Why an honest relationship is the best thing for you.

I'll never forget the moment I told my ex, "I'll never be your boyfriend". Forgetting my issue with the semantics, it is what I said. We'd met overseas a few months before, we were both working in the same area and we got close. Then we succumbed to lust, neglected the consequences, living in the moment.

My statement - frank, brutish, pre-emptive, selfish maybe - came from the honesty in knowing what I wanted and what I was capable of and to set an expectation about who I would be to her and for her. I knew what the word meant to her and wanted to make it clear who I would be.

I'd done a long term relationship that finished with me realising I couldn't change what I wanted or who I want to be to fit someone else's ideal. Where I'd lied to myself until the other person felt lied to.

Honesty is an important virtue in a relationship with someone but it's the most important one in the relationship with yourself. 

If you're not honest with yourself about what you want and who you want to be then you're not going to be honest with another person. You'd think it's a simple philosophy right? Don't know what that is or who it is yet? No problem but be honest about it. And be honest with yourself about where that could lead.

If you're going to tell me you're happy and you agree and want to be a part of a life together then I'm going to take your word for it. If you're honest answer is you're working out what you want and who you want to be then I'm going to support you. But you have to own it either way.

Now it's important to keep in mind that being honest doesn't mean being immovable on everything. But it does mean being convicted, rather than convinced. What you want and who you will be can change but don't lie to yourself while you wait or hope for it to happen.

Whether or not I was her 'boyfriend' we were together. Time passed overseas and towards the end of it she questioned giving it a chance back home. We're from different cities and there was a mountain of impracticality which I believed at the start wouldn't let it work out. 

What I wanted didn't change the moment she suggested it. I wasn't convinced but I gave it a lot of thought and realised I was open to seeing if we could make something work. I decided the regret I could have would be never knowing if we could be something outside the context. That was worth more than protecting the beautiful moment.

So we did it. We made an honest life together. We fell in love with possibility.

I was honest from the beginning and told her how and why I don't ever want to have children and that's something I'd never give her. She was curious but understood me. She wasn't sure herself whether she did or not.

I was honest and told her I don't want to get married. She didn't expressly say she didn't want to either but she saw my points and believed it wasn't important. She supported me in it never being part of our plans together.

I was honest about where I wanted to travel. So we travelled separately on plenty of occasions and found places we both had reasons to go once in a while.

I was honest about how I express myself with how I look, how I live, what I'm into, with my values and she understood the importance of identity and familiarity. We found a way to appreciate each other and feel ourselves.

I was honest and believed we needed our own lives and friends as well as a place where they met. Whether through me or separately she always forged her own unique and quite separate friendships that she was proud of.

Over more than 5 years I never stopped challenging my own honesty. She never stopped challenging me either, and wondering whether my dispositions were changing or had changed. They didn't though, and while I grew in my thoroughness with all of them I didn't really change in them.

The time we were together was the most amazing and truthful relationship I believed I could have - that we could have. Throughout it we gave each other the opportunity to be whoever we wanted in life and it solidified my conviction that I want to be with someone who not only wants me for who I am but for whoever I want to be or can be as long as possible.

The thing is that the two don't always run parallel. Sometimes you have to stop wanting someone in order for them to be who they want to be. You have to be honest and if who you are has changed or is changing or you know it is for them then you let them go. You give them the possibility.

When we ended our relationship we'd both realised that what whilst we wanted each other, we wanted each other to be exactly who we are more. That staying together would only mean one or both of us would not be able to be honest with themselves.

Sometimes I wonder whether you can be too honest with someone, whether I'm too honest? I always realise though, that it'll never cost me the relationship with myself. And that's the most important one.

So, are you being honest with yourself? Your relationship is counting on it.

