Another poem

Hypothetical - John K. Samson and Christine Fellows

Say you wake up one morning without a language
Not lost, but taken away
Stolen by a monster from a childhood fever, for some small slight
You didn't eat your peas.
Do you weep? Or lie back down
Begin to plan a day of watching shadows wander towards the door,
Or smelling the garbage and touching the furniture
Pressing your face to the radiator
Walking with eyes opened, eyes closed
Living without naming, unnamed.

Say you wake up one morning without a body
You miss your hands like a dead friend
You play their favorite songs; mourn all their potentials, what they held
Make a missing poster for your heart, with description and a photo and a phone number
Find your ribcage full of topsoil in a garden down the street,
With transplanted yellow flowers peeking out.

Say you wake up one morning without the world.
The world leaves you for another,
Never returns your calls.
Passes you on the street like a stranger
All you seem able to do is eat potato chips, cry, drink warm vodka from a jam jar and watch TV.
National geographic specials seem especially cruel.
Secrets of the Amazon. Plains of the Serengeti.
And tearing up topographical maps doesn't make you feel any better.

Say you wake up one morning without me.
Say I just disappeared,
Crawl back into the suburbs that spat me out.
Do you organize a search party or burn my letters?
Does your language take a black marker to the words I used too often?
Does your body remember mine?
And will the world look like it's about to say something, and then just shrug?

1:45 AM - 0 Comments - 0 Kudos - Add Comment

The Lion’s Bride

I loved her softness, her warm human smell,
her dark mane flowing loose. Sometimes, stirred by
rank longing, laid my muzzle on her thigh.
Her father, faithful keeper, fed me well,
but she came daily with my special bowl
barefoot into my cage, and set it down:
our love feast. We became the talk of town,
brute king and tender woman, soul to soul.

Until today: an icy spectre shearthed
in silk, minced to my side on pointed feet.
I ripped the scented veil from its unreal
head and engorged the painted lips that breathed
our secret names. A ghost has bones, and meat!
Come soon, my love, my bride, and share this meal.

Gwen Harwood

9:02 PM - 0 Comments - 0 Kudos - Add Comment

This was in Nexus last week.. by me.

Sometimes you can look at your life and not understand what anything means.
Coming out was for me an intense spiritual and emotional journey – it's amazing how quickly things can change in life. One week was all it took for my life to be totally turned upside down.
I'm guess I'm one of those people who always knew that he was gay – no matter how hard I tried to deny it and cover it up, deep down I knew. I ran from this. I didn't want to be gay, all I wanted was to be normal just like everyone else.
I could never work out exactly what normal was though, to try and like girls seemed to be a betrayal of who I was and I had been bought up to think that simply being yourself was the best thing to be.
I had grown up thinking that to be gay was wrong, somehow perverted and against God's plan for life – I had always assumed that it was somehow a choice and that I could choose to be gay or not. I always assumed I would grow out of it and fall in love with a girl one day. These assumptions grew more wrong as I grew older – I didn't grow out of it and there didn't seem to be much choice involved. It makes me angry now when some person (religious or otherwise) tells me or someone else that it is a choice – it's not, but for a straight person this is very hard to grasp. Telling me to somehow start liking woman is the same as asking me to enjoy a plate of liver, which I have always detested.
Deep down, however I knew that I would have to face up to myself.
My closet gradually got smaller and smaller until it was smothering my life. Depression was a way of life for me. Finally it got to the point where I was practically incapable of doing anything useful and so I started seeing a counselor and taking anti-depression medication.
Over the years due to the people I had found myself around, my stereotypes about gay people had gradually come down – I had good friends who were openly gay in several different environments – including church and within my circle of friends. These were all good people living normal and fulfilling lives.
It was if the people I had been meeting had somehow been put there as support and to help cut down the final stereotypes in my mind.
Then came the one day where I felt I could not possibly hide any longer, and I admitted to myself that I was gay. At this moment, I realized that everything I had been taught about gay people was wrong, there was no "gay agenda" or conspiracy and gay people were not all perverts and pedophiles.
Then I realized that I had to either face up to the implications of this or continue to live alone and silent. I started to tell my friends. Much to my surprise most were very understanding. I would agonize over telling someone for hours, and then would tell them – only to get the reply "Hahahaha.. Yeah, kind of assumed that" or "Finally! I was wondering if you would ever admit it!".
The worst was my parents. I wrote them a letter and had to wait a few nervous days until I was sure they would have got it. Despite my requests to not contact me, mum ended my wait by calling in tears telling me that she loves me no matter what.
The best thing about this is that I am now free to be myself – no more walls. I am free to laugh and cry, to love and be loved, to explore life without fear.
I still don't really know what that entails – being gay in a heterosexist world is a bit of a challenge, but it's nice to know that I know who I am and aren't really worried by what other people think.
Gay, straight, whatever, people are all people and deserve to be treated as such!

