A year ago, I set off on a trip that ended up being 8 months of traveling. I spent 5 months in New Zealand with a 2 month working stint and then headed to Australia, Indonesia, Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam. It was my first time solo travelling which brought it’s own challenges (mostly mental as it was all down to me to make the decision and organise things). Who dosen’t like asking strangers to take photos of them, hey?
While I was I was I knew I’d need to have some projects on the go so I started writing a series of poems that encapsulate the past few years of my life. Years of grief, lament, and confusion needed to be expressed. I wanted symbols to root the poems to so I decided on using mostly defult and abandoned punctuation marks that titled each poem. I will probably be adding to this series over the next few years too as I have more to say and more symbols to use. Here is the introduction to the series:
Do you remember a time
a season
you might call it a tempest,
when reason began to feel weak
and you felt the need to rest your believing.
Aching can do that to a person.
It forms us
folds us into dimensions previously unknown,
each crease causing its own
tension.
When rhythms and roars make waves too big for you to ride
and you hoist your sails only to find the holes unmended
from the last calamity,
now clutching at straws and running wild
but not free.
You can get trapped in that
glass half-empty mentality
finding comfort in the melancholy
because it's familiar,
so we linger
a little too long.
This grief does not have to be the end of a life
but the start of another.
So I want to welcome you to a space where lament is normal
where hymns of joy co-exist with those of sorrow.
Let me share this collection of words
with you and your sea,
because rising waters lifts all ships
and who knows what future skies might bring.
These poems come from my own raw reality
By this time I thought I'd have a family.
A husband, some kids,
a job to go to, maybe even a house to clean.
But that hasn't happened
at least not the way I thought it would.
So I'm learning to grieve a life that I see others living.
Trying to clench that comparison, stop it breathing
but some days I suffocate in the
friction,
not wanting to be reminded
so avoiding conversation.
Bitterness is a relentless mistress
which I wasn't born for.
I was to weep with those who mourn,
and sing songs with the partiers at dawn.
Both AND
like everything,
there's nuance in the suffering.
I'm still in pursuit to venture the steadfast way,
earthing on untouched terrain,
and this hurricane is still unravelling at the whisper of love's name,
but this time there's something more.
I’ve picked up grit I didn't have then.
I'm trying to seek gratitude in things
a thankfulness that only grief knows,
growing slowly very slowly
It seems patience is an art form
and I'm far from
an artist
We hear
"Carpe Diem, Memento Mori”
Seize the day because one day we won't be
but perhaps seizing isn&t what we need
maybe surrender is the company we seek.
Heartbroken,
heartbeating
made by design
each pulse teaching us
forgiving us
reminding us
there's life in us yet
too precious, too alive
with eyes that have seen depths.
So when your dark night is worn
like a tux to prom
and you're dancing with shadows of your past self
and whem you're on buckled knees
your forehead on concrete
gazing at the grazes life has put forward
and exposing the asbestos in the house you've created.
While you're in a tempest and,
like Prospero, you might be pleading,
"I pray thee, mark me!"
to silence it might seem,
but know that He has,
He is and
He always will be.