Furious with insecurity

All my insecurities burn in fury within your silence

I held you on a pedestal, I knelt before your highness

Now all I think about is you with me but I'm not there

In my place a silhouette of all I'll never be does dare

In my mind's eye there never was another to surpass

I couldn't see, didn't want to perhaps, my view a half full glass

But you've seen it to be half empty and filled it to the brim

Now you drink it down as I drown both consumed by him

Were Gonna Hold On

you were gonna hold on
and I thought I were too
I underestimated me
and you underestimated you

I never meant to steal
and you never meant to rob
with our hearts a stolen loot
were left only to sob

now we're gonna hold on
it's what we agreed eventually
to what we didn't think we could
but are tryin' to make of you and me

it's funny now looking back
in the moment what did I covet
and oh so much has passed
wonder if again I would've done it

you were gonna hold on
and I thought I were too
we underestimated this
but this is what we're gonna do

The Mistake Of Making It Belief

dear Monique, bold was my conviction of a love that I just knew
and I did in that time and place but it disappears as the truth
when you stop letting love be a feeling and make it a belief
when you think that it's a strive and forget that time's a thief

now I know it must fall to pieces, not us let to take it apart
we have to lose some of it, we can't keep it complete from the start
we could've kept it as we felt it but we've changed what it meant
and we'll say that we knew it but know it different than it went

it was grand to know it to end and wonder where it could go
but now we've taken it with us, if it exists we cannot know
did we plow a field already grown or sow a new season's seed?
have we now clipped and caged love's wings that we discovered freed?

my Monique, was our love made in uncertainty of what sought?
was it in then seeking we'll eventually see it picketed not wrought?
if love's beauty's in could well be otherwise but turns out is not
then love's disfigurement must be our making if only it were not

Past And Future Tense Faces

like dissolution of a relationship
it's just time that passes and places
and so ending a context leaves you sad
with two turned away faces
one's turned because it can no longer be
the other because it's unknown
and it's hard to tell if you approach either
if what you want they'll own
is it the past or the future calling
a friend said to me is nice
but the question can't be answered except
neither completely suffice
so you just sing and though the song ends
the melody with you stays
that's life you think just wondering
it could always be other ways

The Presents Of Possibilities

your presence has been only possibilities
now your absence slowly presents them too
but in a different way, perhaps more as change
of my world though, more than me will it ensue?

but what difference is between my world and me?
it seems who I want to be as will be perceived
and the thing is once the two were the same
but does a love make them inversely achieved?

I want to be the same for you as my friends
but everything tells me it's an impossible do
though I'm sure the strive will take me close
I'm foresighted with guilt my lies will be true

I want to tell my friends to love all of me
but who can when you can't love everyone?
I know friends aren't defined as being in love
but I'm planets, life's gravity and they're Sun

I don't fear change because I feel memory's
who I am and fuels me with reason to live
but I'm consumed with waiting and anticipation
not convicted what to take or how to give

and yes possibilities are what you can choose
but maintain control over you they still do
and because of the unknown; that which not chosen
you can't live to reap without sowing rue

Why Do You Love Me: An Essay

Why Do You Love Me?

To be asked, ‘why do you love me?’ is such an interesting happening. It must surely come up within almost every romantic relationship, where there is mention of the word love, or certainly after some period of time of maintenance of the relationship. It seems to me that it likely arises as a question verbalized from one of two, perhaps a combination of, thought processes. One of those could be a lack of or need for affirmation or seeking it, or perhaps in pseudo jest, for pampering of the ego. The other way could be out of a thought process of doubt, uncertainty, self-criticism or self-esteem issues.

I find myself gripped with positivity that I would never myself ask the question of an other because there is a danger in knowing the answer, depending on how it is delivered; and for the most part it is delivered as condition, despite the frequent denial of it so to the self and the other. That, for knowing, then makes one wonder whether it is productive or good or better or worse to feel the conditions of being loved, the certainty or doubt of them able extant aside.

For someone to lay out or try to explain why they love another is to ask themselves categorically the specific things, of which there are many that make up a person, that they identify as being characteristics greater in that person than in others. Knowing these things, whether they are true or false or allowed change or not or permanent or temporary inflicts the subject with a most likely back of the mind keeping that without them or for loss of them their being loved may be opposed, questioned or liable to dissolution. Furthermore, for the subject asking the question, if they are requesting so from a true uncertainty of themselves and what makes them attractive, desirable, great or anything they define as being loved for then it can possibly have the effect of growing their confidence or aiding their realisation of who they are, what they can be. Still, however, there is the danger of them fixing those things, those affirmations of why they’re loved, to why they’d be loved by anyone and the thereafter association of those things as forefront offerings to anybody whom they desire attention or affection from.

