Lesson

I crave it. The knowledge

you have, the hours of practice you’ve put it.

I want to gain it for myself, I’m not afraid of putting in the work

but how can I train, how can I improve

when being observed

freezes up every thought I have?

The frustration at myself builds.

The explanations are clear, so why do I misunderstand?

There must be a way around it. Trust that I won’t be judged

when my work needs correcting.

Trust

that I don’t have to be perfect

from the start.

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Encyclopaedia

Hidden beneath the cover,

the path is precisely cut.

Figures, animals, empires,

a jungle of words

layered into a hive

where no guide is needed,

just the marker for ‘A’.

Exoskeleton

We are what we are, until

we learn what’s underneath

and what we’ve held back for so long.

Always paying attention to the ticks, but never the softer tocks.

Our outside skins will crack over time,

no matter how much moisturizer is applied

because they’re cocoons

waiting for the right moment

to let us stand on our own legs.

Silken

A strand shines white,

a glimmer on the darkened street.

The moonlight has touched it,

but its fellows remain that rich brown

hanging down to your shoulders.

Each one a piece of your thoughts,

a ribbon tied fast to the building blocks

that make you.

Old strands gift their being to others,

and then leave.

Fresh beginnings grow in their stead.

Doorways

I love to look across at my bookshelves.

I don’t just see slabs of paper wrapped in pretty pictures,

or titles on spines acting as identities.

 

I see doorways.

 

I see vines of words reaching out to tangle around my arms and drag me in,

whether to another world entirely,

or to a part of my own brain that I’ve never greeted before.

 

Even after I close the book

once my ticket there is spent,

I know I can use it as a wedge to return to that place.

 

A place where I will always find a home

or a friendship,

a truth, a discovery

and sometimes

even family.

 

Washing day

As the books topple into the river

It’s not my fault.

The paper soaks up infected waters

It’s not my fault.

Words bleed away with unheard cries

It’s not my fault.

Hands clutch at mushy remnants, already

forgetting what they’ve lost.

 

A slight roll.

Heads on shoulders:

pebbles atop broken

rocks,

half-carved into

torsos, arms, necks.

They roll down the ravine.

Suicide, you would think.

It’s not.

Instead – life.

A chip here,

a dent there.

They reach the bottom

battered.

Some unrecognizable.

They reach the bottom.

No longer caring

to go back to the top.

 

The time I saw a quarter

It looks exactly like victory – if you squint a little. A hungry mouth waiting to swallow the world up whole, too famished to savour the taste. Someone once told me that taking such a meal would never truly sustain a person: half of a half, carrying on in a waking dream fishing for starfish to throw at the sky.

Tiny mite

Regarding Pip, the love-fruit dream of a bookish mind who haunts the dust speckles papering the bookcases – duck-egg pimples on the fingertips. It lurks, d r i f t i n g between SOLID TEXT and verse rising on inhales to nostrils intent on devouring must and ragged ink. Only to be sneezed out into the particle storm; sunlight is the only pair of spectacles strong enough to see them fight the plastic dinosaurs battling for shelf space on the brain.