True remains;
Scattered hens feed crunching beneath my feet;
Wispish clouds strung like frayed string across a bland and flat sky;
Red dirt and the burnt landscape of an afternoon in nowhere.
I see the girl in the corner,
She is hunched like an animal over food,
The wire mesh fence is barren behind her,
The colour of her skin so thin it would not dilute paint,
And my stomach small because of the whole scene.
The true remains;
Bones in the language of common conversation buried in loose soil,
Now spilling up into syllables as long and lonely
As cemeteries carved into the corners of cities once mighty,
Now rotten through.
She speaks to me with her eyes;
Taps out morse code in spasmodic trembles on the air between us,
Cracked with tension as it were.
I drop my pants and see recognition;
She is revulsed by me, but it doesn't stop the end from coming.
The truth remains.
Sunday 8 November 2009
Trumpets of You
Translucent epiphany,
Echoes in vain.
Lucid memories,
Calling out your name -
Cold consonants of colour
Keeping crooked fingers
Crossed behind their back.
The things I lack,
The things I want back,
The truth I would give away...
This relentless living that lingers at the corner of my mind.
The ageless dust which descended
Has left loose change over everything.
Now,
The parts of you that I remember:
The black stockings you wore in summer,
The prose in French with my name misspelled,
The eyes you gave me right before we fucked.
What is this brutal humanity that wants to hurt so much?
Echoes in vain.
Lucid memories,
Calling out your name -
Cold consonants of colour
Keeping crooked fingers
Crossed behind their back.
The things I lack,
The things I want back,
The truth I would give away...
This relentless living that lingers at the corner of my mind.
The ageless dust which descended
Has left loose change over everything.
Now,
The parts of you that I remember:
The black stockings you wore in summer,
The prose in French with my name misspelled,
The eyes you gave me right before we fucked.
What is this brutal humanity that wants to hurt so much?
Sunday 23 August 2009
Spring Comes Early to the Valley of Dust
I was walking back from my friend's place through New Farm last night and I was a little bit drunk and I started really wanting a cigarette. I quit more than a month ago now, and it's the first real craving I've had. Anyway, I became fixated on it and started debating as to whether I should buy a packet... you know, for JUST ONE. Heh.
But then I realised that the issue wasn't that I wanted a cigarette, it was that I was focussed on this issue as if it were a constant - as though it were an established and stable, concrete thing - my wanting of it, which is nonsense, because nothing is static in life, and as soon as I realised that my longing was transient, it disappeared and I became really happy. And then I had this thought, which tipped me into ecstatic joy and sent me running through the park and swinging off tree branches:-
We are each of us riding the razor's edge of time like surfers on a wave which has come from nothing, and is going to nothing. Though we may feel as if we are separated by age & distance & sex & country & class & religion & an almost infinite array of perceptions, we are bound by the truth of each fresh moment born spontaneously and inconvertibly in our awarenesses; it only exists as we exist to witness it, and we share it, on a deeply personal and individual realm, with each and every other living and non-living thing on this planet, at exactly the same time, at exactly the same instant.
The world, not just your perception of it, but my perception, his perception, her perception, its perception - EVERYTHING, is created afresh every, single, fraction of an instant. It didn't exist before you stepped into it, and it doesn't exist once you leave it. We are flying a space shuttle through an axiom of pure existence.
But then I realised that the issue wasn't that I wanted a cigarette, it was that I was focussed on this issue as if it were a constant - as though it were an established and stable, concrete thing - my wanting of it, which is nonsense, because nothing is static in life, and as soon as I realised that my longing was transient, it disappeared and I became really happy. And then I had this thought, which tipped me into ecstatic joy and sent me running through the park and swinging off tree branches:-
We are each of us riding the razor's edge of time like surfers on a wave which has come from nothing, and is going to nothing. Though we may feel as if we are separated by age & distance & sex & country & class & religion & an almost infinite array of perceptions, we are bound by the truth of each fresh moment born spontaneously and inconvertibly in our awarenesses; it only exists as we exist to witness it, and we share it, on a deeply personal and individual realm, with each and every other living and non-living thing on this planet, at exactly the same time, at exactly the same instant.
The world, not just your perception of it, but my perception, his perception, her perception, its perception - EVERYTHING, is created afresh every, single, fraction of an instant. It didn't exist before you stepped into it, and it doesn't exist once you leave it. We are flying a space shuttle through an axiom of pure existence.