Personally, I do not believe I can justly answer the question, at least not at present and perhaps not ever because I am not convinced, nor convicted I know what love is. That the subject asking feels so, and must in order to ask the question, that they are loved is enough and should be so because that tells to me they are experiencing a feeling greater than they’ve known and can imagine knowing. Perhaps the question that is sought, veiled in the ‘why’ is actually the ‘how’. How do I make you feel? And that question is something for which there is only a very personal contention available. And so that does imply that love is not something able to be defined because it’s definition exists as different and fictitious in the way that we read fables or fortunes or poetry or song, the way that mirrors tell different truths to every eye and to every day.

I could come close to an answer, perhaps one to quell the need for hearing an acute response in, ‘I love you because you are exactly who you are and because of how you make me feel.’ To say other than this is to impose condition and it seems apparent that love should strive for the absence of conditions. But that answer also opens the doors for the wondering out loud of who am I to you and how do I make you feel. This brings me to the intellectual feeling that more than love, or perhaps what we truly define as love, is seeking and understanding who we are and how we can feel and what we do feel. Love is just what we call the mirrors that people are to us, reflecting the different, unseen, skewed, changing aspects, impressions and views of ourselves. And it seems the ones that reflect the most satisfyingly, profoundly, intensely are the ones we say we love, the ones we call love, because we are so overwhelmed by the visions and vastness and surprise and wonder if dream or not that we feel without vocabulary for expression.

In summation, though hardly truly conclusion for the endlessness of this issue and questions’ wonder, I love you because; you make me believe that love exists, draw me closer to the things that it might be and without you I would not feel the magnitude of myself that I cannot duly describe but wish to so fervently. Whether this is truth or not, whether you can understand its implication or not, is up to you but I would guarantee that you were unable or would be unable to, without pause, without momentary contemplation, without consideration to the extent of everything you know and can feel, respond seriously and with sincerity to the question yet remain without still feeling as though it was unanswered. If you’re the subject asking it, you would likely feel appreciation, gratitude and enough satisfaction in its response’s attempt. After all, maybe that’s the only reason it’s ever asked; to just hear a lover’s voice, wanting you, desiring to please you, drawing to be close to you. Listening to hear the sound of knowing who you both are, together.

The Silhouettes Of Memory's Pirouettes

looking through some photographs
of a time when I was in love
I felt this urge to race away
towards when the past was enough

because I've become reliant
on the moment feeding my lust
for life and living and feeling
but now the future beckons to trust

and it does so with a soft
touch of a lover's hand in dark
with their look that pierces
and the searing ways their gifts mark

is it truly the feeling of then
that I remember in these photos
or is it what I wished I'd felt
and maybe not again's knowing so

sometimes I think they write
with their eyes upon my heart
and what I feel is the etching
but can't read it til we're apart

and that's what this feeling is
being so close you cannot see
until shadows lift and move
and their figure shows complete

imagination lets your dreams
wonder away with silhouettes
before you know it you're dancing
and your memory remains in pirouettes

all I do is turn and over
many times the ways we'd come
together as lovers and the leaving
with which I never can feel done

Creeping As Dreams Let Seep

I grew to sleeping beside you,
sheathed, a couple of times a week
now as I try to close my eyes
your arms I can't help but seek
I think of your meek fingers
and how they mingle with mine
and the silence that arrives
with your breathing in no time
I try to remember when you weren't
my final thought before sleep
but it seems since our knowing,
through my dreams you perpetually seep
so you keep with me through nights
even if apart we have to be
and though distance some hinderance
each dream's nearer eventually

