antidote

overexposure

your favourite stranger

Its always the same. The snow starts to fall and he recoils, screws up his face and takes two steps back from the window. He leaves us wondering what went wrong between him and that charmed white visitor. When did they fall out - and what was said?

Maybe its a matter of weight. He is so solid, so bound to the earth beneath him. He cannot grasp her delight at drifting slowly down from somewhere so high. Maybe its all to do with colour. Or her silence of colour. One as highly patterned as he - all definite swirls of brown and yellow and green - must be disappointed in someone so pale, so vague. Or maybe its her coldness where he is heat. A rock drawn from a fire now extinguished but still smouldering - we hold our hands against him to warm us through these winters that she weaves.

We may never know his reasons - so we stand, mesmerised, watching him watching her - till snow turns to rain and he turns to go.

fractured elegies

We live with stained glass minds. Medieval minds. All individual pieces and improbable angles. Colours that huddle together to create stylised images of who we want to be. Forever chasing see-through heroes greater than you or me.

Melted minds. Childrens minds. Bright and bold like butterflies that flew too near the sun. Curtains hung in windows near the atom bomb.

Maddened minds. Fragments held together by leaden lines. Time held tight in a rickety frame. Overly weighty and overly thick - we let little light through. Just enough to cast ragged rainbows that slide in daily repetition across your floor.

we fall through water

Give me one hundred words.
I’ll give you a girl
writing stories in the sand
that you walk across
from here to there.

Words you wont notice.
Words the tide carries away.
A girl with feathers in her hair -
writing about you because
she thinks enough to care
to scratch your story there.

A girl who writes
with a twig, broken from a tree
that she grew all by herself -
a twig so rough and splintered
but still held so tightly -

a twig with a leaf attached -
a leaf that sometimes
I think could be me.

the collector

answers badges books bruises butterflies buttons cards cares cars cassettes choices diamonds disappointments doubts dreams effigies enemies erasers facts fears feathers friends hopes ideas insects leaves lines links matchsticks memories nightmares ornaments patches pencils photos postcards posters punctures questions regrets scares scars shadows shells spoons stamps tattoos teeth wishes

red tears are shed on grey

go outside to find the middle of nowhere

She asked me to look at the world differently. She asked me to squint. She asked me to take apart my surroundings blink by blink.

She was wrong. This is commonplace. We never see the maddening loop in its entirety. We greet each moment in isolation - unconnected from the one before. The present merely greases the way for the future, while the past whispers inadequacies in its ear.

‘the past has no significance and the future can’t be pictured’ Amanda Claybaugh

We are cameras. Primed and snap happy. We find peace if we accept that we hold only pieces - if we learn to value the single frame.

Like the man who takes photos of his sky. Day after day, with only the colour and the light changing. The same sky, the same skyline, the same sigh.

scream of consciousness

I taste the woods in my mouth - in my breathing in - in my breathing out - little pieces of me - lost in my breathing out - a little more each time

I taste the woods - I taste them growing - I taste them burning - the way the embers fell against your skin - the way they caught in your fur - the way I was you and he was her

I taste - smouldering ghosts - charred remains of beings destroyed - animal memory - held by heat - the afterburn - the flashfire - where they run - where they hide

you know why

the sunflowers died
when only yesterday
they shined

the puddle ripples
an endless
goodbye

dream of consciousness

they wake - crawl from their beds - blinking and dusty and dream-soaked - their little hands still clutching the leaves that fell with them as they fell from the dreamtrees - they always fail the climb - they never reach the top

they raise their heavy heads - they look to the sun - hanging bright in every window - brighter in every sky - and wonder if this could be spring - so early in the day, so early in the year

they nod and know that anything is possible in their world - though not necessarily welcome - in their world winter is good, winter is welcome - as who else will wrap them in grey blankets and let them sleep a season away

monument

slowing down the metronome

Im not a sun worshipper, though I can still smile at a sunny summer day. But given a choice I would choose the darkness. Light has its place in my world, but only light that does something special - that works a little harder. Light unusual, light thats lively - maybe moving or changing colour. Light that initiates dialogue - that contributes something of itself to my experience.

‘Bright light does not discover, but drives away beauty.’ Peter Campbell


Sometimes we should sample the delights of blindness imposed by the complete lack of light. Constantly harassed by the demand to see, we are never truly left alone with our thoughts. There is always something to distract and seduce you. Everything burns too vividly, leaving no chance for vague impressions or hinted forms. No chance to use our hands to explore our environment - let alone our sense of smell. No challenge to use our animal nature to find our way home.

(s)train of thought

Sometimes it seems like everything is upside down, and back to front.

We are told that in the beginning there was darkness, until god created light. At our own beginnings there is darkness - in the womb there is no light. Only the sleazy red light of our fathers late night wishes. As we emerge we are thrust into bright white clinical cold reality.

By those who have come close (but not close enough) we are told that death is seen as a light at the end of a tunnel - beckoning. Which sounds strangely similar to being born.

We are confronted with a vision of death from the very start. For most of us it takes about seventy years to realise this.

this strange old sunshine beats me senseless

some songs about light that I like -

• a cleaner light - kristin hersh
• beginning to see the light - the velvet underground
• blue light - bloc party
• blue light - prince
• follow the light - travis
• half light - athlete
• in this light - david usher
• light my fire - the doors
• more heat than light - the veils
• red light - the strokes
• there is a light that never goes out - the smiths
• ultraviolet (light my way) - u2

and remembers being small

In much eastern art - a vital relationship plays on the page - where the blank is as important as the mark.

Absence defines presence. Unsaid supports spoken. Silence frames sound.

We need to learn when to stop. When enough is enough. We should allow space for the thing we have created to live and breathe for itself, of itself. We should allow our words to dangle in the air for just a few seconds longer. For the ants to make their own way across the page.

drawn too close and gone in a flash

Space seems a strange place. Things happen differently there.

‘White holes are similar to black holes except white holes are ejecting matter verses black holes are absorbing matter’

Strange - but somehow familiar. A white hole - pouring out confusion, anger, noise and numbness. A blinding bright place of life gone wild. A white riot - too much everything, not enough nothing.

Shes a black hole. Im a white hole. What are you?

no mans land

White


I sleep near.
Dream a whisper -
a breeze
to keep dust at bay.
Wake to watch
and blink away
dark things
that draw close.

I hold my hand.
Still. Around
but not on you.
Shaking -
the slightest thing
could undermine you -
even my breath
from these words.

I’ll hold my breath.
To keep you
the way you are.

I'll sleep in this place

Things that are white - snow, paracetamol, bones, ghosts, lines



Things that should be white - beginnings, clouds, ideas, moon shadows, wishes



Things that shouldnt be white - purity, gold, heat, horses, witches

From the trees

The sycamore girl

Always in freefall -
she tumbles
through another autumn
more brittle that the last.

And wraps her dreams
in brown paper -
only to watch them grow
soft in the rain.