A Poet's Lament
Wishing to be elsewhere, wishing to be whole
At the very heart of my being, I am poet.
I don't remember when it happened. There isn't a single day I could point to and say “From this point on, I was poet.”
Though I can state a time and place as to the very first poem I wrote as an adult, of my own free will outside of school & uni coursework, at that point, I was not poet. I was simply broken.
The date (no day) was March, 2009.
I had dropped out of uni, skipped out on therapy, was actively avoiding friends and family, and undergoing a prolonged mental breakdown. Thanks to a couple of housemates and their friends, I wasn't completely isolated, but I knew I wasn't well. I could see an after... and wanted to describe my lived experience.
At this stage, I wrote stories and was quite seriously working on a couple of novels.
I couldn't think in sentences.
This was my very first poem, Lethargy Awaits.
Lethargy Awaits
Staring beyond the hallow,
Awake, lying and listening.
Vacant sounds of a city asleep
Envelop, surround and bring despair.
Shadows creep across the sky.
Alone, walking the empty streets,
Companionship a lingering dream,
Memory, fantasy and soon dispersed.
Clarity floods with the dawn.
Light, pain to eyes and soul.
Curtain closes and I cry.
Release, shadow-life follows fleeting.
Beauty of a friend remembered.
Hope, constrained by reality.
Saxophone wails into the grey;
Unmasked, pieces of soul fly free.
Sunlight fails to awake the bleak.
Hurt, tired beyond tears,
Life continues for a reason;
Sanity, thoughts cast to doubt.
Sleeping dreams provide relief.
Happiness, alive between the hours.
Passing joy of full lives lived;
Waken, despair with sorrow return.
Another sleepless night awaits.
Stories, romance read by lamplight.
Sustenance for a lonely soul;
Life, fictional relieves the pain.
Night beckons beyond the glass.
Blank, thoughts vanish with each step.
Lethargic cycles reign again;
Help, asked, in written confusion.Circumstances changed through little action of my own. I may have been avoiding family, but they weren't willing to let that stand. My memory is fuzzy, thereafter, due both to time passing and the 7 years of medication that followed.
Yet, as I came to learn the tips and tricks of dealing with diagnosed anxiety, with a side of depression, so too did I write poetry. Since then, I have typed up pages upon pages of poems, stories, and other writing of which I have no recollection whatsoever. Thankfully, my handwriting is distinctive, is somewhat incomprehensible in places.
In additon, I had my poetry published in several international collections, and began to perform upon a stage, and write to that purpose. I found my voice, heard my actual voice, came to really hate the voice I present to the world, and eventually got used to that failure in resonance.
Yet I was still not a poet. I simply wrote poetry. Performed poetry. Used poetry to interpret and understand my experiences and the world in which I continued to live, with growing satisfaction.
I experimented, discarding sonnets as too rigid, haiku as too short, limericks as too much. I took apart words and their meanings and played with mental, observational, societal, and even political issues in the poetry I wrote. The first became my forte, and the last soon fell from context without evident audience.
Through all of this, I learned how to write. Learned the rules of English, and how and where to break them. If and when there was pen and paper (always), I wrote. I collaborated with other people who wrote poetry, and produced my first book, a compilation of such
This is a poem from that book, written in 2014, Xanadu Anew.
Xanadu Anew
Above deep chasms we cannot see
A floating cavern upon the seas
Named for the land of the pleasure-dome
The forgotten kingdom of the deep
That gave forth to rise, on opium’s breath
Beyond turn of time
Beyond call of death
A tale of rhythm that peters off
Distracted by the meter of itself
Twas Coleridge calling Kubla Khan
Kind of a land so soon forgot
We know not where
We know not what
Surrounds the bound of Xanadu
Only that it sunk so far
In tumultuous preclude to foreseen war
When ancestral voices chose to speak
To wail in mourning of icy grave
Foretelling dire cause soon to come
Deep in a sunless sea
So name your ship for a land long sunk
And hope this poet is newly born
Else beware, beware, of ancestral stare
Close your ears to Abyssinian song
And the call from the abyss, below.Then, as is wont to happen, I broke again, this time from an overload of external stimuli, piling upon and upon itself.
