Date: 2nd of September, 2025

Location: Melbourne, Australia

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Notes Running

Latest Substack

Poem:

There is art in your heart.It lives quietly.It lives in places far away from screens.It lives at the corner of the table you eat breakfast, with no phones around.It lives on ridgelines above the clouds.It lives on the highways at 130km/hr.It lives at the bottom of a cup of coffee, in the soaked grinds of coffee residue.It lives in the conversations with friends, 3 hours 49 minutes into a phone call.It lives in the corner of the shower, tired and delirious.It lives on the butchers paper sprawled across your kitchen table.It lives at the 44th minute of your favourite playlist.It lives in the way you waltz across the floor when friends are over for dinner.It lives because you gave it life.There is art in your heart.

You have a lot to share.I have a lot to share.We have a lot to share.

We must share our art,not our worries or our comparisons.We must share our abundance,not our lack.

Date: 25th of August, 2025

Location: Sydney, Australia

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Find Paul here: @thebalancedrunner

Poem:

I can’t remember the day I started

or the first time my lungs started screaming

I don’t remember my first blister

or the pressure my palms placed on my knees,

hunched over, demanding more air.

I bounded, shuffled,

sprinted, jogged,

chased, fled, hammered,

and even wept, when the string down the side of my leg

stopped cooperating.

My body became a negotiator,

making deals with the concrete,

and asking for loans,

a debt of heartbeats.I paid tax on carbon,

and became friends with sugar,

all with a blind faith,

because I don’t remember how I started,

I don’t know where I’m going,

and i don’t even fucking know,

who taught me how to run?Anybody?

Date: 17th of August, 2025

Location: Lucerne, Switzerland!

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Poem: "Hardergrat"

On the edge, where I could die, but won’t.

Not today, for I started singing. 

My mind knows tricks,

But it isn’t the controller,

Not today,

A - B.

Date: 12th of August, 2025

Location: Madeira, Portugal

A Note To The Runners: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Get my book here.⁠⁠⁠

Join The JL Mentorship: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Fill out the form here.⁠⁠⁠⁠

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Poem #1:

All morning I thought of figs.
Quietly, they sit,

beside my makeshift dining table.

The tree talks louder the further August goes on.
I run into the highest point of blue I can reach,

till the mountain says no more.

My legs bear the dust, I’m grateful I bought water.

Would I just be a rock without this life that bleeds through me?
Off the mountain, 

In thick accent, I’m handed ameixas
In small plastic, a dozen or so?
Are these from your home?
My Father’s.
Plums. They’ll do. 

Days before it was beetroot and corn.

Returning to my stone walls,

I think of the fig tree. 

Waiting to nourish me. 

I take just one.
One fig for now.

Poem #2:

Every epoch is paired with a flavour.

Lands that felt like the last frontier were salty.

Late summers in France, peaches under castle shade.
Some years, I made myself sick, overdosing on Camembert.
Saved my bread, and Swiss Chocolate.
Taste is amplified by the seasons,

And multiplied by the company.

Yet, it becomes cemented to my core

In the days I feel most alive.
The European Summer of 25’ 

Will be remembered by the subtle sweetness,

Of the fig tree in the North of Portugal.

Plastic buckets full,
Must be eaten,
In two days.
These days will be remembered by the honeying of figs,

And the forging

Of the man

I am becoming. 

Date: 5th of August, 2025

Location: Madeira, Portugal

A Note To The Runners: ⁠⁠⁠⁠Get my book here.⁠⁠

Join The JL Mentorship: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Fill out the form here.⁠⁠⁠

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Poem:

I desperately tried to write poetically, 

Something, anything.

Observing my words,

It was apparent poetry had left me

With ease, 

And no need for it to be extracted achingly.
I listened to the echoes of the ocean in rockwalls,

Mumbling two words of Portuguese to

A leathered man on cobbled stone

Surrounded by zucchini flowers

And fresh figs, whitened with stretch marks.