7:06 PM - 3 Comments - 2 Kudos - Add Comment

Destroy all dreamers with debt and depression.

I'm dropping out of life for a while.

No internet and no cellphone.

I will not be around for a bit.

So, sorry people but i need to sort my life out.

Farewell,

nick

5:46 PM - 1 Comments - 0 Kudos - Add Comment

Dreams
Current mood: blah

My reality is getting closer to my dreams - to the point where i am getting worried..

I "woke up" this morning, had a shower, fed and played with jakob, did all the usual morning stuff and biked to work. I got into work, early i think. I noticed that Cam had ordered two boxes of bags and got on with the dishes.

I "woke up" again, and did the same things.
Went to work, did some dishes. Nothing really stands out about the second time.
Except that i woke up again.
Still in bed.
I woke up a third time and did it all again, was late for work, Cam had only ordered one box of bags. I'm not sure if I'm really writing this, or if I'm still in bed dreaming it all.

Is this strange? Am i finally falling apart once and for all?
It's confusing the heck out of me, as it's been going on for a while now but seemingly getting worse.
I wish i could bring myself to get out of bed in the mornings, but what's the point? My dreams are far better than any reality i have ever had. I wish i could just live in that space forever.... dreaming life away.. even if i am just dreaming the same things i do everyday.

Meh. i guess that's what my dreams have become - the same as this hell I'm living in.

Currently listening : Where Shall You Take Me? By Damien Jurado Release date: 18 March, 2003

3:31 AM - 2 Comments - 0 Kudos - Add Comment

Life..
Current mood: cold

I was lying in bed this morning, trying to enjoy sleeping in (it was pouring outside, i had a day off work, i had things on my mind..) thinking about the strange things people say and how they effect me.

At work yesterday one of the bosses friends had come in just after we had closed. He was obviously drunk, or one something else (i can never tell what people are on) and was being loud and belligerent.
I was trying to clean up, but he wanted to talk (i was going to say "to me" but that doesn't fit so..) at me.
He made this comment "At first i thought you were a bit of a homo, but your alright"
At first the total irony got me and i laughed. Then i thought about it and it cut like a knife.
Taking me back to school, trying to get away from guys chasing me calling me a faggot.
Not knowing how to answer when the guy in the desk next to me asked me "who in this class do you have a crush on" and not taking "no one" for an answer. I remember that well - i got detention because he flicked ink all over me.
Back to school in class with the guy behind me telling me about all these disgusting things i never wanted to hear - a quiet whisper that would never stop.
Back to the time in class trying to work with the guys behind me flicking things and abuse at me non stop until i broke down. I left school early that day. Crying most of the way home.
Back to the time on k-road in auckland waiting on the side of the road while a "friend" opened his car window and yelled "Faggot" at me non stop until he finally left. While my friends stood by and laughed.
Back to the time on Victoria St outside a bar, being called a "slimy little faggot" while yet again other people stood by and laughed.

The memory come back, and it hurts to think that those people were right.
It's like chips being smashed of a rock until nothing remains. No dignity. Merely an object for other people to scorn and abuse.

Why did this guy at work think this? I've met him twice and one night he was on ended up doing the dirty work for him "because he was going out afterwards and didn't want to get dirty" He's always scabbing smokes off me and has always been civil, but still thinks I'm "a bit of a homo"
The boxes people put people into, i guess.
I left work feeling like a bit of turd. Something to be tolerated and then wiped away when you find the chance.
Is that what everyone thinks of me?
Convenient to have around when there is something they want, but otherwise just excess baggage?

Bleh. What a sick joke life is.

Currently listening : The Milk-Eyed Mender By Joanna Newsom Release date: 23 March, 2004

9:50 PM - 0 Comments - 0 Kudos - Add Comment

No more song lyrics..
Current mood: depressed

Does anyone actually believe in dreams anymore?

Holding on to something in the hope that one day it might just come true, despite everything being against it ever happening?

It seems that dreams are merely cheap pieces of crockery in the hand of an uncaring, sick-humored world.
Do we exist as anything more than wheels in this massive and cold machine that is the universe? Or is the machine simple this society we have made?
Step out of line and face the rewards. This world beats us into submission with lies, Twisted and meaningless words. Giving us false hopes. An Indian giver.

