Nat and Em

There is tenderness
Is the softnesses of you
Small moments you each watch for
Fingers out
To catch them and string them
Up, beauty to take the sting
Out of the overflowing river of
World hurt

You give me hope because
You watch for these moments
For each other- each knowing each,
What colours hurt, what colours heal
And how much a back massage means

I wish I could show
You the way your eyes
Soften
When you talk about each other
They soften and widen and suddenly
Love is a thing I can taste on the tip of my tongue

You hold each other
In politics and pain, through sleep, sweat, and season change
And the best thing is, you
Let your friends see these tiny moments you
Collect for each other
You string them up with laughter in the face of Everything

We are all left with lights dancing in the back of our dark

As we sleep

flying parts

I love you
Light
With flying parts of me
Across the whole spectrum of
Colours
With all my tastebuds

Especially the ones
Tuned to the salt in your skin

Especially the blue shades
Of sea, sky, and sad

The sad parts of me tying
Themselves timidly to the parts
Of me
Learning to fly

dimples against history

My smile is skew
History hanging
On my lips
Unequal weighting
Pulling me down
On one side or the
Other
Sunshine or tomorrow
Or solidarity
Constantly working
Against the weight
To pull me into
A smile
Or a kiss
Or, maybe just a dimple

When you fly

I sit across the table from you
Stylish behind your sunglasses
Slow tears sneaking down your cheeks

How you melt,
From belly laughs into small weeping
How you are so beautiful in both.

I want to carve a stone for you.
It will say:

You are everything.
You deserve this.
You are fire.

BeautifulBrave.

I want the stone to have a small door
For you to open, and hide in
When you are exhausted
When you have the world pulling on every appendage

Climbing up your tears, even,
Into your eyes to pick through your mind
Pulling out diamonds and rushing out with them
To show them in the sun

I want the stone to be temperature flexible.
To be warm, in your chest, when your fear is cold
To be cool when your anger is burning

I want the stone to speak your languages
So no one else can claim it, or you
It will be your secret,
Just to whisper to you

You are everything.
You deserve rest.
You deserve space.
You deserve a holding where you do not have to brace
You deserve lightness
You deserve gentle dark
You deserve softness where you do not have to think who to thank
You deserve to explore without having to hold.
You deserve love without having to speak.
You deserve wings where you do not have to worry what will happen to the ground when you fly.

Disaster Surviving

Every day I am a disaster
Is a day I have survived

The chaos around me
Testament to my life

My house with dirt
And persistent smells

Because I do not have
The will to see myself into tomorrow

But I wake up
Open my eyes and enter
The world
No matter the despair I am feeling

My snail shell-
Safe and shameful -
Isn't a home really

It is a sack for my fragments
A kaleidoscope where I can shake myself
Put myself back together again

I don't forget to wear deodorant
There are just days I can't bring
Myself to wash
To take the time to care for myself
To stop running

My shame over takes me often
But I am still here
Working outside my spaces
Holding my flesh in place

Last time I fell in love
I nearly lost my snail shell
I forgot how to read my snail trails
And I lost myself

I still don't quite trust myself
So I engage in small acts of self sabotage
Reminding myself of where I can't
Where I am not worthy

You are bright, glowing.
Neat and contained
Except for the swirls in your head
I fall over my feet
But our bodies still hold each other

I want to say sorry
For being a disaster
I want to say
In explosions of blood and colour
That every day I am a disaster
Is a day I have survived

Don't run

Don't run.
Don't let the locusts in your chest
Anguish you away

My mouth is not an open hole
Waiting to swallow you

I am open in my laugh
Closed in my sleep
Lacing patterns of breath in between

I might catch you in my teeth
For a second but I will breathe
You out gently as soon as I realize

You will not rot
In me
I do not want you still
I want the heat of our breathes to push against each other, against thunder
Into before storm sweat

I want you gentle, but moving
In yourself and unafraid
Of me, at least

Don't run
I don't dream your nightmares
Your fear does not smell like me
I am not your measure of yourself or your hopes


I am skin with its own dreams
Bones with their own hope
Feet with many directions
Breath that sinks while searching
Up

A being of mist and mercy,
Fear and fantasy
Running and rest

My hand is through my hair,
Over my face,
Searching the sky
Touching yours gently

Don't run.

under the bed

Susurrous
Aftertastes of storm
In her mouth

She collects the pieces
Of herself

Sweeps herself under the bed
With last years jacarandas
Her dead grandmother and the
Fear he woke in her

