Howling at The Moon - 25/10/2014

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your brokenness unattractive

your attempts at attractiveness broken

built you for quick damage

and slow healing

fragile enough that living

is itself a danger constantly

somehow that made you strong

stronger than most by far

strength

it is that which attracts you

what you are attracted to being

you are not broken

you've seen the real broken types

and that ain't you

nothing so far has truly broken you

nothing can

so give yourself

a break

no one else can

_____________

-Peace.









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all of the cyclists, all of the time - 25/10/2014

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You can ride bike with your gloves on all of your hands some of the time.

You can lick your fingers after eating all of a drippy kebab some of the time,

but you can't lick any of your fingers any of the time you are wearing bike gloves.

Ever.

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A Crash Landing - 24/10/2014

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and in the morning
oscillate between wanting to quote
Ani Franco and Travis Bickle
between wanting to run through walls
in a muscle hurricane
and wanting rest quiet
like the old mountains do

wanted to wake up next to you
and not apologise for it
sorry
we didn't do anything
which means me not doing anything wrong
was going to come away regretful
either way

sorry, I'm a mess
trailed in all this mud
from other states I've been in
still raw to the touch and smell
hands are dirty with top soil
from holding my ground

there's a trick to this
you overshare
but never actually give an inch
you can hide yourself
in plain sight

though
not you nor them
will know
the growth
from the damage

will go to the grave
with nothing left to say
It'll be awkward like ...uh yeah

before then,
like in six days actually
will leave here
start my riding back home
in both cases
I will take my sweet time

getting there

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__________________
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-Peace.

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If I Were You - 25/10/2014

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not to sound ungrateful
but sometimes
your well-meant advice
comes across
as a note left
with a wrench dropped
in my otherwise empty food bowl
saying

"go ahead, fix yourself some dinner"

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___________________
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-Peace.

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Shot down - 23/10/2014

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0:59am.

On the porch. After a careful dissection of all the issues in play, and several shots of tequila, we have clearly identified and discussed maturely, the fact that she will not be sleeping with me. I have in turn acknowledged I should probably leave now, but for some reason all this makes an interesting conversation in the unpacking. So I'm still here. All too drunk in my honesty. She has gone inside to get us more beer. While she's gone I piss on her front garden. She comes out with more shots instead.

There's no moon tonight.

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Tuesday October Twenty First

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Probably starts in the head, but there's a hollow ache in my chest, it goes down to my stomach sometimes. It's there now. It doesn't know where else to go. It doesn't know any of the reasons.

It doesn't understand how the love could be snatched away so quickly, and so completely. Makes it feel like there was none there all along.

It doesn't know why I am on this trip. You can't explain inspiration and aspirations and personal challenge, to a hollow lonely ache that only wants to go away. You can't talk about profound life experience to it. It's had plenty of those and it knows none of it keeps people from leaving you, or gives you people to talk to. It's waiting for their knives to come out.

It knows there's no whore/madonna/princess in shiny amoŕe coming to save you. It knows you will have months ahead of you of no one to hold, nights of touchless pain.

It's a belly that wants to do bad things. It knows exile, and anger, for fuel, it wants to push every one away before they have the chance to take more things from it. It feels like something not felt since I was a teenager. I guess that makes it juvenile.

When I cycle it doesn't feel so bad, for a few moments. I don't want to stay like this, once I'm back in the tent I'll start to get better, I think. Meanwhile, it seems important to document it now. Something tells me I will need to be able to look back and reflect/remember this. It will be important. I don't know why. Probably just so I don't return here. Writing, right now gives me something to do.

If nothing else.

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__________________
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-Peace.

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the moving on - 14/10/2014

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after I went
she left me
for someone else
then she went away

lost her
somewhere back
down a road that closed
behind me
this isn't the way
it was supposed to go

somewhere in the folds
of this over-fondled old map
have to find some place
where I can accept
rejection

it's marked poorly
unsealed road and
and there's some long ways to go
a-head
getting there

really don't know where
the end of this journey lies
the only fixed point
I had for it

is now broken

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____________________

-Peace

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Break up poem #12,553

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my life is adequately expressed as:

the coffee I order for takeaway
then drink it as have-here

within my contradiction
I'm just trying to hold on
to the warmth
though in the process

I end up creating garbage

.
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_________________

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October 13th, 2014. I have been alive for 12,553 days. And it's not even 5pm yet.

