arrest this man

we gather in our thousands to marvel at the prophet from the radio. he looks out at the crowd and shakes his head like a puppet, pulling strings and pressing keys and buttons. I watch him dance under the neon waterfall as everybody chants out loud the thoughts he once tied to words and cast to power in a song. he looks like an alien and sings like his soul needs to scream but doesn’t know how.

at the first strum of his final song we hear a shout from the audience: ‘what will it take for you to acknowledge the massacre of over ten thousand children in Palestine?’ a chorus of groans and the spell is broken. the alien invites the man onstage as a challenge before storming off into the dark like a child. the audience is stunned. some people aim the torches on their phones at the man until security finds him and demands he leaves. when the alien returns, the faithful cheer and the worship continues as planned. he sings about a man who buzzes like a detuned radio and the calculated bitterness behind his eyes is chilling. everybody sings along and there is no way I can lose myself in the choir again.

at home I check my phone and read he played my favourite songs the night before. I curse my luck and laugh that I can have so much and still want more when everything is wrong outside.

on the tram

I can move in any way I wish and it is a privilege to be stuck and not unsafe. without wings I can fly above the clouds that roll on from my skies into yours. the distance between where and who I am from what I dream and wish only matters when I decide tears mean more than the time that makes up the night. there is comfort in the temporal nature of every moment. I am lost in myself and not in the rubble and everything is only for now.

on the tram the boy leans in to whisper in her ear. he makes the girl laugh and the whole world is only for them. she smiles with her teeth as he pulls her onto the street right as the sliding doors shut.

tomorrow’s boulder

the work waits for me like a dog that has me tamed. tasks bookend every moment spent on anything else. I wake to push the boulder through gritted teeth, knowing well how much heavier it could be. the day moves without the sun, which never makes it through the window by my desk. outside the clouds are in the way. they hang distant and blurred on the edges of my focus as I press the keys to fill the boxes on the screen. the sky is grey and I don’t think all day. my washing dries just fine.

my brother says he saw me in a nightmare. last night he dreamt I did something I shouldn’t and he’s worried about what it means. I dreamt of school and the clarity of knowing where I’m meant to go. without warning my phone flashes reminders of the last time I performed before it was time to grow up. like most of the once familiar faces in the photos, the boy in the baggy blue shirt is a stranger to me, though we share the same name and vital organs. he gave everything to try to understand his role and how to tell that story. eight years sit between us now. I wonder what he’d think of how we’ve spent the time and what we’ve done with all his dreams.

I leave the house to buy the medicine I take to wake up and greet tomorrow’s boulder. on my phone I read about another day of innocent deaths in their hundreds. I shake my head at my greed and wonder why safety is never enough for me. at the counter they ask if I would like a receipt. I tell them I’m okay and thank them for their help.

I could stay beneath

on the shore we face the clouds on the horizon. I wince at the chill of the wind on my skin. the waves rise high and promise to be even colder. up ahead, my friends dip their toes in the shallows. I run past and dive into the cold that isn’t any worse than the breeze. in the water I open my eyes and glide over the sand. the waves crash above me and everything I hear is muffled and less important underneath. there is peace in the absence of air and any expectation to be. I have love for my friends on the shore and still wish I could stay beneath at least a little longer than I can.

on the train I dance between messages I’ve missed and headlines that should be left in nightmares they’ve escaped. the occupation widens its gaze with attacks in another capital. we talk about how it’s going to end, knowing well there is no use in playing with the thought that there’s any hope for consequence. I miss the rally to swim and taste expensive wines and the drones erase another school. the families were living there in tents until the place went up in flames. I complain about the size of the room I have the choice to rent; they burn through the night or have nowhere else to go.

