Vision

Spread out your collarbones, stand tall.

It’s how they’ll see you

when everything is trying to obscure you from their horizons.

Step through the doors that open,

but only if your heart tells you that’s where it wants to go.

If your eyes catch on another path,

even if there’s no sign,

it can always be enlightening to explore.

Tradition doesn’t have to stale up decisions.

Take the fresh air and use it as an arrow, letting it spin

until it finds your true north.

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Off the hook

Distance vanishes and you’re beside me.

Your voice in my ears while I carry on

my daily routine; washing the dishes,

potting up plants. I can chat without an agenda,

without reason, and I can listen to everything on your mind.

Talking about the future, the past,

exact details of something we both geek out on.

The only thing that limits us is dodgy signal,

and to that we can only laugh and try again later.

Depths

And upon the shore the waves         crashed         spraying crystals

at her feet        as she waited for the sun

to sink.

Dial tone

I hold one end and you hold the other,

tin cans attached by a string.

No matter how far away we are, our voices

always meet up,

taking turns to bounce off the other.

 

Our eyes may not lock together

from one day to the next,

but our thoughts, our words

will constantly be shared.

Wallpaper

We can wrap our bodies in as much decorative paper

as we like,

but still it will rip and tear

the more we leave it up for display.

Prodded, examined and manhandled

until it is mere tissue paper,

hanging limply from the weathered remains

of our original form,

so covered in dust and mildew

that we no longer know

who we were before we prettied

ourselves

to other people’s tastes.

Trickster Timing

It’s a strange thing, time.

Hours can feel like days

when you have something to look forward to,

someone to go home to,

to hold, to cherish.

 

When you’re with them, days

pass like minutes,

heartbeats of a hummingbird,

rolling the week along

so that once more you have to part.

 

Time, that careful trickster,

changes again,

making every second drag,

as if taking extra delight in the stab wounds

separation

causes you.

Space Hopper

If I had seven league boots,

I’d travel up to the stars.

 

If I had three point five league boots,

I’d travel to the highest mountains.

 

If I had one league boots,

I’d travel to every lush space I could find.

 

I am barefoot.

 

I can travel only until I get tired.

But there’s nothing to stop me believing

 

I have seven league boots.

Seafoam

The sea is a bath of minds and instinct,

of pressure and freedom and danger.

Tide in or tide out, if you stand and stare at it long enough

it will tug you away, molecule by molecule

until sea foam is all that you are.

But sea foam is what merpeople are birthed from,

and giant manta rays will guide you

as you spread yourself out to touch hands

with everything that has ever passed by.

Monsters

In my mind after

it breaks down, the world

creeps up on me.

It’s a monster

in my head, sinking its nails in

until I bleed out.

 

Upside down,

I break through. Struggling for air

as I crash the surface,

tearing at the dark scales that cover my eyes.

 

I am a hunter, but also the hunted.

I am the monster.

I am the monster

of the world in my head.

Don’t talk over me

Chatting away to a piece of wired glass

is not unusual nowadays.

Communication, these magic mirrors,

across oceans and mountains and tonnes of fresh air –

well, perhaps not so fresh anymore,

not where we lurk at least.

Mingling human jelly babies,

both heat and cold make us stick together,

even when our bodies are so distant,

or our thoughts so far away

from the concerns groaning up from the ground

beneath our feet.