A Diamond For Trying

you gave me a ring
and asked we be wed
but something wasn't right

you slipped the diamond on
and I saw its weight shone
but could barely stand its sight

it didn't fit and as I looked at it,
I wondered out loud
what did it imply

and silence lingered a moment
and you hadn't spoken,
so I answered with a sigh

maybe love's like that,
you think it's perfect
and you're sure the ring will go

but sometimes you can't force it,
that's just the course of it
that you have to try to know

Loves' Letting

to a lover, once, I mentioned
that I'll never be one to settle
I don't need feel grounded or surrounded
by company to be in fine fettle
well love's not for rent ferocious they said
and I retorted well you make it your mortgage
I'd not want to try own what can't be aquired
love's not a home it's only a voyage
well some time passed and I heard news of them
they're going to their grave in debt
and I'm not far off myself but I'm sure of all I felt
and know it was letting for lack of regret.

Love Is Nothing

do you remember love started with nothing
in that way we'd say so at those glances
we'd spy with big eyes the little somethings
that lead to leaps and taking chances

I recall how love seemed out of our grasp
when neither of us could reach out a hand
but how falling slowly is a rewarding task
it's surer than stamping out ground to stand

I recollect the etched memory of our first kiss
in the way it was mutual the future from there
the trepidation and levitation of is this
going to turn tears of whether worth it to share

did I ever tell you how your bite stung
the second time we locked lips and you pulled
I think I hid it beneath what we'd done
under the throne of responsibility and rules

like all great histories there was a war
ours fought not on hallowed but fallowed ground
then in the night desire's white flags we saw
and realised the Grail never lost to be found

so it occurs me when you reach your eyes
out to mine through what seems to be a mist
that there's still nothing's truthful lies
calling out what you can't help but insist

and it keeps me then with the feeling
of having never ceased to be falling for you
'cause in so many nothings something's revealing
there's so much concealed for us to ensue

Always Watching, Often Waiting

it's hard to get around or over your brown eyes
the way they find and surround mine in photos
it's hard to know that you're somewhere else
and remember the way you once felt so close

in those moments just before we'd go to sleep
when love seemed to keep you through the night
and I'd wake up to see you softly watching me
with so much adoration contained in your sight

in my mind I race through these conversations
where I say to you, certain, how much you mean
to me and the way I still feel plenty for you
but they always end with I wish I'd foreseen

I have these dreams every now and then of those
hopeful, wide open, deep ocean seeking eyes
meeting with mine as the beginning and last
thing I'd see each day and contemplate the size

of our involvement had it been perhaps easier
to maintain than we'd maybe made to believe
I wonder if to me they'll always look the same
if I'll never forget everything they'd seen

sometimes I look confronted to new come lovers
and try well to pretend there's more there
than I know's the truth but it doesn't long last
it seems eventually they see in mine the despair

my restless glances back and forth between time
trying to handle its unbearable lightness
evidence of wonder of whether greatness is extant
or still to come and my uncertainty's rifeness

and though many brown eyes there are to be seen
it's less their traits that I need to be shown
rather more it's the stories that they can tell
and the affection in them accessible to know

so in those photos I guess the truth of your eyes
that I peruse and in them find time to reflect
upon's traveling down memory's waning clarity lane
awaiting it's ardence once again let intersect

and a worthy question it is whether to forget
you can or should try to a once love's eyes
is it best remember what you kept as happy
or pursue the ephemeral with better yet's surmise?