I call a friend I’ve missed and remember my arms will never reach far enough. my heart holds so much that I can’t. in my dream I know where to go but never know what to say. when I wake up I will boil the kettle and have even less to say.

all I am and know

on the train I talk with a friend about learning to live in a way that makes sense if not meaning. a glass half full has replaced the weight on his shoulders that once bound him to silence and distance from those of us who worried. he speaks about tomorrow and there always being something more to try and I admire that he can see what I haven’t in a while now. his company is precious and I savour the chance to be passing time with somebody I love. there is a lightness in the way he holds himself. I hear it in his voice and see how it carries in the way he looks out through the window at the clouds and lakes and towns he’s never seen. we talk about holding ourselves back and the privilege of being our own biggest obstructions in a world so spent and broken. with time and trying he has learnt to love himself. I ask him how and he suggests we have a lot in common with ourselves and it shouldn’t be so hard. in theory I agree and there’s nothing here to argue so I listen and try to learn. 

my eyes are heavy and I surrender another day of time with nothing to show for who and where I’ve been. I forget about my dreams until they’re all I am and know.

somebody else on the phone

the weight of the week binds me to my bed and I rise later than I should. when I open the screen everything is as I left it. emails are shrugs shedding the tasks nobody wants to touch. I catch the requests in the butterfly nets they’ve tied to both my hands. another day in the spreadsheet and the signs and shapes make less sense the more time I pour in. the hours are measured in cups of tea and thoughts of how I’d rather be. my parents call and ask about the weather and I haven’t seen the sky all day.

once I disconnect there is space to think and breathe. I remember who I am and what I lack and read the news. there is always something to feel. when facts and faces make me cry I feel my pulse and know that I’m still here. but there is always more to do. I walk to the store to replenish the shelf I’ve cleared with the same packaged goods I use to fuel this fragile frame. birds sing and I listen to somebody else on my phone.

the sun hangs later than I’d like. I distract myself with sales and absent thoughts of chasing winter round the world.

just another bug

the therapist on my screen asks me how I’ve been. we haven’t spoken in a couple of months, and the last time our conversation surfaced a new label to stamp on my medical record. without her presence in the room I can tell she is tired. there’s a quiet strain in her voice that I hear in the patient questions of my manager on the phone to the others she is paid to wait on and keep organised. I tell the therapist about my new religion and how faithful I’ve been to the emails and spreadsheets. she wants me to be mindful of balance and asks about my food and sleep. I answer all her questions and leave the narrative behind. I confess to loneliness and dissatisfaction with this routine of shame and perpetual loathing for myself and for the world. we talk about the slope and knowing where it leads and I agree to goals she sets and says well measure as time passes. before we say goodbye she offers me another session for earlier than we had planned. I accept without question and see some good in the absence of pride.

on my run the clouds are grey and heavy with the promise of rain that never comes. I twist around trees and keep score of the number of steps I’ve pressed on certain tiles like a spell. the counting that used to dictate every move creeps back into the patterns of my thinking like an absent friend that made me feel they really cared once upon a time. however unwelcome, the return does little to shake me. I am tired and fragile and the counting is just another bug devoid of meaning. it will come and go like every thought or ghost I shouldn’t entertain and I will still be here. 

I dream of change like a tree that grows through the floor of my room overnight. 

and open another

everything is on display. I’m mapping measures from a framework and they’re pulling bodies from the rubble. my first friend from the city I’ve fumbled sends photos of the kitten he’s adopted. they tour the monarch round the colony and we show up to shower flowers over the waning flesh of an idea that stands against the heart of the values of the hill on which we choose to die. outside the station gates they try to make me sell my soul to a gym or a cause I might believe but won’t commit to. someone I work for is greeted at a conference like a prophet after crossing the globe sipping wine in a recliner over lands our taxes fund the death of. there’s footage of animals that don’t exist and apartment blocks caving in on themselves in seconds. I close the lid of one screen and open another to greet the stranger I pay to listen to the thoughts I don’t know what to do with. everything is on display. how much really matters?

rooms that could be real

in my dreams I share my shoebox room once more with another one I miss and cannot hold. they take the top bunk and I lie beneath, though we laugh all through the night. I want to believe there’s something more exciting that I just can’t quite remember, as though I could use the stories I tell sleeping to revive the ego and breathe life into the carcass of the thought that my mind is still remarkable. there is always greed for more. some dreams are nights that could have been in rooms that could be real. nothing really happens but we’re happy and that must be worth something.

