oder

I'm not sure if I've

never been in love,

or loved 

everyone

who had a smile and 

a secret. 

a little

simultaneously 

touched and infuriated 

that you kissed my cheek

"We shall not cease from exploration, and the end of our all exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time." 

- T. S. Elliot

we are all hopeless
romantics, and all the more
hopeful for it

from the horizon

there's a small piece of my aliveness
floating in the waters of Anakiwa

it's swimming around
looking for itself

it doesn't know where its whole is, but
it knows
that it is
Home.

it is torn between
all the things it loves, of which
there are
many -
too many, perhaps -
and found in various places,
moments, people:

nestled in the embrace of many beautiful arms,
sitting in the corners of many beautiful smiles

- and especially, in this moment, in the
slightly ochre cheekbones
of some ridiculous but successful
luring tactics
who I'd have happily stayed put for,
who neglected to remove the glitter from my eye

who was part of this week's opening,
heart-pouring
beside the ocean

How bizarre to wake up in my own bed this morning. 

I feel most at home when I wake up in the world. 

1 -

how typical of me
to bury
so far into ecstasy
that I emerge empty,
unable to feel it's current
but for small, sharp, static bursts
incensing my calves, heart, feet

and having needed so badly
all week long
some body pressing into me
(so much so my dreams were riddled
with unwanted past lovers
and future mistakes,
I was melting with disgust
whilst awake)

how typical -
how unbearable -
that I should falter in my own concoction:

of barely cinnamon pseudo-Red
(how fortunate that science
approves my nocturnal pursuits -
as willed by my insides
beyond my brain's haunts)
and glistening with white,
one palette above my teeth
a dustier kind
than my solid-ground molars

finding at dark intervals, lucid, us
glistening in our toxicity,
odd and beautiful entanglements...
a delightful shock
to execute morning pages here

and I am grateful for these departures
however the repercussions fall
because I'm built of all I've known
and I've a glutton for humanity,
more alive for sleeping less
for passing Saturday's rhythms through me
- Sunday's head could almost convince me
I dreamed it, but,
Sunday's life knows
night's morning secrets -

and despite drowning in my pulsing self,
despite omitting the key arrival, I'm
more alive like this - subsisting
on skin
and conversation's complicity
revelling in the blurred moments
between self, ish and less

containe(d)

burying myself
in the sound of you, despite
having matched my shy eyes
with yours infrequently

... delivered by love and rain
to five years earlier
(I've already moved with you
in yellow) - I'd like to be longer, now,
stretching languidly across time-
and maybe that's why

my shoulder blades featured
in tonight's videoic brainstorm
(I like to notice coincidences
like that, and
make mountains of them)

and the bending of my neck also:
(I suggested imaging my skin;
he suggested tying a skeleton around it)
not just in art, but in totality of ecstasy

heading into water
with someone I barely know -
as I did at the moment
last year became
this one:

wading through that tiny river
until we arrived in the sea
(though this time, by myself,
'til I master sending stones)

and don't worry,
I know he knows - I know
how transparent I am:
I'm in my own head
wearing my own skin
hearing my own mumbles
I feel my own gauche halo circling every inch of me

what is it with me

that I can never rebirth my courage
in the moments that matter to me?
I'm only brave
when I've nothing
to gain