The Time We Married

I had this dream that you and I got married. We'd been together for some time, exactly how long wasn't clear, though it didn't seem to matter. We were young. It seemed apparent what love was and it felt as though it reached all the way around us, wrapped us within it. It was an overcast day, we were walking along a road, it was snowing, but the snow was just cherry blossom petals falling. They were soft pink, almost white and cold and they tasted sweet as we opened our mouths and put our tongues out into the crisp air and caught them. We laughed and I ran my fingers carefully through your hair, brushing out the petals caught upon your head. We'd stopped a second and you were looking at me and I realised so as my hand reached the bottom of the shoulder lengths of your hair. Our eyes met in this moment and I took your hands in mine and began to turn with you, slowly at first, picking up speed until we were at arms lengths from each other, spinning faster and faster. As we slowed down, and took in our surroundings, we were no longer along the cherry blossom, snowing road. We were standing in an empty church that was a forest inside. It was a dome and the trees, thin and tall all around us curved inwards as they reached upwards and only a small circle at the top where they all couldn't reach each other let the sunlight in. The sunlight was soft and it was directly upon us as we stood in the middle of this very natural, comfortable feeling place. There were no pews in the church, just neatly cut-down, thick, many rings of age tree stump seats. There was no one else but you and I in the green, brown, amber, soft pastel mist but we could feel the eyes of an impossible-to-count number of people upon us. We could feel the eyes waiting. Watching and waiting. It seemed that there were voices, softly whispering and chattering, they brushed past our necks and ears like a breeze, which you couldn't tell where it was coming from. We were still holding each others hands. We looked at each other, not grinning, not smiling exactly, but just the corners of our mouths creeping out and up, arching in understanding, perhaps just less than half way to a closed lip smile. We kept looking at each other, locked eyes, unable to move them, not needing to, not wanting to see anything else. We kept our gaze for the time it would take for vows to be said but there was only silence. Just long, deep, concentrating silence. There were no rings brought forth and we knew that we would never wear any. I put my hand into my pocket and you traced my movements with your eyes as I felt around and pulled a watch from inside. The band was not solid, though it was bright and shining gold. It was formed of letters, words, joined together in lower case cursive all the way round. It was a perfect fit for your wrist without any adjustment. The band read, 'innocent when you dream'. It slid over your hand onto your wrist with complete ease and as it came to rest a small wisp of smoke appeared to rise up from where it met your skin. It was searing you, but you did not feel any pain. With your right hand you reached inside your jacket, to the inside breast pocket and you pulled out a watch also. It was identical on the face, and the band the same colour and font but it read different. It read, 'this is all I'll ever have'. As you slipped it on my wrist, just the same as upon yours, it seared my skin and I felt nothing, but thin wisps of smoke arose from around my wrist and I felt my wrist get noticebly heavier. So, with our watches on we both looked at the time and when we looked up from their faces to each others we were then upon a bed in a moonlit room, where the white light pushed through an open window. We were on our sides and naked except for the watches, on top of the sheets, our heads on pillows and music began to play. The music grew louder as we faced each other and I could see your lips moving and knew mine were doing so also, but there were no words coming out, there were no sounds to our voices. We were speaking calmly, at a conversational speed, not hastened or rushed and not exacerbated. As we mouthed words and the music got louder, the sound became more and more like that of a ticking clock. It was slowing and slowing and getting heavier and our mouths started to slow down until our lips were simply pursed. The rhythmic tick-tocking was all we could hear and we began to kiss, soft and gentle and we closed our eyes. Then, every sense seemed to disappear except for the sound of time, almost like a chisel being hit with a hammer into rock, and it continued growing louder and louder. I opened my eyes and I was awake and it was dawn and the clock beside my bed was making it's constant, normal, supposed to, sound. I looked to my right and under the covers swept my hand across to the other side and felt the entire absence of you from the bed. I turned my sleepy gaze from the plush pillow to straight ahead of the bed, where a full length mirror stood and reflected my now half upright position. And looking at myself, I realised that I wasn't frowning, I didn't have tears in my eyes, and I seemed to lack any completely descriptive expression but I could see clearly that my mouth was a curve of wistful, melancholy, slightly turned up at the corners, never smiling, closed lipped and tired.

