grateful

for sophie hunger

for songtellers

everyone is on a journey

everyone is finding 

words break

sharp edges

crushed dreams

dark nights

follies of humanity.

waiting

you are nervous as am I. all the words I wanted to say, they are blown away. a smile breaks through, kind. we are fumbling. i want to jump through the screen. 

there is not much to say really. we will try.

the last warm early autumn winds

 she stepped outside and the winds were warm.

the night softly clung onto the street corner and the tree tops.

the feelings were not urgent, more matter of factly. she stood and wondered at the stars. nothing really mattered: the world too confusing, the paths hiding in the dark. 

I do not want what I haven't got

There is a plan, a weekend, the truth.

Really, we just want to be in each other's arms, long enough. Tena na tena.

Lakini: we already know. I think. You know it, too. We just don't want what we know.

You show me, hold me, we sway, I dissolve, you come, holding my body like a treasure, wiping my tears, holding my head. I laugh and we sink into each other's arms. 'The problem is' I say slowly, 'we are both givers'. You agree. 

It's a long road to recover. I don't want to leave the cocoon. The shapes hunt me down, claw my brain, make me weep in cemeteries, on the bike, at work. I swallow. I return. You say 'maybe what you said, or ... maybe we could put it on hold. What is true in September 2023 may not be true in March 2024'. Exactly my thoughts. But I also know that closing doors properly frees energy. So maybe, after all, the retreat. At least, so we can excavate our souls. Figure out how to do this more poetically. An appropriate way of parting. The obligation: that we shall live more fully, more truthfully. Even with hurt, it works. 

In the end, just one more cup of coffee.

the price i pay

friends concerned naturally but it's not like i am asking anyone to carry my burdens or pay the price i have to pay for the choices i make

there is a muddy swamp and im sinking deeper into it. i wriggle, i try different things but the hold is strong big blue has come back with a force. 

he asks and of course he notices he always does

but there is no time

i can't put words to this in broad daylight

i need to lie down and whisper into the darkness of his embrace

my heart hurts and strangely it is in my right chest. everything is upside down.

it's not like i didn't know.

Gold

 You teach me silence. 

My words stumble and dissolve.

Only because 

It's safe

In your arms

They turn into liquid gold. 

Ghost Malls

 

Prompt:

It was a charity shop

Malls are scary they are just full of possibilities

And hopes

And lights.

Story: I imagine everytime how they will ghost the towns one day. Perhaps the possibilities seeped through the polished glas door fronts and meandered into second use kinda things. Like the charity shop. Then turned into a practice room for DJane workshops. Later perhaps, on the roof there will be a skate park and then, finally, the shadows will eat through the hopes and the lights and leave the bare bones, the skeletons of this errant civilization behind. Maybe a dancer will slide down the broken escalators and write with blood on the broken marble floors. Perhaps a poet will shudder slightly and write about the woes of something, long ago, called capitalism. How everything seemed so lost, how people ran from one shop to the other and couldn’t find a way out. Exits in different languages, signage gone wrong. How charities tried to wash consumer’s souls but no matter how long they scrubbed, less and less money came off their pale and ashy skins and tattered fragile minds. The way hopes were sold in plastic bottles. The way lighting misled people to buy more and breathe less deeply. The way how green plants meandered through the cracks and found hold and brought oxygen back to the grey. The way people fled the cities and wept in the remaining forests.

in the wait

the voice whispered to step back, create space, but I declined, couldn't hold it, wrote anyway. i write and you respond in drops, but you say you felt it was coming and that maybe that's why you had a good energy today. we seek cause and effect in each other's embrace. but there is nothing like that. 

the voice whispers again. okay I say but I write once more, I want to wear your voice like a coat, here I am begging at your door but the door has closed, I can feel it energetically: I need to give you space.

but how much space should I give? is it to follow my fears or my wisdom?

so I do what I thought I wouldn't do, with you. i delete the message.

still

after you left, there was a deep exhaustion, not the bad kind, settling in. i felt like sinking to the ground, held by water but distinctly heavier than it. 

like a leaf slowly swirling through thick autumn air. leisurely, but tinted with light blue melancholy. 

the next day's journey is rough. grumples. a feeling of struggle, with what, remains unknown. the fall comes after, early morning search run after an alarming message, finally finding you and your demons convening in a bar.

the awakening, slowly, hidden in a cave, soft mumbles and secret sharings. you have finally arrived, it took so long you whisper. i feel shy but also expansive. whatever the future brings, at least we are treading a path of courageous truths. 

 

Raw

i'm feeling raw from the inside, the flesh hurts where it touches my bones, my heart is pressing against my rib cage and sends rays of pain to my neck.

my bones imploded, they are voids now, crushed into fine stardust. there is silence where they used to be, throbbing in the aftermath of the implosion.

maybe only angles can hear so low a sound.

i lay my blue coat on the floor to go for a swim in its vastness. 

heavy weighs the grief around my shoulders, clinging onto my neck, begging for sleep, for forgiveness, for a new era of relief. 