Leavers, takers. Takers. Takers. Takers.
Move in, change everything to suit us without caring about anyone else.
Move in. Take over. Mine now. Mine. Mine, Mine. Not ours. Mine.
And mine alone to do as i see fit.

What were they thinking? What are they thinking? What are we thinking?
We live in this place of ashes and filth. Strive to get to the top of the hill.
Dung hill that it is. Get to the top only to realize that it was merely a foothill beside an invisible mountain of shit.
Care, only to realize that there was nothing worth caring for.
Love, only to realize it was only a word, a puff of air.
Live, only to have everything fall around you in a pile of dust.

What hope is there in this place of death?
Only the cold hard earth, embracing our tired bones like a lover.
Until they become her. Until they are her body.
We become one with the system that gives us life, lets us dream and then conquers us totally.
Beaten down, as if with an invisible hand.

This place is all shit. Shit, Bones and Ash.
This place is cold. Death, Fear and Cold, pure Cold.
Rejoice! Rejoice!

Dance naked in this place of ash and death.
Laugh and mock sister death!
Welcome her into your house, embrace her warmly, enjoy the feeling of the warmth dissipating into her cold hard stones.
Eat! Drink! Make merry! For tomorrow she comes to take you away.
To fuck you. To make you her own.
Bones. Bones and Ash.

"Life is a prison of poverty and aborted dreams, It is nothing but a slow progress to my place beneath the soil, it is a plot by God to disenchant us with the flesh, it is a brief flame in a bowl of oil between one darkness and another that ends it"

Youth. Dripping away as if from a leaky tap.
My beautiful Mother and Father.
My family. The only family i have ever known.
It's like looking at a picture in the museum, looking like life, but only a snapshot of its glory, rendered down into a single moment that repeats for infinity.
Hold on to those moments, they tell me. Hold on. Hold on to dear life.

Bars. We live our life behind bars. It's almost ironic that people go to places called "bars" to drink. Become stupefied and blinded, held in the machine with chemical pleasure and harmless dead community.
We are born into bars.
I still remember the cot i used to sleep in when i was very very small. Bars all around. Like a small prison, which seems like a larger prison for the very small, i don't doubt. But still a prison.
I still remember school, with a fence around it, more bars.
To keep people in? Or keep people out? I never could work that one out.
University? More bars.
I look out my window and see fences. More bars. The glass like invisible bars.
I look at myself and see the bars i have in my life.
The things that defeat me and hold me in.
Ever so slowly coming further and further together - until that day when i am finally crushed.

Does anyone believe in dreams anymore?
Or do they only happen in books..
Does anyone believe in Joy anymore?
Is there some chance? Some thin sliver of something to grasp onto and pull towards?
I'm reaching, but all I'm finding is thin air.

Does anyone believe anymore????
Please, There must be some hope somewhere.

Currently listening : Born into Trouble as the Sparks Fly Upward By The Silver Mt. Zion Memorial Orchestra and Tra-la-la Band Release date: 23 October, 2001

5:03 AM - 1 Comments - 0 Kudos - Add Comment

Rejoice!

Wouldn't it be so wonderful

If everything were meaningless?

But everything is so meaningful

And most everything turns to shit

Rejoice, Rejoice...

(more song lyrics, sorry)

4:53 AM - 1 Comments - 0 Kudos - Add Comment

lazy..
Current mood: sad

I'm turning into one of those strange people who post song lyrics cos they can't be bothered writing, but want to say something anyways..

"Is this life? To stand here and wait. In this city forged of scraps.
Is this life? To stand on the dead. On feces and sweat.
Is this life? It's all starting again.
Quick, gather your belongings and go.
Run while it's still dark.
Out here you're as good as dead.
Leave the shots echoing behind.
Don't look back until you run out of land.
When you think there's a second that you can't be seen,
the current can decide how this night will end.
Don't try to imagine what's ahead.
Let nothing cripple your will.
You will cross enormous distance only to arrive with nothing.
You will give all you have.
If you navigate your way with endurance and success,
if you pass the obstacles and still have your life,
if you've escaped death,
if your guts haven't withered away,
if you haven't broken under the strain.
They won't be welcoming.
They forget a time when their land was swelling.
A monstrous movement across the sea.
When she relieved her bowels all over the world.
Don't try to imagine what's ahead.
Let nothing cripple your will.
Just follow the paths that they cut into the earth right back to their door."


"We all got born so afraid
And still search for words
To describe that pain
And cling to each other
Like pigeons in the rain
And nuzzle over feathered breast
With beaks all worn and cracked an stained...