The Snowing Of Never Knowing

Snow had begun to fall the last few days. It wasn't quite Christmas, but that consumer-buzzing, rushing, fake-jolly Christmas cheer was all about. You could see it; on the shopkeepers' faces, almost like it was a plead to buy; spend, feel something, live. I was keeping on at a friend's place in the nearest big city when the snow started. I'd heard by call that there was a light snow, the first flecks a-fallin' the night before I arrived. I was asleep the mid-morning when my friend awoke beside me and stood up to look out the steamy balcony door. She remarked, excitedly that it was snowing. I drowsily replied, querying, and dragged myself up and out to have a geeze also. It was a fine sight, all that soft white, light, feathery snow; swirling about and drifting in from the same marshmallow coloured clouds. The rooftops within sight were dotted too, some covered, in thick white layers, neatly stacked on the roof shingles. It was exactly like being a tiny little plastic figure glued to the ground of one of those shake-up Christmas paper-weight domes. Someone had the thing by the grip and was pretty fucking vigorous on it alright. We stuck our heads over the small balcony ledge and out put our tongues, trying to lick the snow from the air, waiting for a tiny dot of the frosty magic to land in our mouths. It was a childish, giddy, excited feeling. It was the first time we'd seen the snow fall. It was the first time I'd felt the romance of Winter scraping years off my life, I was ten years old again and suddenly, in that moment, life seemed simple and wondrous and I did wish for the feeling to stay. Though, as always, the day beckoned.

Not completely dressed and aware every furthering minute of the crisp and cold seeping through me I went back inside and got under a hot shower and dressed my hair and self for the day. I was stepping with anticipation to get outside and be truly surrounded in the evidence of wind and gravity and December. When made it outside, plenty layers clothing me underneath my stretched black jeans and tired, red leather motorcycle jacket, I delved my pockets for a crumpled pack of cigarettes and shook one free with my gloved hands and after a couple of clumsy attempts lit the darn thing between my icy lips. Exhaling, it was almost as though I wasn't smoking, as I watched the hot breath escape in front of me, more or less the same as when I first stepped outside, heating the valley wind in my lungs and pushing it back into the mid day.

I was strolling now, a pep in my step as melody filled my ears, as often it does when the world immediately around me turns me on; writing and composing me that soundtrack to a wonderful moment. I sort of heard The Band, playing with Little Feat and Jackson Browne crooning softly along. As I neared the roads, busy with cars that looked like they drove out of igloos, they pushed the breeze past my ears and I swear Tom Waits' rasping grasped my ears for some seconds or so, reminding me that the cold inspires loneliness. And I sure felt it, for the time of year called upon a gathering of those close to you to be closer and warmer and I had a near nothing of that. Just my memories. That's what I had. I kept picturing my Christmas' past and the ways I'd learnt to be without bother by the facade of Saviour's birth's celebration. Back home, Christmas meant the heat and that meant escaping the heat and that meant the mountains. The tallest mountains as close could be. Christmas'd grown to be my time of reconcile with mountain roads, sunsets, long afternoons, and lapping up my favourite luxuries: take away coffee cups with alright coffee, mixed packs of cigarettes up that high altitude, and conversations, learning and knowing. Oh the knowing and getting to do so. I'd not spent the most recent Christmas' with the same persons or person. I'd actually been with almost strangers. People I didn't know what connected us but could feel the yearning to get so.

And about this time, filled with all this thinking and longing I stepped into a dim cafe down the bottom of the hill near the city's station and get-going hub. It was a quiet affair for an early afternoon and I got myself a seat and some coffee and a book from my satchel. It's easy to waste away the hours, sip them back in black brew and watch them wisp away on the tips of cigarettes. I guess that's the magic of heating and a cozy spot when the weather's a downward pull of smiling and not knowing so sure why outside. I got on my laptop after a bit and advantaged myself of the wireless network, high speed, world wide web of pseudo connectedness and talked to a few people that I didn't really need to and looked at a bunch of stuff that didn't make me really feel anything. I just kept noticing my attempts to escape and swirled endlessly in my contemplation of what was I doing with my lead up to holidays and why I felt such obligation to be a part of something. Mm, being a part of something, such a tiresome affair. Needing and wanting and trying and maybe, maybe feeling something.

It did occur to me, with a sly grin creeping across my now rosy face, that a perk of this cold outside, get inside to watch the weather mode was the inclination of company to create their own heat and magic. Having sex. It sure was another experience, for some reason, knowing what was beyond the glass and walls of a small space and making something corresponding, yet opposing inside. Fucking and keeping warm was a sure special feeling I was growing addicted to, and knowingly so, anticipating the wistful feeling of the Spring as the snow melts and so does the exactness of the nearness that yearns when two are cuddled close and sheets and blankets tangle and move like waves, pulled by gravity and crashing.

