i try not to spill the words

the world offers it's painted illuminations and i try not to spill the words in an attempt to occupy the space reserved for the silent reverence

of the wind blown anemones,
for the way the sky resembles the emotions of a woman with plum stained hands cupping the planets,
for the green things that are less impulsive in their responses,
for the power of the presence of another,
for the creatures that bow to the elements and instinct,
for the paths and the doors and splintered fingers,
for the detours and u-turns and perseverance,
for strangers and smiles in reply,
for the scars and the skin we call home,
for disconnections and knots and the threads

to transcend the limitations of the language i love
i tried not to spill the words,
but reverence is thoughts which are words which are holy
and my heart is the language, the author, the alter...

i give myself not so freely away

being ill-equipped and disinclined to exorcise the ghosts of kisses from past lovers lingering on the back of your neck i ask of you to take your flag elsewhere to plant in someone else's earth, for you to kindly step back; you trespass on precious ground buried with keepsakes that continue to breathe. i am desirous not for your footprints staining the places i go. i am more than a country you wish to visit, but a world wrapped in flesh made reachable only by deciphering the languages, should i choose to show you, on the skin of my wrists. and i give myself not so freely away.

i ended my name with yours
and thought of the women
who give theirs away
upon marrying
to take on that
of their spouse.

does anything change
other than the way
it looks on paper?

confliction ensues

because i believe not in labels.
because identity has a name.

the way it's perfected
by hand and through life;
an association
between it and us.

our perception of the name,
something we grow into,
or does it become us?

i wonder
whether it has a meaning
other than that
with which we bestow it;

these spiderweb connections
in blood made visible
for a few by pearls
or shackles around the neck.

for the rest
a piece of living history;
connections to our origins
individual like a fingerprint...

what i thought was a halo might have been a distant reflection.
a distortion of the light. accumulations of light gathering crystals
forming shapes around the body you live in.

fact is a matter of interpretation,
but i felt your truth.

so we hold our tangled life lines in soft fists
and face the (un)wavering line of the horizon towards which
we aim our prayers.

the moon like glass splinters on black water

with the kind of feet that could start earthquakes we walk through the gloam.

yet i remember our smallness.

we walk through the last light into the incoming night.

this blue grey soothes me. every sense drenched in a particular colour. i close my eyes and inhale. paint the moment as i see it.

all around mute trees with gnarled fingers reach ever outwards beckoning the birds home.

they, like us, still breathe winter's echoes through tiny paper lungs, but feel spring about to break the skin of our days.

at the edge where boats are tied no more the moon like glass splinters on black water.

you wanted me to be the sky

you wanted me to be the sky,
touching everything and impossible to reach.
turns out i am the storm
from which i drag my own shipwreck
kept in bottles lining the floor
along the skirting board
like an orderly armada of chaos.

in the morning the birds return
to the cloudless blue never ending days
circling your wildest dreams that i also am.
i am no soft corpse cobwebbed
to the kind of simplicity that most desire.
i contain a wild(er)ness.

i embrace the contradictions
and urge you to trust your gut,
your 'senses';
trust your legs to take you there.
then reach, stretch on tip toes.
i am there, between your fingers.