Colin James

Australia

All the Unwritten

time stops after midnight
careless ink catches
like an itch on the page

like a poem
that doesn’t have time
to be

like words lost surviving
in a desert, thirsty
questioning

the objectivity of the oasis
not knowing if the excuse
is simply rising heat,
the shimmering sun
against hot air.
 

Work

Work cannot be enough-
look to the horizon,
watch the sun rise,
the world is not over,
and so there is always more
to be done.

Your hands are more
than tills, you need
to eat things that grow
in the dirt, yes
but even the ground
needs a season
to let the dreams
of nourishment die

watch instead, the dreams
of the next harvest flower,
and take
their place.
 

Kussaz

this is not
kissing, it is tandem
felt.

it is a synchronicity of skin cells married
to the unconscious ease of paradoxical
sleep, eyes twitching; body paralyzed

in a place that could be anywhere
but outside of you.

this is
kissing, it is feeling
incarnate.

it is skin cells destroyed with the repetitive
brush of softness, re-growing with the drawn
blood of impact, unbruised; peeled away

in a place that could not be anywhere
but just the barest whisper inside 
of them.