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Song
You didn't't know how to smile
You only grinned and so it began in a while
Now you have nothing to give back to me
I just want you to see what that's like
I've been longing with all of my might
To be with you and make it all right
I just want you to know what that's like
It's not daisies in June
Or a sweet honeymoon
It's cold and it's hard like living on Mars
I long with my heart to go backwards in time
To never have smiled or met your eyes
I just want you to know what that's like.
Love is a treasure that can not be measured
These innocent jewels that are cut and polished
Are partly demolished to shine.
Reading Sylvia 2
Sometimes in the night
I feel cocooned in a circle of light
Reading with concentration in silence
Your art was abstract, a sensory impression
Words so strangely chosen I couldn't fathom them
Yet I teetered on the edge of understanding
I thought if I did I would slip into your madness
It was like a siren song
Indivisible from you and so strong
I thought is that where I belong
Yet my work is different
It is predictable and prosaic
My choices try to make sense
Of a moment in being with this recompense
I am alive and uncertain and feeling
In the end I do believe in
The soft place to land
The kind face or hand
I seek meaning in the finite
You reach for infinity beyond knowing.
The Riddle
The riddle of me
which I can't solve but only be
Always stepping into other skins
Not knowing where myself begins
Like a snake traveling backwards
If I murder a little of myself
You will not know I am someone else
I imagine a vanishing point
Where I will dissolve and no longer know
The demands of having to live and grow
Please take my hand
Talk to me as you hold it
Involve me in life, let me behold it
I want to be your child
Given birth, given breath
Taught how to be, feel and see
Please recreate me.
Running away
I was always running away
Hurt to many times to say
I didn't want to be hurt again
So my anger rises like the tiger
With claws to protect me
I will reject you before you reject me
It's always the same old story
Somewhere I have an original wound
The first one who turned their face to the moon
Rather than smiling into your eyes
Please understand my tantrums
Try to be wise
I need reassurance to realize
That at last you accept me without disguise
See me looking, see me feeling
Know my being without stealing
Anything from me.
Then I will be in your family tree
And we will have the freedom to live together
Or be alone.
Your star reemerging
Your star reemerging
I see you are still burning
You see me and smile
We see each other and are precious in each others eyes
I see you have grown wise
There is forgiveness in your smile
I find I have no words,
No words to say goodbye
Its enough to say hello
I surrender all, I let go
It's enough to be beheld
I hope you understand my silence
This time it is peace and not violence
When next we meet we may speak
Or each remain a mystery
What can I say
I am glad today.
Trash and Treasure
My bed is like a Ravens nest
Where all that glitters is not gold
Ice is hard until it melts
I was hard before I broke
Here I am with my collections
This leaf litter of my life
Casting up strange new reflections
Of beauty, love and strife
The neighbourhood has put its trash out
Treasure for some who fossic about
I am glad to cast off the past
It can't stay, nothing lasts
Broom, broom make some room
Out with the old and in with the new
I would love to be your artist
But I feel worn out and old
Will you take me and wash me gently?
Then make sure that I am sold
I saw a man on a footpath sofa
I laughed and said where you a loafer?
I was thrown out in my way
Nobody chose me to stay
I traveled far from loving arms
Now I look back wishing to be warmed.
Sweet and sour
Here I am burning my pencil at both ends
Trying to explain and not pretend
Why I won't go back again
I know you were well intentioned
I was already broken
Casting a shattered reflection
How could I help but make vinegar
Even when you offered me honey, sugar.
You always had a little salt too
It stung when you washed my wounds
I couldn't stay clean
My mind was obscene
Cant you see that sweetheart
Its better if we part
No matter how many jokes I tell
The truth is I am not well
I'm just wise enough to see
That there is no you and me
I can carry my own dreams
But I can't be what you want me to be
Sister
Once there were two sisters
One was tall and great
The other small and brave
They stayed together many years
Close enough to hear each others fears
Playing tag through time
They chased and weaved
I'm not sure who was in the lead
Sometimes their silence hid
Trials from each other
When they spoke they drew close
Combining understanding
You my sister know my joy and pain
It isn't that we are the same
Or that we've loved each other perfectly
Your gift to me was just to be.