I'd closed my eyes, I realised, and had that kick in the head of awareness of surroundings and looked consciously around me and then down at my quarter still filled coffee cup. I sipped it and it was cold. That's what time does, what waiting does, what distraction does. It turns your warm spell of liquid content to distasteful, cringe as you swallow, light another cigarette to mask the taste, not at all satiated blend of mellow hope and distraction. Ah well, at least with coffee, the beauty is you can order another pot. Love isn't as easy so. I perked up at this thought and the carrying away of soft focus montage memory of when I last felt warm and loving arms. Everyone always talks about Summer love and it's in movies and shit too. I don't quite get why Summer love is so romanticised and how people identify with it. I don't see love as something that happens in heat, in warmth, in minimal clothes and sweat and stink and that fades away with the falling leaves of Autumn and turns bitter with Winter. It's the inverted for me. I think for most people. Love happens in Winter. We're conditioned to coalescing in the cold and neediness when strength wanes.

I'm a bear and love's hibernating in a cave and you spend the pending seasons gathering and saving up and leading up to it and growing fat with hope and desire and readiness and then you take to the slumber of love and have a hazy dream that swifts by all too fast and when you wake everything's changed and outside isn't the same anymore, even though inside is and you don't know where time went but you know you're thinner and more worn from it and though there's some rejuvenation and content, that's all in your head, just sweet dreams telling you that you did the right thing and that you tried your best and the first taste of the fucking berries or whatever is like that bittersweet ripple on your tongue, through your body that there's another time ahead and I'm that bear that thinks love, well there's another Winter ahead and I only remember the way I felt the last and start wandering, thinking and living for the next. But I think, I'm not a bear, 'cause surely bears are something of a tough, sturdy, brave creature and I'm actually not that at all.

I lift my comfortable self from my abode of away from the awareness of the day and ash spilling off my still-lit-cigarette, pay for my moment of distraction and contemplation aids and flick the lengths of my scarf back across my neck and shoulders and swing out into the even colder of the dusk and drop the butt of my smoke into the mounded, hard snow and watch it extinguish. It's just another day, another spent way, another nothing to feel or say, excursion towards the holidays. I think Christmas will be lonely. Likely cold, and bitter and dreamy in the anticipation of when I'll feel okay and warm again. So far, away here, it's cloudy and windy and smoky in the valley. There's no seaside breeze that cools the humidity off the brow. I don't have a car and winding roads to climb to a sigh of it'll all be alright. The snow's still falling and I can hear Bob calling me now, telling me of a girl who'll give me shelter from the storm. And I know the storm's not the swirling snow and the ice-brick roads or the false hope on stranger's faces, but truthfully it's me. I'm the snow storm plowing through the valley, colouring the season and masking with loneliness everything in sight. Pep in my step, pretending to myself that I love this Wintery everything, knowing that self-convincing is the key to continuing I finally arrive at my friend's place.

It's empty still, their day not over and mine never begun. I spark on the heater and light a cigarette inside, I'm sure they'll mind, but I'm all for lack of caring and I look out the steadily steaming glass and everything just keeps passing; swirling about outside and I have a moment, where I think maybe it'll pass. Maybe my contemplation of all this disdain will wander off with it all too. Maybe, eventually, my feelings will just melt like the snow and pool at the bottom of roads and on the green grass and I'll only ask why isn't it cold anymore and commence my hate of the heat. I do love Winter. Magic is about everything you can't see and won't stop wondering about, knowing it all the while an illusion. Anyway, I think, at least I had that beginning moment, that bliss of magic, wondering why everything is the way it is, a new morning, a new day and even though it was cloudy and swirling and sad and I couldn't taste any of it with my tongue out in the wind it still felt like being alive. It still felt like I didn't know everything I wanted and that's a pretty way to be and see life.

Then, I hear the kettle whistling, and making another cup of coffee was just steps to the kitchenette away. And I thought, assembling my next moment of snow-stars gazing, that I'd probably do the same the next day and begin with the shaking, tumbling, loving of that little dome filling my day with some moments of magic and child-like smiling. The truth of everything up, coming down, but slowly, amazingly, sublime to the eye and alive with never knowing. Snowing and never knowing.