This time, through the course of healing, again, words became a greater part of my identity. Already a voracious reader, since childhood, I now took up the burden of reading for perfection, aiding in the presentation of information for posterity. I became editor.
The medication became more burden than aid, so I abandoned chemicals in favour of words and self-regulation.
On and for my 30th birthday, I published a collection of my own poems, entire: Waiting on Rain. It was the first of 3 books, thus far, yet I was not poet, even then. Sometimes I would describe myself as a poet, but it was not at the heart of what I was. In my heart, the old definition held. I was broken; twice-broken.
When I write, my poetry describes all that I am. It is as much or more real to me than the emotions I hold to and never let go. It is a snapshot of a given moment, archived for later perusal. In effect, and in hindsight, in its inception it was, then continued to be, the most effective tool or coping stategy I every had.
Poetry allowed me to ask questions of the world, and sometimes to receive answers.
Poetry allowed me, my mind, to heal.
In the analogy of the broken bowl mended with gold (as in the Japanese tradition of 金継ぎ (Kintsugi; ‘golden joinery’), poetry is the glue that held everything together.
Note the past tense.
This following poem, The Pharmacy, is from July 2020. It was written in memory of the recovery from the second breakage. Note that while containing sentences, it was written as a poem.
The Pharmacy
Silent service in the pharmacy, neither of us speak in sound.
My hands know this till; the location of the card reader; of exactly how far to reach to pick up a bag — when there is a bag.
My head knows this pharmacy, knows the promise of lessening all the depressed and frantic thoughts I don't remember, though I still feel their echoes, and wonder how many were sparked by the medication intended to still.
I know this building, its cracked pavement, grilled servo, scarred gravel pits behind that were burnt three years ago, with the singe-rusted car I took photos of just as the regrowth was bleeding through.
There's a MacDonald's next door, a pharmacy for a different craving; its promise heaven. Only, you eat it, consume it and pass beneath arches golden, but the gold never rubs off on you.
I know this emotion, this fear, memories caught in the Maccas spiral and eating me. I never go to Maccas, but the servo sells hot dogs for a couple of dollars and when I lived round the corner, they were my midnight breakfast more than once.
I still come here cause it's cheap, and I can park in the backlot and scope out the bins— boxes for every house move these past five years, and once I scored big-time on the bubble bath and Manuka honey capsules. I'm still going on them. Figure I ripped off some exiting employee's last fuck you to the pharmacy, but I left them the flavoured nicotine, the pregnancy vitamin pills.
This pharmacy knows me, know my chemical habits, all legal, know when I cut myself, get the flue, bleach my hair, want to effect change. This pharmacy knows me and I want out—away from the prescribed, the pain relief addiction.
Away from the numb.
I reach for my bag: no pills, no anxiety killers, not for years. Took myself off them when the angst, the anger, the suicidal, murderous carnage thoughts go too much. But I had to drink to dream in those days. Alcohol and anxiety medication clashing in my head to send me out of this reality — out over the purple hills where three armed Spanish Inquisitionesque priests flay the innocent like their historical terrestrial forbears.
Now, I sleep to dream, and the pharmacy, too, has changed. My hand clashes against the suspended Perspex shield I was too caught in perspective to see. Through it, my silent attendee matches my smile. Rueful, our fingers exchange germs as the bag changes hands.
There's nothing good in the skips tonight, but from beyond the sunset a small twin-engined cloud-hopper grinds its way towards the ground. I watch it pass over the gravel pit shadows, now covered in vines. Pass over the pharmacy, up where the new security cameras can't see what I'm watching. Pass over me, then I'm outta there. I've leftovers at home, home-cooked, delicious, and filling, the way the midnight hotdog never was. Then came an invitation to a festival dedicated to poets, by poets. Suddenly I was accounted a poet by other poets - strangers, most. I wrote poems especially, poems during, poems in summary, alive. I performed what I had written, the day of.
From my point-of-view, I delighted in a new experience and depicted it in my chosen medium, poetry, then gave it back to my companions, in delight. For me, this was simply habit. Simply what I did. I cannot say what it was to be audience to that, but still marvel at the response.
Trying to describe it is like trying to draw a blazing file while swimming butterfly. Impossible.