Poor wee beastie
Like a little mouse gnawing on electrical wires
Until I tasted blackness and sweet fire
I can make all your lights go out
So you wake up and don't know your house
I can see you sweet as honey
A soft centre golden and sticky
Not a dark thought in your mind
Everything is fine, fine, fine.
You are the garden of my desire
How I long to play with you
Running through the starry dew
But I'm the mouse in a big dark house
So starved in my soul, I could eat you whole
Perhaps I am the cat growing to a tiger
Yet fiercer than that growling survivor
No, I truly am the rat
I think small bitter thoughts
Running backwards I am caught
By memories of blue cheese
Something is rotten in Denmark
I just want to please, to steal your heart
I can't explain the acid of my sadness
It eats me alive and fills me with madness
Small like a mouse but as big as a moose
I am laughing and crying and angry too
Is art a mirror?
The truth of the maker?
If I am mistaken perhaps I will waken
Not dying but breathing
Alive to my feelings and laughing
At the folly of this curse of a verse.
Pleasure in my kingdom
When I was a child I lived lonely in a kingdom of whimsy
My logic was magic and my dreams did not seem flimsy
Everywhere I looked there was beauty
Treasures in nature for the loving eye to see
I lost my world of fancy when I was thirteen
Then there was loneliness left
I was lost, sad and bereft
The only dreams I had were heavy with hot breath
That was not enough
I think some people find their joy returns with children
They are reminded by young minds that we are all life's pilgrims
For those who stay alone, as I have done
There is a harder battle to recapture the sun
Light for them shines from the self
In discovering its nuances
In finding love for someone else without asking for return
Right now I am lonely but I am willing to learn.
Millennium Man
A small burning circle in my brain
A place the plug in the thumb drive
I record all memories but they are distorted,
Self corrupting.
Some virus I once called the love bug
Now eats at me with other feelings
Making this tiny circle
If only I could be human
If I could just let tears fall from my eyes
Slick and silver like mercury
Robots never cry.
I know I will be human
Because I can see you imagining that I am.
Millennium man made out of your dreams
Seamless but flawed
I move like you but am not moved like you
I am a trinket, a clown, somehow upside down
In your world of feelings.
Take me out to the wilds
Play the drum, walk in file
Break open my shell
Let me dwell in your strong arms
I shall be the tin man
Given the mystery of a heart.
You know perhaps I was only pretending
Strength because you needed me so
Now I emerge truly out of my shell
You will see how human I can be.
Bought at Three
They came to you when you were three years old
With glittering beads and asked for your soul
You were milk dumb and mild
You gave it up with a smile
The corporate wagons rolled on
In your eyes they were as brightly painted
As those in a circus parade
But they came to plunder and raid
To steal your imagination
To make your every wish come true
So that you never knew want
They lit the fuse of continual desire
You had no control when you grew higher
You thought at least I'll be admired
No there was nothing that made you unique
You were branded bought at three
Not likely to be different
If you had someone would have taken that too
Ground up that self like glitter for the mill
Escher
Escher opened doorways to infinity
Where the only horizon was his imagination
There creatures follow and eat each other
In an unending circle of life.
His small worlds reflected and uncurled
Detail within detail slowly unfurled
His mind retracing smaller thoughts.
Black and white opposites making a whole
Two faces or a vase shift and evolve
This is obsessive pattern making
The will to see the world with meaning
Dancing in the stillness.
He created places for little faceless people
Decorated homes with tiny features.
Godlike yet tender, I wonder why he did this.
Sylvia
This is a photograph where your still face
Is paused in a moment of long ago life
Here your eyes are moist, expressive and yet wary
I wander why you went eventually
There is so much potential life in your photo
Did death cleanse you making you forget
All your memory, all your pain
Were you remade as a babe?
Did all your cynical glittering words seem absurd
You fascinate me
Its like being on a bridge over water
I feel the temptation to fall through your image
To see myself in you
Would you see yourself in me?
I simply don't want to be a repeating pattern
I want to make my own discoveries
Even if they have the same end.
