poem: black denim

god bless you skinny legged

black denim encased

boys in bands

I imagine you’ve grown your hair long since you were a private school boy

you’ve grown a moustache and you mean it

I’m laughing at your jokes and calling your eyes over

you cannot see me in the crowd through the lights,

but still I’ve made a cosy story for us

let us never speak;

by 24 you’ve read just enough philosophy to be dangerous.

there’s no way I can oversell the fact that

you’re not smiling at me, even through the lights, you’re not smiling for me

and I’m not the one you pursue to take home

girls like me

never girls like me.

god bless you boys in bands and your

skinny black jeans

After the show

I leave suddenly, because

it doesn’t matter how good you look behind a keyboard in those black jeans if you’re a dick.

that’s a lie, because I am powerless before black skinny jeans

the cockiness of youth.

Let us speak, I can teach you something

beyond the music lessons your parents paid for that have you here, fodder for women

as well as girls

as well as me

as well as all of us.

us, we’re 

all scrabbling for 'cool enough’; 

you are unironically wearing a full moustache.

secret: New Year's Eve, 2016 to 2017

Last time there were fireworks it was New Year’s Eve and I was dangerously close to going home with an unfamiliar boy from whom I’d felt an unspoken pull; that draw you get to a beautiful stranger; that tingle of mystery and recognition that can be endlessly romanticised, made all the more tantalising by virtue of the woman he had ignored on my behalf until she chased us down the street some time long after midnight.

I’d sat in the middle of one of the main streets of my hometown at 12 midnight, traffic be damned, with a clear view down the hill to those momentary and momentous bouquets of light and sound that meant something to those of us with resolutions, a year of shit to put behind us, dogs at home quailing at this faked thunder. 

I’d sat with a friend and his wife, our arms around each other by default, wishing each other all the things you’d expect of a New Year’s Eve. I’d steeled myself away from those "be better” promises, but I was pleased to see the back of a year that had dragged me with buckling knees into commitments, right past failed relationships I’d never given more than an “I wish” to. 

There’s a melancholy all of its own to realising you’re not even feeling particularly caught up in the sentiments of ringing in the shape of a new year. I found myself drawn into a long conversation with my friend about the nature of our friendships, which was telling of the year I’d been planning to have, but not of the year our friendship subsequently shaped up to look like. I worked to be heard over acquaintances and strangers singing hits from the 90s; we abandoned our important chat to sense-make snippets of conversation floating by us. 

Being made carefree by the hour of the morning, with the year still so new on my fingertips, I touched the shoulder of this beautiful stranger to launch myself into a back and forth on horoscopes. I laughed right into his face as he made a sparkly-eyed case for us two being an excellent match based upon the months we were born, as though we somehow knew each other quite aside from the basic facts we were missing. He asked my age, I asked his age. He asked if I liked girls or boys or both, and I asked him the same, and we smiled, complicit in our elusive answers and mutual interest.

Last time there were fireworks in my town, the night’s love story ended almost there, with a few small additional details in the shape of his female companion’s heartbreaking chase down the street (and my cluelessnes, or lack of finesse with pickup lines, or both). I am not one to steal someone out of the warmth of someone else’s heart where I can help it (no matter my fantasies). I am not one to wait to be chosen, either. 

There’s a story that goes something along the lines of, the way you spend the first hours of your new year determines the look and feel of the whole year ahead. For me, being wanted, and wanting, and then walking away on my own steam to my own house - that is my year, and perhaps more years to come. This is not a story of a pity party. I chose this, and I have power (that comes with the being wanted) and I listen to my heart (that comes with the wanting), and I reach to take the exact parts I want. 

All this is to say no more than that I remember the last time there were fireworks in this town; I remember the way they made me feel, which is really no more or less real and human than I’d already learned to feel. I remember the colours and the shapes, and the noise they made; I remember they went for longer than I’d expected, and I remember feeling the open space left over when they were done. 

poetry 2017: 8 Jan

it is exhausting to find a place to sit
in my world of one or the other
as though a person can't be
sad but overjoyed
sunburned with a vitamin D deficiency
starving with a full belly.
they forget to balance in the precarious in-between
& they push their forgetting into my hands
expecting me to happily take hold.
I am bored by the broad world
having stumbled into a party uninvited
filled to the brim with people I know.

it's the happiest heartbreak to want both
but to also want neither;
to believe in standing up for your beliefs
while sitting quiet and wordless.
yes - exhausting,
to find a place to sit
in a seatless party
toasting failings; grasping straws
pushing past your handshakes.

secret: 20 thoughts collected from the year I was 30 (or, Some Things I Know To Be True)

1. Social media is not the one way
to my soul, nor the way to make me
pay attention
nor the way to make me love you.
HOWEVER
If you are not there on some sort of
platform
How are we to meet?
How am I to know?
Social media is a tightrope.

2. A person does not have to be a gender.
Sometimes I am tired
Sometimes I am not a woman or a man
Sometimes I am a Helen & that is all.
It follows that there are some people who are perpetually tired in this one way; the Patriarchy is a big nuisance forever
A person does not have to be a man or a woman all the time (nor straight, gay, queer, more).
That is fine with me.

3. There is not much that cannot be soothed by any or all of these things:

• Licks from puppies
• A hot drink you can warm your hands with
• Putting things in the places they go
• A full night of good sleep
• Being in a bookshop or a library
• Days with no plans in them.