If there was ever an event that might make me poet, that was it, but even then I felt an imposter. My craft was not of the poet, but of the emotion and happenstance described. I might write poetry, but I was not poet in truth.
It is ever such. I can drive, but am not a driver. I can cook but am not a chef. If I want to do something, I learn how to do it there and then... and then forget as soon as the next interest comes along. As previously stated, for me, poetry began as a coping strategy, and so it continued to me. The festival was a new and exciting experience. Overwhelming. I simply dealt with it as best I knew how. My life, my desires, lay elsewhere.
These experiences, realisations, began my journey towards creating my old style of poetry, but that is another tale, which I will recount elsewhere.
This is once such poem I wrote during Red Dirt 2018, Hiphop at Epilogue. Epilogue was a nightclub, a venue of one of the events.
Hiphop at Epilogue
Hiphop at Epilogue
Dancing in thermals, four scarves, and a jumper.
I basked in the warmth
Skin dry—
Bemused, in shoes!
My Home is humidity—
Sweat on my nose when I wake up
Go dancing and kick off the flood
Spinning in singlet
Bare feet decimating the concrete,
the grass, the sand.
I dance till my shoulders glisten
and the glint in my eyes
shines a path through the punters.
I dance till I have to drink salt
patch scars,
and stich torn clothes—
so terrifying the drive.
In confinement, I lose my way.
Stumbling between the beats,
tripped up by warmth.
Confused by the weight,
out of balance,
out of tune.
So, I leave, slide down into the river bed
where the stars pulse their own beat
and spin in the darkness.
Toes ensconced in the granules
taunting frostbite.
Mind swept wide-open by the promise of horizon.
Free!
Unconstrained.
Swept away by the memory of the river.
The sight of my breath, the shiver of my bones.
Divested of cladding, I may soon freeze.
Yet, sweep the stars about my shoulders
Let the desert sing the melody
If I live or die
while I am spinning,
I'll greet you on the dancefloor of eternity
There's space to dance in eternity.The festival was the Red Dirt Poetry Festival, which is held every two years in Mparntwe (Alice Springs, Northern Territory, Australia). The year was 2018. It is now 2024, and this year's festival starts today. In part, it is the inspiration for this piece.
Note, if you will, that this text is not a poem.
Enter Covid, stage central.
Thus far, I have been invited to, written poetry for, and performed at the Red Dirt Poetry Festival over 3 succesive occurences, 2018, 2020, and 2022. That the 2020 event was held online was an experience in itself, demonstrative of the effects of Covid, personified.
At the 2022 festival, I launched my second book, Red Dirt Scrawl, which collected together those poems I had written for the 2018 & 2020 festivals. Once of the poems inspired during the course of events then became the foundation for a video, Community, which launched last year (2023), alongside my 3rd book, Dedications of Joy, of Loss.
Another poem written not for Red Dirt, but because of it, is Heavy Words.
Heavy Words
Heavy words.
Story is the embodiment of power.
Spoken story, poetry, becomes weight
Gifted freely for the world to hold
That the world may become strong,
Holding story.
Heavy words.
We who tell story hold power.
Our shoulders strong beneath its weight.
We give of ourselves to ensure story lives,
Growing, that our words may hold weight
Until every word is embodied power,
Holding story.
Heavy words.
We are weighed down by heavy words,
For story is weight that must be spoken,
Must continue to be spoken,
Until the weight no longer holds story,
Or the world becomes strong, holding weight.
Holding story.Though this is a simple poem at its heart, I account this the most important poem I have ever written, and likely will ever write, for it describes what I, as poet, am and must be. It cemented poet within my heart, at the very crux of my being. Banished all self-definitions of breakage.
Thus, I can safely say that Red Dirt and its infulence is as much of what made me poet as all the poems I have ever written.
For context, though I can only provide examples of my poetry, here and now, I haphazardly compile my poems into a single document. I last did so in mid-2022, by which point, I had written 480 poems (approx. 66,500 words), since 2009. It’s safe to say, that I’ve surpassed the 500 count, nonwithstanding the 4 or 5 written this year.
Someday, I hope to post them all here.
As I write this, I am lying on my couch at home, far from the cold sands of Mparntwe. This weekend, the weekend I have been looking forward to since the ending of Red Dirt two years past, poets and poetry lovers from across the country, across the world, will gather in central Australia to delight in their craft.