Monday 17 August 2009
Aimless Insanity
My first film...
(:>={
In other news - been writing a new song. Have a killer chorus worked out and a really catchy hook, but I can't seem to find words for the verse. It's driving me a little bit crazy. Jorge Borges wrote that anyone can lose their mind if they are unable to forget something. So, if you had a coke advertisement stuck in your mind on repeat; it wouldn't be long before you'd be that guy walking down the street talking to yourself. Naturally, his words were more eloquent than my primitive paraphrasing, but the point is, I've been really feeling that statement for the last few days with this song.
Hope all's well in your world.
-P.P.
(:>={
In other news - been writing a new song. Have a killer chorus worked out and a really catchy hook, but I can't seem to find words for the verse. It's driving me a little bit crazy. Jorge Borges wrote that anyone can lose their mind if they are unable to forget something. So, if you had a coke advertisement stuck in your mind on repeat; it wouldn't be long before you'd be that guy walking down the street talking to yourself. Naturally, his words were more eloquent than my primitive paraphrasing, but the point is, I've been really feeling that statement for the last few days with this song.
Hope all's well in your world.
-P.P.
Sunday 2 August 2009
An Open Letter
It was the warmth in you which first attracted me.
It was the kind of thing which I always wanted to be close to,
Because the night was so very cold without it.
I remember an evening,
Walking with you, on the way back from the cinema;
Hands interlocked
When such a thing was still new to us,
And we were talking about everything;
And I was falling ever deeper in love with you
With every sidled glance that I could steal.
That was when it was still easy,
Back when there was no fear of what you might think of me if I told you a secret.
Or more importantly,
What I might think of you.
We knew there would be an understanding,
Because we both wanted it.
That changed though, over time.
I don't know why, now;
But it became very important, what you thought of me.
And I began to place conditions on our love.
I've thought about all the angles,
And I honestly believe that the reason that I still break down at night
When I am alone,
Is because I know that I was wrong.
Even though all the evidence may say otherwise,
You were always more honest with me,
Because you embraced your demons,
Where I just pretended that I didn't have any.
And your parents loved me for it,
It made me easy to get along with;
But I haven't learned much in the past few years,
Other than how to not chase my dreams
And cultivate anxiety in a petrie dish.
You left a few hours ago,
You're gone to the other side of the world.
And I didn't want to write this any more,
Didn't really want to give it over to foreign eyes,
Because it seems so cliche and obscure,
And makes me feel like a failure.
As if there isn't enough heart break in the world that
I think it would matter for me to reveal mine.
Revelling in self-pity like an old junkie reading a Burroughs novel.
But the truth is
It helps.
And so then I guess it doesn't matter what anyone else thinks,
Because if I can start to face my demons here,
And call them out like I used to,
Maybe I can remember how to be brave,
And one day,
When I can stand to be near you and not want to cut my heart out at the same time,
I won't feel like I failed Love with you,
And I'll be confident and strong enough to know
That it's okay we're not together
And it's okay that I was wrong.
It was the kind of thing which I always wanted to be close to,
Because the night was so very cold without it.
I remember an evening,
Walking with you, on the way back from the cinema;
Hands interlocked
When such a thing was still new to us,
And we were talking about everything;
And I was falling ever deeper in love with you
With every sidled glance that I could steal.
That was when it was still easy,
Back when there was no fear of what you might think of me if I told you a secret.
Or more importantly,
What I might think of you.
We knew there would be an understanding,
Because we both wanted it.
That changed though, over time.
I don't know why, now;
But it became very important, what you thought of me.
And I began to place conditions on our love.
I've thought about all the angles,
And I honestly believe that the reason that I still break down at night
When I am alone,
Is because I know that I was wrong.
Even though all the evidence may say otherwise,
You were always more honest with me,
Because you embraced your demons,
Where I just pretended that I didn't have any.
And your parents loved me for it,
It made me easy to get along with;
But I haven't learned much in the past few years,
Other than how to not chase my dreams
And cultivate anxiety in a petrie dish.
You left a few hours ago,
You're gone to the other side of the world.
And I didn't want to write this any more,
Didn't really want to give it over to foreign eyes,
Because it seems so cliche and obscure,
And makes me feel like a failure.
As if there isn't enough heart break in the world that
I think it would matter for me to reveal mine.
Revelling in self-pity like an old junkie reading a Burroughs novel.
