For Simone. I promised, almost a year ago, to get this piece to you. I never forgot, I always remembered, I’m sorry for the wait. And for Patch, who knows it by heart and performs it from the same place.

curiously omitting

(full version)

I’m curious at something he didn’t say
but he did say ‘love’ at least three times
and I swapped three places at least three times over
to find out that it is me who is curiously omitting,
me riding ruby waves inside my skull,
me dragging the tide on those days too cold for the beach, too old for the aging
and too young for the green not to be discarded
or caught in an oversight.

In this curious place
red walls sing someone else’s nostalgia to beat my ears,
a notebook binds my hands with its innards,
inky-spoon pigeon eggs of text hatch to the dirty floor,
lift their beaks, and scan, for dangers, the chocolate air I’ve poured myself into.

Sparrows are playing the gutters like drum skins.
I feel one bit them and one bit me,
bite my spoon, drink manicured liquid,
pretend that writing is the source and all that lays beneath it. Pretend.
We’re all pretending right?
Finding ends to pre-evaluate our actions. Finding actions to end us, to end it all.
It all ends pretty sporadic sometimes
and then begins. Just when you think it’s found itself in the realms of never.

That’s the gold I’m panning for
with this rusted tin on the banks of a dried up bed, feel drawn-out dead like River. Feel sorry for yourself much?
Feel sorry?

It’s those patterns I was presented with.
They took hold in my hands and now grip me, masquerading
as my own twitching impulses.
There is some glut involved, but mostly its got nothing to do with ‘sin’.
Now that’s a word not used often in atheist and indifferent circles.
Maybe its like ‘love’.
Who says love anymore?
Who says love, anymore, amore?

I love the tiny birds that eat crumbs from the pavement.
I love those smiles shared with strangers that curve your mouth a good four minutes afterward.
I love curiosity, love wondering for instance, why a cat kills birds to play with their beheadedness.
I love stationery, the good stuff.
I love something indefinable about a particular footbridge where I taped up some of my poetry on a day too potent to speak.
I love days too potent to speak.
I love deep and dusty colours,
old treasures from markets that sell the scurf of yesterday’s deceased estates.
I love that we all die.
I love truth
and theatre, bold moves and unsaid statements.
I love crisp, clean, white cotton,
the third cup of tea from the same pot you brewed only a few minutes ago.
I love the pain of not knowing,
the promise of surprise.
I love the dark and its mysteries.
I love phrases that haunt you for weeks.
I love friends gathered like petals on the floor feasting from an assorted mix of culinary pollen.
I love being too meandering.
I love the allure of far away places.
And I love when the allure of far away places maintains itself because I stay put.
I love sharing that time between midnight and dawn,
love the ocean on my calves.
I love immersion, painting, beauty, film.
I love the word ‘sandwich’.
I love laughing at the ridiculousness of the world,
love drinking wine with friends who love drinking wine.
I love dancing at the top of my lungs,
speaking up for those down feelings.
I really love the word ‘sandwich’.
I love that a car can be a turtle.
I love the horrific beauty of taxidermy in all its horrific beauty.
I love when people get insanely passionate in their speech and forget about the way they look, sound and spit.
I love understanding sadness.
Just as I love misunderstanding it.
And I love misunderstanding the particular sadness I feel when I think about writing phrases like ‘I love…’ like… ‘I love being alive’.
I love that poetry never truly achieves its original or specific goal,
but touches upon another deeply and with no remorse.
I love.
I just don’t call it that,
or not often enough,
or something.

 

Written at the loved and lost Chocolate Bean, Adelaide.

For those playing at home, yes, this is where that slam performance about love began.

 

---

© Indigo Eli. Terms of Use.

15 Sep This entry was published on September 15, 2014 at 8:19 am. It’s filed under page, stage, words and tagged Adelaide, birds, chocolate bean, curiously omitting, death, I love, indigo eli, love, poem, poetry, sandwich, slam, south australia, sparrow. Bookmark the permalink. Follow any comments here with the RSS feed for this post.