rain

today i woke up with rain in my face.
so many words we said to each other
but now i don't know how they connect.
as if no order / forms / no sense.
all that you said, like rain.
made of so many individual droplets,
each one seems almost exactly the same,
hanging on its own in the air.
raindrops, that once were joined in your mouth,
but out here are just fragments,
falling down in sheets.
and i'm standing here staring,
searching for patterns,
but they change with the light,
and i'm tired of trying.

i stood in your rain
and you stood in mine.
now i'm soaked to the bone,
and i don't know where to move.
it's falling too thick,
there's no way through.
and i'm drenched, but still
it slides right off my skin,
puddles at my feet,
and i don't know what it means:
a blank of slate, a tree of fields,
a star of skies, a skin of peels.
a puddled lake on the floor distorting the light,
all surface and ripples,
and it would seem crude to move
a foot through there,
to stir up a muddy swirl of unclear.
so i'm standing here still and i cannot cross.

you said so many words,
and others you didn’t say at all.
and between gaps, fleeting, not quite caught,
i'm searching for the insides, the feelings behind,
but all i can see are these singular droplets:
tilt back my head and let them stream down my cheeks.
behind the rain is just fresh air.

the truth is --
the truth is, there are so many words, but none of them --
the truth is, there are no words to describe what you --
the truth is, you could have any of my words, but none of them --

all is silent now.
as if a great wave rolled through.
heaved me up and sunk me back down,
shifted me into something unrecognisable
that on the surface still looks the same.
and my body aches to move forwards
but i don't know how to navigate.
and my body aches to move towards,
but there is no sense left.

all is still,
after.
clear light,
full of scent.
the water's gone
and there's air inside air,
ground upon ground.
there's a softness here that has no sound.
cool skin marks out my body's edge.
full breath marks out the space of a chest.
and i'm sitting, trying to let it go.
and i'm going to try to let it sit.
i'm sitting, trying to let it go.

lake

i'm standing alone, and it hurts a bit
to realise there's nothing behind, ahead.
it hurts a bit, but that's just the start.
when i let it sink in, it wakes something else.
there's a quietness here, a softer place.
there's an emptiness i normally push away.
and the walls of my chest have become paper thin,
like some giant leaf,
with only delicate veins for the lines of my ribs.
a leaf that moves out so far as i breathe
that my insides feel too big to bear,
as if an enormous lake opens up in there,
washes up against every cell
so that each one glows with a sadness so clear
it could almost be joy.
whose pain is this?
this is much more than mine.
to this great empty lake the world floods in,
and now inside my chest is building a scream
that i'm not sure will ever come out,
a scream that's already three thousand years old,
that's seen everything broken that could have been whole.
and i'm old and tired, i've seen empires fall,
i've seen greed, inequality, mindless war.
the world is bleeding all over -
it has been so long.
i'm too soft in here
and the world rushes in.
it's bleeding all over
and i'm covered in scars,
and you started this somehow,
but now it's nothing to do with you.
it's something bigger i'm connecting to.
and i don't quite know how to navigate.

eyes

i am all eyes, all eyes,
my very being condensed into two orbs,
too large and heavy for the rest,
and you can't even see the half of them.
two great orbs that hang and swing in the air,
unwieldy, hesitant, not quite supported by their frame,
a bag of clothes not sure how to arrange themselves in form,
knees and shoulders poking out further than expected.
nothing sure.
two great orbs, like so many tea cups,
into which the outside pours in great sloshes that swirl
in a turbulence of unidentifiable forms,
as the orbs swing from person to object to person.
two great cups that don't ever fill up,
but suck the outside right through
and know nothing of where it goes.
how could a cup know.
and the orbs swing and the cups drink in surfaces,
endless surfaces:
shapes and forms that divide into separate units
when the light allows.
divisions and surfaces, units and continuities,
intentions and coincidences,
and how should i know where to draw the line
between one and another?
where does a hand begin and a finger end?