A bit of grief

I know a bit of grief.

 It's the moment you realise

you cannot go back on your steps

to make it better

or say I love you again

 see someone's face every day,

hear their laugh, trace the outline of their smile,

hold their hand or hug them.

When you learn what it feels like to run out of time.

No more silent pauses in conversations

seeing them across the table,

passing the salad bowl at dinner.

All of those moments you take for granted

stop in your mind,

they are gathered up in memories

and the grieving begins.

I've learnt grief isn't bad,

it's all we have, really,

for our tears are our love

which used to go out

towards those we love.

After they are gone, it has nowhere to go,

so our unexpressed love

becomes our grief.

And as our passion is as undying,

as our mourning.

This strange sadness will never leave

not until our dying days.

It comes over us in the most unlikely moments

in the tiny flickers of memories

the flutter of butterflies

a microscopic movement is enough the overcome us.

Sometimes it's like a tap that

we need to open to let the pressure out.

But mostly, grief is a dark veil that wraps around

our hope, our happiness and faith

and covers our organs which 

find they have an extra weight to carry

the resistance makes it harder to breathe

love and move forward when we don't

want to.

It may seem ironic

but I hope we never

stop grieving

because it keeps our

dearly departed near us.

Life doesn't stop

when someone dies,

it merely shifts

and changes into another

gear and somehow

we live with it.

Nothing to know about grief

The thing about losing something

is that there is nothing to know.

It's an emotion that takes hold of you

pushes you around like a bully that doesn't let up.

You put up with it, let it bleed you dry,

cry yourself to sleep until it loses its strength.

And then you can push it under you, into your heart

Occasionally it will bubble up, making you vomit emotions.

Eventually, it will become a part of you

reminding you how capable you are of love

and how love never really leaves you.

Deceptively Delicate

Poetry is deceptively delicate

it's a whisper which gradually becomes a scream

a dream turning into a nightmare

which stays with you all-day

a compliment transformed into an insult

subtle niceties and manners on the

surface while being sarcastic and real below.

It is the truth, leaking out

of the heart despite itself.

The beat of a constant drum

below the flourishes of what we

create for ourselves.

Subversive, not submissive

honest razor-sharp observation

its words are strength,

they can be deadly.

Thank the muse for bringing the light

of poetry, into a tenebrous world.

Connection

We only have these moments

tiny connections

to hold onto

as life slips through our fingers.

My poetry

My poetry is a constant whisper in my ear

a dark, haunting and persistent dream

my inner voice leaking out of my head

a constant weeping emotion

which is eerie, untamed and real

it is always uncomfortable

to share as the words come from an awkward place

yet they feel beautiful just the same

They are like little deformities

which express a deep insecurity

unpleasing to the eye

yet satisfying for the soul.

I coax them out of me like untamed wild animals

I watch as they slowly show me their savage power

I am always in awe of the epicness of human emotion

And how it can consume itself.

Death's garden

The idea came to commemorate my dearest ancestors

by planting them a garden.

Lavander sprigs for stillborn Estella.

Delicate violets from Nonna’s garden.

An all-enveloping ivy that covers and embraces

everything for Nonno.

Daddy would be an aubergine flower as that's

what he left for us in his garden.

Mum will be an exotic caper flower after she is gone.

I will plant them on my skin,

they will slowly grow up my arm

and cover my body in death's garden.

Added to with every loss

I choose a new plant to sow

for my family and friends

and add to the artwork

with each ghost.

The Olive Tree

Bury me, there under the olive tree

where my ancestors sighed as they worked

where they whipped up dustbowls and thorns

where the songs and prayers were once sung

with tired voices and broken bodies

on whose branches some hung to harvest

and others to choke the very life out of themselves.

I want to rest under the ancient olives filled with endless spirits

and where the ghosts wait to possess innocent souls 

each tree growing around in knotted branches, tying themselves

into the ground, holding onto the magical fruit

which revives the weary and contains the flavour of life.

There where the work is done like a religious rite,

with honest hands stained in dark oil spots

together with families who warmed themselves

with the hot coal filled conca 

moved from tree to tree

during the once dark winter.

Where everything felt inevitable, everyone knew

their place, where the work was true and when done

you could rest.

Inspiration

You can reinvent yourself

endless times in life

so don’t be so precious

about failing,

just get up and reset.

_________________________________________

Don’t accept what others think

as the truth of who you are

you are your own creation.

_________________________________________

Today I ate, drank and lived

without sharing online

and I felt truly alive.

___________________________________________

The trauma of broken things

I carry my fear like a heavyweight

many kilos of fat

pushing down on my bones

making my movements slow

and wearing down my momentum.

I'll never allow fear to make its

home in me

I hope it moves on

I push it away.

A violent act forced fear into my life

like so many random accidents,

which happen when no one expects

so much bigger than any one person

forcing us to live with

the trauma of broken things.

Paperback Love

When words are all on the screen,

everyone forgets about

the love of paperbacks.

The love of softcover paperback books

shows how much you adore the written word.

Like vinyl shows a tangible love of music.

They show you are hungry for books

how you don’t have the money to buy the hardcover

and are resisting ebooks.