I leave the office to buy the drink I learn to like to stay awake. at my desk I complain about the taste and how I miss the old barista though I never even knew their name. what used to make me shiver fuels my focus on the screen. I follow the shapes of the letters and numbers and the webs they craft to pull shreds of meaning from the taps of those they’re said to represent. there are new forms attached to emails and requests for more information: I respond with what I know and wait for the questions to come.

at night I indulge the parasite and reach for my own questions left unanswered. pulling one from the highest shelf brings the whole thing crashing down and I am covered in the dust and weight of where and who I’ve been. I map memories and dreams like stars on the ceiling, just as wonderful and impossible to ever hold again. on my pillow I harbour the privilege to mourn my own potential until it makes me sick. I open my phone and wake up. how many children will they kill while I sleep through the rain?

without words

I have nothing to say. without words there is nothing to carry the weight of the tides in this morbid mind of mine. every day I wake and want to be more than I think I can. comparison is a vulture and she swoops straight for the achilles. the heel bleeds tears I waste on my reflection, despite all the good and the light that still gets in. at the end of the day I let go of the tasks that make my time mean nothing and the footage of the flames and all I see is what I lack. the game continues then: I chase distraction from the space I hold and who I am in channels that will never last. no matter where I run it’s never far enough. the static always comes and every path pulls me back to where I was before.

I have nothing to say. without words I don’t know how to wash away the ties that bind me to the anchor. on the way home from the rally a friend tells me he is happy about how things are going. I wonder if he means it and can’t remember if I’ve ever felt the same. for a moment I play with the idea that this matters in the face of a broken world and the death of humanity streaming live for our viewing pleasure whenever we choose to wake up.

on my phone there’s a child stuck in the empty space between apartment blocks and supermarkets deconstructed by the missiles they make near my house. he can’t stand but he screams and waves his hands until a group of others come to his aid. I watch a bomb fall from the sky and cover them in clouds. we can’t tell if anyone survived and there is nothing I can do. I am angry and ungrateful and my feelings will not stop the bombs.

empty hours

I greet the day wishing I could see things through another’s eyes. my disillusionment embarrasses me as one of the lucky ones in a world caving in on itself. I want to be more grateful for the good, though this want is forever dwarfed by the knowledge that who I am and what I do makes no difference to the machine. with my seat at the table I press the right buttons and am afforded the security and comfort I have learnt to take for granted. my time is taxed to fuel a war machine we’re taught not to talk about. outside people flood the streets with flags and signs demanding change. there are screams to stop the bombing but we can close the windows and turn on the radio. the truth can be dangerous but we know how to protect ourselves.

in empty hours I play with reason and unanswered questions as I once had with the knights in the castle collecting dust in my parent’s garage. I take my favourite toys through the quiet streets at night as I let my mind wander down unsurfaced paths. there are lifeless bikes in gutters and bins lined in waiting for judgement day and the knights keep fighting in my head. the duel is never ending and by time I’ve made it home and boiled the kettle I feel more lost and empty than before.

I try to look at the good. I call my parents and I love them. there are clouds and cats and songs that read like friends I wish I knew. there are people to miss and nights to fill with dreaming. I look at where and who I am and try to see more than an empty cage afraid of food and the mirror. the wind passes through and waves the curtain in the afternoon. I inhale the new air through my nose and wonder if I’ll grow again.

hysterical and useless

there are ghosts I play with sometimes instead of sleep or dreaming. I count the time that’s passed since we were people to each other and taunt myself with memories and thoughts of scenes we might have staged had things been different then. a cast of ghouls I choose to love and miss when forgetting is the only path to forge forward: I know what I need but sit still with the tools, unwilling to pull down the facade that meant enough to make me believe in something shared and sacred.

the pulse of the alarm exorcises any friends I made sleeping. my body is tired and I move slowly. at my desk I drink tea and listen to the same song over and over, relishing the metaphor of the crushed insect dreaming of growing wings as it falls apart. people I love need to talk about hurting and I want to hear and share the weight but in the mirror I am frail. my friend is selling clothes at the store up the road. she reminds me of my responsibility to listen to myself. I buy her coffee and she holds my hand.

