DIARYOVJANE (POETRY ARCHIVE)

I think it was when we were staring at the preserved lung tissue, that I realised I already liked you.

In a medical museum I point out discoloured hues, emphysema like crushed cotton, blurring burnt orange into violet blue.

When I told you I thought it was pretty, you didn't take my excitement as an affront.

"They're a good match" you laughed, 

our favourite colours you hadn't forgot.

We were born in the same hospital,

A couple of years apart. 

Toes tagged pink and blue, 

mislabelled from the start.

We ran from Sydney for something better, you're further along that path; Leading with determination, choosing hard roads with a soft heart.

You're a living reliquary of a sihlouette unknown, would you let the hallowed niche of your heart contain my own?

Where I'll drip gold upon chamber walls in a pattern ornate, that cradles your soul without constricting its shape.

The ressurected rests upon the doors with which your heart is hinged, a relaxed lover occupying a vague niche within that I don't 

wish to undermine;

For I saw the softness with which you held them and bound my heart with my mind.

Yet from that constriction drips a sap waxed maudlin, sealing those sentiments in metaphor too vague to be wanton.

I’ll asperse a rosaries worth of pebbles for a pastors child, collecting loose like gallstones,

sitting solemn in a jar while we sit in communion.

Away from the liturgy.

And I’ll observe my litany of reasons I don’t ask you to stay the night.

In dreams I melt from the holy water on your breath, delinquescent and delusional, a sopping mess on the church steps.

Still heady on those sober disclosures from when we met beneath club lights,

When we named our afflictions and what balms of intimacy soothe us at night.

Yet In that moment I could not trace the sihlouette of my want; I could not articulate the amorphous with words I was never taught.

Because I was taught how to stifle desire and feign naivety, 

Fake it till you make it,

or at least until they believe me.

But when I look into your eyes with a hunger that I can't shake off, I can't pretend I don't long for the touch that I said I didn't want.

I tire of speaking in tongues too cryptic and saccharine, for my fear has only made me a prudish machievellian.

So if you could enjoy me in my strangeness, I hope you can forgive my doubt;

That I could say what I mean and trust you'd stick around.

Because I could count the prayers I made in supplication, that earnest longing made with tempered expectation.

I thumb over each porous stone before unthreading them into the jar, if you can't be honest with yourself Hail Mary's won't get you far.

So when I can finally stop talking around it,

I'll give you some string, 

and I'll tell I love you,

And you'll know what all those pebbles mean.

“This Machine Is Your Ticket To Greatness”

was the line inscribed on the top of my first skateboard deck, a promise visible beneath a transcluscent pane of acid green tape I'd scrape my foot over again and again.

It's nose would stretch skyward, tail still planted to the ground, a futile attempt at lift-off that would keep us both bound.

My mother signed me to a couple of lessons, but the instructor rarely showed up, only heralded by the scent of artificial guava and donuts. 

But he taught me how to fall, and that has helped the most, as I'm reminded touching

the hinge my skin stretches itself thin over to keep my forehead closed

We try to disperse the damage laterally, never taking it all head on, it doesn't matter if your shins are bleeding if the slam you're still walking from. 

Because if the boundary of elation isn't a catastrophic fault, then what separates that promised greatness from the mundane of it all?

A slick signature of wax on a bench becomes a playful taunt, to trace your wheels over the dark stain and interpret what failure taught,

Because failure is the aluminium chalice we drink from gladly, even when it cuts our palms it nourishes out hearts plenty.

And although my recovery time can stretch into weeks, I never stray long nor will I forget, that feeling of greatness only a gamble can beget.

When you got back from Auckland you gifted me a set of stickers, gilded flowers I'd taken as a token of favour. In my room I had placed them in all lines of view, to find you in every glimpse of their marigold hue.

We were bathed in amber the only time that I held you, soft intimacy washing out the fear that I'd long grown used to.

That my desire might only ever be taken as a threat, pinning you up with carpentry nails from a dissassembled bed. Framing you as a mere body to sate me for a day, while convincing myself I'm not just doing this for the lay.

My heart was a lump in your throat tolerated for two weeks, and in an act of Mercy for us both you returned it to me. 

It was a gentle rejection, no revulsion could be gleaned from the clear understanding that it was not meant to be.

The first thing I did was to peel off the stickers, tentatively tacked to torn bible paper than adhered with their sticky backs that would force commiting to their placement, left on my desk as their packaging I'd parted ways with.

I'm weighed down by all the pebbles that are left in my head, every piece of affection that I can no longer give. They will all pass painfully like the worst of gallstones, but I can no longer pretend its not their time to go.

