His Lady

He saw Lady lying in the field,

small poppies surrounded her head,

providing warmth to her cheeks,

which they lacked that afternoon.

He walked to her and noticed her slumber.

Desperate not to wake her

he lowered the side of her dress, which had risen,

showing the pale skin which resided underneath.

Her hat had tipped, leaving her forehead uncovered,

he pulled that down as well,

shading her eyes from the afternoon sun that blazed.

Finding her hair fallen out of her ear behinds,
he was very careful in placing it back,
knowing her sensitive ears meant that she could stir soon,
but she did not.

Lady’s mouth curved in happy dreams,
her eyes lay still,
and her gentleman tidied himself,
ready for her wakening.

He sat close,
as he would if they were almost alone,
reaching his hand out softly,
he touched her cheek.

Temped.
As temped as it never was.

Whispers from his lips reached her ears,
touched but not receiving.
His beautiful lady still smelt her sweetness of roses,
so he lay back to wait.

Yet the bench across the way,
hosted the women who were talking,
of the breaths,
which had long since evaporated poor Lady’s chest.

A List

Since you've always wanted to know,
I am going to admit that I never liked

Pop music, country music, banjos, the triangle or those damn drums

Drinking shots, of alcohol of coffee
smoking, clubs, rooftop bars in winter,
eating outside, el-dante pastas

Straight hair, high heels, black eye shadows
short skirts, chipped nail polish

Foreign appreciation days, national holidays
minutes/hours of silence or commemoration

Earth hour, feminism, climate change
fossil fuel discussions,

Keeping characters alive, ending stories
ending poems, like this one

Peace
(if only I didn't hate an expression like that one too).

You Can Take Photos, We Get It

 People document their movements in a crazy fashion. When you think about it, we see very deeply into the lives of people around us because they have been desensitised to what photographs are appropriate, and which are intimate. We have all witnessed that one friend from high school post a sweet photo of them with their grandparents, and then see that the next is a picture of a blade with a caption like ‘I can’t believe I used to use this’. Somewhere here the lines got crossed, maybe there are just too many ways to capture a photo and it has resulted in some insanity. I’m sure that when people were restocking their film cartridges and actually walking to the Kodak shop to get them developed, they valued every one of those 24 shots; 25 for the people who snuck in the extra one. There has been a larger impact on the removal of physical film than we probably realise. By allowing people to snap 32GBs of images onto a tiny Kodak, we have unleashed monsters. It has reached the point where there is little room for any sort of reminiscence going through a shoebox in a bedroom that isn’t followed by the idea to ‘post this on Facebook’.

    Whoever thought that inventing the digital camera would have lead to applications that mean people are taking photos of their lunch, applying affects and adding some sort of relative hash tag about it being #delicious, or #essential. Of course it’s essential you nitwit, it’s food. Maybe it’s the technology that we have available to us which implies that other people are checking their feeds as much as you are, and that they care about what you’re eating for lunch. This whole encouragement means that everyone is more likely to spawn images of their lives and electronically thrust them in your face; “HERE I HAVE MORE PHOTOS OF DESSERT”, “I HAVE LOTS OF ICE IN MY COKE!” “I’M DOING SOMETHING, LOOK AT ME!” What I’m saying is that there needs to be some sort of mental filter. Even if we were to ask “do people really need to see this?” silently in our heads before clicking, I’m sure that the situation would improve.

    What is worse about this issue is that even people like me are offenders. By people like me I mean the people who run from the camera at a party, or always offer to take the photo rather than actually be in it themselves. Obviously I am not taking photos every single day, but apparently there is some state of exception in my mind where I too feel that I should be documenting and sharing. I recently went on a holiday and took so many photos on my trip that I filled a 16GB iPhone and more. This is hardly normal. I can understand this coming from people who take photos every day, because now it’s more like a habituated thing more than a desire to ‘share’; but from someone like me there has to be some sort of other reason. Perhaps I am conditioned to belief that one must take as many photos as they can while they are on holidays, because everyone back home is dying to see them. Yeah, not so applicable when there are hourly updates.