Hang on to each other

So this one's for the lost ones
And the dead ones & the ones who fell away
All our busted brothers
And tumbled lovers
Spitting at the rain

We all got born so afraid
And still search for words
To describe that pain

Hang on to each other...
Any fucking thing you love...

Birds toss precious flowers
From the murky skies above..."

Listen to these songs..

10:50 PM - 0 Comments - 0 Kudos - Add Comment

Random musings from Brisbane

It's been a long day, getting up at 3.30 nzt, being picked up by the shuttle at 4.30 nzt and boarding a plane at 6.00nzt.
Arriving in Brisbane at about 11.30 nzt only to find that it was only 9.30 in Australia and wandering around the airport worrying about things that were beyond my control.

Finding the train ok and arriving at the friary with little or no problems was a surprise for me, I expected at least one thing to go wrong.
In many ways it's been good.
In a day like this you don't actually do that much but have a lot of time to think about things and a lot of things to think about.

The people sitting next to me on the plane, reading their magazines, the conversation i had with someone yesterday, what this break will bring and what changes it will entail, trying to remember what was in my bag to determine if I had lost anything by leaving it open by mistake, the list goes on.

Contact with people is strange. I sat next to this couple on the plane and I helped them put their luggage up in the overhead things and we exchanged friendly chatter.
Sat down and didn't say anything for the entire flight.
Getting off, I helped them with their luggage again and then bumped into them in the lift going to the train.
Friendly people but silent people. I guess I wasn't that forthcoming anyway and I don't actually know how to start conversations with strangers at the best of times.
It made me think though.
It's a strange feeling, getting up in one country and getting on a plane, then, five hours later you are in a different country.
Nothing you left behind is able to be changed anymore.

Leaving was strange for me, leaving is always strange to me.
Possibly the hardest part was saying good bye to twilight and Jacob.
It's amazing how dead the house seems now without them.
It's hard to imagine life without Jacob's chatter and twilights antics.

It was a bit strange this afternoon because I was nodding off in the afternoon, in that strange place between waking and sleeping and I heard a lorikeet in the distance, it immediately transported me back home and I jumped up thinking something was happening to Jacob that I needed to intervene and help him.
Then realized that it wasn't Jacob and I wasn't at home.
It was a strange realization.

When I was waiting in the airport back in Hamilton, I was thinking about the old plane trees that had been cut down in Hamilton and feeling sad about it.
These trees had been standing on the corner of Clyde and gray streets for as long as I have been alive, possible as long as anyone alive today has been alive for.
I remember biking around the corner on Tuesday and stopping, realizing that something was missing but not quite knowing what it was.
Then it hit me.
The trees were all gone.
I could have cried, but I didn't really grasp the idea at the time.

It hit me when I saw it in the paper the next day.
I think I did cry, but only for a second, what good does it do?
It pisses me off that this can just happen, pushed through before anyone can say or do anything. 80-100 years of live destroyed in under a day.
Imagine what those trees have seen, what I would give for a glimpse.
I was reading John Berger's essay again, it keeps coming up in my thoughts again and again. I read that essay and am ashamed at my powerlessness.

Anyway, it's strange to have time to think about these very Hamilton things, when I'm a million miles away.
Strange that I never really found the time to think them over when I was at home, it was almost like I just faced them, recognized them as solid and ignored them without getting my head around it.
So much time to think on a plane – there is just nothing else to do really, sit and watch the in-flight crap, I tried to watch DVD's on my laptop but the turbulence interrupted that.
Nothing to do but sit and listen to music and think - drifting into that half awake half asleep space I love so much, where reality starts to combine with dreamland, swirling together like oil and water, totally incompatible but miscible for a short time.
The space where I am still awake, but anything seems possible, even probable.

I was thinking today how I seem to have collected all of these totally incompatible labels, but in me, they sort of come together.
The worst sort of labels – people always assume the worst really. I'm Christian, so therefore on the same level as Brian Tamaki or some happy clappy person (I was going to say loony). I'm gay, so people automatically assume I hang around public toilets and sleep with anything that moves. I'm an anarchist, so that means I like throwing bombs.
Stereotypes are stupid.

Anyways, it's almost 9.30 in Brisbane, almost 11.30 in Hamilton, and I want to be up for Morning Prayer at 6.45. so I had better be off. I'm planning on blogging over this weekend when time allows, but we shall see. It's nice to have these few things out of my head; it's so much easier to reason when you are writing things down.

4:27 AM - 3 Comments - 3 Kudos - Add Comment