Friendship

I've been thinking a lot about friendship recently. It seems like some people just click with others right away and go through their lives surrounded by good friends, always having someone to spend time and have fun with.

Then there are people like me. Yes, I do have some amazing friends but my best friend in the whole world is in Scotland studying and the other friends I have are never around much. I can’t blame them, they have their own lives and things to do.

I don’t make friends easily and I envy people who do. Someone I love deeply pointed out to me that at a certain age, we never really make new friends. All we have are the ones we made as kids and teenagers and eventually, life pulls most friendships apart.

It’s a sad thought that we all end up going our own way and losing contact. Even with things like Facebook and Twitter, a comment or a like is never the same as just hanging out and having a laugh with a friend.

I know I’m not on my own in this. There are plenty of people who feel the same way and it’s sad to think there can be so much loneliness in a world with so many people. Even when you feel so alone, remember that someone else out there feels the exact same way.

All any of us can do is make the best of what we have and be a good person. I believe great friendships are like love, they can appear out of nowhere and you feel that you've known that person forever. We all have to grow up and just try our best to not grow apart. The friends we all have are the ones who've seen us at our best and worst and have supported us despite everything. I believe if you’re a good person and try your best, then you find people who will be there for you. All you have to do is be open to possibility and hold on to what you have.

We all make mistakes in life. This week I almost lost the person I love most in the world because of my own stupidity. But we’re all human beings, we all have faults. Love is the best type of friendship that exists because you grow together and if you’re very lucky, you never grow apart. 

CXLVII

Sunlight yawned over rooftops and pierced the hotel room window.

Shining on your face as you lay back in my arms

Turning it golden

And I remember thinking in that early morning with the day stretched before us

That your face now illuminated my world

And made all things brighter.

Your eyelashes fluttered as I ran one finger over your chest

You struggle between sleep and the wakefulness of my soft touch.

Eyes opened,

You smiled and said the words

“It’s too bright”

I kissed you, shielding your eyes from the sun

While warming my fingers on your face that radiated hope and joy.

Your eyes crinkled and I lay there watching you

Creating stories in my head, writing you enough poems to last a life time.

Wondering if you’d ever wish to read them.

Those days were filled with points and scores,

Nobody wanted to miss, they all craved winning a trophy

And I sat there smiling, slightly numb until you placed your hand on my leg and squeezed.

And I melted.

I knew I couldn’t miss… I had to win…

The trophy I wanted was too precious and rare.

I had to have you and not just for a few stolen nights in a city we both had never seen before.

At night we searched the sky for UFO’s and laughed.

And even in the dark, with your hands on my body

And your lips kissing mine

There was no blackness any longer,

Just light…

I would kiss your shoulder and sigh as shooting stars and sunbeams tickled my mind

And changed my world forever

As it collided with yours

Part of me is still there in that city, in that hotel, in that room, in that bed.

At night when I can’t sleep, I close my eyes and go back there...

You beside me.

Strong arms curling around me.

You take me away with you.

Whisper things only I understand and we kiss.

Curtains close and we are surrounded by darkness…

Then your hands find me in the blackness, you pull me to you

Rainbows glow around us, newly polished with love

And there is only light. 

Step City

The following is the direct result of a dream I had recently about a place called 'Step City' which was full of uneasy people but was completely silent, except for the noise of footsteps.


Raven wings massage the tip of a bright white sun erased by haze.

I am starved of stars in this city.

Inhaling without contemplation, surviving without sustenance on poisoned air.

The parks are a sea of people, all trying to eat nature

Until there is nothing left to feed on.

A city of heat and hurry, no rawness, only impurity.

In a grey building, gloves are placed on,

My final meal, two hours later,

Is nothing more than stomach contents on an autopsy table.

I belong to the city now.

My undesired energy cut out of my system.

As I walk the city streets, I am sure I am screaming,

Yet only my footsteps leave an echo.

Erebus

‘As I kept climbing, there were rocks and boulders, and many of them resembled human shapes. Somebody is watching me. I had a feeling that somebody, or something, was watching me. That there was some other presence there.’

Over the last few nights, my dreams have been haunted by Mount Erebus. I say haunted, because nothing in my dreams has been clear or vivid, just elusive shadows of an eerie snow covered mountain rising before me with its steaming center both bubbling before me and within me, every lick of steam manifesting itself into the clamminess of my skin as I awake. Mount Erebus is the most southerly active volcano on earth, a real debauched example of the extreme differences of heat and chill that exist together. Last year I went through a phase of obsessing about this mountain in Antarctica and it now seems like it’s calling to me in my dreams, seeking to become vivid again, for me to tune into its frequency.

In my dreams, I am surrounded by needles that seek to inject a cold world into my veins and make my head spin in air filled with crystals that catch the light. At night, the moon and stars of the southern hemisphere do not twinkle because their light is just too intense to ever fade. The snow and ice moan as others arrive to where the cold has taken me, and together, we inhabit the caves of the mountain chiseled out by the steam of the volcano that lies beneath.

And when I wake up, it suddenly becomes clear to me. This mountain is telling me the love story that exists within it. The lure of the cold and heat that work together to make Erebus so beautiful yet interminably volatile is their inability to compromise; their constant struggle to be dominant is their lovemaking in which passion abounds and difference drives them towards a new world. This cold, dead place is caressed by flame and brought to life and, like any love story, there is hostility among the obsession. In my heart, Erebus has an existence far beyond living; a skeleton of ice with a heartbeat of molten lava erupting into the sky, coming alive under the force of tempestuous nature. In my dreams and in my waking life, Erebus is as the Greeks described it- The Underworld, where lovers' tantrums are followed by a white silence of contentedness, when a mountain of ice and fire lays still… and thinks.

Hailstones by Seamus Heaney

I've been reading this poem all morning...

Hailstones.

I

My cheek was hit and hit:
sudden hailstones
pelted and bounced on the road.

When it cleared again
something whipped and knowledgeable
had withdrawn

and left me there with my chances.
I made a small hard ball
of burning water running from my hand

just as I make this now
out of the melt of the real thing
smarting into its absence.

II

To be reckoned with, all the same,
those brats of showers.
The way they refused permission,

rattling the classroom window
like a ruler across the knuckles,
the way they were perfect first

and then in no time dirty slush.
Thomas Traherne had his orient wheat
for proof and wonder

but for us, it was the sting of the hailstones
and the unstingable hands of Eddie Diamond
foraging in the nettles.

III

Nipple and hive, bite lumps,
small acorns of the almost pleasurable
intimated and disallowed

when the shower ended
and everything said wait.
For what? For forty years

to say there, there you had
the truest foretaste of your aftermath -
in that dilation

when the light opened in silence
and a car with wipers going still
laid perfect tracks in the slush.