Every jacaranda, every storm

Every jacaranda
Against every stormy sky
Is heart against
Hope
Is parts stubbornly refusing
To be swallowed by whole
Is whole gently licking and
Holding parts
Is cycle reminding of where you
Were,
Where you are
Where you will never be again

Who will always be gone
How they will always be with you

Is shutting your eyes to the fall
Finding the gentle cushions of wind
In the storm

waterproof

I am thirsty for you
I need you in my mouth

I want to wash my eyes
Out with your sweat so
That you dry into my vision
So my visions are only of you

I am careful with you
I will not tell you how much I want you

You are a fairy, a ghost, an empty promise
I only want you because you are empty

But wanting you has become an empty ache
In my storm

I am invisible to you,
Like fine rain
You should feel my touch on your skin but you are
Waterproof

Ice and light

Trying to skate
Through this year
Of loss without
The ice creeping up
My ankles

Without
My skates
Drinking through to the
Water underneath

The water is thirsty for me
But I fell in love
Unexpectedly
With the sun

Now I am in a race
In a balancing act

In a beautiful
Coital
Coil
With light and ice

Breath is
Warmth and death

Cold is burning
Dread and laughing
Safety, a hope

That hops out ahead of me
Teasing me into following
The lines of my skates

Inscribing love poems
To the sun
To the skin of winter
To the death that came, the one what will not come

The ones I hold in holes in my teeth
Crying with my mouths closed
To keep them close

all in the same second

my heart is being burrowed
open
by earthworms and skyfish

lightening in summer
warm wormholes in winter

all in the same second

i want to kiss you
i want to drown

i grow like
moss with a bad sense of direction

i love
like a broken compass

love me like
earthworms
loving the rain
by instinct

by necessity

when we know hope is
cruel
and happy is false

we grow determined

feet planted strong as
river current

as gentle as
nothing gentle at all

all in the same second

Up

There is an
Aspiration for up
When sideways might be more full of joy
When down might be more realistic

When losing momentum and
Staying
Willfully
Might be braver, even

But the sky still governs our senses
As impossible as the stars will always be
Our orientation remains,
Stubbornly
Stunningly

Up

Mirror

I have been used
To mirroring you

Your rage
Your joy
Your twists

I unentangled myself
From you by
Chewing through my
Veins

Quenching the bloodflow
With my fingers

Sewing myself back together
With skin gathered from
Lashes on my back

It is just after the operation
I am in isolation
Finding my mouth again

Finding pockets of emptiness
Looking absently for a mirror
To find you in
To fill me again, then

My veins remind me of how I
Had to tear them from you
My arms bare the scars of my stitches,

To ease the emptiness ache, then
I have to relearn my own reflection

Palm

My palm lies on yours
An anxiety of skin
What peace does love bring?

Made of Volcanoes

It appears you have forgotten
What you are made of
As you creep into a room
Head down

Shrinking into yourself

Trying to make yourself
As close to
Disappearing as you can

Raise your head
Open your mouth and
Roar
You are the World

You are made of Volcanoes
Magma flowering in your hair

You are made of Opera songs
Vibrations of impossible notes
Humming in your teeth

You are made of Tides
Extra terrestrial forces
Licking your soles

You are made of Winter
Crackling things dry
Storing life and death in your joints
Showing yourself brilliant in
Stark Sun

Unshrink yourself darling
Come into yourself

The years will unfold around you
Summon them with your Roar that
Sounds like

Opera songs exploding in Winter Waves
Wrap yourself in your own delight
You are the World
Too full of wonder to make yourself Small

falling

You appeared to me
In my blindness

My fingers on your face
I recognised you

when the ghosts

When the ghost
Came to visit me last night
I opened my covers

Let her in
She told me she misses you
She told me it hurt more than
She had hoped
She curled up inside my arm pit

When the ghost came to visit me
Last night

I let her in
Under the covers, like she was used to
She told me she was sorry
She never meant to hurt me
Her probing fingers were part of her anger
She curled up inside my knee.

When the ghost came
To visit me last night

I let him in
He told me he was angry
No one was there when
They set him on fire
No one was there to hear him burn

He curled up in my wrist

When the ghosts came to
Visit me last night
I let them in
They sat round the edges of my bed
201 of them, mangled from the machinery
down the mine shaft

I am sorry
I told them

They shook their heads
No amount of blood-letting
They said

They want nothing from me now
Except for me to open my covers every night
Let them sleep in my bed

They curled up, one by 201
Inside my head.

