– Passport –

Grief is my passport
into new territories, into delayed flights
of panic and rage, dragging a samsonite
full of kryptonite through terminals
of lost composure

It is a ticket
onto planes where the safety video
is a bag of lemons to suck on,
the seat belts are made of straw,
the lunch served is turbulence

The chair in front reclines
into my eyeballs,
life jackets only inflate
through incessant wailing and the sick bags
are already chunky

Grief is my entry into places
that smart traveller warns to avoid,
the spots where even the customs
official on arrival says
welcome, I guess

It is a culture shock
of indiscernible noise,
taste buds missing in transit
and the language I scrubbed up on
I recall none of

Grief is the tour bus
thrusting through mountains
when the destination was meant to be at sea
level and I am congested by the drops in oxygen
and options for a toilet stop

I trudge passed streetside vendors,
jetlagged and clutching bags, purchasing postcards
for places too fogged over to see,
discovering that this truly is
a lonely planet

Grief cancels plans and books
the earliest flight back with a suitcase
heavier than I started with, the baggage
handlers hammer-throwing me,
my duty-free spirit broken

and seeping into every crevice,
sogging the cardboard packaging of the
more-than-any-human-ever-needs-to-eat Toblerone
and this passport has too many years
sewn into its pages

I stamp travel restrictions
onto myself and hibernate in a cave
of pillows and soup, scared
to tread into a forever changed
world

– Before most of the street stirs –

Before most of the street stirs

Before most of the street stirs
I am up at the crack of
poetry

and feeling bloated after gorging on
last night’s noodle bowl
of memories

In the shower my hair
is lathered, conditioned,
yet my hackles stay frizzy

and my nerves are split ends,
raw to the touch
of word and deed

I towel off and try to cajole joy
from the detour it has taken
from my face the last year

I stumble out and drown
my cereal in mourning’s daily downpour,
my outlook as sombre as dried oats

These dripping tears have aged and wrinkled,
a grief no longer fresh,
a sorrow no longer rushed

I wonder how much pain
one endures before it simply becomes
the norm

– How –

How do trees know when to drop
their leaves
How does the phone know when I am hungry
for a way to show my wife I love her

How does a mother intuit when to push
her baby out of the nest
How does a parent know when to take down
the posters from the child’s room

How do we know when to keep fighting
and when to call it quit
How does grief know when to hurt me
then to heal me