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.