Lovers of words should touch them, write them,

caress them, hold them in their original form

smell them, know them as you recognise a human

as they come from the ether,

from whatever exotic country they are born in

to the writer, editor, to read them out aloud

then onto their home through the ages

to their final destination in some readers eyes, souls and dreams

to then finally, return from whence they came.

Battered covers are well-loved and re-read

crisscrossed calligraphy shows

classroom notes and learning

while yellowed pages are

a long-lasting love affair,

My paperbacks are like sunburnt Sienna.

I’m frightened to touch them else they will disintegrate

their tiny print was once easy to rip through,

but now they are difficult to read

they seem like spidery footprints

who gives me a headache

The paperbacks on my shelf are a time machine

they take me back to when I was young

voracious and wanting to read everything

now I still want to satisfy my appetite

I know I cannot read everything

so I’m more selective

I have moved onto a virtual text

which is as fleeting as a thought

when I finish reading a book

I often wonder if I actually read at all

I miss my book stacks

holding them and turning their pages

swiping on a screen is so mechanical

while touching, smelling and devouring each word is bliss.

Put it all in a song

I want to put it all in one song

but it won't fit

So many things keep me awake at night

vivid memories of regret,

something I should be doing and don't

endless what if's and perhaps

never quite happy with what we have

we torture ourselves in our sleep

Do you remember when we talked our way

into the new millennium?

A 2,000 filled with promise, just needed

to take a step outside of ourselves,

we felt we could eat the world up

but now there is only hurt

I ran away too fast and fell over myself

I didn't realise I was still attached

Tore me into pieces.

Now I'm humming along to the music

pretending to know the words

and trying not to piss on myself.

Is it just me or is anyone else feeling kind of lost?

Do the super-rich disgust you

and the poor make you feel guilty

of your plenty?

Is there strange serendipity when you read the gossip

as if you live next door to Miley Schwarzenegger

and are complaining about her irritating trashy pop music

being played too loudly

have you heard it all before?

Do you have nightmares of having your head chopped off

because you don't follow the right religion

or of being gunned down when you are sunbathing

on a remote beach

Kalashnikovs are arriving on rubber dinghies.

Does online seem more real than every day?

We post, postmoderns, Xennials

With an analogue childhood and digital adulthood

and virtual Millenials

are all lost in our heads,

 and it's making us all morose.

I persist

These are my many lives

lived in one lifetime

tired of re-inventing myself

all the blood and tears

who's going to notice a

little lisp on the tongue

mixing up the words

forgetting some names

a little white lie

some worry lines

slightly battered and bruised

by life,

but I persist.

On seeing an old photo

Was I ever so young?

I don't recall being so fresh and new

I feel so old these days

like I've lived a thousand lives.

I have an older partner

live in an ancient country

all of those decades, centuries and epochs

of delusion have become a part of me.

I've always been shy

but my eyes were once filled with possibilities

now there are no new tastes

and I've heard it all before.

I'm feeling so very weary of this world

even if I've still got time to live.

I wonder what Twain, Lawrence and Woolf

would make of these days?

Would the modernist wit, energy and wisdom

Give us any solutions?

Would they hold the paranoia in check?

Or would Virginia drown herself again

After witnessing the first beheading?

Are we reliving the Crusades

or is it the madness of history's

fanaticism spiralling out of control?

Will the Jehovah's witnesses rule over the world

after we all die from a new pestilence,

or finish killing one another.

Promise me you will remember me

when I disappear into the heavens

without ever coming down to earth

blown to smithereens …

at least I died going somewhere or

coming home, rather than lying in a coffin,

an octogenarian with a tube down my throat.

Why do you write?

 I write because I can't help myself

it's an itch I must scratch

a craving I want to satisfy

I'd be lost without words

my companions on this journey.

As I read, I need to write,

my mind ticks over at many beats a minute

the brain overflows onto the page

despite the torturous process of giving

my thoughts some logical sense

we are as irrational as hypertext

leaping from one idea to the next

faster than thought, to hand, to page.

Still, I insist on putting pen to paper

I tenaciously grip my pen

even if I have a hundred incomplete ideas

who are all screaming for my attention

submerging myself into my thoughts

it is my meditation

a prayer I say to myself every day

to remind me to be true,

to exist despite every heartbreak.

Words come out from the ether

as if my grey matter is filled

to the brim

with a vocabulary

which needs to be liberated

the words would suffocate themselves

if I didn't write them on the page.

Writing saves my life.

Forget your heritage

It is destiny to forget our heritage

life makes us grow in other directions

like a shattered tongue

ancestors are our Babel

we crumble apart

away from our origins.

Knowledge of where we come from

reveals our origons and helps

to define who we are

but then life takes us beyond our roots.

Pathways through life are random

work, family, friends and our hearts

determine the moments beyond ourselves.

We grow our own branches

beyond the family tree.

Part of who we are is formed by our ancestors

the murmur of their struggles

are a piece of our own voice

we are a part of them

and they are embodied in us,

a continuous spiral of milestones

twirling on through and beyond us.

Even if we forget

their stories are our stories

their faces are in the mirror

each hand holding onto the next

reaching up to now

raising us up and

pushing us forward.