I will not be attending. That I was neither invited to attend or perform does not enter into the matter. Had either happened, I would have very reluctantly refused.
It breaks my heart.
I am poet.
I am poet.
I am poet.
I am unable to poem.
The self-defined features of ‘broken’ exist always within me. So does the gold, the glue, the poetry. I know this at some level beyond learning and forgetting. Though finding its beginnings as a coping stategy, poetry became my truth.
Currently, this truth is equally false, and the act of admitting that fact is comparable to taking a sledgehammer to my foundations.
My breakdowns were always mental, a result of abnormal or misdiagnosed brain chemistry that impacted upon my mental state. I was thus unprepared for the impact physical sickness would have on my capacity to simply function.
I very much wish I might make use of the coping stategies I have so much experience in using. However, stategies for mitigating mental instabilities are near useless when the issues are physical.
Ah, I find I am skirting round the matter. Unwilling to write the sentences that spell my doom.
I am poet.
I am...
I...
In November last year (2023), I suffered a bad bout of Covid, following which, certain of the symptoms continue to affect my cognition, fatigue, and pain thresholds. While I can gather my thoughts and let the words flow through me, narrative stucture comes much easier to me than the abstract thinking inherant in my poetry. As I was once unable to form sentences, I am now unable to write poetry without great mental and physical effort. Likewise, I am incapable of appreciating the poetry of others.
Critical thinking takes a very physical toll.
Critical thinking amounts to 75% of the freelance editing work I do, so believe me when I say I have pushed my capabilities to their limit, and further. I have, through trial and pain, found my limits.
I have written the very occasional poem, though the writing of this piece, stole my energy for days, thereafter. Other, shorter pieces lie abandoned mid-stanza, as attention fled.
Clepsydra (Hourglass)
All it takes is a moment to send you back.
Set fire to your memories
And be forged anew.
Revamped, rehashed, written true.
Painted with glory like the last stampede
Charging headfirst
As time recedes.
All it takes is a question to send you back.
A caring reminder that you're breathing still;
That decades have passed
And dreams have come true. Nightmares too,
And still you continue,
Riding the years.
Alive to face every one of your fears.
All it takes is recollection to send you back.
A taste on your tongue, a touch, a look,
To live what once was
And never again,
While the rain falls fierce and you hear the shriek
Of heartstrings breaking
Then turn to leave.
This wound's too fresh, too full of grief.
All it takes is a story to take you back.
The flow of tears,
Tending pain as they fall.
Heart aching and mending, you remember it all.
The joy and the stress;
The music, the love.
Making life so worth living, this choice you recall,
To continue. Continue
And find what comes next.
All it takes is a deep breath to bring it back home,
To the now, to the present,
To this instance of grief;
Knowing that this minute is the youngest you'll be,
Raise your gaze to your timepieces,
They stand, banter, at hand-
Time feeding, time stealing, time never gives back.
So raise a glass to clepsydra
Your mates, loves, and friends
Celebrate them now, now and ever.
Together, to the end.This is one of very few poems that I have written this year that I can actually bear to read without wincing. I have and will continue to attempt others, if only to keep my hand in, but the majority of all I have written has been created immediately, not worked on, session after session. That is simply not what I do. I am not that poet.
Genre-wise, I am an improv poet.
Likewise, I could have written this entire piece about dancing, changing only certain details, and swapping out poems and/or festival details. Since contracting Covid, I can't listen to music and also function. While driving a short and familiar road the other day, I had a radio program on, which I was not actively listening to. I had to switch it off, purely due to the advertising jingle, for even that much stimulation surpassed my ability to concentrate.
Thankfully, I know this to be an illness. I know (hope) it is not a life-sentence. Someday (soon?) I will get better.
While I have been, and am currently, depressed, I also know that the depression of today is far cry from that of yesterday, or yesteryear. I have the toolkit with which to track and measure progress, be it mental or physical.
I am better that I was.
I will continue to improve.
One day, I will be poet, both in who I am and what I do.
One day.
But not today.
If you are attending or have attended the Red Dirt Poetry Festival, 2024, please regale me with your tales. How I wish I might have been there, too.
Written: 2024.08.20-21