mots-passants

[mots-passants]

Gauche.

My left foot

is stuck

behind

my right foot.

Attempt after attempt after attempt after attempt I

trip

on the little red rocks caught in my shoe

and the big red rock caught in my throat

pushing back and down

crumbling into red soft sand

slowly sliding sideways

stopping

in my lungs.

Oxygen has left my left foot

I fall

on my knees and off my pedestal

down the years,

back to childhood

and into the rage of the broken heart

of a bodiless girl barely breathing but on the brink

of breaking the bonds

around 

her screaming silenced self.

In the red soft sand

my fallen left foot writes

With two wrongs, you can sometimes make it right.

[mots-passants]

Like a Mare on a Feather.

As her life shrinks,

from a five-sided world to a million pieces of an island,

to a still life landscape from limitless horizons,

She is no longer a part of you.

Silenced by the eyes of a thousand neighbours,

her heart echoes through the waters

flooding the bridges between the old and the new,

making your voice impossible

to break through.

Don’t try to staple and stitch

her lips back together

like the walls of your house,

they won’t stand still much longer,

yet the roots of her smile come from your every fibre.

She is no longer a part of you,

and she will always love you.

[mots-passants]

The Cheshire Cat

In my mind I go back through the secret passage in the shed into the flowery corridors of her life –

The baking lessons when I would flour my nose in the magical kitchen full of whisks, tins and bowls her own personal armchair in the sitting lounge our trays of fluffy bonbons, pink and blue and white and at Christmas the excitement at the first ray of light.

Time has stopped with white statues of dancers and children the constant rewinding of a film too familiar about a woman full of warmth and affection speaking soft words with such determination (yet the weather often a source of distraction) and her jokes always bringing us all in unison.

Three names on three bags in the shadow of red and green fairy lights as we run for the presents, for her hug, for her smile, never looking forward to the day we say goodbye as she puts on her special coat, her special gloves, her special hat, with a twinkle in her eye and a wee cheeky smile.

[mots-passants]

if it doesn't come bursting out of you in spite of everything, don't do it. unless it comes unasked out of your heart and your mind and your mouth and your gut, don't do it. if you have to sit for hours staring at your computer screen or hunched over your typewriter searching for words, don't do it. if you're doing it for money or fame, don't do it. if you're doing it because you want women in your bed, don't do it. if you have to sit there and rewrite it again and again, don't do it. if it's hard work just thinking about doing it, don't do it. if you're trying to write like somebody else, forget about it. if you have to wait for it to roar out of you, then wait patiently. if it never does roar out of you, do something else. if you first have to read it to your wife or your girlfriend or your boyfriend or your parents or to anybody at all, you're not ready. don't be like so many writers, don't be like so many thousands of people who call themselves writers, don't be dull and boring and pretentious, don't be consumed with self- love. the libraries of the world have yawned themselves to sleep over your kind. don't add to that. don't do it. unless it comes out of your soul like a rocket, unless being still would drive you to madness or suicide or murder, don't do it. unless the sun inside you is burning your gut, don't do it. when it is truly time, and if you have been chosen, it will do it by itself and it will keep on doing it until you die or it dies in you. there is no other way. and there never was.

So you want to be a writer? - Charles Bukowski (1920-1994)

[mots-passants]

FIVE EARTHS

If only we could’ve stayed trapped in that bed not inside each other’s heart and head so afraid of words left unsaid instead of bed sheets left unmade misfed all for one mistake one feeling misspelt the other misled both misinterpreted.

So we misbehaved, curling under the covers, hiding inside our bones, bashful bodies born out of fiery flesh, coy caresses out of sweaty sex. And outside our bed outside our heads a world of perfect unison, laughs, conniving elation, my cheek carved into your collarbone, my bust into your backbone, perfect, but for our screaming skins’ silence.

Let’s break it! Let’s tear wide open the ironed shirts, the flawless scars and cello-taped mouths! Let’s step out of timelessness, tiptoed mess and useless regrets, into breathless thoughtless madness!

Let’s confess our perfection through imperfect sweaty sticky confused and chaotic lost and lustful body dissolution.

[mots-passants]

Four Seasons in One

I am

The spicy flavours of a faraway country The blue and white dress flying through time and space The smell of her old shed in the greenest of gardens The cigarette smoke in her closed up car The book in her hand on a Summer’s day The movement of a needle on a mermaid’s tail The mountain-high journey of a daughter’s devotion The three horrible ringing words on the last dancing day.

I am

A worldful of memories inside their loyal smiles The solid red-bricked walls of true untidy friendship The honorary housemate in their welcoming hearts The temporary shadow of a mistaken protector The best of childhood friendship that still will last forever.

I am

The flour-coloured brain behind wasted eyes The exhilarating heat of a sudden short Summer The bloody nostrils of a long lost friend The fateless encounter of a high school crush The sunny roads of an Italian Spring.