Burning Boat

I am on fire
You are inside me
We are a burning boat
Sacrificing ourselves
To the river-gods

Your belt

I wish you didn’t go
I wish the belt had broken
I wish you had used your favourite one
That had been worn out with years of wear
As your grew
And it’s last act of love to you had been to break

When you need

I take your broken pieces
The ones still attached to
You with
Skin threads

The ones swept out
Into the
The yard by
Your hurricanes

The ones hiding in
Trees
Terrified by
The world and
Your brave rages at
It

I take your broken pieces
Blow the dust off them
Kiss them gently

Put them into my stomach
Carefully

Growing them back
Together
For when you heal
For

When you will need them
Again

Not a love poem

I want to write a poem
That is not a love poem
That is a poem of opening

How I unfold in front of you, shyly
Laughing, so you smell the bees,
Hear the pollen in my centre

I want to write a poem
That is not a love poem
That is a poem of holding

How my hand lives in yours
Alive in a language of skin
Peaceful quiet

I want to write a poem
That is not a love poem
That is a poem of hoping

How I lose myself as an apology
Find myself as a laugh
Between my mouth and yours

I want to write a poem
That is not a poem
That is an invitation exploring

Maps of your muscles
Beaches of my bones
Contour lines finger-traced

I want to write you a poem
That is a breath
That is a breaking

That cracks the sky open enough
For us to slip away
So I can kiss you in the dark

kiss me

kiss me soft
your hand on my cheek
gentle

you are
early evening light
I am early morning

so kiss me
soft
let me forget my name
in your hand cupping my cheek

kiss me hard, too
I am rock with cracks for you,
waterfall, to slip into

meet me in the sun on our lips
in the stars in our teeth
in the secret place we store our laughter

in the pockets of need in our bodies
meet me tomorrow, today,
meet me now and kiss me
soft

armies

we build armies
slowly
consistently
of madness and misfits and
terrible beautiful power

we don't realise we are building
armies
i don't think

not until the attacks start
not until we are needed to march

then as the armies rise and we
see we are inside family

we realise what we have been building

Hani and Biko

I wonder what Hani and Biko would have become

Black consciousness
And ANC communist and
Militant
Hard
Fighting


I wonder what balloons this racist,capitalist
Post-apartheid
Would have made them

But maybe that was why they killed them

Maybe that was why they died

Their heads broke

But their hearts didn't

Maybe they were lucky in that

Very close and very hot

I will make myself very small
But I will burn very hot
A small coal
In the middle of the ash
Only if you come very close
If you stand for a minute
You will feel the heat

The way you love

I love the way you love
Have loved
Love now in the past

The way you coat your pain in magic
The way you sew
Star clothes

And the way you won't let death go black

I want to hold your heart while you speak

I hear your voice
Slow
Untangling itself into strands of colour in my head
Yellow pain
Purple clouds into in and
The yellow is now stars

I don't know if you know how finely your face reads
Joy, pain, loss, magic
Love
Flow across your face like
Weather

I wonder if everyone sees these seasons?

I want to hold your heart
Not contain but just
Feel in my hands for a few seconds
Just for you to feel held for a few seconds

Just to say to you
That you are held

I never see you alone
I never see you lonely

In my head you are a wizard
Magician and
At the same time grass
Flowing, spreading,
Mushroom like

And never alone

But there are some moments
Where I get a sense of what your chest tree might hold

And I would like to hold your heart

(or lie naked with you
With a pen
Drawing nudibranchs in your
Chest tree)

And kiss you
And say I love how you love

We will stand

Darling
Do not lose yourself in these
Tentacles
Of despair
Everything looks dark now but
Through these tentacles you can
See fragments of sunset

Allow that you can
Let yourself go into the
Deep, natural, mourning time of night

But when the sun rises again
Do not let these tentacles of despair
Destroy you
Do not let them pull you apart
Give one to each of us,
They are ice, no on can carry
More than one

But we are many
We can take them all

You are an Empress here
We feel your magic woven into your hair
Your smile
The warmth that flows
From it embracing everyone in the room

And darling, your future is fire
Still. Now, in the depth of this despair
Your future is fire

We will not let you go
We will stand in a protective kraal
Around you
Blowing your embers so they don't go out
Pulling the tentacles of despair from you
One in each of our hearts

They paralyse us for a day
A week
But our hearts grow round them
Until they are just a dark spot
A pause
A silence
Because there will never be words


Let us hold you
Because your future is still fire

Light in the Window

This flicker of
Fragility I will
Neither fan not squash

I will rather place
It in the corner of
My window as a
Small signal for gentleness

If you see this light
Knock gently
My door will be open
I will be sitting by the fire

Come and sit next to me
Slowly, touch me
If I do not flinch
Put one arm around me
One arm holding my book
In case my eyes are heavy

