A Letter Before We're Gone

I know this is a bittersweet time of year for you because you remember too much.

You remember too many Christmases for someone so young.

There are lights on the tree and there’s water in your eyes, even though the soft glow of everything through a window as you drive past makes you happy. It’s a happy kind of sad, it’s a sad kind of happy. Are you happy now?

How long do we have? Not long. Who do we have? Only so many. Maybe less. But it is enough, and they are enough.

I hope you find your heart under a tree somewhere, wrapped in beautiful paper and tied with a bow. I hope you forgive the people you hate and that you find some kind of peace in someone else, even if it’s just for a few days before we all return to the business of forgetting our lives as we live them.

Your heart is enough.

Don’t get me wrong, good things happen, more than you might expect, or more than you might ever dream, but bad things happen too, and you’ve got to appreciate all the moments between those two points because that’s life too, and it keeps on happening no matter what you do, until it doesn’t and then all that’s left is what you made and who you loved.

Your life is enough.

If I’ve learned anything this year, it’s what I’ve said before: Listen to the kindest voice in your head. It’s the highest form of yourself. The best you is the kindest you, to yourself and to others.

It’s sharp and rough out there, the only way you beat it is by keeping it soft and gentle in your heart. 

Being kind is enough. Love is enough.

 Thank you for every ounce of kindness you’ve shown my new book. It means a lot to me. Thank you for telling your friends about it. Thank you for all that you are. You are beautiful and loved by the universe that made you.

You are more than enough.

My best,

Iain

The Way Strangers Laugh

People laugh faster than you.

They laugh without thinking about it and they seem easier in themselves, like they were poured into their skin.

Not like you.

You feel like you're borrowing your skin, waiting for the owner to show up at a party, remember he lent it to you, and ask for it back. 

Sometimes, you look at the stars in the sky like they might be home.

And you try and find yourself in every puddle that you cross in the street.

The Story Of Everything Starts In All Of Us

Maybe the world isn’t all good, but if you hold my hand, I can prove to you that it’s not all bad either.

There is good love in the hearts of a few, and a few is all you need.

The Truth Is A Medicine

Hate is the only illness you can choose to get better from.

The Waste Of A Good Heart

Who are you still competing with in your good heart, and will you really waste your last words on your deathbed to say, "Do you see? I won."

The Day My Reflection Took My Place

We were walking past the lake, when my reflection took my place.

It held your hand and watched you slowly drift away from me.

It threw a plate against a wall the night after you left, when it relealised you were never coming back.

It drove around for hours on its own, not knowing where to go.

It held the phone, not knowing who to call.

And this is the only way I can explain to anyone what I'm doing, underneath the water.

The Living And The Brave

There is no bravery in a gun.

Brave is saying no to the comfort that kills you.

There is no bravery in a fist.

Brave is singing Kumbaya softly to a screaming baby.

There is no bravery in a flag.

Brave is holding onto the air itself to stop yourself from falling into yourself.

There is no bravery in a crowd.

Brave is knowing who you are, even when everyone else doesn’t.

There is no bravery when it's easy.

Brave is carrying on and on, and looking and finding all the angles and all the keys, and turning every single one.

There is no bravery in bright light.

Brave is fighting the sun itself for the right words to talk yourself off the ledge.

There is no bravery in hurt.

Your bravery is kneeling on the ground.

In the end, your bravery is living.

The Good Engine

I know you and I know your engine. Your engine runs on truth and light and nothing else works, I've seen you try and fill it with the kind of lies people want to hear and it was like watching someone fill their gas tank with sugar. Sweet, but going nowhere.

The Sky Is On Fire

Tell them, “If you’re gone too long, I will light candles for you in the dark. I will burn down a forest just so that you see it." And maybe they won't go.

The Eternal Echo

I know how you felt when I touched you, because I know how I felt when you touched me. So you cannot tell me that you do not think of it often, or wonder why no one will ever be able to touch you like that, again.

____

The winners of the competition to win signed, limited edition prints of my most popular poems are:

On twitter:

@bbbrooke_ann
@starsasthoughts
@wemadeeyou

On instagram:

@eeosh
@k.prebz
@gvcv16

Please mail me at pleasefindthis at gmail dot com with your shipping details. If you didn't win, remember, this is only the first competition, there'll be more and they'll be announced on instagram or twitter or facebook soon.

Thank you for your time, and thank you to everyone who's give the new book such an incredibly warm welcome into the world,

Me

The Music Is Only Alive In Each Moment

I'm the record.

You're the needle.

The Egg Timer Of Infinite

In some new world, there are no clocks, so they must measure time in what they miss.

Their recipe books say, “Boil the rice until you forget what they look like.”

And, “Bake for exactly as long as it takes to remember why you left.”

The New Book Is Out In The Wild

The new book has leaked early on amazon and a few people have managed to pick up advanced copies at Barnes & Noble! Keep an eye out and please take a picture if you see one! Click the picture or here to see for yourself!

The Pain Of Learning

Remember yesterday’s greatest lesson: What hurts you today, won’t hurt you tomorrow.