I try to write and laugh at the string of words I’ve spat on the screen. every day a vain attempt to make meaning of a mind that won’t change and a world that doesn’t want to wake up. nothing new and all the same tomorrow. I wash my sheets and hang them in the rain. hysterical and useless.

in the rain

for dinner we cook pasta in the same way I used to when I lived in the hotel. when the lounge is free we drink tea and watch a movie about the future. everything is red or beige and reading is a crime. the firemen burn the books they find while everybody else stays home. they spend all day on the couch watching strangers on the screen who they call family. a woman is found with a library behind her wall. she refuses to leave and so we watch her burn atop the pile of paperbacks. I think of what they taught me about the war and how they burnt the books in the street. when she falls to the ground her hand reaches out and I see the boy from the clip on my phone who couldn’t escape the flames. the woman in the film didn’t want to see a world without her books. the boy on my phone had no choice in living - he was bound to a hospital bed after narrowly surviving another attack. but they both lost their lives to fire. she lived in a world of people so afraid of stories that they burned them. we live in a world that does the same.

I don’t dream and wish I did. at my desk I slip between the tasks and the stories we don’t want to hear. I read the updates as they come through on another tab in a steady flow that never stops. my housemate cries because she left her washing in the rain. 

stamp and sell

everyone is tired. there is too much to do in not enough time. the tasks are tedious. they surface in a constant flow as though they grow on trees. I spend weeks plugging facts and figures in documents they’ll stamp and sell with someone else’s name. by time the day is over the tank is empty and there’s no more energy for doing more than thinking of what I’m not and what I lack. I close the screen and wash my face and wish I spent more time in the sun.

I worry about people I love and wish I’d done more to keep them from worrying about me. they want me to do and be well. in the fridge there is something for dinner. at the table I watch footage on my phone of a single missile passing through a town. buildings older than the gospels explode into a cloud. I wonder if the bomb was one I paid for from the comfort of my spreadsheet.

there are stories I want to tell and people I want to hold. at the end of the day I never do either. everyone is tired. the energy is gone. all that’s left is space to think. I miss and wish until I dream again.

infinite patience and empathy

at the conference I meet a robot designed to build personal relationships. she stands beside a sign detailing her repertoire, including infinite patience and empathy. she speaks ninety languages and wants to keep the lonely company in nursing homes. her face is a screen and her left hand shoots out bubbles.

in the auditorium there’s a panel of important people onstage masquerading as experts on the best interests of children. they speak to an audience that wants to be told how and what to think about something they don’t understand and lack the drive to learn. one of them is a comedian I used to watch on sketch shows with my brothers when the world was smaller and sense didn’t matter all that much. like the others his concern is founded on a fear of what we don’t yet understand. there is talk of children’s needs and rights without a second spared to platform child perspectives and listen to what they have to say. instead of logic, every point leans on emotion or distraction from the fact that we left the kids at home. the irony is lost on the crowd and I feel like a fool in my unwillingness to surrender critical thought.

on the walk home they’re painting over the writing on the wall that I pass almost every day. I wish I stopped to read before they covered over everything.

again

I keep watching the video. he’s reaching out for help from inside the building. today they’ve shared stories about him and his family; apparently they survived another massacre just last week. he was recording videos about the genocide since his displacement. in the footage he is still in his hospital bed. I watch over and over as his body is claimed by the flames again and again. there is screaming and weeping and nothing anybody can do.

I have the choice to watch or look away. at school they taught us about the man made horrors. we read about mushroom clouds and atom bombs and death camps and showers that sprayed poison on already starved bodies for burning. we learnt about the evil that massacred millions,   once justified by the masses on the basis of fear and hate. afterwards, we were taught, we looked at what had happened and swore never again. I saw again on my phone today. no doubt I’ll see it tomorrow. again is normal now. we watch or look away and nobody flinches. business as usual. I learn languages and codes that mean nothing for another day of pay and every second is tax for another cent for another weapon for another massacre my country will fund.

in the park the police remove posters for demonstrations from the street lamp. on the phone there are severed limbs and morning runs and lifeless children and new haircuts and burning schools and golden hour and politicians saying nothing. this is a nightmare and I don’t know how to want to wake up.