But the truth is
It helps.
And so then I guess it doesn't matter what anyone else thinks,
Because if I can start to face my demons here,
And call them out like I used to,
Maybe I can remember how to be brave,
And one day,
When I can stand to be near you and not want to cut my heart out at the same time,
I won't feel like I failed Love with you,
And I'll be confident and strong enough to know
That it's okay we're not together
And it's okay that I was wrong.
Sunday 19 April 2009
A Singularity Complex
When all the universe comes crashing back into a single, sucking density;
There at least, we will be whole again.
There at least, we will be whole again.
Wednesday 15 April 2009
A Return to the Familiar
The details of this evening are as follows.
A 25 year old male, quasi-drunk on scotch and water, 16 cigarettes down and finding any excuse not to finish marking the pile of assignments which sits in a disorderly heap on his bed preoccupies himself with fanciful imaginings of a hypothetical romance he's uncertain to the extent of which lies in actual reality.
Thus begins a debate as to the nature of reality.
If reality is an observable fiction which relies upon competing forces in order to determine creation and chaos, then what powers those forces? It would appear to this male that if it is a force of perception, his imaginings are not to be deterred - the mere examining of a thread of thought pushes it squarely into the light of creation, and can thus be used as a stencil from which to fill the colours of his desire. Of course, his thoughts are not the solely determining factors as to whether the romance will sew unto the threads of a reality and pursue a current in livable fiction, but he also knows that in previous circumstances, they generally tend to.
He wonders briefly why this is, then puts it down to luck.
Luck that natural genetics instigate a pleasant living portrait which most others like to view. and luck that he has had the fortune to find life so far mostly amusing, which animates said features in an agreeable manner.
He is sitting on a couch, considering his options when suddenly, he becomes extraordinarily tired with the whole conundrum.
Conversation, desire, want, lack and sex - for what use? The ricocheting communications cause a cacophany of confusion which set the world to rumbling and eventually leave a very sooty mark upon a slate which would be clean if it were not for these amblings. Of course, the point of all this is to learn a lesson, and from the lesson future generations may cleave their own meat to let grow fetid with the maggots of discontent.
And so on, and so on, and so on.
It occurs to the male that his thoughts are particularly cynical. To what extent, he wonders, are they influenced by outside factors? Religious and/or spiritual indoctrinations as to the reliability of thought and the necessity of control spring instantly to mind, which in turn becomes a debate as to how one may assume the arrogance of emptiness in a world which demands engagement.
In all of this, he realises, he has no understanding left.
A 25 year old male, quasi-drunk on scotch and water, 16 cigarettes down and finding any excuse not to finish marking the pile of assignments which sits in a disorderly heap on his bed preoccupies himself with fanciful imaginings of a hypothetical romance he's uncertain to the extent of which lies in actual reality.
Thus begins a debate as to the nature of reality.
If reality is an observable fiction which relies upon competing forces in order to determine creation and chaos, then what powers those forces? It would appear to this male that if it is a force of perception, his imaginings are not to be deterred - the mere examining of a thread of thought pushes it squarely into the light of creation, and can thus be used as a stencil from which to fill the colours of his desire. Of course, his thoughts are not the solely determining factors as to whether the romance will sew unto the threads of a reality and pursue a current in livable fiction, but he also knows that in previous circumstances, they generally tend to.
He wonders briefly why this is, then puts it down to luck.
Luck that natural genetics instigate a pleasant living portrait which most others like to view. and luck that he has had the fortune to find life so far mostly amusing, which animates said features in an agreeable manner.
He is sitting on a couch, considering his options when suddenly, he becomes extraordinarily tired with the whole conundrum.
Conversation, desire, want, lack and sex - for what use? The ricocheting communications cause a cacophany of confusion which set the world to rumbling and eventually leave a very sooty mark upon a slate which would be clean if it were not for these amblings. Of course, the point of all this is to learn a lesson, and from the lesson future generations may cleave their own meat to let grow fetid with the maggots of discontent.
And so on, and so on, and so on.
It occurs to the male that his thoughts are particularly cynical. To what extent, he wonders, are they influenced by outside factors? Religious and/or spiritual indoctrinations as to the reliability of thought and the necessity of control spring instantly to mind, which in turn becomes a debate as to how one may assume the arrogance of emptiness in a world which demands engagement.
In all of this, he realises, he has no understanding left.
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