Simple words carry all the weight.
Not fragile,
Nor vulnerable,
Not teetering,
Nor doomed,
Not hopeless,
Myopic,
Oblivious,
Or shallow,
Just
Life.
Us.
Home.
Truth.
Safe.
Happy.
and Love.
Seven words.
For seven years.
For ever.
Bryson Thomas
Tag: free verse
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Night is when the words visit.
Taunting my mind
In diaphanous cloth.
As cool, heavy sheets
Sing lullabies of safety
To slow my nervous heart.
And coyotes wail their carrion tales
To everyone, in particular.Night is when leaves grow
And dreams flow
And gods file past
With skies in tow
And dew hoards starlight
For the near-dawn show
Night is when scars heal
And lovers reveal
And the world is,
In a word,
Reset.
There is hope here on this earth as yet.Bryson Thomas
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Roaming around it,
I know I’ll miss this place
When it’s time to leave.
This sun-stained face with
Heritage curb appeal.
These paint-swatch eyes
Scuffed by struggle,
Flecked with joy.
These arms that held
People who are now
Only pictures.
This comfortable chest
With its spare room,
Decorated with love.
This waist, a crooked
Hallway between hope
And nostalgia.
The leg scars that the kids
Measured their growth against,
When I stood tall,
And they still looked up
In wonder.
These knees that creak,
Like the side door
Reserved for friends.
These epilated shins
With marble-veined facade.
The left pinky toe,
Still crouched in surfing stance,
Like I was when I broke it
Trying to impress a pretty girl.
This place.
This sweet, sustaining ephemera.
This home,
Was only ever rented.Bryson Thomas
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This morning,
Like every morning,
I surrender stiff knees to an east-facing mat,
Closed eyes still propolised with sleep,
Bare arms goose-bump quilted
Against the night-touched air,
I still my body,
And notice my breath.Breath.
Just one word for an eternal battle with gravity,
Life forced into cells
From whence it will plot its escape.
But not today.
And not now.
Now is abiding by my stream of consciousness
Without wading in.
Neither war
Nor worry
Nor warming
Nor waste
Now is simple.
Now is breath.Bryson Thomas
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My feet are bellows,
Forcing furnace-fired air
From my instep through my shoes,
Heating socks and venting from cracks
In the black-waxed pair.
The rouge powder dirt
Plumes about tired trees,
White-gum bark flush with rosacea
As sweat pricks at the heat-rash
Playing house above my knees.Across the rail lines
Warped and poorly drawn,
Shimmers dance and locusts crack
From leprechaun places
In the high school lawn.My sagging backpack
Leaching all my resolve,
Its sweaty shroud kneels heavy
On a once-fresh shirt, praying
Pedagogical mass.Year nine in Australia
And it’s 44 centigrade,
At least, that’s what I’ll remember
Getting to class in December,
As finer details fade.Bryson Thomas
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Today, Winter sits on our shoulders
As our boots munch on the path,
And I love you.
Today, Spring casts off its jacket
And skips ahead of our bikes,
And I love you.
Today, Summer spreads its feast on a blanket
As we wiggle our toes,
And I love you.
Today, Autumn steeps tired leaves in honey-tea light
And calls us home,
And I love you.
Four days of love.
Forever.Bryson Thomas
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My mind is a multiverse of parallel thoughts.
I see the forests and every single tree,
And the leaves, grass, needles and buds,
Chlorophylled chaos pressed into newsprint,
Where all the stories lead.
A book of unnumbered pages,
Shuffled ’til they flutter with,
Pigeons in the street,
Shooed by a doorman,
Stood sentry at a revolving doorway,
A carousel of shifting rooms,
Sirens of possibility pulling at my soul.
But now the carousel acts centrifuge.
Concentrating all my focus.
On to one, brilliant slide.
Universes retract.
Galaxies collapse.
A wondrous
Singularity
.
Let
There be
Bright creation!
To split the rumination,
Nascent worlds and systems,
And comets and stars and
Oops! There’s a galaxy,
Oops! There’s some gravity,
Pulling me down to earth,
Circling the sun,
Spinning around a viscous core,
And I take back the mantel,
Of divided attention,
And once again,
Let my mind refract the world,
So I might dance among colourful thoughts.Bryson Thomas
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20,000 days from now
My arthritic fingers
Curl into claws
But if I hold them together
And point my aching thumbs
They look like the heart
Still beating for you.20,000 days from now
My seized neck
Angles my head toward the ground
But if I stay close
And turn my rheumy eyes
I see the point of your cheekbone
That I love to kiss20,000 days from now
My thoughts are sand dunes
Drifting and squeaking
But when I walk where the sun
Strikes the brightest quartzite grains
I am back
At our first I love youBryson Thomas
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They say names have power.
They say names can’t hurt you.
Which is it?
And who are they?
They’ll hate me.
They’ll tease me.
They’ll laugh.
They’ll judge me.
They will
They will
They will
Will they?
Well, here’s what I will.
I will that people would own their words.
I will that trolling
And hatred
And blind bigotry
And casual insults
Be writ scarlet on their chests.
I will that everyone using
A keyboard to kill
A screen to injure
A pen to stab
Be out as public
And permanent
And viral
As their cold
Runny product.
I will seek them out.
I will give them names.
I will call them into the light,
From under their Momma’s
Skirting boards
We will see their tiny, quivering shadows.
We will see myriad sad, lonely souls.
Pissing into the wind.
Wee willies.
A hurricane of wind.
But still just a whole lot of piss.
And piss only hurts if you drink it,
So they say.Bryson Thomas
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It’s always somewhere.
The little tattoo, tucked under a dog-collar.
The mantis, praying for prey.
The crease in the vestments.
A speck in the font.
The crack in the marble wall of
Human institutions.
Just wide enough
For thousands to fall through.
Just deep enough
To keep their cries from kinder ears.
Just small enough
To be papered over,
In courts
Inquiries
High commissions
Low places.
Stick a wedge in it!
Flip the tables!
Tear it all down and
Reclaim the lost!
Christ on a cross,
We’ve nothing to lose!
We’re already crushed.Bryson Thomas
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