We All Try To Ride The Time-Machine

why is feeling content
so desired but a truth made dire
when you find yourself pretty sure happy
but so quickly still inquire
as to what more is there, what other
pursuits and pleasures are left
why is content only a walkway
to the edge of emptiness' cleft

I got something I long sought
and thought'd make me smile
and sure enough it does
but I wonder if just for awhile
will I ever feel truly satiated
or do we want until we die
is the most to hope for living
knowing happiness is a lie

it seems everything's disposable
as something new's available
we almost strive to say this doesn't
do as the old was able
like it's easier to know
what was good than wonder if will be
the other, greener pastures,
life's tempting possibilities

love's like this they say
you know it, you just do when so
but then when it ends your conscience depends
on the fact you didn't know
I read a gem of wisdom
printed on a vintage coffee cup
it said love is handling a time machine
which concisely sums it up

who knows whether the past
or future holds the answers
we all try and live somewhere in-between
the figures the clock dances
you can't want something forever
because want is only change
disguised in what we think we need
and revealed as truth in age

and you can never know it all exact
so why get caught up
in wondering endlessly whether
you've ever had it good enough
the best you do is just know want is change
and do what you can to slow
it down 'cause the longer it's the same
the longer you think you'll know.

Missing In The Big City

it's finally night time in the big city
and as a quiet rain gently begins to fall
a lover sighs looking up into the wet
and at their other, tired thoughts stall

a homeless man makes a cardboard box bed
and fills it with the nothing he owns
nearby an empty can clanks and rolls
in the distance a truck exhaust groans

a man on holiday wishes he was home
knowing the warmth of his woman's arms
many miles apart living a conviction
a girl wistfully gives wind to her heart

Of Course Remorse

my days
are all coffee stains
and cigarettes
and beer
and in this murkyness
why you left
with every drink
becomes more clear

it's a hurtful mess
surrounding me
that I know
you had to leave
but I grieve you
and the relief you
gave me
and earlier my mistakes
I wish I'd percieved

now all's left
is empty bottles
I thought I could pour
some soul out of
but the feeling
remains
as my pockets
empty of change
and I know
what I need's
too great a cost

if I ask you
kindly
even if you
remind me
of my sins
can you share my load
it's difficult
this road
though I know not
what you chose
but your heart'd
go well sowed

into
the fragile earth
of my desperation
and I'd give recourse
and remorse
you're owed
just to be taken
into your home
a guest to rest
with hope reside
where love's confessed
and can abide

A Carriage Of Marriage

you married me to your hand
and divorced me from your sight
you led me blindly with no plan
just ahead with wistful plight

and I knew not to feel any better
or inclination for more
because I too was looking for a past love
and through you to tie the score

we bound each other fruitfully
to the future hope of redress
and found a way to live for love
fowarded from a previous address

yes, now the only mail we get
is sent from despair to hope
it's safe to say you can make closeness
and care well enough to cloak

and now, though our marriage is just
a carriage for memory to ride,
it strikes me just the same as other people's;
a convenient way to forget and lie.

Morning Procession's Warming Confession

I woke up this morning,
in warmth, lain next to you
and bathed in the feeling
of my small bed resting two
as morning light consumed
in procession through the room
I couldn't help but feel
the day moving all too soon

looking in arousal at you;
your eyes so wide and pretty
the certainty of your affection,
like an arrow pierced me
though the pain I felt
wasn't brazen or discomforting
on the contrary it only dwelled
in my chest as love or something

your smile spoke good morning,
your soft hands said, 'I want you'
your eyes read like a story
of there no desire left to choose
I smiled back to affirm that
I knew so and requited
with confidence then locked eyes
to yours knowing you'd find it

we lay there, silent, just gazing
at each other for awhile
so smitten at the length of
what our intentions compile
and though soon then the inevitable
commence of day did ensue
I was surely most content
to get to wake to it with you