Here.

Even in this heat I'll put another jacket on

Wrap the blanket a little closer 

So it feels like you are here

I can still smell you on me

And that's enough for me

It feels like you are here 

Pretend my flinches are your heartbeats 

Pretend my sobs are your sighs

Pretend my demons are your whispered goodbyes 

I put another jacket on

Yet it still grows colder 

But there's so much ice in your voice

That even in this blistering cold 

It feels like you are here 

Dark Shadow

Someone once told me
That little girls want to marry their fathers

I found one just like you, you know
When I was a little girl

I never knew when he would snap
I never knew if he was hot or cold

He was just like you.

And when I swirled on ice
(Not that you ever saw)
I was never afraid

I am not afraid of pain, or failure
I have had enough practice as your daughter.

You are my darkest shadow
And my deepest fears
You are screams in the dead of the night

There is too much of you in me
But without you, I am incomplete.

I am tired of men who say
'My God, I love a strong woman'.

I cannot love anyone
Who loves my war wounds
More than me.

They will let anyone
Say anything, do anything
And watch in glee as you grit your teeth

And when finally you snarl and roar
Like a baited bear

They will say

Look
Look how fierce she is
'My God, I love a strong woman'.

Pearls Before Swine

I know you think badly of me
For my ravishing, voluptuous, lascivious nights

I know it is not love, but
I think the fence is beautiful
I think vicious, vapid lust is beautiful

I admire its purity
I admire its integrity
I admire all that is bold and brazen in this world.

And when I float down the stairs
With kisses on my thighs
And knots in my hair

I feel beautiful

Believe me, my friend, I know what it is to be used
I know what it is to be betrayed and abused

Not by them
By you.

My lovers have loved me well
Only if for a night

But my friends
My honest, honourable, patient friends
The ones I would cross oceans for
Do not even walk over puddles for me

If my body be sacred, like
The cathedral on 8th Street
A thousand men may enter me
And I will still have my sanctity

But there are other things that break much more easily

Do not give what is holy to the dogs
Nor cast your pearls before swine
Lest they trample them under their feet
And turn and tear you in pieces.

Cloud High

Will you live your life as a tree for me?

Never changing
Ever changing

What God has put on this earth
Let only an act of God
Or child of God

Tear asunder

And I

I will live my life as the hummingbird

Whimsical, beautiful, ethereal

A heartbeat away from death
A bullet away from the grave

But, my love
Aren't we all the same?

My love,
I do not leave you on the ground

Birds and trees alike
Soar

Cloud high

I do not have your strength
To bear the burden of

Snow fall
Snow melt

God never made me for the earth
He made me for the trees and the sky

He made me to fly

Up to His kingdom

Cloud high

Keeper of Dreams

And when I have another dream

I think of you 

I want to tell you, tell you everything

Tell you what warm, distant future tomorrow might bring 

Do you remember?

We dreamed of a room together, far away 

In some ancient college of new knowledge 

A church to nourish our blasphemy 

Dreams are what you make of them, my friend 

I do not give up and I will not give in 

I do not fly like a wasp caught between roses

Our dream is now my dream

And I dream of it for me 

You were never my dream, my friend

This was. 

Kintsukuroi

I am sorry that you fell for
The red lipstick girl
Her tinkling laughter
And swirling silk clothes

But remember
When you were done with her
The lipstick was gone
And her dress was strewn across your floor

Why do I waste my breath talking, my dear?
When one word from a stranger
Can make you doubt a friend
When white words make yellow silence

I am tired, so tired, my friend
Of working so hard for so little
I watch in the shadows
As you, the golden boy
Receive my crown
On a golden platter

Forgive my magpie greed, my love
But I am not interested in baubles
Or your love affair with love

I take what I need to keep it together
Because you will not be here
Come hell and high water

And I must not fall apart.

Ghosts

i am not your marionette
anymore
the ties that bound us
were puppet strings
i don't dance for you now

we are unquiet ghosts
always lurking
stop, start, stare

we have crossed the wide sargasso sea
but a fallen woman, a gaoled woman
is not a quiet one

i am the blood of kings
and i will thrive
like the rose in the cracks
in the concrete

you banished me
and yet here i stand

there's a phantom ring on my finger
and phantom chains that bind
you are here but not here

and i know you see me
when i see you my blood turns to ice

you said you'd leave
leave, then

die.
don't come back with green grey eyes.

Why Aren't You White.

Now Playing: Viva la Vida by Coldplay (revolutionaries wait for my head on a silver plate, just a puppet on a lonely string, oh, who would ever want to be king?)

So a couple of days ago we were in Kalbarri whale watching with a bunch of other tourists, and one of the ladies asked us, before she even said hello, where we were from.

Which is a reasonable enough question, because nobody actually lives in Kalbarri.

We told her we were from Perth, and she just glared at us like we were little kids being sassy. And then she said - slowly - 'no, before that'.

Ohhhhh. You don't actually care about the geographical location of our family home. You want to know why we're not white.

People are constantly asking me why I'm pretty critical of Australia - the culture, the society, the politics. People tell me I should have a bit more patriotism, a little more national pride. How? How the hell am I supposed to consider myself 'one of the Aussies' when other Aussies clearly disagree on that point?

