conversations with M

space: unquantifiable except that it's the exact breadth, width and height of the person from whom you want space.
why do all women need someone to share their lives with. It's as if they need a witness to their life, without whom they can't be sure they've lived or done or seen or conquered. Woman: the schizophrenic see-er who is observed and observes simultaneously, passive and active. she needs someone there to validate her existence, to acknowledge and proclaim it to the world at large. why don't we all rather hire photographers to take pictures of us eating chocolate, walking along the promenade, watching a film...
society's reflections are spilt on us, mingled with terms of endearment, 'babe', 'sweetiepie', 'honey'. I want no more of this generic gibberish, no more of society's expectations. Take it all, i am not a generic woman.
Maya Angelou spring forth.

musings from the lost box

musing on writing and unearthed truths therein, i came to the rabbit hole and tumbled down, sinking slowly on a bubble of questions. to what extent do profound thoughts rattle around at the back of your head, unnoticed among the marbles, and then pop out of their own accord when you least expect it,as though some puppet master has pulled a string or turned a key to open a secret door behind which lurk these half-formed notions which tumble out semi-formed and disguised by pretty words and metaphors? Always my thoughts shimmer as a mirage on the horizon, while i scrabble at the gravel, striving to reach them, grab them, shake them into speaking their entire meaning to me, but only ever ending up with hands of soil and stone, empty words for which the toil was worthless and from which the meaning has turned tail and fled - a fox fleeing the hounds of inquiry, and leaving nothing but fast-fading footprints in owlet's down mingled with dust in the corridors of the mind.

glass-blower

small hand, big hand, held tightly whilst a little nose is flattened by glass watching glass being reborn; bubbling balloons of fragility blossom out of nothing to become objects of fancy, flying horses, spiders' webs drizzled with ruby dew, fish-shaped glass, distorting reflections somewhat like diction intended to dazzle which creates a non-existent self from shards of society's mirror. We are who they are. Still teetering on the cusp.

dream 2

i am late afternoon sunshine interlaced through and about the heavy magenta-flowered tendrils of bougainvillea, rocked in the cot of evening breeze. i am skipping down a sidewalk, scattered and broken like light. i turn to say something to you, to wind a flower into your hair, to spin a sweet line out of delicious nothings, but you have vanished, may never have been at all. it is a dream, a castle in the air, whose corridors echo (echo echo) with longing and stolen kisses. summer is fading bittersweetly with the day, slowly evaporating, a mist of crackling solitude. I teeter on the cusp.

dream 1

I am on a bicycle, arms spreadeagled, chin up, swirling and swaying along a sleeping street; the flower duet is ringing in my ears, a rushing waterfall of melody freewheeling and soaring through the whirring of the spokes. Dappled sunlight is sprinkled on my face, pooling light on closed eyelids, dripping down my arms, down the back of my neck from leaves of eddying autumnal yellow against a holey dove grey sky that i cannot see for eyes shut. silence. there is a dead bird in the street. i am the dead bird. i am riding a bicycle. i am in a glass globe on a sill, where leaves purl on the peripheries, left of centre.

Yet more poetry

I'm sorry, i can't seem to stop posting poetry. I didn't write this one; i wish i had.

Fable of the Mermaid and the Drunks

All those men were there inside,
when she came in totally naked.
They had been drinking: they began to spit.
Newly come from the river, she knew nothing.
She was a mermaid who had lost her way.
The insults flowed down her gleaming flesh.
Obscenities drowned her golden breasts.
Not knowing tears, she did not weep tears.
Not knowing clothes, she did not have clothes.
They blackened her with burnt corks and cigarette stubs,
and rolled around laughing on the tavern floor.
She did not speak because she had no speech.
Her eyes were the colour of distant love,
her twin arms were made of white topaz.
Her lips moved, silent, in a coral light,
and suddenly she went out by that door.
Entering the river she was cleaned,
shining like a white stone in the rain,
and without looking back she swam again
swam towards emptiness, swam towards death.

Pablo Neruda

Beware the gremlin (a rhyme i wrote to scare the little children)

On midsummer's eve when the moon is dark
and on the cow bell's toll and far dog's bark
comes the sound on the breeze of dancing feet
beware, oh children, take care, take heed!

Do not dare wander into that black night
where the faeries dance on brambles light
instead hide your heads and shut your eyes
and pray that others should be so wise

For wicked gremlins with the faeries dance
and spells they shall spin as they sylphlike prance
and you they'll bewitch if find you they should
upon yonder henge and in yonder wood.

Une comptine d'une autre été:

dappled sunlight on closed eyes
the green of his eyes brimming with tears
the sound of a distant harmonica
climbing the pomegranate tree
leaping cat
le moulin abandonné
white dove perched in the ivy
wind through the gum trees
sitting on the window sill
curtains billowing in the breeze
tangerine haze of cloudy sky
apple peels
hovering sunbird
comptine d'une autre été