Thieve Your Gaze

Thieve Your Gaze
Your stare is so
penetrating that
I'm sure you can see
the blood rushing through my veins.
Words are thrashing inside
the pen like two hooked hammerhead
sharks but it is her penetrating
stare that tightens every slither
of skin skin.

Your eyes are a lesson
in anarchy and how to survive
and get paid for it too.

Wallsend

I tried to write this poem about a year ago, and if you check on my blog you'll see it in its draft form. I've never written a poem in this way before - its very simplistic and much more language-oriented than image-oriented as most of my poetry is. And because of this shift in focus, its probably my most candid poem written yet. Its fairly obvious what its about - Hope you enjoy it.

Wallsend
For Mitch

When I pulled into your driveway
(having driven pastalready, 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
like your spirit loves to do, though
neither has been brought to fruition.

That night we hired The Strangers partly because
Liv Tyler was way hot and a good scare was in
order. Halfway through the movie you asked me
to get up to see if the door was locked because
who knows who might barge in
and you thought it would be funny to knock loudly
on the wall to make me think there was someone outside.

Oh but I got you back, didn’t I?
Never have I laughed so hard, as when I saw your
back arch like that of a cat as you whirled
around to confront who ever it was I made you think was there.
Payback’s a bitch I said.

The next day at the supermarket
we bought supplies for the weekend. You bought a couple
of Sang Choy Bow kits because it was your
specialty and I introduced you to the delicacies that are
the Donut King closing-time specials. I still laugh
at the fact that you rang your mum – who is nine hours
away from Newcastle – to ask her if spring onions
came in cans.

And then we got drunk. We do what we always do.
And then we talk about girls because we’re best friends.
And then we talk about the deep stuff because we’re best friends.
And then we confess our undying love for each other because we’re best friends.
I go to sleep wishing we could do this everyday.

In the morning I have a sore head
and you’ve got a soccer game. I watch you
play and lose while I meet and chat with your mates.
I chat with your dad and he’s a cool bloke – you’ve got his sense of humour mate.

Then all of a sudden we’re off to the shopping centre
for the billionth time in I-can’t-remember-what-suburb
because its cold and we need jumpers. The clerk confuses me with prices
and you just laugh at how confounded I am by maths,
just like you did when we sat next to each other in high school.

That night we go see The Hangover at the movies
and spend most of the time pissing ourselves because
it is just that funny. I saw us in that movie.
We could most definitely be the ones waking up in a
trashed hotel room with a random baby in the
cupboard and a tiger in the bathroom.
Man, it is so us.

It makes us think of the stupid shit we’ve done.
Like the time we trashed the post office in Coly and
wrote ‘Ben’s Mail’ on the postage slot. Remember when your dad
asked if we knew who
trashed the post office?
Now that was playing it cool even
though I’m sure he knew it was us anyway.

Sunday comes and I try and think of ways to get out of going home.
I don’t need to go to class, I can always miss a few.
I don’t need to go to work, I can always call in sick.
I don’t need to finish that assignment,
there’s till a few days before its due.
Sure, why don’t I stay Tuesday too?

But I go home Monday morning and it is hard.
As I get in my car, I’m unsure whether to hug you.
We’ve never hugged before and I don’t know if its something we do.
So I shake your hand instead and you seem okay with that.
I drive off and it’s just me again,
Driving alone back to Sydney to live as
a folded page.

Two Drafts

The Fog
I was driving down my road
through the white dusk and
came across a lady dressed
similarly, walking alongside
the road. I pulled over to
ask what she was doing even
though I wasn't sure I should
and she told me
that she was tracking
a ghost.

Blue Light
Sometimes in the
corner of my eye
I see a tiny
blue light and it is like
a messenger that makes
sure I never forget
the colour of the sky.

Hydrosphere

Written for the Poet Union's Greenhouse anthology, third edition.

Hydrosphere

How I came to be submerged beneath
the waves and how
the sun had become
bright enough for its
light to penetrate thedepths of Mariana Trench
I could not be sure.
Yet this sudden illuminance of the sea
had left me with no need for
breath because from the underwater wildflowers
came a different kind of oxygen.

And this oxygen fed the
sailfish in me.
I was a superfast submarine,
silent but with purpose
and that purpose was discovery:
a voyage through the crystallised
depths of you and me.

What I didnt know is that when
I surfaced I would turn your world up-side-down.
Because if you're heart was
a piece of coral and your
blood was salt water,would you be still as
certain you could live forever?

Creative Writing Assessment

Here are a few poems I'll be working on for my Creative Writing Assessment Task. In the coming weeks, I'll use this blog to work on these poems and discuss them as to further understand and develop my work. One of them is Watching the World Turn, so I wont post that poem again. The idea of separation I've drawn upon in that poem is that two people can be separated in ways other than just physically.