The puppet child
I came in on your coat tails, dragged blinking into the light
I couldn't speak or say my lines because nothing was mine
Still you were there saying jump and I danced on your strings
Your reluctant plaything
Did you want to know me?
No, you had to make me
Choose my clothes and cut my hair
You were the one who said go here or there
I went knowing I was yours
Without you I couldn't exist
Now you aren't satisfied with my dance
You say make up your own existence
I am blank caught repainting my face
How does a puppet stand on its own
How can a puppet be alone
I might as well be dead, crumpled among slack strings
The strange thing is that I was always mine
I had dreams, I had mind
So now I find the will to stand
To twirl and arch, step and dance
Only for myself this time
I don't need your applause
I am my only audience.
Still touching
I wished so much that I could touch you
Reaching out a trembling hand
You were still like and pale like wax or ice
So quiet in your silence.
Perhaps I did not love you and
Only felt safe in your presence
A wild bird captured by gentle hands
But still liable to peck with resentment.
I know I won't see you again
These are only remaining thoughts
We are each to timid in our pain
To ever seek the other.
I like to think that all souls are like trees
That while we feel separate our branches are touching
Somewhere high up in the sky
Beyond all knowing or feeling.
What happened when we met
Something for remorse or regret?
I regret your sorrow but I don't regret my learning
When I recall I feel so small and my eyes are burning.
Underground Streams
The tissue is always poised in the box
For tears that never come
It was never safe to cry
So instead the rivers run inside
Underground streams aching in my brain
Blue ice and crystal, a cold headache
They leave salty deposits.
Fear fluttering in my belly
Little butterflies never able to settle and rest
Never calm in being I, always in search to change that self
With books or medication
Never the will to just sit still and be in meditation
To look within is to see those streams
To know how deep the grief is
How I wish that I could cry
If only to release it.
Meditations
There is something about this place
All green and all blue
Where tree and grass meet sky in a vivid cacophony of life
Here bees fly, cicadas sing and birds are on the wing
It looks complete and freshly made
As if a god had placed each flower
I sit under the pine trees, my prickly friends
I come here to drink in cool meditations
Being as the bee, becoming the flower
For this hour to be free
I know each springing weed intimately
Why is it so hard to know you
Sometimes I like to forget my humanity
I like the caress of nature
That silent and immanent presence
That speaks to me so easily
The Frankness of Frank
I love the Frankness of Frank, the Janeness of Jane
I love them not for their beauty but their complete uniqueness
For the pitted surfaces and ruffled edges
I have never met anyone the same
I feel so privileged to be here and share
Love sees with the eyes of an artist
So it marvels all the time.
Dad Daddy Dad
My father died
Dad daddy dad
I remember you
Not as a man on the worlds stage
But someone we knew day to day
Who fed us and read to us
Who spoke with us and ferried us
A far from perfect man
You had two sides, a Gemini
I saw the best in you
I was sadly disillusioned
Then out of that confusion
I saw neither good nor bad
I saw just the man
Whose life was not as he had planned
You are still in my mind
My years of watching have recorded
Have left their glory and their warnings
I still have you inside
I will try father dear
To bring you no more anger, no more tears
Dad daddy dad
I still love you and I'm glad
To have had this life with you.
Christmas decisions
Somewhere you are buying presents
Deciding who you do and don't like
Have they been bad or good to you?
Christmas is hard for the unloved
When I was little it was bright with glitter
Now I can see past the tinsel
Still I wish you a Merry Christmas
I wish you well
If I can't have it you still can
Yesterday I woke with childlike glee
Only needing to be for me
Today I see your needs
My pride isn't too high to respond
I can say what's inside
That I love you
That I want good for you and me
Swimming
My fingers are a prow cleaving the water for that first thrust out
I am without the need for anything else
Once swimming only the movement of my limbs can keep me suspended
Which is like being born and then living
Swimming is doing something impossible because you know the art of it
I love its steady rhythms, these repeated actions lead me into trance
There I can dance with my thoughts, sliding backwards and forwards.
You always have to work in water
It's no place for despair or drunkenness
To sink is to drink to deeply
To penetrate surfaces and feel what is under them
I don't swim when I am sad
Mostly the water loves me
I feel a sense of freedom in it
It supports, it caresses and invites play
I twist and dive, bob and survive
Laughing like an otter
A song for you
You stood on the brink of something new and strange
Two people meeting who weren't the same and still you turned away
Were you too afraid?