Let us be gentle together
In my fragility

If you cannot be gentle
When you see this light
Do not even breathe
On my window
Keep walking,
Wrapped in your lights

If your lights dim
If you one day
Find yourself fragile

Put a light
In your window

If I am able,
Feeling warm

I will knock gently

See how strong
Our fragile lights
Can be, one arm
Around me
One arm
Around you

Thriving

This space of near death
We must live from
We must live from
Second by gasped second

We can only be great
If we are nearly dead

If we were more confidently alive
We would not have to fight as hard
These would be more energy, maybe,
To dominate, not flutter
To be present, unapologetic,
To not car about spaces of fitting, or looking
Or sitting
Energy to do more than survive
Energy to thrive

Could you imagine how colourful
How powerful
The world would be
If all my BeautifulBraves were
Thriving?
With me?

Dying Living

I’m scared of
Being close
To you of being
Vulnerable and
Open of being
Hurt of dying
I’m scared of
Living

My graves

Visible and invisible graves
That we fall into without hearing
That we build homes in without tasting
That we walk over without shivering

Histories holed up in our heels
Under each step like slipping stones

Give me your hands, love
Hold my graves with me

Let’s pack our graves up
Into each other like
Babushka dolls

Close. Tight
An intimacy that pierces
An intimacy that is perfect in death

Language of sleep

Ghosts speak
In snakes
That swallow, that spit
That do not know the language of sleep
That do not know the language of sleep
That do not sleep

Heart-Doors

The way hearts
Fly open
Like cupboard doors
In a kitchen:

Here- drink, eat
Share
Break

Cook, weave, smell
Spell, magic, mix,
Make, sew, fix

Hold

Hold fix hold
Fix, cook, bake
Mix eat share

Hold, share, hold
Fix, share, warm,

Hold. Hold. Hold.

Come Gently

One day these wings will rain, will walk
Will not need to fly, to soar: will walk

Rain makes poems in insects: locust ladybugs bees
Rain swallows wings, they fall from the sky tumble spill walk.

Labyrinth-speak: hear hold enfold
Dreams held in lips we will, to fulfil, walk.

“Come gently,” he whispered, “carve me safe into stone”
“Reach me” he breathed, “Gently come to the hill, walk!”

I survived you: a wonder surviving the winter
Even after you I can still walk.

Against Hope

Us. Here
High. 12th floor up
Into the cold

Dressed warm
Heads full, scared, hoping
Mountain on wall
Hope cascades over it
Runs
runs
runs out
runs away

We are not allowed to hope here
Us. Warm.
High
Wet only by delicate accident

Our hope for better worlds
For less guilt for ourselves
no.

We must live with our guilt
Like worms

we are not allowed to have hope
also
with everything else

hope is there for a sun
for a sunset
for a ray
that illuminates where Black is a queer death

we are not allowed hope
up here
on the 12th floor.

Fire on the Plane

Our plane caught fire.

Our emergency
landing in Halifax
my first time in
Canada. I am groggy
With shock and sleeping pills

In this state
I can first begin
To realise
I have lost you

In this state
I can first begin
To realise
I have saved my life

We cry. I expect tears
Of fear
Of tiredness
Of frustration at the
Country we are unexpectedly in

My tears are tears of joy
Of relief
My tears put out
the fire on the plane.

Raffi's Wings

You have wings to take you soaring
You have had wings all your life
Everyone saw them on you
They shone in your smile
In your laugh
A bright, vibrant

Those wings have been waiting for you
To take you softly
Gently
To your home

None of us, not even your wings,
Expected you to travel so soon
They tripped over themselves
Brushed our faces

As they came to sweep you up
You are safe in them
As we sit here in the rain
Silently listening for your wingbeats
You are held, peaceful, safe

Love ties you
So close

You will send wings to your daughter
Your husband
So they can hold your travel a little more lightly
So they can hold each other
So your wings can be wind instruments
In their grief

The wings you send them reminding them gently
That you are safe
You are held
You are precious, beautiful, loved
Your wings will be around them always
That when it is time you will meet them to
Help them travel safely,
Your wings grow from heaven to earth
To hold us gently
To let you sing softly, as you are loved, celebrated

As our hearts grieve knowing you are held
In God’s wings
Nestled in those spaces
Where we are never alone
Where we are never apart.

