waking up anew
realisation makes you
feel like shit: workday
Kiss of Time
Photos of your world.
You stand in a snow-covered forest,
with a stillness not found in my summer.
In those photos, the kiss of time moves slower,
for the kiss of time moves faster in the heat of summer.
I find myself longing for the winter, yet I need the summer;
without summer, there is no winter; without spring, there is no autumn.
Without the kiss of time, there would be no time for us.
Our impermanence would be permanence.
Our beauty and wonder would never be so lovely.
Our hearts would beat something other than blood,
as we grow colder every hundred years or so.
Tanka: New Year
Another year bye.
The heat of the new year burns
into our bodies.
A becoming something new
as we look to the new year.
The Tea House
The words of Rumi take shape and play a scene with sounds as I sit thinking of the desert, exotic lands, and being another person in another land with another life.
In a far off land different from my own, I am alone, and I walk within your nation, yet I walk apart. The half-hidden faces and the glances show me that I do not belong here.
I have never worn so much cloth around my head, had so much material cover my body, and I have never felt unseen; yet the heat and the clothing cool my skin, and I feel free of fear.
Arabic on the wind and the vision of a mosque so beautiful you know the artists and architects loved their god, yet I’m a hypocrite for I do not believe in anything anymore.
Safely wrapped, a kind man ushered me towards the tea house to have something to drink. The smell of mint, rose water, and orange blossoms put my mind in a philosophical mood.
Surrounded by noise, I feel calm as I cannot understand a word, yet I know I don’t belong here; I am not part of this country. I am a hypocrite hiding behind a cloth I don’t believe I should wear.
Yet, I cannot bring myself to admit that the pull of this place feels like a longing that I have felt since I tried to play that broken instrument that looked like a Qanum many, many years ago.
I sit in the tea house surrounded, yet alone with my thoughts. Then I hear the bombing begin. It is a shock: a booming calamity and a whooshing sound mixed with many other sounds. It is a shock to my ears and my heart, for we do not know of this life in Australia.
Blood mixed with dust, concrete and debris strewn across the streets, bodies broken and mangled, and there, so close to me, the kindly man who ushered me in: bloody and dead. In those cloudy eyes, I once saw courage.
I walk from the tea house to stand and look towards the sky. You have gone from me through some cruel twist of fate, yet I know we will find each other again one day.
I feel like an important person in that instant. It is as if my feelings are the only feelings I can feel exist. Individualism has taught me to think my feelings might change the rivers of time.
The next bomb destroys my daydream, the images and the sounds of Rumi end, and I am sitting at my desk reading about your country: saddened by so many dead.
January Dawn
Last night we whispered, ‘Happy New Year’.
No dancing and singing; no festive food, wine, and sparklers glittering.
We sipped and read quietly at home, contemplating another year gone and looking forward to the new one to come.
Almost another year older. I feel a bit jaded, perhaps wiser, and I feel like I’ve aged, and I’m so much older.
I sit thinking about all the people I have not seen. No hugs and kisses unless they are through a screen. Friends down the road I have not seen, and a longing to do so much with so little time, sometimes I’m searching for the words to say what I mean.
The January Dawn passed us by as we slept in late. Whatever this year brings, I hope we come together, become closer, and learn to embrace love and not hate.
Life is not lived by the rich and the few. Life is lived by smallfolk: by me, you.
At times like this, I feel the pull of that longing place. The place with a door leading me to somewhere magical: a hidden world with a forest and the phenomenal. Is it my inner place?
I wanted to open that door wider for many years, yet I get closer, and I falter and think of my peers and imaginary sneers. Is my inner place calling for the two halves to meet? So separate they have been that no one knows where one-half ends and the other half meet.
For now, I sit hidden from the blistering sun. I peeked at the outside world, at the browning lawn that we must mow, which will not be much fun.
I sit here and wonder what we should do. How many more New Years’ Eves will I get to share with you?
Thoughts of Her
I think of her softly,
the way she moved and the things she said.
Even now, she moves through me,
even as the rain softly falls on the windows.
Someone said you should love,
yet I want to tell them to go fuck themselves,
for love has broken my heart into a thousand pieces.
Yet, still, I sit and think of her,
the little ways she made my day bright and happy,
how we talked about everything.
I miss her sunflower soul dearly,
for her soul calmed me through my many storms.
Me, alone with my broken heart;
I keep the sadness close to feel her.
Sitting in my seat;
on the train, her face and eyes come to me
as the rain turns into icy pieces of snow.
Ornament
The tree stands tall in the lounge room awaiting decorations.
Amongst the decorations lay many ornaments; some new, others old.
A wooden ornament passed from generation to generation sits oddly on the table.
Tabetha picks it up, and says, “Why am I made of wood?”
Ghost
Nothing tangible
to touch tonight,
his ghost
an ethereal plume.
Forest of Forgetting
A bird chirps unknown thoughts from a branch in a tree that I have not seen before today. The air feels thick, with the taste of a storm or rain; I cannot tell for sure how the weather will play out, for I do not live in the clouds.
I stand in a potato sack dress, oblivious to my situation; I do not know how I came to be here, nor do I know the name of this country.
I know nothing, yet I feel the very fabric of my surroundings. The connection with nature, as if words are spoken directly to me and only for me to hear, guides me forward.
Trees remind me of the Tree-Folk and their many stories; the wisdom they share with only a selected few. I feel closer to something as I step across an invisible threshold into the forest.
The weight of some emotional distress lingers on my skin and in my mind; I hold back the welling of my heart and those tears wanting to spill and run free towards the forest floor.
Something is missing from my many layers. It is as though my past, personality, and me, the person standing in a forest, ceases to be what she once was.
I walk to remember. I walk to forget. I walk through the ever-increasing darkening of the forest as rain does not come. Instead, snow begins to fall.
The snow should be cold. The snow should make me feel cold, yet it makes me feel calm.
I stand still, waiting for something to come.
In the forest of forgetting, I walk, and I walk until I remember what it is that I must finish.
Returning to the City
The grey of the morning passed,
turning the day into a Spring Day.
Returning to the city after so long,
so jittery and awkward in my skin.
Picking a cafe out of the busy way,
to sit and process many feelings.
Sipping a cappuccino so far away,
jolted from thought by a kind pug.
C & K 