Forgiveness

 

I was 18,

had only started driving

and didn’t realise a main road

was ahead.

I just snoozed my way across

—thought I had the right of way,

no less.

I grasped the madness of my fault

as I sailed across the bitumen.

—A streaker across a warzone;

some bird through the blades of a turbine.

I could have been crushed.

I was never in control.

I was nothing. I could have been killed.

Are we ever in control?

Our passions—anger, sadness—come and go.

They’re not in our control.

We’re told, of course, they are,

but trimming hedges back will never kill a root.

Falling in love and breaking up:

they, too, are not in our control.

Even times I’ve done the breaking up:

I wasn’t really in control

of anything

at all.

The moves I make to cook my food:

I do them out of hunger

or habit: both out of my control.

Being born, my earliest tears,

or all the tears I’ve ever cried:

no control.

Then the time

I almost died

on some main road.

We’re not in control.

It calls for forgiveness, really,

of everyone.

Even yourself.

I think we learn to forgive

when we see

we’re none of us

in control of our lives;

or, we learn how to love

when we see

we’re not

even truly

alive.

The breaking wheel

 

Back in Old Europe,

by swollen Church

and funky dress,

they kept a thing in the

back pocket

of the zeitgeist:

the breaking wheel.

The condemned were

tied down,

the enormous wheel

dropped

on

every

limb.

Drop.

Smash.

Drop.

Smash.

Smash.

Smash.

Life

for the tortured

—at such a frequency—

must feel more like death

might feel

if death could feel like anything.

The broken bones would then

be threaded through the spokes,

the puppet of flesh

hoisted up

to parade its screams

to a crowd.

For those most damned,

the Reaper took its time in riding in

to haul the soul away,

the meat

scavenged

by beasts.

The condemned

were criminals,

but how that fits

fails me.

They might have used the breaking wheel themselves;

that wouldn’t make it right,

only worse.

But here’s no study of justice.

Here’s no study of anything.

No final thought,

no sombre lesson to be learned,

save for

life is hard for all,

and, for some,

death unspeakable.

Hostels

Hostels

are the coolest

and loneliest

places.

Love is a wave

that rolls towards or away

from us,

depending on which direction we face.

Or some shit like that.

Better to know how to float

than have learnt how to swim.

Or some shit like that.

Hostels

are the coolest

and loneliest

things

and mantras

are much the same.

It's what we do

I refuse to sleep on road trips

in case the car goes rogue

and there’s time to pull the handle

                                and throw myself to safety.

I’ll play those odds

though keeping alive

means getting old

and laying friends to rest,

though keeping alive

means further scars along

the spirit flesh of the heart.

It’s what we do.

We take the blows

for spaces between the blows

lending chances to laugh with mates,

to kiss a lover,

to read a quote or two.

Not much else. It’s bittersweet, really,

               

                but worth it.

Delight,

at junctures in every breath,

walks the gallows

but hangmen take sickies too.

It’s bittersweet

but we keep ourselves alive for little else.

It’s worth it though.

I don’t know why

but it is.

October 16, 2018

My housemate lands his share

of women newly divorced.

I see them stumble out his room at 8am.

My Facebook feed is full of albums

of recent weddings

—where the stories begin.

My housemate’s room is messy.

No albums feature my housemate’s messy room

—where the stories,

so often,

end.

This glass here's for you

When I was young,

dad would only say he loved me

when drunk.

He’d take me to his face

—a toilet bowl—

and spew the sewerage.

Or at least

that’s how I saw it.

I hardly do it but

tonight,

years on,

I got drunk

and when my housemate entered

I felt this overwhelming love.

It was like

I was free to just admit

my housie was chocolate cake

and I’d loved my chocolate cake

all along

and none of this felt weird

in any way.

Maybe dad had it something like this

and it took the grog to just let go

and love me the way he always

actually

had.

Maybe most of the time

love is too intense to handle sober.

I never really get you dad

but this glass here’s for you.

I think

So I observe my thoughts.

Mindfulness.

Cool.

There they are: my thoughts. Sweet.

Got that part.

But that’s a thought itself:

the thought that I’m observing thoughts

which further breaks things down

so now

I’m free of thoughts themselves.

At least

I think I am.

No, I’m having the thought

I’m thought-free.

No sweat:

that just breaks things down completely

to true,

authentic,

thought-free

being.

I think.

At the cemetery

I was at the cemetery today

and things were in their place.

The iron gate was owlish

—always on nightshift

even at midday.

The crows shrieked

and passing freights came moaning back.

The grey sky

spat

weak rain.

Things in their place

—the world in emo at the cemetery.

But what of the graves?

What of the death

that whispered secrets eternally ignored?

Even there,

Death seemed strange

and out of place.

Even there,

at the cemetery,

Death was impossibly awkward.

America

America,

I miss you

though I’ve not yet left.

America,

Venice Beach beneath

a burning, blasting sun.

My burning heart for you,

America.

How long can you withstand?

America,

buses and deserts

and,

somewhere,

coyotes…

America,

Oklahoma, suburbs

and questions, America.

Fears for you

in my churning gut.

America,

just how

will they loot your legacy?

America,

Texas and longhorns

and NFL with pizza.

Jazz and sweat

in New Orleans

and dirty secrets

of a city

that sweats on a port.

America,

so confident.

I fear for you.

The mob attacks

the shining city upon a hill.

They want to clean you out.

They need to clean their rooms.

America,

the mirror in our rooms

reflecting the image

we see in ourselves.

America,

you fought the Crown

then fought yourself

for a

yet greater

America.

Warrior, liberator

in dark nights of the soul,

you’re Susan B. Anthony,

Dr King,

General Patton.

Are you on your knees,

America?

—Your history, your anthem, your children

mobbed.

America,

if you go

we go.

America,

you’re Jim Crow,

you’re strange diseases like CNN.

But more,

you’re Jefferson, you're Lincoln.

You’re enslaver but,

much more,

emancipator;

a people

that shine a light upon a hill.

America,

you’re the stretched fabrics

of all the world has sewn

and yet remain

the greatest

we’ve ever known.