    Before, taking photos of your holidays, coming home, developing them and placing them in a photo album was the appropriate way to share the memories that you had gathered along your travels. But I took photos in every city, of everything that I thought was worthy, along with so many others that I did not, and made sure they were taken on my iPhone so that they were easier to upload if I felt the need. Now that I am back, I plugged my phone into my computer, selected all and dumped them into some file marked ‘Europe 2012’. Already the title of the album tells me that I won’t be looking in there often or really much again. It suggests that I am only making room for more photos. I have already dated it as though I have had many other trips. This really unnerves me. It also makes me wonder if I have transformed into an every day, every movement photographer, or if I’m just around for special occasions? Either way, the snap sound is only going to chirp louder and louder all around the world until Apple decides that a new capture signal is needed.

And please, don’t take my picture.

Kurt Vonnegut Teaches How to Write a Short Story

Kurt Vonnegut on how to write a short story

Please, Leave Me

Please, leave me

For my heart cannot hold much longer

The feelings that it hosts inside,

When they seep out my eyes they scream

But my will for normalcy remains stronger

Will my lone breath ever come?

I know more than you ever might

Of how my twisted thoughts they work,

If it were my choice I’d begin my depart

But my heart cannot leave your hands for they hold it tight

Do you know you need to go?

As I bite back my lips tremble

When I entertain the thoughts I do,

The temptation is in every facet

For me to resist it is our love that must crumble

Please don’t leave?

My mind is bound

My heart has stiches,

Your needle hands pull them out

When I am exposed you will not like the darkness that is found

Let me show you there is some light?

Please, leave me not

Always Forget Who You Are

I am an 'adult'. My bedroom is painted ‘Bubble gum Pink’, and I sit looking around it on my baby pink tinted spread sheets, on the bed that has frilled dust ruffles joining it to the floor. While I hold the teddy bear that was given to me at birth tight to my chest, I see the amounts of stuffed toys and Barbies that my room has collected along over the years. A poster of the Spice Girls hangs clear on one of my walls, the one that hosts my doll house. I also have a jewellery box on the chest of drawers adjacent to my windowsill, but I don’t really use it. My wardrobe is full of purples and pinks, of skirts and dresses, of lipsticks that are too bold for my shade of skin, of eye shadows that no one outside of costume dress should ever be caught wearing. There is a picture on my wall of ‘Winnie the Pooh’ and his friends that my mother helped me to put up when I was four years old. 

There is something vastly wrong with the picture that has been described of my ‘adult’ bedroom, and that is that it was all determined when I was four years old.

With clichés that suggest things like ‘don’t ever change’, it is easy to begin to question what would remain the same if we never did, and, which idiot thought that this was a useful idea to be spreading throughout hoards of people. This is not to say that the materials that my bedroom was comprised of when I was a four year old are wrong or detrimental; it is more that if I had not branched out in the fourteen years since, that I would be determined mentally instable as a result of lacking emotional development, or development in any other kind.

There is obvious pressure in our culture to ‘stay true to yourself’ or, to ‘remember who you are’, but it seems that the potential progressions that could be made on part of the people following such barbaric instruction come as the ultimate sacrifices.
My advice is the very opposite. Forget who you are, and do it over and over until you have explored so many avenues that you have learned many things that others have not been able to. Be passionate with a range of things, and never define yourself as a man/woman of any one discipline. These are my clichés.

There is no shame in changing, and I think that this is a sensibility that is lost over the populous. Rather than acknowledging the changes of our peers as something that may be more beneficial to their learning, many greet them with sneers, then utter the dreaded remark, ‘you’ve changed’. It seems that rather the feelings of shame or embarrassment that we have learned to endure if any one of us has been on the receiving end of this comment, that instead, we should acknowledge the changes, as a positive thing. Imagine if I really did sit in a ‘Bubble gum Pink’ painted bedroom with stuffed animals and other knick knacks that I had when I was a child? There is no life to be had in that stale existence.

