I wanted more to do with this patch of dirt, this sad unsquaredanced bald spot, where no grass grows and where the spotlight shadow of the neighbour’s fence stops shy of this stage. I wanted to planta tree, where I could have built a treehouse, because we know colonialisation comes in steps,and what better place […]
Tag: death
FREEWRITING EXERCISE #72
Like all love, it happened at an inconvenient time / doubling over in the grass /the whirr of a lawnmower still running rounds downthe cul-de-sac / lying there with his half-trimmed lawn /I wonder what he must haveseen / His nostrils, filled withthe afterglow of shorn blades / His breath coming in and outlike his […]
FREEWRITING EXERCISE #24
Come walk with me on this side of the street.The other side is full of riff-raff who want.The crossing itself is a tribulation, one most are not equipped to do. The traffic’s too fast,and we’re all heading in the same direction,aren’t we? I wouldn’t know. There’s a bendup ahead, and from there our paths diverge,but […]
FREEWRITING EXERCISE #22
Every day the same bitterness,every day the words hide in the back of the throat, every day mouths shut against the light. Every day I am reconfiguring what I want myself to be, what I want everyone to hear. There is an art to this manner of magic, this two-faced trickery we call civility. Anger? […]
FREEWRITING EXERCISE #15
God was a carpenter because I don’t know any carpenters. That is a way to start a prayer,in the same way it is to end one. Sometimes in the middle of crossing the road I stop to think of the luminal space between God and pavement. Consider: God as pavement.Consider: God as atheist. I am […]
FREEWRITING EXERCISE #14
Staring down the clock to divine meaning from the intersection of clock hands. Hands on top of hands, layers upon layers of intimacy stacked like a half-shuffled deck of cards. Is it any wonder why we personify Time? But why is Time a father? Time has never given us pause. Time is a mother, time […]
FREEWRITING EXERCISE #13
Anything to keep the faucet going, anything to keep that great big hamster-wheel of the heart spinforever, anything to be a poem.I realise that my life has been a series of fortunate events andseveral turns of phrase, like the turnstile of the station nearest to my first heartbreak. Hark, it’s9pm and I’m dirty and unwashedand […]
FREEWRITING EXERCISE #12
We went in on a dare, so of course we’d be half-alive by the end of it.A dare is a half-suspended heart beat. The drum, out of place. A falling out of line. There is so much you can do before someone else will want to nip it in the bud. Ah, a cliche. See, […]
SELF PORTRAIT AS OWN BIRTH
If two sameselves make a paradox, then so is my birth;one roll of the die with infinite sides.I oscillate between possibilitieslike a speck of dustcaught in vision. A child of coincidence, one branch of Yggdrasil, born to yearn for fruit. I’d like to reconfirm my own existence, ensure that I was some other unknown in […]
BOXING
It’s not as much a tussle as much as it is a boxing match; the dodging and weaving like swerving into traffic.The reason people must inevitably bury themselves is the same as why full stops must be full. You know the steps by heart:here is an empty space to be filled. Here is a name erased. Here is another […]
ugly stage 