All day I wished for the sun to stay longer

And in those wishes

I found poetry.

It didn’t need to be written,

Simply it was lived. 

Date: 28th of July, 2025

Location: Madeira, Portugal

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Join The JL Mentorship: ⁠⁠⁠⁠Fill out the form here.⁠⁠

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Poem:

A bucket of beans picked by leathered hands,

left in the sun, awaiting validation from the rain.

Rugged concrete walls, acting as living rooms

For washing lines, lizards of the north, and summer flowers.

An old buoy, I walk into it three times a day,

Rusted pegs, and a knife turning battered, blackened, peppered, and salted.

Windows facing seacliffs, million dollar views, no-ones cares.

Fruit, yet to ripen, one day to be savoured, maybe wasted.

Every Sunday, a meeting spot for the family,

A few kids not knowing their fortune,

Wishing away the riches of boredom.

Brick behind my front right tyre,

And my stick left in third, ignition off.

Stalling on start, a clunky first gear,

A little humid without the windows down

I keep forgetting to get cash, Cash for flowers.

Lady on the corner. A few bunches left. Can I send them home?

I've been waiting round fora note from home,

Forgetting, home is always in the details you choose to notice.

So, I go on, 40km over the speed limit.

Running into the wind and the blackberries.

Date: 21st of July, 2025

Location: Madeira, Portugal

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Poem: "Words"

You had a funny way of saying things,

placing commas, where I didn’t think to pause,

saying ‘period’ instead of ‘full stop.’

Except, the words you used, made me stop,

giving me reasons to think about the world

in ways I didn’t care to before.My words were crunchy, and scratchy,

like a vinyl turned dusty,

left out for too long.

Yet yours were smooth,

just as the honey was in your summer cabin.

I could never talk with syrupy words like you,

they’d leave my mouth like boulders hitting an xylophone,

bumping four notes at once,

when I only needed one tap to make a point.

I started to celebrate my scratches, and my umms, and my ahhs.

I became smarter when I used my words,

my own words,

mixing them like a wooden spoon in life’s batter.

Stirring them slowly, making sure

they eventually find their place

but of course,

with no rush.

Words don’t need to be beaten into existence

just stirred, and melted,

shaped, and moulded,

but not taken away because they clumped together on a humid day.

I wish for words like yours

but I have my own,

and they’re sweet on Tuesday’s

sickly on Saturday’s

and just fine on Monday’s.

I am a nest of words, with hummingbirds visiting,

to take twigs, and feathers,

in the shapes of ideas and letters,

to places of the world I will never see.

My words must look like me,

or you’ll never know,

why I chose red ink or blue,

in the portuguese summer,

at 4.57pm by the sea.

Date: 14th of July, 2025

Location: Madeira Portugal

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Weekly poem:

There’s a similarity to the tensions of my mind

with the environment I’m in right now.

To my left_noise.A party, movement, excitement, bouncing versions of the images one can be.To my right, a castle, fundamentally strong.Calm, quiet, peaceful.A centre to remain and hold both balance and meaning.One will fade, one will stand the tests of time.I hope to find home in the castle.

Recorded:  Tuesday of July 8th, 2025

Location: Hong kong airport

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Recorded:  Monday, 30th of June, 2025

Location: Melbourne, Australia

Sponsor: Josh Lynott - Mentorship program and what a sesh running.

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Poem:

Bench spray in the refrigerator,

goats cheese in the washing machine,

watering my plants in the shower,

running laps in my mind.suit details,sweet details.

Petals blooming,Petals falling.Too much ginger,few shooting stars.A world upside down,

still spinning,

still hoping,

that all the things I put in the pockets

of old sweaters, paint-splattered jeans

show up, somewhere

In the ether between honey and lemon

I’m trying desperately hard to make sense

of things that

don’t belong

in my

refrigerator.