The Poetry Marathon

8 years a traveller, that’s me,

From homeland to those far flung places, that’s where I may be,

Wandering lost, on a journey,

Of discovery and subsequent destruction,

Following my own path, sweet, crazy, maybe.

I live in a country,

whose motto is ‘We are free!’

But I’ve never felt more repressed,

no job, no visa, no new company.

The end is in sight,

In the future I’ll call on my feet,

To carry me away to lands I’ve not yet seen.

Through Thailand, to Aussie,

New Zealand, Cambodia, Hong Kong, Both Americas I’ve been,

Europe and Asia, I’ve always felt free.

6 continents of 7, so proud of me,

Now I’m stagnant, I’m stale,

I don’t know who could help me?

But as I wait for immigration to allow me to work,

Throw down some roots,

Make my future with my husband,

A small voice mocks me,

“You travel and travel, now you want roots? Like a tree?”

They have been bred into domesticity,

Our four legged friends,

Taught to catch, carry, play, care and come,

Without them we would fall to the wolves.

They help us in ways we cannot fathom,

Form the smallest of breeds,

To the biggest of hearts,

They come to us in the night,

Pushing away our PTSD, our fears, our fright and loss.

Wandering with us, beside us, behind us,

Reminding us we are less than alone in such a big world.

There are many things we wouldn’t achieve,

Without them we cannot conceive our lives,

They allow us to breathe their bravery.

They save us, give themselves for us,

Trust us, give us their utmost,

Our four legged friends,

Without them, we would be with only each other.

I look deep into your eyes, reflecting a sadness carried often by many, understood by few. The oceanic blue twinkles in the light, reminding me of starlight, moonlight, shifting repetitions of light and dark in immeasurable amounts. I know those eyes, so well, the skeptical glance, the way you try to hide the deep secrets flowing and ebbing out from the windows to your soul. You try to catch it back before it reaches me, but I am too quick for you, too smart to not notice. You know, I see the soul you believe doesn’t exist. Those eyes have looked at me for my entire life, they can see my entire being sketched upon that non-existent soul. I am distracted by the bags you carry underneath the piercing blue, you have learned to hold your head at a certain angle so they appear as ghosts of themselves. But I can always imagine you, laying tossing in bed, visions of ex-friends and former boyfriends dancing through your head. You seem to be tortured in some way. They come to you in the night, your mistakes, and take from you the sleep you need to let them go and forget. That emotional baggage is etched into your face. Your round, moonlike face, the one you inherited from your matriarch. A spectacular mirror image of her, 30 years later, but every groove, every softness just the same, like a clone, a carbon copy. Except you scowl more often than smile. Whereas she smiles more often than scowls. Deep inside, your fear lurks, spilling out in a crashing panic of dark emotion, on the surface your deep brown/black eyebrows knit together and the eyes I see every time I look up are lost in clouds of flashing, envious green. You are framed ironically by yellow, golden hair, falling so elegantly around my most well known face. Layers of blonde around a dark, stormy pair of eyebrows which scream detrimentally. The panic is only hinted at by this subtle change in eye colour, you control all else, you sport what you can only describe as ‘resting bitch face’, but you know you just want people to believe in the tough exterior you put on display, they can never see the frightened, lost little girl you hide beneath that mask of silence, only blasé emoting from it. You sport facial piercing scars, fading to quiet nothingness, a small mark of the parts of the anger you have let go, removing them slowly, allowing a short, glimmering glimpse into what I can see is your true self. Finally less afraid to let go, maybe let others in, to see the beauty you hid behind those piercings. Letting the persona fall away as you gained confidence in your own appearance. The flow of your soft, rounded cheeks would never show tear tracks making their shiny way across your face to anyone but me, I am the only one who judges your acne scars, your blemishes, your crows feet. As you push further into your thirties I will be the one who first notices all the changes in the landscape that is your beautiful face. I see because you allow me to, there’s nothing you can do to change the fact that I am not blinded by your masks, your face will always give you away to me, you can’t hide from the girl reflecting into the mirror.

A day not working out

Could spell addiction, are you addicted? An addict? Such negative connotations…

Thinking over all the articles I’ve read,

things running through my head,

most of the content of fat comes pouring out of our mouths????

Break up the fat cell and huff and puff, like the Big Bad Wolf and it all makes you a slimmer, trimmer version of yourself. But do you truly change?

Could you lose the bad memories with it as well?

Like if you were stronger, could you have made a change for the past?

Dwelling hardcore over a decision you had already decided to let go of?

Are you pushing yourself hard to try to push out of a mindset?

Is there a place in time for you to eventually stop thinking about it and let it go to the universe?

You may feel stupid but should you then hold on forever?

We’ve seen what holding on does.

It breaks people into an unrecognisable version of themselves. Dark and lost and broken. Can you ever come back fully from tragedy? Is there coming back or is there only carrying it forward, lost in the hopes of being carefree and forgetting for longer than a minute that this world is unjust, cruel and heart breaking.

