Gentle soul - you have sought it, sifted

and panned for it, dug and rummaged

as though it were a set

of mislaid keys - or eyeglasses; as though

it were a treasured pen

you'd dare not sign your name without.

And so it is - gentle, restless soul -

that you feel empty without it; that you wear

a sparse coat, sewn from the cold of experience;

that you are one forced smile from hardness.

Don't look here

on the days when your voice

is lost as a mumble, or a slur,

or a broken song:

I will be scattered;

intangible; a pepper

of smaller traces.

Spirit that the world said no to,

unwatered wallflower, I recall

when your days had the mercy

of callous warlords; when every eye condemned

with the nature of a solemn judge,

and burnt you at the stake of fierce indifference.

How you toiled with that puzzle of ashes; how

each dawn's ruthless jackboot kicked them

from the cradle of your patient hands.

Darkness assigned your role - cast

you as a wraith to dwell upon a shadow's fringe:

close enough to witness light; enslaved beneath the pall.

You're waking now -

though sighs are shared,

the hemispheres are split

with another sober slice

of fission - once more

a planet cloven.

Perhaps you wear it heavily,

drag the first thought of it upon

your wanting flesh like a hairshirt -

This Idea Of Us,

this beast that pants and lolls,

ankle tall, old, lagging,

straggling to keep pace

with the lovely that you're wasting,

the beauty you've withheld

for this ungodly age - this wild

that howls alone.

One

blazing

flame of flesh;

one

torch of blood;

one

luminous harvest

with which to light the world -

heart -

benevolent fire,

you spread your warmth

as bread for the feast

of humankind.

An hour is eternity. If

paper is scratched with the wrong meaning

blood is drawn.

Why must it be so delicate?

The nib makes uncertain gestures over

winsome, or dusky, or sultry -

yet can't commit.

This is the horrid nature of specifics.

Still, one can't desecrate.

Those are not your smiles.

Your smile is the language

of forbidden consolations.

Because you exist, I cannot see the world.

You leap from lilacs, and tambourines,

and bubble in the eddying waters. You plucked

me from the stalk of a limp night, and because you exist

I am suffocated by your name.

You who turn from love in pain,

turn kindly: seek the tender cycles of the world.

The winter greets with joy-flung arms

the first fog's slow return, and so the moon

shall know its lover's face, the sun sinks

without quarrel. Spring dances without clothes

as Autumn looks on, waiting, and neither

will depart the grand design.

I was a bump in the day.

I walked fifty miles of aimless, looking

in each pavement crack for the faces of angels,

turned blind corners with eyes wide open,

sat quietly at out-of-service bus stops,

for an event I didn't wish to attend,

nor could remember the invitation for.

Noon spun on a dry axis,

each second needing the grease of

a troubled thought and an injured sigh,

and the leaves dived without noise, just as expected,

from the maples along the street

and the eucalypts upon the mountain.

It sticks to your insides, this endless tramp

of the daily, damp commute. This war against the clock

and how each monstrous hour falls and falls

and chimes a bleak reminder.

The calendar, it hurtles slickly by - you swallow

knowledge like you fight a rising gorge -

those displaced days that made up all your youth

lie littered in your wake:

the carrion for history's avid vultures.

And yet, you grow accustomed to the loss -

and grinding down the journey of each day

into a powdered debt - resolve to pay yourself

at Destination.