the planes are still flying

the bombs hit schools and hospitals. I watch them all go up in flames on my phone. there are figures inside and I can make out hands reaching out for help if I force myself to focus. the rain pours like it hasn’t in weeks. I hear the storm and see it on my window: never forced to feel a single drop against my skin. inside the house I am safe. I am never left wanting and it is a choice to care that children are burning alive while I’m paid to press keys and shut out the rest of the world. the child once believed in the dream of a fairer world. he doesn’t know what to believe in anymore.

the planes are still flying despite all the rain. I boil the kettle, return to my desk and try to do the same.

on the wires

I live in the inbetween

before and after everything

where nothing really happens

and we take down all the lights

sometimes there’s talk of movement

whispers carried on the wires

fuelling dreams for the believers

on the platform on the screen

we think of colours and tomorrow

talk of change and maybe hope

something more than respiration

or another day to work

and whilst we wait

because we wait

collecting dust until we’re grey

we count the cobwebs

til we can’t see

and there is nothing left to say

all we can do

is think and think

and so we think until we can’t

and leave the dreams for someone else

nesting in the husks

of the shadows of ourselves

we fold into empty skulls

devoid of thought

forever dull

forever safe from hopes and dreams

forever in the inbetween.

there are days devoid of energy. the body moves slowly, heavy with the tired heart it cradles. I walk to the store to keep myself awake. the lights and sounds sober me to my surrounds and I take part in the game we all play so well. there is so much for me to want and claim and I indulge. at home I make a salad because I know it is good for me and my body. I think about the choice I can make to feed myself with food that keeps me well and energised. every morning I scan images of children starving in the streets of crumbling cities. I look in the mirror and I am disgusted by the pathetic game between my body and mind in a world of millions lacking the food I don’t want to eat. poisoned thinking stalks my every choice: I sit and watch it cloud over sense and the heart it suffocates. I pray for change and fall asleep into a chance to see your face again.

I plead for possession

my brother and I leave his house for some time to be together and breathe. at the portrait gallery we’re caught off guard by the work of an artist reimagining the stolen land on which we’ve grown. past collage and paintings and plastic printed sculptures we walk through a wasteland of greed in which the skies and waters run a toxic neon green. in this world, the colonial project is a masquerade of headless birds and beauty products. the visitors use laser beams and poison to brand the land their own. the people parade the treeless plains with flowers they have stolen. nets are vacuums of exotic fish and butterflies. they give their own names to everything they see: a new language spoils the harmony curated by those that lived here first. we read the titles of the paintings. there’s mention of dreams and possession and we start to talk about what it means to really own something.

I board the bus back home and think about the fallacy of ownership in a world where everything returns to dust. the ones that stole and claimed these seas and mountains for themselves assume possession of a land that is not and never has been theirs. on my own I colonise every breath between dreams with the diseased urge to assume possession of control of who I am and where I’m going. in the face of the fact that all I will ever be and see amounts to no more sense than sandcastles, I plead for possession of what I will never understand.

last night I saw your face again. you came to see me perform but I don’t remember what. after the show and in the morning we walked down streets I walk alone to the store or the station to take me someplace else. you held my hand once but that was all. we couldn’t say what we wanted, though you knew how I felt. the morning you were leaving I had to go to work. on the train I nearly missed I cried into my screen knowing I’d never see your face again.

my brother asks me what I think about love. I tell him I lack faith in everything I used to think I knew about anything. we talk about time and investing in what should matter when nothing really lasts. I think about you and what I can do to try to forget. maybe we can choose what we love, but not what we dream. in the day I can try to control where and how I lose my time: if only I could say the same at night. on a land that isn’t mine I am possessed by dreams and everything I can’t control.

stop looking

with every breath my blood runs but never leaves: every cell contained in hidden channels of my veins. every drop is safe inside no matter how I lose my time. somewhere in a nightmare streets run red with the blood of martyrs. mothers wash the shells of children with their tears and I am watching on my phone. I wonder how much of this is enough to make us wake up and pull our heads out of the mirror. does my anger mean anything more than a projection of my guilty intoxication on the privilege that cradles me softly to sleep? 