The Constant Fire And Noise

I have taught myself to see the person a person is trying to be, not just the person they are. Above some, I have seen a nurse, a cowboy, a man made of shadows, a girl who cries beautifully, someone in complete control, someone who overcomes great things, and someone who's love is needed by the world. Like ghosts, the people who you're trying to be, they float above your head. But if I look up, all I see is a catherine wheel that never stops spinning, and it is something I have never been able to look at directly.

The Shade In The Night

Give me one beautiful thing in the darkness to hold onto. Even if it’s only the ghost of good light.

I Wrote This For You 2007-2017 is Now Available For Preorder.

Click here to preorder.

10 Years Later

10 years ago today, I posted the first entry on a blog called I Wrote This For You. I had just turned 27 a month earlier. I wrote most of the first 100 entries in one big push, in December 2006, and then they just sat there in a word document forever because I didn’t know what to do with them.

In July, I started posting them on a blog with some photos I had on my digital camera. The photos were really, really bad. But at the same time, this guy I knew from an irc chat room, who lived in Japan and had a similar taste in music, had just developed an interest in photography, and he agreed to let me use one or two. And then everything else happened.

I’m not sure what else to say right now. Things have changed so much. But I hope some things never do.

Thank you for your time and thank you for reading. - Me

The Person You Want To Be There

They're someone you see out of the corner of your eye, next to you in the aisle at the store, at a movie or in a park, and you think it might it actually be them but you don’t want to look at them directly, in case it’s not actually them, and the feeling that it might actually be them is the closest you’ve been to happy in a very long time.

The Words Made Of Still Water

I wish there was a code word for when we lost our minds. A thing that we could say as a way to reach out to the other person, through the anger, and say, “Despite all the things I’m saying, I’m still in here and I love you, I hope you’re in there too.”

The Song Of You

Even when the things they sing aren’t kind, remember that someone is still singing for you.

The Scars Fade To White

Here is the start of the unpopular poem:

I don’t miss you anymore.

No one will get this tattooed on their arm.

No one will start crying when they read it. 

It doesn’t feel like it at the time, but time takes everything away eventually. Even us.

I hope you have a good life and I hope you fall in love with good people.

The Only Ending

Let me be the reason you tell yourself better stories.

The Map On My Skin

Those aren’t scars.

That’s where life underlined the important parts of you.

The Love Of Last Meals

We're in your apartment and you're making dinner and we're laughing and I’m struggling not to tell you that this might be the best my life has ever been and somehow, I know if I tell you, you won’t believe me.

We're in your apartment and I want to tell you that even after everything that's happened to me, I can love you.

The Spinning Heart

Please take a moment to be still.

Even if it’s only as long as it takes to read this.

I know no one told you, but it’s your turn to hold the universe today.

It’s your turn to keep it safe. So don’t be angry at anyone, especially not yourself. And if you were thinking bad things about who you are, stop.

Remember that when you’re kind to your heart, you’re kind to all of us.

And please. Be careful with yourself and the universe. Because the feeling you have right now in your chest is what it feels like when it spins.

So hold still.

You are holding the universe, in your heart.

See you tomorrow, Johannesburg!

I'll be at The Kingsmead Book Fair tomorrow for two sessions, reading a bunch of poetry and signing books - I really hope I see you there! Click the image below for more info.

The Good Heart

You have a good heart.

Don’t let people be clever with it.

It is not a toy, or a novelty, or something that should only be loved briefly.

Only your heart is your heart.

Don’t let someone leave it behind, in the backseat of a car, in a time before now, or in someone else’s ribs.

Don’t let someone handle your heart with dirty hands and don’t let them use your heart to clean up after someone else’s heart. Your heart is not a rag, your heart, is your heart.

So offer your heart sparingly but bravely and if your offer is not accepted, do not accept a lower counteroffer. 

Because your heart is precious.

Keep it secretly, in a box made of self-love and kindness and the softest blankets and pillows. Wrap it in silk and keep it in your chest, even when it feels like it’s at the back of your throat.

Because only your heart cares enough about you, to beat for you.

So do not leave it outside, to be weathered in the rain and if you have, run, now and go and get it and hold it in your own hands and cry and whisper over and over and over again,

“I am sorry, I love you, and I will never let you go again.”

Love your own good heart.

Because a good heart will last a lifetime and if you can find another good heart, together they will last even longer than that. Let it beat for them every day, like a drum at the end of the universe, and say,

“If you knew everything my heart has been through, you would give it a medal and you would hear it clang every time it beat.”

And then let your good heart ring, like a bell.

The Place Fear Grows

I’m afraid of you.

I’m afraid that if I love you, you’ll become a memory.

I’m afraid that you’ll become something that haunts me, and that I’ll become something that haunts you.

I don’t want to be the one that digs into you late at night.

And I don’t think you want to be the one that holds my breath for me, when I least expect it.

The only thing I’m more afraid of, is not loving you when I have the chance to.

Of not finding you every morning. 

And what if all love is an act of bravery?

Could you look at me and say, “I am not afraid”?

The Good Poem For Burning

First, you let them tear you up, until they can’t read the words on what’s left of you.

