Mm, yes, this will be my downfall when they psychoanalyze me.

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you a poem that I wrote when I was half-asleep, and which definitely makes me sound like some manner of serial killer. Obviously, I have been watching far too much Dexter. (Actually, that's a really good excuse - Dexter made me do it!)

--

Incisor

I've pulled you apart
More than a score
Of times - each showing a
Revelation, a dance of
Blood and organs,
Manners and graces.

My tools are slick with it -
You are all over my table.

I've cracked you into segments, to
Revel those thrilling corners -
Exposed for my frank, surgical wanderings.

I'll paw through your coils and determine
All possible things.

It took but a blink and
the veil dropped.

I'm startled, for I'd
Captured you ravenously,
While blocking all but a
Few curious elements

You are more and more than all
I could ever surmise.

--

It is so amazing how, sometimes, your perspective on someone will just leap off into new directions.

How curious. And wonderful.

*Edited to remove the blatant Plath-theft. Although it was more of a tribute, really.

Streams

The following is an extract from the bizarre stream of consciousness that I somehow pulled from my brain while I was on the train from Melbourne. I'm almost entirely sure that I worked myself into this weird, Zen state, because it got even more strange (and wanky) beyond this point.

--


Where does it all come from? There's another place, a secret invisible layer of threads that we pull closer to us, that we weave into things - the great shadow puppets, the notes on strings, the hint of creative manna in the air.

And wouldn't it be interesting if there was something in the atmosphere that fired off the chemicals responsible for throwing open the vaults of our brains - some kind of pheromone - a little whiff of lust, of creative zap, of pure muse, a musk of resonance and truth and clarity and longing, a concentrated drug of brightness and discovery and world-ending, chaotic brilliance. Maybe it comes thicker in the air here, or perhaps over at another corner of the world. Could you filter it, mine it, sell it wholesale? Would the dullest of us brush up to a stunning sheen? Could we inject it into the worst of us and see what their body filtered it into? Would we have explosions of dark, violent art, a bevy of glorious, dark children, running riot with torches and manic grins? What would it do to the serene - the dignified and the haughty? Would they sit at tall harps and break us with resonate, soul-tearing music? Would they melt themselves into rending verse? And what about the practical, knockabouts, the shapers with callouses, the menders and fixers and carvers? Would they build us towering palaces, monuments of slender grace, would they shape pieces and things that catch us and hold us and give us some kind of surety that we are all to be just what we will be - a reflective construct, a binding structural keystone, a resonant physical truth?

Do some of us just have keener senses than others? Some kind of receiver that tunes to the ghostly, etheric music from that other place? What could we achieve if we all reached the zenith of our creative extravagance? We'd hardly have time to eat, surely, we'd all be too busy throwing ourselves after ideas, blinking back tears of awestruck fascination at what we'd all discovered, taught, created. And it would be a shining radiant place, and all of us would give in a thousand times to our most ardent passions, and no harm would follow.

Draw yourself up -
You will rise
Immeasurably high
To unmatched realms, to the
Undiscovered, boundless altitudes
Walk forth with all of that
Great, bold, strength behind you,
Hold yourself as highly
As we see you.

The Fires

I cried at work today.

I couldn't help reading coverage on the fires, after panicking on Sunday because the fires were spreading to close to where the family in the country lives. Not dangerously close, mind you, about half an hour's drive, but if the wall of flames is moving at 100km per hour, you don't exactly need to be very close.

Everyone I know in that area is fine, which is such a relief. But so many, so many have lost their houses, their lives, have been burned alive on cricket pitches and in family cars, have agonized and left people behind, have watched trees explode and choked in the smoke.

It staggers me. It breaks my heart.

I wrote at work today. It helped, just a little.

--

Our eyes have never caught, but today,
I am your mother
With all the gravity and sorrow of
She who first bled for you.

I would have gladly leapt to the flames
To spare your torment
And wrapped you and spared you the worst
For you should never, never, never have any of it.

If I could, I say,
And with all of there is of me,
Every part
I mean it.

That bright, osmotic energy
Spurred on the best,
boldest grin
I've worn all day

it is not
what you write
It is how
I read you

--


My ritual is underpinned with a
Delighted focus - gleeful rapture,
A certain incredulous examination
Near exultant, rhapsodic
Illumination

--

I also have something else hovering about which I shall more than likely turn into a short story, which is already taking structure. If I even think of any part of it, other areas clarify and develop - it's almost as if I have nothing to do with it, or if I'm remembering a dream, or perhaps... I don't know, someone else's memory. The funny thing is that I know that this piece of writing will have an extraordinary structure, something very strange.

Oh fuck. It has just meshed with an idea that I had months ago, a deep, intimate kind of exploration that I couldn't figure out how to approach. I wrote several drafts which never seemed to be quite right, although I hoped at the time that they were.

And now I have the key to it, and it was as simple as a line from a message.

Bravo, muse.

Saturday

Another 42-degree day. Wait, make that 45 according to the Bureau of Meteorology. I went for a wander down to Macro, to drink coffee and revel in A2 as I do on every Saturday I possibly can, and felt like I was in an oven. And then I remembered some lovely Fitz wisdom. (Yes, I know we've all wanted to smack him upside the head on at least one occasion, but he is, as you know, very wise all the same. Well, Nighteyes is, anyway.) Remember when he was walking up to Buckkeep in the rain and realised that he should stop contrasting it to warmth and heat? Same thing. It is only hot because I want to be cool. I should accept the heat as it is, as something that I cannot change, and simply exist in it. It actually worked. I was suddenly hot, yes, but perfectly accepting of it as an environment.

That lasted until the hot wind blew and actually pained my eyes. I was squinting out the heat, but it didn't work. My eyes actually felt too hot in my head, and that is not a good thing.

But it doesn't matter, this morning's ritual was a productive one, and I emerged from Macro with a dreamy expression on my face, because I am now full to the brim with resonating ideas and carefully constructed sentences.

I shall post.

I'm banked & I smoulder
Dulled embers sit blankly,
Molten red jewels that you
Exhaled on & invoked.

This hissing has dimmed,
Yet I wait for your stoke -
Your flash of tinder
To engulf me in a roar