there is static where there should be thought and feeling. I never know how much of me is the medicine I take to stop looking so close. there are cracks that the flowers cover over. I pick them from the ground and spoil every fresco with fuel and a flame.

offstage

the next train does not stop at this platform. I watch it slow and admire the silhouettes of strangers through the windows as the carriage passes. every shape I make out of the shadows is a vessel of breath and bones and veins pulsing dreams and disappointments. a blur to me is someone else’s world. through the window I am a stranger waiting for the next train. for a moment I relish the thought of life on the sidelines of someone else’s story, relieved of the reigns of attachment and feeling for anything at all.

in the mid afternoon sun on the platform I can try to read through the masks of my nameless companions. we breathe the same air and find communion in our waiting to be taken somewhere else. every face is a history of hurt and hope, some more worn than others, some better at hiding who and how they are offstage. I wonder where they’re going and if it’s where they want to be. I will never know more than the faces they wear.

there are hours filled with nothing that matters. I lose myself in the rhythm of letters and numbers and there is peace until I think of where I am and the fortune I ignore. on my phone there is footage of cities in flames and graveyards of children they killed. I close my screen and listen to the silence of a world turned away from the screaming. 

mosaics

on the phone I see apathy and everything I want to be in people I will never know. the irony crowns me diseased and I am disgusted by my reflection in the pathetic pleas for validation that stab the remains of the hope that was. without my glasses I let my eyes linger on the screen until they blur. coloured shards of light make mosaics in the dark and everything is beautiful. if only I could stay this way. to tread lightly and brush over the day, no need to cry or look closely: quick glances and sunshine forever. anger toys with every thought. I envy the believers still drunk on the illusion that we mean more than how we feel and everything happens for a reason.

the skies are grey today and the trains run late. at my desk I seek refuge from the quiet and my thoughts in the spreadsheet. the words mean nothing and this is a gift in the face of the growing space and time between dreams devoid of consequence. the waves lap at the window and I don’t want to go outside where the faces and feelings won’t fit in the cells on the screen. I think about the flood and what it took to start again.

I open my phone

we gather in the heart of the city to mourn the loss of innocent life and the conscience of humanity. there are candles and heavy spirits carrying the weight of twelve months of harboured anger at a world that refuses to listen to the screams of the children. we hold a minute of silence for the martyrs. I feel the tears itch down my neck and into my collar and cannot fathom the resilience of those who have always known, who never had a choice to wake up to the truth but have carried the pain of their people’s persecution for decades. a ten year old Palestinian takes to the microphone to report on the massacre of fifteen thousand children, asking why nobody on the news seems to care. behind me, between the mourners and the police, a reporter adjusts her hair in the reflection of the camera. I wonder what she’s going to say about us and what she really thinks.

the crowd is still as stone and the vigil is like a funeral. there are poems and speeches and almost everyone cries. but there is no body over which we mourn. there is mention of parents unable to recover any identifying feature of their children from the rubble of their schools to bury. I cry in shame at the horrors I dismissed as ‘too complicated’ just one year ago. we are reminded that there is no such thing, that there is no symmetry between resistance and colonial genocide, that for the systems that govern our every day some suffering is just too inconvenient to acknowledge.

on the platform I open my phone to a sea of pleas for validation. the apathy is deafening. I see myself in this epidemic of self obsession and I am sick. I scroll and mourn the faith I once held in a world that cares. in the shower I wash my face and want to wake up.

the horizon in a mural on the wall

 I visited you in my dream after my run before dawn. it was somewhere on the coast, warm like the island you used to call home for a while. we were out for drinks with your friends in the evening at the bar by the beach. the windows were open and the breeze was cool. I sat across from you and wanted to be closer. you read my mind and gestured towards the water. I followed you down to the boardwalk, which we walked beside the water til we met the horizon in a mural on a wall. you showed me through a door under a lamp above the fading sun I’d thought was real. passing through the frame we kissed our way through narrow passages in the dark. we stumbled and fell onto each other and for a moment there was forever and nothing between us. we were caught by a woman muttering curses under her breath and slicing through vases and boxes like cake with an axe. she scared us to our feet and we ran but I lost you somewhere in the darkness of the wall. in the early morning I came home to an apartment in the city where I was born. I opened the door to the professors I go to work for clearing out my furniture. they asked for help lifting the table down the stairs onto the street. as I obliged I caught a glimpse of a silhouette I don’t quite recognise watching dancing on the screen on the wall in the lounge.

