2010

No compromises.

Heavier Things

My dreams are too heavy for you to hold,
my breath too strong for your mouth.
Be thoughtful with your lips
lest you suffocate on my life,
so that you don’t swallow
my prayers.

harvest

I’ve been published — please have a look:

http://harvestmagazine.wordpress.com/2009/12/13/a-summer-harvest/

Available direct, or from:

In NSW

* Better Read than Dead: 265 King Street, Newtown
* Bird in the Hand: 100a King Street, Newcastle
* Gleebooks: 49 Glebe Point Road, Glebe
* Kinokuniya Bookstore: Level 2 The Galeries, Victoria, 500 George Street, Sydney

In Victoria

* Readings: Carlton, 309 Lygon Street
* Readings: Hawthorn, 701 Glenferrie Road
* Readings: Malvern, 185 Glenferrie Road
* Readings: Port Melbourne, 253 Bay Street
* Readings: St Kilda, 112 Acland Street
* Avenue Bookstore: 127 Dundas Place, Albert Park
* Basho Bookshop: 139 Lygon Street, Brunswick East
* Brunswick Street Bookstore: 305 Brunswick Street, Fitzroy
* Brunswick Bound: 361 Sydney Road, Brunswick
* Chronicles: 91 Fitzroy Street, St. Kilda
* Collected Works Bookshop: Level 1 Nicholas Building, 37 Swanston Street, Melbourne
* Collector’s Corner: 240 Swanston Walk, Melbourne
* Greville St. Books: 145 Greville Street, Prahran
* Kids in Berlin: 472 Victoria Street, North Melbourne
* mag nation: 88 Elizabeth Street, Melbourne
* Melbourne University Bookshop: Baillieu Library Building, Parkville
* Metropolis: Level 3 Curtin House, 252 Swanston Street, Melbourne
* Paperback Bookshop: 60 Bourke Street, Melbourne
* Polyester: 330 Brunswick Street, Fitzroy
* Reader’s Feast: Midtown Plaza, Cnr Bourke & Swanston Streets, Melbourne
* RMIT Bookshop: 17-25 Little LaTrobe Street, Melbourne
* Sticky: Shop 10 Campbell Arcade, Melbourne (enter from Degraves or Flinders Streets)
* Swinburne University Bookshop: 160 High Street, Prahran

Around Australia

* Borders Bookshops

11.12.09

I am, but I am not.

With every prayer that leaves my lips, I feel You slipping, slowly but inexorably from me. Yet I am called upon to pray, to lay hands – to let go.

But it is so difficult to die to myself. When my life continues moving forward despite my best efforts to pause in order to pray,

If I was unshakable in my faith, it would be so much easier to continue despite any difficulty. But I suppose then they would not be difficulties, only events that occur around me; and then they would all be meaningless, just so meaningless.

So shall I face adversity head on? Should I smile even through broken times? I struggle to find pure joy in difficult circumstances, and it shakes me further that this is the case. And how can I do anything for anyone else if these are the things preoccupying my mind?

If only this, if only that.

But it is only through You that I can do anything. No matter what is on my mind, no matter what invades every crevice of my mind, You are always there.

I am not unshakable in my faith, but You are immovable in Yours. And for this, my love grows and pervades my being. Despite circumstances, I’m able to let go.

How You love me! You answer my every prayer. When I come to You tired, You give me rest. You prepare a table for me in the face of my emotions. You touch my soul like a river running through a desert, and yet You transform my heart into an ocean. And still You find the time to encourage me, to speak clearly to me when I ask; to rejuvenate me when I am in need.

How can I say that You are slipping away? You are everything, an unfathomable eternity that encompasses me. Even as I feel You slipping away from me, I am clothed in Your love. Even when I am unable, You are supremely capable.

I am not, but I am (through You).

Sink

I once sank into your hands
and drowned in your perfume;
I struck a match upon your lips
and it was extinguished in my breathlessness.
In a room choked with smoke
I wrapped myself in water,
and in your spirit,
I was buried.
My grave was a mirror,
a reflection of your beauty,
and my epitaph but a candle,
lit by your glory.

Later

Later,
in our hero’s thoughts,
you crept
like a thief cloaked in memories,
armed with a knife made of dreams.

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Maybe if you breathed until you were breathless,
spoke until you were speechless,
you would see like the sightless –
words that ring true beauty
and colours that can only be tasted in night skies.

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I wonder
if the skies caught me staring at its thighs,
would it rain thunder down upon my eyes?

Oak

In oaken words I loved you,
and in rotting thoughts I left you.
Remember when we danced,
yawning and laughing upon city lights?
Remember when we sang,
with hearts weeping into the air?
You were like the wind,
blowing through the trees,
and I was the leaf,
tossed about the earth.
When our whirlwind dance ended,
I fell, earthbound in a foreign place,
and when the howling song subsided,
I was dry and thirsty.
Our love was stronger than oak,
but without the laughter that fed our hearts,
our love rotted away,
and I no longer loved you.

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Can you take this crown of ash from my head?
I am crestfallen, mind heavy from despairing thoughts
and mourning voices,
and I want to be rid of this unrelenting shame.
Please,
steal death away from my heart
and take this crown of ash from my head.