You are a goldfish and your bedroom is your bowl. Your job is to forget, to clear your mind of what you think that your personality entails and instead do what feels natural. For the fish, this is to part its tiny mouth and absorb the oxygen from the water. For you, it is to only do what feels exciting and happy. As for the fish bowl, it fills up pretty quickly. There are only so many castle and plant ornaments that can fit in there before you have to settle for what there is and stop pursuing the new things. Please, do not hoard. Clear out the fish tank and make way for the new, always make way for the new.

So keep in mind that the phases that people go through are so essential to their growth that no one group should be denigrated for doing what feels good to them at any one time; unless they never conceive of change; because change is beautiful. We should always be forgetting who we are in terms of interests, because the essence of who you are will always remain, and this is the most comforting thought. 


Never forget to forget who you are.

This Is Why We Can't Be Friends Anymore

It’s been years now since you smiled at me through the pre-pubescent and clammy hallway, and since I smiled back. I built our friendship on this smile, and others that I demanded from you as I shared what made me happy. I built our friendship on the ideals that we were the same and that you enjoyed my company, and I enjoyed yours. We listened to the same music and laughed at similar things; I cried with you over the deaths of loved ones and got angry with you when the other girls made snide comments. I built our friendship with you, on the smile that was once flashed from across a clammy hallway.

Now, when I look back to memories once lived, I recognise that this was not a simple smile shown to a stranger from the opposite side of an unknown area; this was not a welcoming and inviting ‘hello’ that made me feel warm to my core. In fact, it was snarky, it was arrogant, and it was insincere. Since that exchange, our whole friendship has followed the same theme. What was masquerading as kind or loving, was actually quite depraved. With you I’ve shared news of varying natures, and you have listened along, but you have never loved me completely. You say you love me, and you show me affection, but your heart is wandering to some other place during any hug, so that I am left feeling as though you may not even have one at all.

We can’t be friends anymore because I am not sure that you are capable of love. I have heard you say it, but only in the context of primary caregivers of which you are expected to love. I have seen you write it in cards or texts, and claim it quite a few times, but I have never observed genuine love in your eyes. I am an emotional human being, that feels deeper than is healthy, and you, where the cages of your heart should fall to show any true feelings, instead there is a cloudy glass wall that stifles any real cultivation. I am left asking myself if you are numb, and this makes me uncomfortable. We can’t be friends anymore because I am not sure I can understand a person who sounds like they have tape over their mouth every time they speak about a feeling. It sounds like you are suffocating, and if you are not, you are terribly empty.

We can’t be friends anymore because you hate my success. Sometimes you run over and beam with happiness, you must have received good news. When you reach me you will tell me that you got high distinctions for your class that you’ve been working hard on, and I will smile back and hug you with enthusiasm (because I can feel real emotion). I will bask in your success and share it with you because I feel as invested as you. But you do not return this sort of reaction, my friend. When I scurry over with my high distinction you flash your cloudy glassed smile, raise your eyebrows in uniform fashion and say ‘that’s good’. Every, single, time. Following this you turn to your left and then you go silent. There is no other discussion and I am left feeling sorry that I achieved. I am sorry my success hurts you, and that you can’t give me what I give to you in terms of genuine spirits. And because of this, we can’t be friends anymore.

We can’t be friends anymore because the snide smile that began the very foundations for which this friendship is based, makes me remove any future trust that I may have in you. Because the realisation that this was scripted makes me wonder if any moment I have ever shared with you is honest. You were young then, and so was I. I am so prepared to disregard that moment, accept that you may have learned and progressed. Yet, the other day I turned and saw you give this very same smile to a girl that you have expressed your disgust for on many occasions. Then it hit me, your mouth curved in the same way it did for me, your head tilted to the left just the same, and your eyes reached the same level of squint that I was granted; and for this, we can’t be friends anymore.