Is there such a thing as too much peace?

The warm gentle lights of the kitchen are cloying,

The tea is too sweet,

Your affection too stable

Where did that throbbing heartache go?

That yearning, twisted like a tree,

Take me back to the all consuming,

The sickening of it,

I float on the gentle breeze,

And long for the destructive gale...

I’d forgotten that feeling

Mind unspooling

Thoughts rolling in and out like the tide

The coil loosening

Hearing the radio

Seeing people around

How did I get hear?

When did this hum in my ears begin?

When did I stop blinking?

I was an animal once

Baking in the sun

Playing in dirt

Imagining and wishing

Now I just wait

Constantly

For the next drop...

If you suppose I always go

Up the river heave and ho

Against the current, up the flow,

Backwards

I used to know just what to do

And what was what, and who was who,

That was before I came unglued,

Backwards

You thought that I was just a child

And yet a look, and yet a smile

Left alone to weep and while

Backwards

You left me there and went ahead

Left me unshod left me undead

My little heart a...

The boxes were still flat,

Bought in bulk,

Tape dispenser, labels, a fine fat marker shiny and new,

Repairs that had been untouched for years were suddenly finished,

New paint,

Fixed chips,

Replaced appliances,

He’s done this thirty-six times,

Shuffled from place to place like a rag,

She’s never blown in the wind,

Settled like and old mop left in the corner of the laundry,

Ten years of memories...

I wasn’t looking for love, and I wasn’t looking left either. Her van smacked right into me as I was crossing the street on my bicycle on the way home one drizzly Tuesday evening. Thankfully, as I would later discover, she’s Melbourne’s slowest driver and the owner of one of the city’s oldest vans.

I looked up at her from the flat of my back on the bitumen as she leant over me, with the old VB bi...

She loved to stand on the rocks and stare right down into the water. That was her favourite thing about the place; the water was always so clear. She could see the riverbed way down beneath. Sometimes she would see see a pair of claws, a murray cray walking backwards along the bottom, or bubbles from an eastern long neck turtle. The river was snow melt at some point far away and never dried up, ev...