I'm pretty proud of my Asian heritage; it's interesting being bicultural, but it's also really difficult. It's hard belonging and not-belonging to three totally separate cultures, and constantly being falsely aligned with one or the other. But it's a complicated story, and not one that is particularly useful or interesting for polite small talk between strangers who have never met and will never meet again. And I don't appreciate being interrogated for the crime of being Not White, considering that Australia is part of Asia and the indigenous population are decidedly Not White, too.

Mum then asked her where she's from - because, as I said, hardly anyone in Kalbarri actually comes from Kalbarri. And she just said 'Busselton'. End of discussion.

I almost said 'no, before that', like she did. I almost said it even though I knew it was a rude question. I almost said it because, you know, she didn't look particularly Aboriginal and therefore she must have 'come from' somewhere that is Not Australia. But considering she thought we were sassing her by not immediately diving into our story of Ancestors from Not Australia, she might have punched me if I had asked her what was partly an honest question - after all, I have lots of white friends who have fascinating stories about coming from places of Not Australia - but mostly I really wanted to show her how inappropriate it is to ask a total stranger what their genetic makeup is.

It's perfectly fine to ask your friends who are people of colour what their ethnic background is. Most people of colour are very proud of their heritage and are happy to discuss it in painfully excruciatingly pedantic detail. But when you don't know someone's name and when 'where are you from' is a more important question than 'how are you', that's racism. I don't have a story of being born in some Very Poor Asian Place (that has been Bombed Out by the White People, but let's just pretend that all Oriental misfortume was the Oriental's fault) and coming to This Beautiful Country. I was just an Aussie kid born in an Aussie hospital trying, and failing, to be Properly Aussie; because even if I beat all the white kids at English and be stubbornly monolingual like the rest of them, the main criteria for being Australian is not, apparently, being Australian; it's being white.

Speak Now #34: How to do Feminism.

Now Playing: Fast Car by Tracy Chapman (city lights lay out before us and your arm felt nice wrapped around my shoulder and I had a feeling that I belonged, and I had a feeling I could be someone).

I feel like many feminists are forgetting who the real enemy is.

Feminism is a sisterhood, and if you have a sister like I do, you know that it's not always smooth sailing. You're different people with different ideas and different ways of doing things and you're never going to agree with each other 100%, 100% of the time. But beneath all the petty disagreements is a belief in some higher ideal.

Feminism is a big, messy, complicated sisterhood involving thousands of sisters around the world and across the centuries. There are going to be fights. There are going to be disputes and debates and disagreements; I'd argue, nerdy academic that I am, that this is healthy, to make sure that we are always keeping our arguments relevant and in perspective.

But we have to remember who the real enemy is.

Tearing down other feminists is not helpful. Proving that you are a better woman and a better feminist is not useful. Making other feminists too afraid to speak out and voice their opinions because they're terrified they'll unleash an onslaught of abuse and criticism is not solving anything. Cutting people down and tearing them apart for a tiny slip, a minute error, or a different sense of the ever-increasing terminology surrounding feminism/poc activism/queer rights movement is not facing the real problems facing women and feminists and people in general.

Of course, be critical of feminism and other feminists. Call out racism, slut shaming, queerphobia, and the like. It's your job as a feminist and you should take it seriously. But there is a difference between sensitively and civilly talking to a fellow feminist, a fellow human being, to discuss any problematic issues, and yelling insults at them on public forums. I'm not saying that feminists are required to be polite or are even required to entertain toxic attitudes, but I'm talking about fellow feminists; feminists who might be new and not quite steady in their beliefs, or sincerely believe in crushing the patriarchy but have, like the rest of us, subconsciously absorbed the ideals and attitudes of our society, or just didn't realize that something that might seem innocuous is actually offensive. This isn't saying that feminists shouldn't call out problematic issues; in fact, I don't think we do it enough. But we have to recognise that a different perspective or a little naive ignorance is not the same as being a fedorable neckbeard serial rapist woman-killer.

My Guide to Being a Feminist: 

- Recognize that you are not an authority over All Other Feminists, and your position is not automatically 'better' than anyone else's. Feminism is about demanding that women be imagined complexly; you can start by doing that yourself.

- The majority of feminists, particularly social media feminists, are very young, or started getting involved in the feminist community very young. Feminist or not, all teenagers say stupid things. It is also not reasonable to drudge up some out of context remark someone said when they were basically in diapers and hold it against them for the Rest of Eternity.

- We all have our biases and prejudices; we have all grown up in a sexist, heteronormative, queer-phobic patriarchy and we have all mindlessly absorbed some of those attitudes. Nobody is a perfect embodiment of feminism, and that includes you.

- The correct response to a problematic text or piece of popular culture (I'm talking Game of Thrones problematic, not like...Elliot Rogers' manifesto problematic) is to say 'the portrayal of women/poc/queer folk is interesting/progressive in x and y example but is problematic in this way and that way because reasons'. Not ERMAGERD KILL IT WITH FIRE.

- Be sensitive to the fact that many feminists have mental illnesses including depression, anxiety, and post-traumatic stress disorder. No matter what they've said it is cruel and dehumanizing to deliberately trigger that by being excessively aggressive in your response to problematic discourse. You might think you're being smart and sassy, but you're just being an asshole.

/rant.