Whatever you do, don’t let them cry, they’ll just make the ink run.

Then, crumple yourself up and light the match for them.

Then become smoke and ash, and fly far away from here.

The Questions That Make You Feel Weak

I want to know if you know who you are.

I want to know if you know you’re pretending to be who you are.

I want to know where you buried your heart and if it was easy.

But asking questions makes me feel weak, and the only way I get to be strong right now, is to not say anything at all.

I want you to give me a reason for all this that makes sense.

The Seasons After Winter

I think you want to say, “You might fall in love, is that the worst thing that could happen?”

And I want to ask you if you've ever noticed the way Christmas lights reflected in a window at night look like stars exploding.

And I want to ask you if you had a garden growing up.

I want to ask you if you had to listen to one thing forever, what would it be.

And I think I want you to say, “A river. Why are we hiding what’s happening here?”

And I think I want to say, "Falling in love is not the worst thing that could happen."

But I don’t know.

Because when you’ve been waiting for someone else for so long, you can become a stranger even to yourself.

The Burning Of Snow

Tell me again, the story of all the things I cannot do, so I can tell you the story of how I will do them.

The Heart Of The Night

All I want to know is why I never wake up in the middle of the night thinking about someone who loves me.
I ask and nothing in the night answers me.

The 10000 Ton Grave

"What I'm saying is I don't want you hurting somewhere when you least expect it. I don't want you ordering coffee and waiting and suddenly feeling sad and lonely out of nowhere. That's why I'm saying we should bury them deep, these people that we were and the things that we had, and far away from each other. I don't want them finding each other again, in the ground beneath us. I don't want you to hurt again and I don't want to hurt either and as near as I can tell, that's all we can do for each other."

The Cold End Of All Things

"Even if you've forgotten who you are, you could at least try to remember what you mean, and who you mean it to."

"I think I've forgotten both who I am and what I mean. And why should I care? Why should any of us mean anything."

"You're just talking now. You do not have to talk if you don't want to.

"What is left to talk about? These are our lives and they have both begun and begun to end."

The World We Live In

What if there are no bad worlds or good worlds.
What if there’s just the world you and I live in.
What if everything isn't fixed in stone.
What if everything's like a river that meets other rivers and they become each other.

What if we still have a chance to make this a good world.

Canvas Prints

You can now get what is probably my most famous poem as a canvas print to hang in your home - click here or on the picture.

The Love Like A House Collapsing

Below the rubble, I am still trapped next to you.
Below the rubble, I can only move my fingers.
Below the rubble, I am dust in sunlight.
Below the rubble, rocks crush my chest.
Below the rubble, I remember when we could hold on.
Below the rubble, our fingers touch.

The Words You Could Say

If you can do nothing else, tell the truth.

Say, “I don’t know who I was before now, and I don’t know who I’ll be tomorrow.”

Say, "There are things about me you'll never fix, and it's not your job to fix me."

Say, "I feel things I don't know how to feel."

Say, "We can be anything but we can't be everything."

Say, “I can do nothing else, this is me and this is all there is.”

If anyone stays with you

after you’ve told them that

stay with them

as long as they’ll have you.

The Things That Might Happen To Us

I don’t understand how you can be so worried about what might happen, when what might not happen, is so much worse.

The Edge Of You

We got mixed up in the making of us. Before the first sunrise, your wrists were my wrists, you looked through my eyes and I heard through your ears. I felt what you felt. Wherever I am, I know now, some part of you is a part of me too.

The Tempering Of Hearts

You do not make love strong by resting on it.

The Start Of Stupid Stories

I believe that if you’re good, more good things happen to you.

I believe it rains to let you know you’re lucky.

I believe that you only get old if you let yourself.

I believe in trying your best and forgetting who you are as often as possible.

I believe that there’s a way to love someone like we thought we could love when we were young.

I believe there’s a way to love like a story book.

I believe in stupid things.

The Race To The Bottom

Ultimately, people want to convince you that you’re actually racing them, because they’re racing you and if they feel like you’re not racing them back, well that’s as bad as being ignored.

The Best Of Us

I whisper because some part of me wants you to whisper too.

Because I want you to tell me secrets.

Because our secrets are still the best parts of us.

The Gods Tremble Before Quiet Strength

I know you best when you are flowers in the barrels of rifles. 

I know you best when you are brave.  

I know you when your strength comes from your compassion and when your greatest fear, is that you have not been compassionate enough. 

I know you when you look at others not as others but as people you might have been, as people your parents might have been, as people your children might still be. 

I know you and I see you when you stand up. 

I know you and I see you when they tell you to be afraid, to hate, to go away from the world, to go away from each other. I know you and I see you when they scream storms at you, when they bury you beneath mountains, when they drown you in oceans, when they push you under and yet still you whisper from the deepest part of you: 

“No.” 

 And when you do, I look at you and I say, “There you are. 

I know you."

The Strangers In Waiting

Everyone talks about love at first sight but not once has some well-meaning soul turned to me and said,

“Do you know how many years it takes to become strangers again?”