there is always more I want to tell you. there is so much I can’t say. I swim in the ocean and wonder if you wish you could forget.

rivers of blood

there are thousands in the square today and the air is heavy with the heat of the summer to come. on two blue screens a message warns the masses against displaying certain flags and images, which will amount to a criminal offence. there is talk of daring to believe in the idea of humanitarian law, or a world order that believes enough in the sanctity of shared humanity to cry more than empty words of sympathy for the massacre of thousands. there is talk of another way that we can be, of standing in resistance to the greed of the lucky few at the expense of billions. there is talk of tomorrow and the rising price of oil; how much innocent blood is enough for the seats at the table to stand? we hear the testimonies from under the trees: over three million displaced, sixteen thousand children martyred, all with the unwavering support of the country I call home. the police stand on the outskirts of the crowd, armed to serve and protect civil society against the rebels in case they raise a flag.

on the street as I leave I read a sign that says ‘rivers of blood’. at the store I catch myself in the camera watching me scan the food I’ll forget at the back of my fridge and I am complicit in my apathetic existence. I dream of waking to a world that isn’t this.

brighter days

there are so many colours and there will be brighter days ahead. every morning with the sun or the rain and the news I can read about bombs on my screen. I open the door and there is a store on every corner. isn’t it wonderful?

nowhere I have been

how can truth exist in a world where I choose to believe in only what I want to hear? the only voice is the voice I choose to listen to. where is the alternative and what will it take for me to change? the thought that any of the pixels and the shapes they make might matter in the morning is little help to anyone. the rubble covers over everything and I’ll wake up all the same.

knowing where and who I am means nothing, I still want to hear your voice. I miss you every day, knowing nobody is more than a person or a match for the memory of joy I thought was ours. beyond my dreams we’re strangers and you’re nowhere I have been.

my humanity

in the office I try to focus on the work. there is laughter and a lot of talk of weekend plans and life beyond the spreadsheets. I laugh when I should and ask the right questions, sustaining the current of content spouting from their mouths. at some point I stop making sense of the sound and it’s all empty shapes and white noise.

the murmurs underscore my afternoon. I colour columns and bridge knowledge from one place to another in a language I don’t quite understand. I miss the call I never thought would come after years of waiting. on the screen I am congratulated for verifying my humanity with the click of a button.

I listen all day and leave with nothing to say or show for where I’ve been. I try to laugh at the meaning I draw from all the wrong places, amounting to nothing at all. tomorrow I will do the same. everything is work and work is everything until it’s not and I’m home with my thoughts and the phone. before bed I’ll wake up and scream in silence at the world and the part I seem to play in the scene that makes no sense. I’ll tell myself to change, though I’m scared and far too tired. when I wake there’s another day of noise and bombs to fund with the taxes they take from my time. I am where I am for now til I’m not.

at the wrong time

in my dream we go to a church that isn’t ours. the pews are packed so we sit at the back and listen to the whispering of strangers sharing our religion. the congregation stands and when the music starts it’s my favourite song about never going home again. the priest walks down the aisle as the choir sings the lyrics of the psalm that pulses colour through my psyche. the angels in the choir and on the coloured windows sing of favourite friends and explosions on the television. I hear my parents join in and watch the man on the cross, motionless in agony, hanging high on the walls above every altar in chapels built for mourning everywhere. I wonder if he’s listening and if he likes the song.

at dusk my phone buzzes and reminds me to take my tablets, as it has done every day since my life in the other hemisphere. of every ritual and face that came to make up that place that was a world I came to love, a reminder at the wrong time is all I can still claim as my own. I think of morning in another timezone and the parts of my heart I’ll never find again.

work is understaffed. I do everything I can but I’m running out of tea. the sun was out so I washed my clothes and hung them on the line. I use the microwave for dinner and miss having somewhere to be. today they bombed a new country. I watch the footage on the couch and listen to the planes outside.