Bone

There's a poem lodged
in my throat like the
clear bone of a fish
thin and prickle-ended
a filament of clarity that
I swallowed in the night
giving way to the heavy
drape of unrequited sleep

It's jammed in that place
before air can become a word
stubborn as a memory
so I cough and harrumph
swallow and stretch, trying
to dislodge the bone of a
poem wedged in my throat

Any way is fine, up or down
I don't mind if only I can
get it out, unstuck. I have
better uses for my throat
for my scratched voice: today
I must warble like a magpie

City life

Some days I think I can't possibly stand another minute in the city.  Then I see a group of tourists jumping into the air in front of a fountain for a photo. And just now, a whistling man on a skateboard, with dry cleaning slung over his shoulder. And it gets a little easier to stay.

A warning for my future lover/s

Be careful of taking a poet for a lover
for she cannot wear her love in silence

She will catalogue the flaws in your skin
and the reasons she finds them there
the flow of your breath when you sleep
and your exhalations when you make love
the soft dough of your face when you wake
the rumble of your laugh spilling over
the wonder of finding in the dead of winter
that her hands are always warmer than yours

She will tell everyone about the way that
(despite your worldliness and machismo)
you kiss her mouth as if you can’t help yourself
of the way your thoughts simmer and surface
surprising, like bubbles in hot mud pools
and always she will write, of you, of herself
trying to find better and better words for
the mystery, the matter that binds you together

Be careful of taking a poet for a lover
for what a poet loves she must write

How to write more poetry

leave your phone at home all day
you don't need its buzz and blink
the waves of sounding interrupting
crashing into your lapping thoughts

keep a secret smile barely held back
for the giddiness of sleep and waking
to sunrises and crunchy leaves and breezes
grateful for the constant thrum of blood
rushing past the inside of your ear

pay attention to the firm sound of
your boots meeting cold pavement
to the snag of ragged autumn air
in the clutches of your throat
feel the yearning of your body
for the rooflessness of the sky

always keep ink and paper close by
or write on napkins and paper bags
on the backs of your curled hands
the margins of abandoned newspapers
write the memories pressed into your skin
and the lives you have never lived

stay up past midnight scratching
your musings into the dusky page
write your horror and your heartache
until all that's left is your fatigue

leave the embers of your words
for paper strangers to discover

Unrequited oceans

Love is a compulsion for collision. An unavoidable drive to meet, to crash into an other. To press lives and mouths and yearnings together until it cracks us open. Because sometimes it's the only way to get it out, to cope with the swell of the oceans inside us.

This is love, for me, perhaps just for today. (Mixed metaphors because one will never do for this). I won't always think so. It's not all I think. But I am cracked open and I'm afraid it's for the wrong person, again. I made the choice. I just need to understand it.

Tonight I was driving in the rain and my face started to match my windscreen: streaked with rivulets of wet. I drove until there was somewhere quiet to stop and then I curled against the steering wheel and heaved with the ocean in me.

I grieve not for a loss, but for the love I've never had. For needing these minor collisions to recognise the vastness of myself. For having to be cracked open before I realise that it is unrequited. That the swell coming back the other way is not from a meeting with another ocean but my own waves bouncing off a wall.