I am

The motherly hand afraid of letting go A hidden love under dark bushy eyebrows The hope of a puzzled family, through her kindness, pieced together, The softest skin sculpted against my skin Like an armour of marble around a beating drum.

[mots-passants]

Rainforest Angel Creates Honest Everlasting Love

Raw beauty, peace and harmony

Are at the heart of this green and growing

City, loved and protected with simple

Humanity, a strong woman in her secret

Eden, an honest friend who generously

Let us in.

[mots-passants]

546 EYELASHES

To Nowhere

could I go with you

if it was just us two

or a billion other strangers

in the background view

a jungle of vicious vines

incapable to break through

the golden cocoon

protecting me and you

as we soar through the sky

so pure, so silent, so blue

a world under our feet

I only have eyes for you.

[mots-passants]

ZORRO

At the top of the stairs In a grey decaying building Through obscure corridors An invisible cat is purring Still Waiting for your soft hand to carry The weight of its nine lives. A telly in the background Screams out numbers - lottery is a beautiful vice if you want to be an immortal old woman who loves bitterly, sarcastically, unknowingly, a deaf and blind and scared family so scared of being together happy they waited and waited until she had to be six feet under, breathless and ghostly, A ninety-nine year old woman, A gossipy comedian, A widowed grandmother with a favourite grandson, The accusing mirror of a broken family who on her last day of Winter Stand together strong.

"There was an old woman who lived in a shoe. She had so many children she didn't know what to do. She gave them some broth without any bread. She whipped them all soundly and put them to bed."

[mots-passants]

SURROUNDED

A curtain of raindrops falls on my nose, Under my skin, Into my mouth, And my blurred vision slowly projects The leafy landscape of a past with no regrets A puzzled heart made of a thousand breaks Like a rose whose petals one by one create. Now in my brain starts to germinate Strongly rooted memories and their gigantic stem The good, the bad, the maybe and the truly-meant Je t'aime.

You see, Without an overgrown forest of unwanted weeds Dropping from time to time stubborn bittersweet seeds You would not be the one my layered heart still needs.

[mots-passants]

MURMURE.

Soft, silent and surreal, Your words slowly taught me how to heal As they grabbed out of my chest A dying heart that would not rest.

It was a whisper, A breathless murmur But I heard it as clear and loud As the clear bright sky without a cloud.

And now I am voicelessly Yours.

[mots-passants]

The Grampians, Victoria, Australia.

[mots-passants]

Blame it on my skin.

Blindfolded, I fell in love through my fingertips With a thousand goosebumps And a shiver down my spine.

As we touch Waves of sunlit water Leaves of teary nature Flavours like no other And a four season weather Under my nails live forever.

You are the wonderland forever dreamt about but never seen on all the tips of tongues but never uttered

Yet my skin, involuntarily, brushed against yours,

And my heart landed at The Point of No Return.

[mots-passants]

Jacob.

Did you hear me cry that night

When you said goodbye?

Did you hear my voice crack and hear my heart tumble?

I knew we were friends then

I knew our kisses were like rain

Washing away the scars wrinkles left

After fake smiles, trembling lips and burning eyes.

But without words

With nails on bodies and teeth into flesh

It all meant nothing

And everything

And anything

We wanted to be

When we dive past the past we hate.

I made a statue out of you

Still, unchangeable, unbreakable, untrue,

Until my fictitious strength broke under you.

Instead of one, we are two,

And I hope one day you will forgive me too.

[mots-passants]

Bury me with the memory

Of our bodies flesh to flesh Bone to bone Blood to blood

As we unspoke the unsaid The unthinkable The universally known.

The night was young, then

But we were old Enough to see how life unfolds

How my body in your hand holds How my warm lips your strong kiss moulds How with one silent word my weak heart grows

Perfectly.

[mots-passants]

Es-tu ?

Just a moment ago I could Touch you Smell you Kiss you See you And with a snap of the fingers You disappear.

I keep pinching myself Remembering all our souvenirs And all the stains our love left on the bed Disappeared.

So did I dream you? Are you a fragment - the best - Of my mind?

Because this loneliness That I'm feeling Should not be the consequence Of our loving, Should it?

And because your ghostly mouth buries The sharpest of my fears No more can I sleep alone No more do I close my eyes and drown Into the dreams your arms promised— Only nightmares of your absence Embrace me.

Let me feel your bones again.

[mots-passants]

A Hunch.

    Picture yourself in front of a

crumbling wall

and gently brush its crumbs

with your finger

and happily watch the dust

fall at your feet

like the symbol of an old November

victory,

while your smile widens

and your skin softens

and the weight of all our burdens

fly away.

    This is what it feels like to finally let yourself be.