wrote you a poem

Sydney, Australia.

[s0ftplacetoland]

fieldwork

I went down alone where the grasses breathed like animals. Nothing had a name there— only mouths, only heat coiled beneath the roots.

They said not to wait in that place. But I did. I’ve always loved what watches without blinking. And there is a silence that wants me fed to it.

In every dream I’m the offering— the one who walks in without a lantern, who lies down willingly on the stone with no altar.

I have never begged. Only watched the teeth open like petals and called it spring.

There’s a way to hold still that invites the strike. You learn it young.

It is not suffering, if you choose it. It is not love, either— but it’s close.

-g.l.brooks

[wrote-you-a-poem]

I wrote a love poem today

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How can the alphabet in any order transpose the way you illuminate when you speak of things you love.

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"I will be the mother I am and let you draw from my body"

- St. Thomas Aquinas

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View this post on Instagram

A post shared by @poetryisnotaluxury on Aug 30, 2020 at 11:24am PDT

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Spending this summer carrying my child.

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There is the first touch. There is that first true moment of knowing.

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i saw your poem there will always be a part of me that waits for you and it struck me and then i saw m. edwards at the bottom and that is my name too and it made me wonder. it’s so strange to see words written by someone else that almost feel like the thoughts in your own head , and then to see it signed by yourself with no memory of it

Wow - that is such a cool synchronicity!

Message me off anon so we can be friends ✨

[ragewrites]

The first two poems in this micro-series are rewrites (remixes, perhaps?) of two works by the brilliant @avolitorial: (x) (x). They were made as part of a swap exercise Aya was kind enough to try with me. The third is a product of thoughts I had while working on them; in taking ink to them I unintentionally revealed an overarching narrative, and as poetry is largely conversation  — particularly between the poet’s selves — I decided to round off the thread.

Besides, I like threes. There’s power in them and in that.

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She is time and space, or she is beyond it. She hides the universe in the folds of her knowing. She is something I can’t fathom in her entirety. She is something I can’t put my finger on, but I want to. I am searching for the words but she is another language. Nobody speaks her. She does not even have to say anything but when she does the earth shifts. When she does time stops. She is the most gentle god. She is as distant from me as she is within me. Oh how does she seep so deep down to the bones she must be the ocean. She must be the salt of my earth. And when she speaks to me, I am moved. Over years she could shape the stone of me with her hands, yet she is something I can never hold in mine. She is bigger than my hands. She is exquisite like the stars. I could not pull her down. She is infinite. I could not mute her burning. But as long as I become lost in the folds of her she lifts me up, and oh god I burn in constellation with her.

m . e d w a r d s

[last-picture-show]

“Language is a skin: I rub my language against the other. It is as if I had words instead of fingers, or fingers at the tip of my words. My language trembles with desire.”

Roland Barthes, A Lover’s Discourse: Fragments, Translation by Richard Howard, 1978

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She is in the kitchen shucking corn from their husk. Her long-lonely-work hands tear like the mouth of an animal her second nature rips the fibres from their roots and drops them in a bucket leaving neat yellow rows spitting drips of flesh down the boney knuckles of her fingers and down her wrists.

I want to ask her what it means to be hungry to be hungered for to be pulled from your skin like she must have some thought on the matter after all those years in the kitchen I want to ask her if she is in something like love and when was the last time somebody ripped at her with their own mouth their own animal their hands the last time she dripped down their knuckles.

But you don’t talk about certain things you don’t talk to your family about hunger other than your belly you don’t tell them how they got here and what loves they passed through on the way to their body

You don’t tell your children why they are alive and you don’t tell them why you aren’t

I want to tell her I got caught in the middle of something begging to be swallowed got picked at while nobody was looking got spat out I want to ask her how to go on how to forget how the animal still lives in your hands how you rip out its teeth tell it to be quiet for the last time how it feeds on your memories when the lights are out and nobody can hear you breathe.

Because I am still panting running I’m still hungry still growing still turning over a body that is not there arching my head to the sky and calling my lovers name to the hot night.

I want to ask her if she is in something like love and how it stays beneath the skin like instinct how it lives in your bones I want to ask her if our knuckles grow thick from the weight of holding ourselves back I want to ask why her bones break so easily now

I want to ask how to not be eaten and then survive to survive your own animal how to cage it how to pull it from it’s skin I want to ask her how to be broken I want to ask her how to be torn apart from myself and never cry

m . e d w a r d s

27.12.17

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Episode 3 of my podcast is up!

This is Daniel Aguilar, creator and host of @thedeathofmy podcast.

Firstly, although I just met Daniel, it’s clear how incredibly sweet, genuine and generous he is.

His father died suddenly in a freak accident, which sent Daniel along the path of dedicating his time to creating a space to help others with their own grief, and to start normalising the conversation. The Death of My Podcast speaks with people about a loved one they have lost, and how they have moved through grief.

Find the full episode on Apple https://podcasts.apple.com/au/podcast/sudden-death-his-father-creating-community-from-grief/id1534279498?i=1000499694806

Find the full episode on Spotify https://open.spotify.com/episode/1Aet0b9KEey73e05YRWNFt?si=pFOe8yvOQhKW9KbwP8k4wA

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This is a conversation that has stayed with me since recording it. There are SO MANY golden truth bombs.

Jag left his high flying investment career, lost everything, and build his life up again from nothing in a totally different way. He retrained as a therapist, working mostly within the scope of womens emotional and sexual trauma, giving true meaning and value back to his work and his life.

This is a genuinely valuable listen for both women AND men.

These are some of the topics we cover

* Money does not buy happiness

* Coming back to what you truly enjoy

* The true meaning of endings

* Shedding toxic people

* Having no money after having lots

* Trusting the universe

* Negative self talk

* Men navigating the emotional freedoms their fathers have have not had

* What Jag would say to people feeling suicidal

* Forgiveness??

* Parenting through your own emotional trauma

* Fear of change

* How holding on to emotion effects the body physically

* Jag’s best life lessons

Apple

https://podcasts.apple.com/au/podcast/from-high-flying-investment-career-to-becoming-trauma/id1534279498?i=1000497564853

Spotify

https://open.spotify.com/episode/2POe5p34h2I973zdjTTLmY?si=ImSXNUx-Qhi9wwPe0V4NUQ

[wrote-you-a-poem]

Sorry but can I quit my job and just become one of those 1950’s housewives, heavily pregnant and burning a cigarette hole in the armchair falling asleep from my 2nd afternoon martini?