Needle and knife

I might fall apart today
As I choose between
The bright of the knife
And the bright of the needle

The knife knows how to open
To dig
Carve out worms and rotten flesh

It knows how to placate me too,
Sings me a song of work to do
When it and I have learnt to
Survive on my blood

It sits on my belt
Satisfied that even though
I never sharpen it
I will always weaken back into it

The needle knows how to close
To sew shut and let heal what
The knife has opened

When the knife has cut out the worms
In the wounds that won't grew trees
The needle sighs gentle stitches
That only sting a little
That sing, rather, old marching songs,
Lullabies, composed just for me

Last night I chose the knife
Today I choose the needle
Touching my tongue to the sun
I thread the needle with light

I will sew up the places I opened
Sew closed the places that hurt
Unpick the the stitches locking me in

Bright stitches will mark my journey
To the bright of the needle
From the bright of the knife

Thin rain (zoloft, seroquel, epitec)

Thin rain
Fills the space between storm and drought
I don’t notice it, really
But it is rotting my flowers

I float between drugs
Finding a space that is not empty
Not closed

I inhale
Searching
Scared of losing myself in the grey
Surely that would be better than losing myself in the dark?
Surely the bursts of colour are not worth the terrifying
Free falls?

I don’t notice it, really
But it is rotting my flowers

precious precarious

One day
I will not be transformed by a kiss
Or a gentle word
Or gesture
Or caress

Into this
Simpering, needy thing

Who dances so hard
To make sure I make the right foot
Prints to spell out love in your language

Who reels and twirls
But summons the wind to hold me
Just so I can look steady in your gaze

Who knows I am not steady so
Who gushes waterfalls of words
Hoping that somewhere in them
You will hear what you need to

One day I will be fierce
Drinking black label in my blue leopard print jeans

Red lips for the fire in my skin
Converse so I am always run-ready

in this fierceness I will be calm
Collected in myself

Allow you to want me or not
Not hang my whole precarious
Precious
Existence round your neck

I will have grown my spine up
tall, spiky, like tree in my garden

Strong enough to hold me on my limp days
Spiky enough to warn people
Before they try to envelop me

Then you can love me like sunshine
you can leave me like mist
I will not crumble, feel I cannot breathe without you

I will smile, star teeth
stick my tongue out- mine
Into the night

Until you sing

Mourn, child
You were not born for this
Not born to be on the other side of
Fists, slaps, choking hands
A dick that does not know who you are.

I know this will make you strong,
But the truth is that it will make you weak, also
It will make you scared
Want to hide,
More likely to slip into puddles
You would have been able to jump over before

So mourn, child
You were not built for this
To be whittled away at like stone
When he does not see the statue inside
He just wants to make you small

Mourn, child,
Because you loved him
You love him still
He is still something your huge heart can wrap around
His shape inside you

Mourn, child,
Because that love was not broken when he hit you
That love was not broken when he threatened you
That love was not broken when he nearly killed you
That love was not broken when he raped you
That love was not broken when you sensed that,
somewhere down the line, your life would be in danger.

Mourn, child
Weep
For your self, and your soul, and for his too.

You do not have to be strong through this
You will survive, of course
Survival is always a puzzle-game
How many pieces you can put back together

Mourn, child
Let us weep
Let us weep loudly
Let us weep loudly enough that we find each other
That we may hold each other

Let us weep so loudly that we do not have to
try and be strong

Strength will come from weeping, eventually
Because we are not made for weeping either
But if we do not weep ourselves empty
We cannot see what puzzle pieces we will find
to rebuild ourselves
If we do not weep ourselves empty
We will never be light enough to jump over the puddles again

Mourn, child
We were not made for this
We were made for singing
And for fire battles

Let us weep until we sing

Yellow brick road

I must mourn you
As if you were dead
You are never coming back.

I sift through the remnants of you
In my spring clean
My heart trying to hold you still

With you I was sliced open,
As bloody and delicious as
a December watermelon
You spitting out my pips

With you I was as in love as a
13 year old with a boy band
As an 85 year old at her partners
Funeral

I worked harder with you than
I thought possible
To the horizon and over it
Into the dark

I felt safe with you in warm moments
Of half sleep

I felt brave with you often
Until my knees gave way

I was awed by you
Floored
Amazed by your dimensions

I was terrified by you
Feared for my life,
My sanity and
My future

I was so hopeful in you
For our future
The future worlds you hold

I was enraged by you
Tears hot down my face
I wished I could make them weapons
Find some way to escape you

We found each other in gentle moments occasionally,
Secretly

I was broadened
Stretched by you
Through you
To trying to survive you

We will not walk together again
I turn to see you
yellow brick road burning in my heart

I put all the love and rage
Hope and desperation
In a letter on our last brick
I turn to face the sun