The Children

Straight backed obedience
Driven to comply
Acts duly committed
Without the question 'why?'

Love for the adult
With unmutual respect
A diminishing soul
Too imbedded to detect

Quashed curiosity
For adult peace of mind
An inquisition missed
Too hard to rewind

Mouths shut, legs crossed
With eyes on the prize
A minute validation
For developmental deprivation

Can't you adults see
Children need to be seen?
They mirror your acts
And reflect your esteem

Can't you adults hear
Children need to be heard?
Their simplicity of truth
Redefine the absurd

You act for the immediate
Only for your convenience
You shut the kids down
Then blame them for deviance

Why for your sake
You keep kids in your wake
But ignore their joyous presence
When they're opportunities to take

Don't you remember
That you were once them?
Reaching out for the hand
Of your adult guardian

Don't you remember
How you wanted to play?
But told to sit down!
Listen! and Obey!

Nurture the child
That you wanted to be
To build a new adult
For our future community

We don't want the anger
That perpetuates the war
Between youth and adult
When we're all from one world

Understand today
To realise tomorrow
There's more to education;
There's no bow and arrow

In the words of Abe Lincoln
We must 'disenthrall'
Our industrial ideal
It's detrimental to all

Embrace a new culture
To flourish and thrive
Cultivate individuality
Aid kids to come alive!

We need a revolution
As our soulful solution
To bring the human race
To a new evolution!

Pt III Discover Travel Series: The Free Fall

You did it! You're gone!
New lines have been drawn
A paradigm has shifted
Your heart is reborn

Throw out your arms wide
Feel the rush, take your time
Let your senses drown in wonder
Have your faith by your side

Everything is new
But there's a sense of deja vu
You've been here before
It's your soul baring true

Breathe in a-fresh
Breathe out infest
Melt into yourself
Discover new depths

Pt II Discover Travel Series: The Embarkment

You cling to the familiar
You're flooded with doubt
These crazy ideas
How have they come about?!

'Things are fine the way they are!'
Your mind shouts in vain
'You're not ready for the world!
Not equipped for its pain!'

'NO!' your heart screams
As you fight through the tears
'I'm ready as I'll ever be
It's time to face my fears!'

The barriers are broken
Nothing stands in your way
You take a step forward
It happens today. 

Pt I Discover Travel Series: The Motivation

A question comes to mind

for those who want to find

the reason for travel:

what do you want left behind?

Routine sex, the daily grind

a stale perception, temptation to resign?

Travel is a gift, so take a moment to revere

the possibilities that are offered: are your intentions sincere?

Are you ready for the road? Have the guts to adhere?

Or else there’s no difference if you’re there or here.

What is your motivation?

Do you really want a change?

A leap of faith, an adventure

or a getaway vacation?

What is your motivation?

Do you really need a break?

A quick fix, a holiday

or spiritual revelation?

A question comes to mind

for those who want to find

the reason for travel:

what must you leave behind? 

Date A Girl Who Doesn't Travel

Date a girl who doesn’t travel. A girl who doesn’t travel is easy to track, easy to predict. She’ll always be there. She’ll be on your couch at home, or hanging with her friends waiting for your call. You’ll know where to find her. When you do, you will talk about your day and she’ll talk about the latest episode of Jersey Shore. With you, she’ll be secure from the dangers of the world. She’ll be happy with her virtual one. She will be safe. She’ll enjoy a night-in with a movie or a PS3 game. She won’t expect, or even want, extravagant, expensive, creative days and nights out. You can pick her up a bottle of nail polish and be in for a good night.

A girl who doesn’t travel is very well-groomed. She can take the time in front of the mirror and have tidier eyebrows, even complexion and smooth, smooth skin. She won’t have the wiry mane of a girl who travels who pulls faces for photos in front of yet another landmark. Her hair will be glossy and maintained. She will have the perfect picturesque pout.

It’s fun conversing with a girl who doesn’t travel. She’ll believe everything you say and then giggle politely when you tell her you’re joking. And then laugh louder when she gets it. She will let you take the social center stage. She will watch you from the sidelines with admiration. She won’t challenge you with the wit of a girl who travels. She won’t one-up you with stories from the foothills of the Himalayas. She will like everything you like and go everywhere you go. You will be the light of her life. She will turn to you for every lip tremble, every tear. She will wrap her dainty arms around your neck and embrace you with a need so powerful you know that she can’t live without you.

