May 2012
11 posts
4 tags
The Space Between Oxygen And Hydrogen
When the air touches water, it makes a mirror. When I touch you, you do the same.
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The Monster Made Of Black Paint
Close your eyes if the world offends you. Because it’s better to be the only blind person in the world than to try and make the whole world blind.
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The Reason For Airports
You can only hurt someone until there’s nothing left to hurt.
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The Remaining Mirrors
And I hide because there’s more to me than what you see and I’m not sure you’d like the rest. I know that sometimes, I don’t like the rest.
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The Glass Attic Of My Mind
What would you like to tell yourself today, to make yourself feel ok?
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The Line Between Madness And Life
When I’m crazy, you tell me it’s just the chemicals in my brains mixing and unmixing themselves at the wrong time.
When I’m in love, you tell me it’s as real as sunshine and we’re greater than just molecules and air.
So I choose to believe different things, depending on my love. Depending on my chemicals. At the time.
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The House We Keep Moments In
May you do the things you want to and always remember what it felt like when you were doing them.
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The Defiance Of The Different
Most importantly, if you can at all avoid it, don’t be normal. Strive, burn and do everything you can to avoid being the industry standard. Even the highest industry standard. Be greater than anything anyone else has ever dreamed of you. Don’t settle for pats on the back, salary increases, a nod-and-a-smile. Instead, rage against the tepidness of the mundane with every fiber of...
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The Remaining Me
Even after the entire world has taken me apart, there’s still a part of me left for you.
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The Carrington Event
Love proudly. Let it burn anything between you.
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The Day We Stopped Dying
You’re wrong.
The question is not
“How many times can your heart be broken?”
The question is
“How many times can it heal?”
April 2012
10 posts
4 tags
The Middle Of The Universe
I understand that you care. I just sometimes feel that the people who know me best, are people I’ve never met.
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The Pain Of Each Other
I do not understand why you would go out of your way to hurt each other, when life can already hurt so much.
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The Closeness Of Shadows
You still believe you’re allowed to hurt the people who love you more than anyone else.
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The Envy Of A Billion Little Unique Snowflakes
I don’t care what people think. I fell in love with you. Not people.
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The Burning Wings And False Light
If you are a bee in a dark room, the faintest lightbulb looks like the same sun that guides you home. But please, don’t fly to it, you should save your energy and wait until real dawn. Please, sleep.
I know you’ll ignore this and kill yourself, trying to fly through the hot glass of that bulb, to that fake sun. I just thought I should say something.
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The Order In Which Things Are Drawn
No picture of a person ever feels alive until you draw in the eyes. So open your eyes. Let at least one of us feel alive.
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The Salting Of The Earth
You should know that there is something worse than hate and that is unlove.
Because hate is anger over something lost, hate is passion, hate is misguided, it’s caring for the wrong things but it is still caring.
But unlove, unlove is to unkiss, to unremember, to unhold, to undream, to undo everything that ever was and leave smooth stone behind in its wake.
No fire.
No fury.
Just,...
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The Hidden Depths
You’ve got to keep looking for them, even after you find them. Otherwise, you lose them.
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The Air Carries You Away
I’ve tried to put you down on paper so many times.
But you keep getting up.
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The Light Of Future Memories
You make me nostalgic for a love that hasn’t even happened yet.
March 2012
12 posts
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The Voice In The Back Of My Heart
When you have nothing left to say to me, say it anyway.
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The Different Ways I Die
And it made me lay awake, thinking of everyone I’ve ever known who died.
And I hoped that someone would lay awake one night, thinking of me.
(Don’t worry. I will feel enough for all of you.)
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The Eventual Ghost
You have until the hour you die to do everything you’ve ever really wanted to do and say everything you’ve ever really wanted to say. It sounds less fair when you get older.
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The Age At Which It Happens
One day, you realise that there are some people you’ll never see again. At least, not in the same way.
The Way Home
If photographs of you are as close as I can get, then that’s as close as I’ll get.
If the edge of the land, is as close as I can get, then that’s as close as I’ll get.
If right up beside you is as close as I can get, then that’s as close as I’ll get.
I have and always will be, as close as I can get.
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The Importance Of Breaking Things And People
Just so you know, there are certain people who were put here to break you.
So you could learn how to pull yourself back together again.