Robert’s Creek

Is flowing along the unsung
Melodies of tangled water.
That trickling that pulls
At every string beneath my
Skin, beckoning me to disperse
This hidden light within into the
Heavenly air. But for now, I cannot
Relinquish to the call of your house.

So, I guide my leaf as it imparts
The branches that have
Sprouted from my limbs:
It is our celestial child
And though it will never grow,
It can never wither.
Never rot, never dry.

It is good enough for me.

For we both know what
It really has become:
Everlasting empowerment
Released into the gentle stream
That was created with your
Embrace: your very smile.

Oh, can your starry eyes
See that I am finally here?
Can your smiling eyes
Caress this course
We’ve created?
Be it a mere creek,
You should know that
It will always be ours.

And as for my gilded leaf;

I watch it flow out of sight,
'round the meander of Robert's Creek,
Into your awaiting hands.


Some Strange Place

I savour the sound of
my footsteps on the
floorboards: to others
it is silent dance music
but to me it is the
loudest answer to
my many questions.

But still:
My body is as confused
as a million words
harbouring on the edge
of meaning something.

Most of the time
in this foreign land
It tries to exhale,
but breathes in instead.

And at this difficulty
I can only laugh...

And laugh.

And keep laughing until
my throat falls out in
exhaustion.

Maybe I should invoke
circular breathing?
The kaleidoscope
I've built my flickering
home within would be
more appreciated.

I wanted to play that song I loved because music ties me to every life I've lived.
Oh, but then I realised it was already playing.



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 linking our household's 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"


Something Abstract

What was once a timber kingdom,
and was then a fractured bone
and recently a tolerable debris
is now air: breathable but yet
another vanishing point to
which we're exposed.

Every leaf and branch
I clung to at the beginning
now treats me as a ripened
fruit ready to fall to
hereafter.

Every leaf and branch
I could gather at the supposed
end can no longer be gathered.

'Because?'

Because
Every leaf and branch
is ancient vapor and we are all
breathing it in as if
the next breath shall
be our last.

Of All Edges

So, I think I'll save the analysis of this poem for another day.

Of All Edges

Month after month
Everything played out
in my mind like
a cancer of thoughts
and I convinced
myself it was terminal.
Then in the Family Room
on a day like every other
I discovered there is a verge
waiting for us with every
step that is taken.

I could only watch
as all of the things
about me that I could detach
easiest teetered on the edge
that I never thought I'd
ever see. Teeter then drop
like stones into the ocean's mouth
below. I can imagine so many
things in life slipping through
my fingers, but never this. And
then I imagined the people I'd heard of;
that Dad had told me about
because he is one of those people.
He was a cliff-dweller.

Two weeks. Hospital visits.
Doctors. Blood tests. X-rays.

"Are you under any kind of stress?"

Doctors. Blood tests. X-rays.
Doctor.

Counsellor.

And these days I'm a scoober
diver and in this arc I'm
salvaging the parts of me
that I treated like air and water.
Mostly my patchwork
body is thrown against the cliffs
by the waves
but there are precious times
in dangerous waters because
sometimes I find exactly
what had been taken and
then I find a little more.

He was a cliff-dweller.
And now me too.

Watching the World Turn got published!

'Watching the World Turn' got published in Five Bells and I didn't find this out until my copy (I'm a member of the Poets Union... fitting? I think so) arrived in the mail. Can you imagine my excitement when I flick though the pages and see my name and poem published? I got pretty damned excited to say the least, and dad would agree since he was standing right in front of me.

Weirdly, I can't help but wonder why they didn't notify me that I was being published, since the Poets Union website details that that will happen once my poem is selected for publication? OH WELL. WHO CARES? I got published! Very very happy! And what makes me even more happy is that after me and Dad found out about my publication, he went out to get beer and apparently told everyone who he saw that one of my poems had been published. I love that he is proud of me, what more could a son want? Funnily enough, he told the person who the poem is about that I got it published, but she doesn't know anything about being the subject of the poem. Irony anyone?

I actually don't think I've posted the poem on my blog, so I've posted it further below. First though, a little analysis. Written in 2007 as 'The Dusty Frail', the poem is about not being able to offer any assistance to one of my best friends (by their request) who was going through a difficult period in there life. It has a number of companion poems, being written about an event during my last years of highschool (which is when I started writing poetry). For your reference, these poems include: 'The Sitting Room', 'Daysrping Leaves', 'Magnolias', 'Quiet', 'The Narrative' and 'Their Nests Were Made of Glass'.

The original poem 'The Dusty Frail' mainly consisted of the 'Question stanzas' that make up the body of the poem. It was written before my computer crapped itself and deleted the majority of the poems that I had written up until then, so when I rewrote it, I managed to remember most of the body, but the first and last stanzas I added on and I believe it is a much more coherent poem with these additions.