Big Blue

big blue went on a bikeride yesterday. we played with each other. later, exhausted, big blue laid itself out like a carpet in my room while I scrolled on Instagram on my bed. when it slept I slipped out to run some errands. the wind was nice. blowing through my hair, caressing my skin, no big blue, shh, it's sleeping, at home. when i entered the apartment it was sitting in the bathroom, by the mirror, looking at me accusingly. 

this morning blue was probably running out on its own but as soon as the part of the day approached where i had to do things in the outer world, it suddenly jumped in my brain and settled there, partially weighing down limbs as well, and a bit of the chest. one step out of the apartment, and blue is unfolding like a coat around me. holding firmly onto the upper part of my brain as it snuggles around me like the weighted blanket i use because it's supposed to make you feel hugged.

i sigh. nothing i can do about it now. me and blue unlock the bike and enter the streets: everything seems fine, people on their bikes in short shorts and the clouds are playing with the sun. 

at the cafe i crawl into the farthers corner of the room and convene with big blue.

big blue, i ask, what is it that you need? why do you feel better in my brain? how is that safer? i really enjoyed how we went on a bikeride yesterday. i don't see why it has to be this way. a part of me is afraid. afraid that it will remain this way. that big blue will turn dark and become a shape that inhabits me. which will make it even harder to meet anyone because it takes up so much space and those shapes are fearful of touch and being known by others. it seems impossible to let other people into those secrets. 

maybe big blue just needs me to cry a little. so it can come out of my head again. 

big blue doesn't agree with just a few tears though. it props itself up and says slowly, as if i was hard of hearing: i want you to acknowledge the full tragedy that I am! and it tries to stretch itself into really large shapes to demonstrate its weightiness and importance. i chuckle. i acknowledge you, i say softly. let's write a song. let's make a storybook. big blue is intrigued, immediately, bending over my sketch book, glancing over at the guitar. calling the clouds to summon its best friend, A.'s big blue. let's go to Alaska and be utterly dramatic, it says proudly and slowly rips all papers in its vicinity into tiny pieces.

let's go.

finally i dare to look at big blue. we hug quietly. 

sunset

 now, 

the clouds are like someone painted them with a loose paintbrush. 

a tiny stretch of smoke left by an airplane, behind that darker cloud that is shaped like a secret, glows pink orange speaking of a set sun.

sunset. loving someone who is dying inside - i wrote, as a response to the seven word story challenge. 

but this is gone now. done. 

those, who have loved and lost watch the dance of swifts filled with awe. 

the blue of the evening sky is still too light, only here and there a hint of violet. the dark will come. paintings waiting to be completed.

but when is done really done? you ask. i sigh. i have lost sight of the endings. they curl around my ankles like a sagging mess of underwear, transforming into hapless creatures, small snakes, snapping, wiggling, urging each other in confusion. 

unfurled.

what needs to be done

 the clouds balloon in a milky white overexposed sky. it is summer again. swallows and swifts elegantly cut through the heat ether while the trees hold their breath until a soft breeze invites them to dance again.

there is a young man with pale skin and a bitter disappointed face sinking into his bony body, limping through the coffee shop visitors asking for money. his right foot is wrapped in dirt white gauze bandages, a wound that had no time to heal.

there is good music, still, in this world, and in these headphones. Brothers of Santa Claus sing a song called 'figure it out' and the beat and voice reminds me of those days in Vila Madalena when life was closing in so narrowly the only way I could survive was by squeezing through a tiny crack that catapulted me into the stratosphere, further and further out into space where everything seemed bearable in its utter mysteriousness. much had to be left behind. much was lost. much milky white obscurity surrounded me.

M. finds himself in a predicament, his partner decided to come out with him and the baby as he is trying to bring me the keys to my apartment. i know he hoped to bring those keys and find love but his life choices and responsibilities are getting into his way, the price he pays for secrecy. the same way my choices and undercurrents brought me to this moment, without access to my home, witnessing mute intuitions playing themselves out. i knew, somehow, that this was much bigger, much more complicated than just a hand over. 

his worlds are clashing, just across from here, at the other side of the canal while I re-open my blog because there is no one I can think of that I feel like sharing all of this with. the judgement and concerns of my friends i am not afraid to deal with - but not right now. also my journal seems tired of my handwriting. as such this is the place now that i return to, in need of my own intransparencies and secrecies until the seedlings reveal their tap roots and sprouts and hopeful lives into the open. life holds its breath, until the winds get a hold of it and dance, dance, dance.

two girls laughing in the sun over their cups of coffee and a boy writing, in solitude, with his beer and cigarettes and references to night on earth and coffee and cigarettes by jim jarmusch. when M approaches I love his silhouette and his gait and his gaze as he arrives and his warmth mingles with the summer and my silly heart.

it is clear that life is closing a chapter. my thoughts and feelings are barely cutting through the mud, it needs more water. i swallow hard. the feelings balloon and want to discharge themselves in a big thunderstorm. there is no need for begging, the music reminds me. 

i look at the suitcase and the backpack idling by my table. the transience of being on the road humming and strangely comforting.