4. Love is a mystery
I definitely believe in it, but romantic love mystifies me. It is my way to want to pin it down and have a definition to refer everything to, but it's ridiculous and won't stay still. I don't get it. I don't get how you're all doing it. I'm bewildered.

5. I am pretty fucking great.
I have spent a lot of time rebounding from all the things other people think. I've tried very hard to keep them happy; to mimic their ways, which is almost the best way to give them what they want from me.
I have curbed my instinct and my words and my actions to fit into things. I have felt guilty or fake or like a liar for saying I think one way and knowing that isn't always true. I have chosen not to do things because I will probably do them wrong and then people will have opinions about that and I will need to address the opinions of me like that's my job.
It's not my job and it's none of my fucking business what you think of me. Go for it and leave me out of it.
I am pretty fucking great just like this and I love my mistakes and it's fun when I'm doing things differently from how you'd like me to. Please, when you feel compelled to give me guidance disguised as kindness, know that I sincerely to the very bottom of my heart am just not really listening.

6. I don't owe time or smiles or gratitude.
When you are kind and generous and friendly with me that is just lovely, and thank you.

BUT

I don't have to do things I don't want to do anymore. The best bit is this means that if I'm smiling at you I really mean it and if I'm where you are I want to see you for reals and you don't have to play a guilty game of obligation with me, which leaves you time for more activities.

7. I remember when you let me down. It doesn't mean that our friendship is broken, because I'm an adult that can like you in spite of your flaws. I just didn't forget.
I didn't forget all the times I let you down, either (the ones I know about, anyhow). To err is human, etc.

8. Most motivational quotes are true.
But this doesn't stop me from cringing.

My favourite motivational quote is from Alias Grace by Margaret Atwood and it goes
"When you are in the middle of a story it isn't a story a all, but only a confusion; a dark roaring, a blindness, a wreckage of shattered glass and splintered wood; like a house in a whirlwind, or else a boat crushed by the icebergs or swept over the rapids, and all aboard powerless to stop it. It's only afterwards that it becomes anything like a story at all. When you are telling it to yourself or to someone else."

This is life and this is definitely my life. I guess maybe it's not your average motivational quote, but it sure as fuck motivates me.

9. Sometimes it is easier to spend time with new friends who are right there than to keep up with old ones who are far away.
Once I love you, I really love you, which means that when I can't see you whenever I want, my heart is broken.
I basically need to forget you exist just so I am able to function, unless I'm visiting your neighbourhood.
[I love you faraways so much, and think about you all the damned time]

10. The thing that makes me tough, strong and the actual best:
My brothers - by sheer virtue of their own awesomeness. We reflect this awesomeness in each other ad infinitum. All other relationships of my life are based on a version of this. They have taught me fierce loyalty, the fine art of cutting the shit and saying the truth, the importance of a shot of Campari before any party, and that the power in just knowing that someone has your back helps you to move fucking mountains. People are jealous of us and look, we know it.
What you suspect to be the case is true: even on our bad days, we are actually a little bit better than everyone else. We're not sorry about that. Try asking water not to be wet, or scotch not to be delicious.

11. Look, it is a definite waste of your time to care about how fat you look in your pants, but we all sometimes think about it, even the most kickass feminist of us.
It's ok to have a lapse and think that silly nonsense thought.
I shake away the thought like it's a little spider on my arm and do not beat myself up about fat, pants or thinking thoughts.

12. A lesson for humans:
You can't assume anything about anyone by looking at them.
Don't think a fat person is unhealthy
you are not a doctor
if you are a doctor, you still cannot tell by looking.
Don't think Aboriginal men are bad dads
stow your cartoon drawing pencil
Don't think a trans person has to "pass" as any gender
you can see my earlier thoughts on gender
and probably also fuck off
Don't think a woman deserves sexual, verbal or emotional abuse
for making a mistake
for having an opinion
for running for president
for wearing any particular clothes combination
for not taking your advice
for drinking too much
for making eye contact
I'm bored of this list already

13. Early marks are way better when you're an adult.

14. Sure, drinking is probably a thing I should feel guilty about
but I do not
because

1. alcohol is delicious 
2. soon, you are a bit more funny and charismatic than previously thought
3. you make new friendships that are very important 
4. intolerable people are either a) easier to ignore or b) weirdly tolerable now
5. you can sing and dance better
6. alcohol is still delicious

15. Some times I put things off for ages that turn out to be great, and my favourites:

• learning to drive a manual car
• downloading and listening to podcasts
• buying a house
• becoming vegan

16. There are some people who just remind you of who you are
You wander through many other places and try on other hats
And your paths cross again, and
Of course! There you are! Your self was there the whole damn time!

17. Layers upon layers of blankets
are the only way for me to fall asleep
like a pressure on my heart
will keep it in my chest
and I can rest
safe, without worry.

18. Layers upon layers of paper
are the only way for me to feel at peace
stacks of books and notepads
to ease the aching of my heart
so I can breathe
safe, without worry.

19. Mornings are probably the weirdest
of all the regular struggles of my life,
because when I get up and do things early
My day is better
My outlook is better
My breakfast is better
I have time for 2 coffees.
BUT
Bed is a great and tempestuous love of my life
It is so warm and comfy
and often, after
a whole night of treating me badly
I crawl in
hoping the next time will be different.

20. I don't know a lot about much, but I do know that having a place to belong in is saving my life. My garden grows roses, and I collect them to display in a bowl by my bed like trophies. I am making a good life for myself, and there are roses in it.