Morning breath.

1.
Cold, musty, and moth-smelling,
Like the room behind the eyes.
Curtains are shut,
Dawn hides behind,
As if ashamed, to show her face
To this weary traveller of the night.

2.
There are countless mornings,
But none are like this one.
Today is the day after
I closed the door for the final time, at last.
I will not come back again,
I know it.

3.
I rise to pull back the curtains,
And let the morning breath shine
Through me.

This one thing on my mind right now.

"And start new when your heart is an empty room."

You play the piano, but you do not speak french, nor have red hair.
Still, should it be any reason for me to be less fond of you?
No, I think not.

Cousin Sam.

Lying atop a journal that is not mine, there is a picture of my cousin Sam dressed in a brown woolly jacket squatting beside a blue old rusty dumpster. He is looking at the floor but his expression is a disparate one. Though he looks lost and upset, I know that he isn’t really all that because the photograph was taken in Melbourne where he was holidaying. Although I think he looks a whole lot more good-looking with his seriousness, even if he’s faking it. My cousin Sam is my cousin Sam. I think.

Asking yourself questions you know the answers for.

Who else?
You.
Nobody else but you.
Is there anybody else besides you?
Why not everybody else but you?
Can there be anybody else besides you?
But why is it only you?
You.
What is it about you?
What makes you you?
Why this obsession over you?
Is there only one you?
Why this elusive nameless you?
You.
Who else but you.

The deaf and dumb gods.

A quarter past eleven, I’m reaching for the phone. I dial the numbers I can never quite erase from my mind; perhaps nothing ever will. I wait for the call to connect and look out at nothing outside the window. Even in the room it is empty and lightless. It starts to ring across the line; the droning drowns sounds of the marching band called silence. It sounds for a while longer and I start to wonder if anyone is awake. Then I begin to come up with excuses for the absence of life on the other side. It was late, but you always slept late. Maybe you were away, but you never left your phone. Maybe you were still refusing to talk to me, but you always forgave easily. I hear a click and your voice inviting me to leave a message. I don’t think about it before I do it; I speak, for the first time in months, because I want hear from you. I slur and mumble my words, a silent prayer to this god called you.

I don’t remember now, what I said in that message I left you. Too proud to have picked up the phone much earlier, I strangely still remember what you last said, long before, after you kept calling; searching for life across the end of other line but life didn’t want to pick up, your plea to an earless god. So you left a memo for me to return the calls. It’s my turn to do the waiting now; and the gods never answer the prayers, do they? You must be as deaf as I am or mute after all this time.

There is nothing else except my room and the telephone and the line that stretches from me to you. Between the two ends of this line is the stubborn indifference of two immortals and a blinding silence that extends for miles.

Jai guru deva om.

"Words are flowing out like endless rain into a paper cup

They slither while they pass

They slip away across the universe

Pools of sorrow waves of joy are drifting through my open mind

Possessing and caressing me"

As the Beatles put it best into the song Across The Universe.

"Nothing's gonna change my world."

Amidst these giants,

I feel wholely inadequate.
Every person I have conjured a mere replicate of some more successful character.
William, Elsie, Tom, Sophie, Susie, Mag, Danny, Moore, that father figure, that faceless mother, and that tragic boy.
Products of angst.
Language, my medium?
The brush to paint the colours of my mind?
It is a broken one.
Broken and dulled by the waters of a lake called Vainglory.
Cry now and understand why she left you.
Know now, why she sent that postcard.
Economy of expression?
You squandered it.
Penniless.
Guilty.
I scoff at you now.
No, not hopeless.
Go.
Go out and earn your keep.
Don't return until you might have enough to lure her back.
Tempt her to returning.
Try.
I dare you to.
Afterall, what else have you got to lose?