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The Strangest Days
And when I’m far from home and I feel like an alien, trust me, somehow I never left you.
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The Truth Is Different Every Day
You keep trying to tell the truth about who you are but you keep changing, every time someone listens.
Lights Out. Gorilla Poetry.
If you want a free copy of I Wrote This For You - and take part in a little gorilla poetry mission, go here, now.
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The Words Are All In Languages I Do Not Speak
And yet, when you get here, you are not given instructions. No one tells you that heart A is meant to slot into heart B. There are no diagrams about how you are meant to live each day or directions on how to assemble some semblance of happiness. You are not even told what colours to paint your feelings or, given a purpose and a reason for your life.
You have to make all of it up. You have to...
The Broken Ice In Your Wake
I have a list in my head of all the feelings I still want to feel before I die. And you have ticked so many things off that list.
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The Waves Are Still Going To Make It To Shore
Stop thinking about what they’re thinking about you.
February 2012
21 posts
4 tags
I Read This Out Aloud For You
“So what the hell is all this? I don’t know. I don’t know what I’ll write let alone what people will like when I wake up each morning. I do not know what Jon, the photographer of I Wrote This For You, will send me. I believe this is why I still enjoy it.
Perhaps, in some sense, it is the witnessing of someone else’s life. A way to let someone know that someone does in...
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The Relative Phenomena
I would do my taxes. Fill out insurance forms.
Count grains of rice in a bag.
Whatever made time pass the slowest with you.
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The Standard Operating Procedures
No matter how hard you try, you will never be stranger than what the world considers normal.
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The Things We Are Supposed To Be
Just so you know, I don’t. And I refuse to care.
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The Strangest Voice
You’ll forgive me but I’m professionally curious. I’m paid to be interesting. I’m indebted to mystery.
And perhaps you have thought that because I use simple words, I am an idiot savant who does not understand bigger ones, but I’ve experienced such limerance from a simple dulcet daliance with complexity that I’ve come to believe that such things almost always...
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The Grinning Fool
Each night, somewhere out there, people go to bed, petrified that I might be happy as I am.
And I wake up each day and make their worst fears come true.
PS.
I hope you’re happy.
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The Violent Peace
You kill death every day that you live.
And I do my best to murder hate whenever I have the chance to love.
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The Day You Shot Me In The Back Of The Head
The sun rose like it does on any other day, on the day you shot me in the back of the head.
I’d just made coffee and you’d come back from doing the groceries and I asked if you wanted some without turning my head to look at you, on the day you shot me in the back of the head.
And I hit the floor so slowly and so hard and without any real warning, on the day you shot me in the...
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The Stuff And The Things
If you like a whole bunch of things and I like a whole bunch of things, maybe one of the things that we both like, can be each other.
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The Shot Stars
If your star falls down, you will find mine lying beside yours.
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I Wrote This For You. On Tour
I will be available for speaking/readings in the following places on the following dates.
Johannesburg, South Africa.
27-29 February
Cape Town, South Africa.
2-4 March
SXSW/Austin, USA.
9-12 March
New York, USA.
14-23 March
Now, I’ve spoken to my tour manager, who is me and he’s indicated that because everything’s been finalised...
4 tags
The Things I Meant
A heart was meant to beat. And air was meant to be breathed, close to your ear. And your skin was meant to remember what mine felt like. And some songs were meant to play on repeat. And the sun was meant to come down. And we were meant to ignore it when it woke up. And days were meant to pass. And nights were meant to follow. And your eyes were meant to cry out whatever pain was left.
And I...
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The Longest Shadow
You know what I would do for love. But no one ever asked me how far I would go, for loss.
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The Billions Of Pieces
The human heart is made from the only substance in the universe that can become stronger, after it’s been broken.
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The Similarities Didn't Make Us The Same
You spend your whole life learning what you shouldn’t care about. Until one day you find out you didn’t care enough.
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The Defect At The Heart Factory
There is no heart you can have that another heart will not have a problem with.
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The Sun Will Freeze Before I Do
I promised a lot.
But never that I wouldn’t get back up after you knocked me down.
Never that my broken remains wouldn’t catch fire.
Never that I wouldn’t burn through the ice and snow one more time.
And you can slam your glaciers into to me, so slowly, and even though they hurt, I will not go numb from the cold, I will not pass out from the pain, I will look up...