Were you too sad inside?
Or were you simply glad to be back on the road
I don't understand why you turned away from me
Except that we have our own journeys
We are reading different maps
Yours said to wait and then to turn back.
I've been so silent since
I haven't crossed the fence
Because of how it felt when you turned away from me
Though each of us needs comfort and each of us needs care
We can't own each other or keep each other there
So now I turn away from you
Writing
There are meant to be blessings with this but it is harder than it looks
There is artifice within the art,
Not simply to create from the heart but to plan and cogitate
Its enough to set furrows between brows
While you wonder how you will bring your dream to life
I've worn so many skins
I don't know where my own begins
If I were alone none of it would matter
I write because you are here
I guess I also hear that inner voice listening to itself
It is never pure because it calls for artifice
Each face on the page is mine
A hall of mirrors back in time
Reflection that's what looking back is called
So I look back and remake it all
Godlike and yet so small
I wrote to become someone else
Someone who spoke
I always wanted you near.
I used to write poetry
I used to write poetry
Wanting to be great
Wanting to be known
To reach others because I was alone
So I wrote and my soul woke
The voice that arose
Spoke of justice, beauty and pain
I thought the last would end me
Then I was to sad to write
Sugar spilled my brush was stilled
I was silent dwelling somewhere
Words could not describe
But now I return, burning to speak
My blood is rising like the tide
Words rise and rise
There is still something inside
Even I can not disguise it.
Restoration
Seared by fiery fury
Cooled by icy shock
Spotted in lurid reflective orange
We think it is over but it is not
Bruised and bloodied we watch
Sad eyed prime ministers
Promise us justice
For once hoping that their rhetoric
Reaches some emotional truth
Offers us some proof of oneness
So that what is hurt can be healed
What is severed made whole
But how can they hold back
The thrust of that insidious presence
Spreading a confused message of rebellion
In our terror, only that word will serve,
We undermine democracy from the inside
Rearranging life
It isn't some bad bomb that will blow us to the sky
Its the things that we do daily without asking why
The energy we burn, the cars that we drive
Pollute the air we breath so that nothing thrives
It takes time and information to make a change
Will you make it your priority when you rearrange your life?
Pandora's box
We opened Pandora's box and let out
The roiling, rutting, rucking mess of society that cried
More, more, more and feed me on your illusions
I want to be famous.
Seeing hope on each face, we did just that
Breeding a seething sucking population of thousands
Who fed, fought, bled and died
Until nations of wealth stood with one foot
Hoisted over their poorer cousins and said,
Do this and it was done
Although not forgiven by everyone
Because children were still the future
Each generation taking on the weight
Of the lasts mistakes
Until waking they realized
The roiling, rutting, ruckimg mess of society was untenable
That despite celebrity glitter they needed food and water
After that the only sanity left
Was knowing that having opened the box
That inside every despair there lies a prayer
Hope for the opposite.
Triangles
Dark triangles trace the air
I am but you aren't there
We all walk with our memories
I am and you are inside me
We are two and also three.
None of us is truly real
Nor can be known as we are
You were my star
Shining far away
If I saw you day to day,
The mundane would destroy that image
Perhaps remake you in a closer guise
But even then we are disguised
Only revealing as much as we can tell
Honesty presses me against your skin
Then pushes me away to face my days.
For Robin
The colour of the sunset is never just pink
I think it is peach
But you teach me what to see
Colours ripple with meaning
Death can be black or white
Depending on the culture in your sight
You are like a butterfly
Speckled with refracting dust
I trust that you have found home
Flying back with the third generation
To be in the mist and green
The cradle of your soul.
Beyond reflection
Gazing into the pool at my broken reflection
You asked me for help
But I was gazing at my reflection
My life in so many pieces
I wanted peace
You asked me to be the brave one
To walk into the crisis
I could only see what this did to me
Then I heard your voice, tired and broken
I thought she needs my help and the universe flipped
I looked up
Instead of my life I saw yours
Then I walked forward.