreign, but as enchanting
As it ever was.

She was singing
The sweetest carmine lullaby,
Swooning the senses of the brightest birds
To settle on soft Earth.
Down here, I knew they
Could hear the
Stilling whispers of an
Ancient timekeeper for it
Froze the flutter
Of their gilded wings.

Theirs' was a silence
To say goodbye, 'suppose
Somewhere else it was
All a symphony
Of joyful recognition:
A nod to the swifts in
Another world that had all
Waited for me to take flight.

But Cassie was the furthest
Place from silent: her words
Danced within my mind to
Become a plume of her
Infinite shades.

Josh was exuberant:
A searing sun
Bouncing around our lawn.
He couldn't contain
His fire and never
Expected silence -
He’s held it captive for years.
He is me in one thousand ways, but
I am him in a million.

His was a new voice burgeoning.

It is all a circle where I live:
The Red Sunset is the key
To the starlit Riverina.
This plain is the only gate to
The beautiful pink sunrise of tomorrow.
It is what we call breathing;
It is the cycle of night and day
And the ebb and flow of the Murrumbidgee
River that flows through our town.

And it's all out of my hands.

We were ebbing
Into something entirely
Different, my family and I.
In all paths we travelled
But we were still bound
Together in a chain beneath
The Red Sunset, the mixed blessing
That we'd endured and embraced
These last ten years -
The Sunset that was finally fading
Along with the leaves of the latest
Autumn we've ever had.

Or was it just the longest summer?

Either way

I know that
Cerulean skies are ever waiting
Beyond the heavy grey clouds
And the leaves that look
Like withered butterflies,
And I am ever chasing the horizon,
Ever guided by you all.

Mabin's Well

This is just a draft for the moment, although it's a fairly well developed one.

I wrote this poem about a place near my home town of Coleambally. I haven't been there, as is stated in the poem, and there is something about the idea of the place that repels me from doing so. I'm not really sure what it is - it could be that it's someone's private property.

It's more of a metaphor for being unadventurous, and at this point in my life, that sums a lot about me. I'm sick of being adventurous, I want to just get to my goals already. I want to achieve my university goals and it has proved quite difficult in the past to do this. I just want to move on with my life, but I guess I feel as though uni is holding me down, but also holding me up at the same time.

It's something of a dichotomy, I suppose, but dichotomies generally make for good poetry.



Mabin's Well

Mabin's Well is a hole
In my mind, as I trundle
Down the street.
It's a place I've never been:
A stone well on the hidden
Boundary marked out by
Frightful birds.

Someone whispered on
The usually silent street
That they'd never been there
And didn't know anyone that had.
I was foolish to believe
No-one could read
My silent thoughts here.

I kept walking on air,
Dreaming of that place.
But then I knew I had to look up,
Look up, keep looking up -
Like a brolga that could
Smell the impending storm.

The clouds parted like a
Flower of the hour
Fully realising its beauty
And I knew that Mabin was
A gate to another place,
Another time.

Things tend to dawn on me
In bursts of light, beams that
Cannot create shadows.

I suppose it's how I breathe.

I will fly there one day,
Even if I have to wait until
Until I'm no longer
Beneath these wings,
But inside a boat
That isn't afraid
To moor on the water's edge.

The Wings of Birds

Okay, so here's a poem I wrote sometime during the middle of last year. It details my thoughts and feelings about leaving university at Bathurst and returning to my home town. I wont discuss this poem too much, because I think it's themes of "going home" and "nostalgia" are pretty clear throught.

The Wings of Birds

In the wintry hovel of Bathurst,
my horizon was forever hazed but
Outside, in the wild blizzard,
I lost and found the path back home.
My hoarded wealth and treasure was
once afloat afloat in oblvion; now
as feathers into my heart
they all floatingly descend.

Ceaselessly, time is a set
of slippery stepping stones;
Each one harder to stand upon,
more difficult upon which to hold my ground.
But these things I've learnt
in my own fleeting reality,
envisage a field once faded
into one of flourishing colour.

Countless cryptic messages were
a dark room that has since been
lit; teaching lessons of hardship and
those morals of fellow feeling.
And standing at the outer edge
of earthy home and hearth -
I absorb its crystal beauty;
its eternal radiance.

And that handsome Kingfisher squawks high,
telling me that home
is not where I stand on soil,
but whereI settle on the river's bed.
It's all inside a world inside a forest
beneath the wings of birds:
that town where I grew up,
my memories etched within.