We need more time, we need to feel fine, we need more police and less crime, we need to at least feel safe, we need bravery, not slavery, or more reserves for The Army or The Navy. We need clean water, we need to protect our sons and daughters, we need our own bricks and mortar, and probably, kinda, sorta, we need to speak up. We need to hold our chins up high, to explain who, where, when, which, what and why, we need to stop for a moment and try, we need to feel alive. We need air, we need to care, see how we fair, we need to stop telling others to sit down, or to shut up, we need to stop cutting up our brothers and sisters, we need to stop cheating and lying to our misses or misters. We need to be true, we need to find out each clue and we need to help each other when we can only see black or a very deep blue. We need to stop staring, doe eyed at screens, we need to listen to each others screams, we need to clean up our acts, react, intact with the universe, each other and in fact we have a need, in a classless society, for less greed and more people freed, sowing the seeds of knowledge, a steed worthy of carrying our nations, intertwined because we need each other to love, to have and to hold, we need to be bold, and as lost as we are, if we listen real close, we can each hear the ghost of that need, the list of the never ending things we are convinced “we need.”

Thinking back but looking forward. Getting excited for the unknown future whilst also emoting nostalgia for the known, uncomfortably known past. Missing the heat waves of pollution dancing across the suspicious eyes of the city, dark critiquing stares at our fair skin and white collar dress. Memories still ringing of the roar of the Phantom at 6.15 as the streets began to steam with the smells of mee cha and pho, a hearty Asian breakfast, slurped down by adults and school kids alike, sat upon tiny plastic stools, surrounded by motos and calling Tuk Tuk drivers who’d probably been drinking and calling all night. Haunted by the wide, questioning eyes of street selling children, some no older than 3 or 4, trying to push bracelets, tshirts, books or other trashy items no foreigner really needs but might buy out of guilt for the horrendous situation of the child, which in turn fuels the trade of street kids selling, and probably barely feeds them and keeps them out of school. Some kids so hungry you find they talk only to your burger in their broken English and will sit down to share the remnants of food with their little mates. Heartbreaking, you have to develop the thickest of skins to live any sort of long term existence there, in that place for so long we called our home. Gated off by security guards, guard dogs, gates, walls, fences and window bars. Secluded into an ex-pat zone meant only for foreigners. Still missing that place where teaching was the profession of the hour, Chur was the name answered to, and though it wasn’t our food, wasn’t our life, wasn’t our culture, we learned to drive like a Khmer, brashly wander out into traffic like a Khmer, speak the language like a Khmer and love the kids, the strangers, the friends, the co workers,the life as if it were our own. And now, in the midst of reverse culture shock, missing our independent life as if there were an irreparable hole in my heart, I wish we could take back those moments we missed, the ones we were living without fear, without uncertainty, without knowing they would be some of the most cherished memories later, when they were gone. Now they are gone. I don’t want to go back, but I am shy to move forward, revelling in those forgotten easy Asian times in the city of everlasting roadworks and dust. The place I never thought I’d learn to call my home, until I did. I miss you.

Tiny dog waits for his tiny person to come,

he watches the door,

tiny person always leaves at the same time, he thinks,

and he arrives the same time,

when the tiny hand hits four.

Tiny dog has a tiny bark,

but a big personality,

like that of a shark.

Tiny dog may eat,

only a tiny amount,

but it doesn’t matter because tiny appetites don’t count.

Watching the window and smelling the door,

tiny dog will wait for tiny person all day,

waiting to lick his tiny face,

roll over,

run around together

and play.

Tiny person and tiny dog

are the best of friends,

right now they are tiny,

but this is just the beginning,

just wait till the end.

She doesn’t speak when you ask her to talk.

She won’t take one step if you asked her to walk.

Her eyes would never catch yours.

She’d not want to touch you whatever the cause.

She’s hurting and broken and thinks you forgot her,

She thinks badly about herself and would sooner be…not her.

She doesn’t know which words to choose, so she doesn’t deign to choose,

She feels like a loser, she’s confused, her heart is broken and bruised.

The reason for this, she would never tell.

Her agony, her problem, her darkness, her hell.

She hides it, stuffed into the nighttime, but she won’t weep even then.

Even though the movie of it replays over and over and over again.

She’s hurting and broken and thinks you forgot her,

She thinks badly about herself and would sooner be…not her.

She doesn’t know which words to choose, so she doesn’t deign to choose,

She feels like a loser, she’s confused, her heart is broken and bruised.

If you wanted her to let you in, you’d be mistaken.

She’s not been the same since her innocence was taken.

There’s nothing for her, she thinks she’s already in hell.

And though she won’t say it, you can already tell.

Looking out over Phnom Penh,

Watching over the rain again,

Not chasing the gold,

But the opportunities, two-fold,

Could we stay one more span?

Factor this into our plan?

I see so many,

Keep moving on after a one-year trip,

I’m about to see my sixth year hit,

No longer than two years in one place,

But this may change due to that one and only face.

I’ve seen it change in the past two years,

Just like this city we have come to call home,

There are always these kinds of fears,

But together, we know we could actually, anywhere, bloom.

So, whether it be in Phnom Penh,

Or another place again,

Looking back here,

Or even further to New Zealand,

The best thing is we can be together,

And wherever we end up it could well be forever.

There are plenty more fish in the sea, is what they say, throw your line in, wait, have patience for the day. So many people, so many times, don’t throw one back just yet, if your catch seems just fine. It’s a trick to tell, as you line up your rod, if it’s going to work, or you’ll be screwed over by the fishing god. There are plenty more fish in the sea, is what they say, throw your line in, wait, have patience for the day.