The title comes from directly from a line the Powderfinger song 'Sunsets' which is mine and the subject of the poem's favourite song. See why it makes a better title than 'The Dusty Frail'? I don't even remember why I originally called it 'The Dusty Frail'...

Watching the World Turn

It was 3:27PM, and
we were hip-to-hip
on the school bus that
was today an oven.
You said nothing to me but
I still noticed
Your blue eyes radiant
Against the fires
Of the afternoon sun. They glistened
As birds of sorrow that could not fly:
A swirling, darting dance
Of tears and frowns.

Why not let me build
The bridge to cross
The haunted waters within?

Why not open your heart to words
Drawn from the well of sturdy
Legs and arms?

Why not pick up the pieces
Of your shattered past
And throw them to the stars?

But I guess you're happy
To merely watch the
Sunset set sail across
The treacherous seas
Of the universe, and I
Am just
An obliging friend.

Tourmaline Dream

Tourmaline Dream

Once the leaves above

Trail Street spread into

a canopy, I instantly wanted

to live there. The growth was

exponentially green and it

was a stark reminder of my other home

that was willingly trapped beneath the

wings of birds.

DRAFT. Will add to later.

Bond

For the past three days
I have witnessed a light
flickering in the trees
outside my room. It flitters
from tree to tree like a
bird made of light and
calls my name. If I go near
it I fear it might take me away
to another life in another world.
But it could be calling back
towards the line that I've walked
up until two months.

I do miss that line.
These days I walk on a
zig-zag and sometimes
even up-side-down.

Her Quiet Inspiration

Starting from now, I think I'll try and have pictures of things in my blog that inspire me in some way. To start things off, I have a very nice picture of someone who is pretty much my idol when it comes to being creative. I sort of wrote a poem ages ago in dedication to her called "The Goddess of the Gypsies" but since then I've realised that name is massively cliched and it uses one of her song titles as inspiration which is comes across as cheap to me now. I'll try and rewrite that poem now.

Her Quiet Inspiration

Her crystal voice sang low in an atrium that she built herself.

The sapient nightdress of Minerva (upon another's body)

twirls with every soulful note that's sung.

It's like the winds of a storm.
She embeds those words of the soul;

words that tear pieces from the primal skies and seas

who's hunters found their prey all those years ago.
The maze that she's crafted from the clay within her mind

protects her from being translated into life, into form.
Who else embodies so brightly the spirit of the world?

Who else is the poet in all those people's hearts?

She is silent sometimes but so alive

when life calls for it.

.

.

.

Okay so that's that. Just a draft for now. Thoughts?

Hmmm?

Instead of writing new poetry, maybe I'll should drag out a few oldies and post them? I started writing this blog when I'd already had a substantial amount of poetry written. Here are a few that I admire most (hopefully they haven't been posted previously).

The Beekeeper
The sun might shine
right through you
when you step outside
but I still see
the tortured bees
buzzing around
behind your eyes.



Incantation
I know
you said something important
at the same time

that all the smaller things started
shifting towards the fire to
burn into bigger things so
they could be monuments
to erase all of this

away.

But I was so in awe
that I couldn't hear
what it was.

In Limbo.

So it was brought to my attention today that I haven't posted anything in quite a while. And looking at the last post date, I suppose this is quite true. The reason why I haven't posted in such an extensive period of time is probably because I haven't written any poetry since 'Something Abstract'... Well, more accurately, I haven't completed any poetry since 'Something Abstract'. And why I haven't written any poetry? This a question with a number of answers - some clear, and some not quite so clear. Uni work is probably one reason, yet last year I seemed to do fine with studying and writing at the same time so what's different this year? Stress is probably another reason: I've recently starting have panic attacks for no apparent reason, so lately I've been massively on edge about everything you could possibly think of. I suppose poetry has taken a back seat in my life... No, it's probably taken the boot. Eating well and exercising have taken a back seat, but hopefully I've started to turn those things back into passengers.

Awesome! I'm using a metaphor. This is one step towards writing poetry again. Maybe later after I finish some school work, I might gather up a few drafts and try to forge something like poetry. Maybe. We'll see what happens in the next couple of days.

Something Abstract

Something Abstract

What was once a timber kingdom,
and was then a fractured bone
and recently a tolerable debris
is now air: breathable but just
a vanishing point on the
horizon.

Every leaf and branch
I clung to at the beginning
(timber kingdom) now
treats me as a ripened
fruit ready to fall to
hereafter.

Every leaf and branch
I could gather at the middle
(tolerable debris)
can no longer be gathered.

Because
every leaf and branch
is ancient vapor and we are all
breathing it in as if
the next breath shall
be our last.