Don’t invest your time and love in a girl who travels for she CAN live without you. She knows how to take things in her fearless stride. She would be fun for now, not forever. She’ll never be around. She will come and go and laugh melodically at your pleas to stay. Don’t get caught up in her spiritual depth and hippy ways. She’ll just plant grand seeds of thought and question everything you ever believed in. Her passionate rants about the beauty of the world will send tremors and quakes through your foundations and belittle your existence.

A girl who travels will drive you crazy with her sporadic emails and unreliable contact. She will send you mad with video calls where you can see her but can’t fucking touch her. She will make you cry with longing. You will realize that distance doesn’t make the heart grow fonder – it fucking rips the heart apart and smirks at the shreds of despair. Date a girl who doesn’t travel because she won’t do that. She will take the tender steps to keep your heart intact. She will fold it up in cheesecloth and hum to its soft rhythmic beat. She will keep you in your realm of familiar and sit demurely in the passenger seat as you drive on that 6-lane freeway to the white-picket fence.

Let the girl who travels go off into that other dimension. Forget all the romantic stories she tells of pristine white beaches, gushing jungle waterfalls, and tropical wildlife encounters. Dismiss her tales of the whack-jobs she met along the way and the adventures on which they embarked. Let her endanger herself with military run-ins, frightening South East Asian traffic and storm-whipped boat rides. Let her try quench her insatiable cultural thirst in countries with makeshift beds, dank toilets and parasite-ridden water. You don’t need it. You don’t want it. Not one part of it.

Find yourself a nice girl who doesn’t travel. You just can’t know where on earth a girl who travels has been.

Getting A Sense of Barcelona

Barcelona looks like thousands of china plates smashed into minute shards and reassembled into architectural masterpieces of curves and spirals.

Barcelona sounds like a swollen tongue with a distinctive lisp and infinite roll of the R that resounds the seductive allure of an endangered language.

Barcelona smells like a Catalonian cologne concocted of cured meats, roasted cocoa and a dash of Mediterranean Sea breeze.

Barcelona tastes like explosive bites of marinated culture; a kaleidoscope of pickled onions, artichokes and cherry tomatoes.

Barcelona feels like a step back into a forgotten memory with the crisp fresh air nipping at your cheeks as you cycle through the narrow alleyways carved from gothic stone.

Barcelona is a city to come back to. 

Tribute to Panama: Not Before Coffee

This is a Spoken Word Poem thing with a melodic twist performed on a rooftop for my beloved travelling buddies on the 20th of Jan 2013.

A reunion in Panama, an adventure for three

The Isles of San Blas, strips of sand with coconut trees

All sickly pale and in desperate need
of sun rays and sunshine
on aqua carribean seeeeeeas

but noooooooot...before coffee

Barefoot treks through a jungle marquee 

Santa Fe was the next destination for three
Bound for the waterfalls, we sunk to our knees

In horse shit and spit, not a soul heard our pleeeeeeeas

but nooooooooot...before coffee

On the shores of Bocas we lived by the sea
Above an open sewerage that amazingly didn't reek
Sprawled out on the pier, with a ciggy and a beeeeeeeer
but noooooooot....before coffee

Backpacks reloaded on a water taxi
We arrived in Bastimentos, a jungle drumming oasis

In the Bushman's Kitchen we waited hours for a feed
But it was so worth the chef being high on his weeeeeeed...

thank Goooooooood we had our organic, Up On The Hill coffee

Things took a turn with an addition to the team

dynamics made a change and a Brazillian took the lead

carried our bags, booked hotels, ordered our food, translated our requests...

actually that's fiiiiiiiiiiine before coffee

In Santiago was a lesson about the humble abalone
I learned not to eat something that numbs your body
Thank goodness I had friends to take me to Emergncyyyyy
Unfortunately for them it was waaaaaaaayyyy before coffee

To Santa Catalina's Pacific with depths of murky

In search of the shark whale, its sight a rarity

All but one was equipped for the sea

Daca got cocky and then struggled to breeeeeeeeeathe

but nooooooot before coffee

We concluded our time with one more to the three

The four of us together made wonderful memories
We raised our glasses and toasted 2013
A bright new beginning in Panama Cityyyyyyyyyyy

(all together now!)

BUT NOOOOOOOOOT BEFORE COFFEEEEE