-Peace

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The Tattoo - 10/10/2014

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It's inked right here on my arm-
"Everything that has a beginning has an end."

No words, but a picture/symbol representation from that movie no one likes. (The Matrix: Revolutions). Here at the end, I should remember what's written on my skin, know this thing bodily.

Should anyone ever ask, that's what this tattoo means. It's here so I can remind myself of endings, impermanence, finite mortality and infinite applicability. I will say all this when asked, I will sound wise.

I'll be lying to them.

Right now I am one of two people scrambling desperate to rewrite their own personal histories to make all the jagged pieces fit, outside of a relationship.

Previous decisions made are now continually repositioned around the room, for decorative taste and illuminations sake, but mostly for convenience. Why I was wronged, stopped, shut down, held back, put upon, turned off, suffocated, by the the partner drawn second-draft.

I liked playing the villian, til I got type cast.

Now every failure I've had as a boyfriend, a man, a lover is a self prescribed hand-drawn blemish on my surface that I want to call something else. Tidy up the truth and make it mean more than it did.

It's why I write-it-out here, in my head I can lie, get lost in the elephant grass growing there, refight every battle so it looks like I won. What a loser.

Writing is the only thing keeping me honest right now.

I got this tattoo in Singapore in July 2011, with a friend, he and I about to go our separate ways. He got the same design, in the middle of his chest. Simpler times except they weren't. And we were good mates when we didn't annoy each other. At least that's how I like to remember it.

It's a joke. On the basis of the irreconcilable fact that I like those movies so very much even though they're terrible. Funny when we were drunk. For some reason. The truth is, this tattoo doesn't mean shit. Shoulder that.

Everything that has a beginning has...

Unfinished Foundation - 8/10/2014

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hard part will come after the blast
when the smoke clears
the air no longer choking on clouds
of cement dust and debris
the clearer picture will cut into you
deeper than the initial damage

ground has shifted hard
cracks opened up underneath
angry lines like a kid trying to cross-out in crayon
start to see where you went wrong
what weaknesses you built upon
apparent structure merely painted on

you were trying to live inside an intellectual property
but never laid your foundations properly

you can see now
it was never going to take much
to bring the whole place down
all it took was one spark, a bang
and everything collapsed

all the experts have their take
already talking blame
before we've seen how many bodies come out

can't deconstruct til we clear the rubble
demolish down what's left in the layers
hard part will come after the blast
when the smoke clears

start again from scratch
no choice but to rebuild
build it back up to last
make it stronger
make it better
after all,
this might be a massive mess now

but that's always been where you've lived.

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_______________________

-Peace

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Grows in the telling - 3/10/2014

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Sometimes I keep the story simple. It goes: Melbourne. Then being a Haemophiliac. Having a bicycle. And bad knees. And taking pilates classes. With a holiday. Sitting on the bike seat.

Other times it's an extended cut. Nine years of welfare work. Performing poetry. Some place to hide. An empty desert flat.  Head full of holes. Fundraising. Thin skin. Slippery grip on a will to live. Awareness.

There are other angles on the same journey, Hepatitis C. Interferon. Sore thighs. Hollow eyes. Lonely hands. Strange spaces. Urban exploration. Restricted areas. Dark. Discovering the muscles.

There are small parts made large. Inhibitors anti-bodies, relationships open, solipsism, my weight, how much I still carry, temperature ranges, a disassembling cycle. The parts exposed.

Your story is what you leave you out, how you collect and display the details, what questions the tale asks, what answers it seeks.

The best stories don't answer all your questions, or tell you what to think. Sometimes the writing tells too much, and the pacing drags.

Your story is always the short version. Life is written that way. Don't lose your authors voice in the details.

Above all, you gotta keep it interesting.

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____________________
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-Peace.
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