I have sat solemn in a church pew just praying you'd believe in the love I misinterpreted from every line between, 

Those signs I saw will be filed away with the false UFO sightings, coincidences and anomalies that we're too eager to buy and I know that I am cared for, delightful souls have found a friend in me, but I worry being in love with me is something people only wish they could be.

Please don't call me darling,

Please don't press yourself into me.

And let your touch linger like a shock of electricity rending my muscles tense even after I've gotten home, derailing me in a way my body had never known.

And when I compliment you,

Please don't tell me that was the most beautiful thing anyone's ever said, because I will never look at an oil slick the same way again.

And please don't give me that look while you tell me how much you love that you're someone I know, 

With that snaggle-toothed grin you know I can't get enough of, looking like an adorably drowned rat in a dress I can't take my eyes off.

Please don't say that writing to me feels like an indulgence, that my company makes you feel like a kid, that reading with me is an innocent joy that is hard to part with.

And please don't return that "I love you" that slipped from my tongue, as the train comes to prematurely rip you away from my arms.

And please don't look at me as if I'm the only one, as if my friend didn't just see you kissing someone, as if you texted me even once after that night, and showed up to what you promised you'd make sure to. 

And please don't call me in the evening to say you need to see me, and sob when I tell you the real reason I'm leaving.

And god, please don't ambush me when I've finally gotten over you and ask to accompany me for the night when we both know there's someone waiting for you to return to.

But thankyou.

for never asking me to stay, no matter how much I wished you would, for otherwise I'd have never moved away.

Because even now if you called, I'd drink up what ever is offered, you iridescent refraction on an oilslick, too alluring not to imbibe.

There is nothing novel about global tragedy,

or the imperial violence that circumnavigates the world 

and returns to police home with artillery.

We were never designed to know so much abstract pain, and at times I feel the limits of my empathy; yet I tire of sand burials and selective sympathy.

Clutching shovels I know is easy,

and to hide your eyes can seem better

believe me;

But the cities still burn even when you aren't a witness

And they don't care if you can recognise the names on their hitlist.

You will feel the heat circulate through the sand above your head, and you'll never breath easy even if you pull yourself and up and brush the sand off your neck.

I know how that despair wells in glass coated lungs, 

And in that helpless state you're no help to anyone.

So please don't look away, even when your vision is scratched and blurry, tend to those closest, but don't abandon the far in a hurry,

because when it all feels like too much is when you've finally started hearing,

The desperate sobs of those trying to stop their loved ones bleeding, 

For their blood will still seep into wherever you hide, soaking your scalp when it can't breach your eyes.

You will be annointed in awareness.

Because none of us can afford anymore to care less.

This morning I found a strand from the mop I used to clean the floors at my old job, 

adhered to the bottom of my boots with congealed cigarette ash and memories I can't shake off;

of the scent of the smoke you blew in my face as you called me mutilated, and how it lingered on my clothes long after that conversation.

I hugged you and affirmed "I'm not angry," which was a dishonest response;

teeth clenched on my molten resentment and pretending I'm not wrought with a heat disintegrating the low melting point pins that held together my spine, 

anger will make an empty cast of you if you keep it all inside.

I got good at surviving by learning how to lie, so when they told I you was disigenous it was an observation hard to deny.

I could melt down my lead lines and rearrange my frame, a glassless window you can fill with a palette you curate.

I'll bath you in all the colours of that filtered sunlight, those unnaturally agreeable hues that make you feel you're in the right. 

I thought loyalty was tolerating resentment, 

that one always has to forgive more, 

but we believe it less and less each time until bitter flames devour us whole.

I know the face of rage and its something I never wanted anyone to see on me,

but what don't acknowledge within yourself will be put on others eventually.

A self-hating solipsist will burn the world to find their peace, for everyone is a mirror to what they never want to see. 

I have torched many friendships from letting fear guide my way, people I said I'd cherish left among the burned the next day

And when I recite their names, the memory is veiled in regret, for all the times I spoke to them and never said what I meant. 

The others at that job, they were not all unkind, but my saccharine defensiveness made working with me a hard time:

Flirty when I never meant it, sulking with passive aggression, an inconsistent learned helplessness that only continued to build suspicion.

You said I was like a cancer,

to be excised before I spread rot.

It didn't matter if you saw good in me,

In your eyes I was already lost.

You fired me

Said I could come back when I've become less complicated

and learned to untangle the knots; 

of every lie I spoke to safely obscure my thoughts. 

Since then I'm trying to be more honest, 

to say what I mean even just to myself:

I have yet to forgive you, for saying I act like a fucking freak and thinking it would help.