Days in Paradise

I see a brightness shifting,
shining,
it falls across a wide white plane –
a wall.
It shimmers,
it dances,
it glows.
The light is suffused with connections
I fail to comprehend.

I am here
It is there.
It cannot be held.
It has no name.
It’s silence.
It fills my small, lately born, heart
with unconsidered, infinite love
and unconditional trust.

Yet grow I must.

How little I know of life.
Some things stay.
Some move away.
That is all I know.

I need but I do not want.
There is pleasure but I have no driven desire.
The words I have learned are few.

Is this hand I hold up mine?

******

The door to the garden is open.
The cat sleeps there in the sun.
I am not the cat.
The cat has a separate name,
yet I vaguely believe the cat’s mine.
Somebody said it was so.
The cat won’t acknowledge the claim.
The cat wouldn’t sit on the mat if I asked it to
The earth is pleasantly hot so I sit beside the cat.

I understand now about blame.
I was told to be good
so I am.
That’s the game.
I sit where I’m told to sit
and I wont start digging again
although I love to make the earth into mud.
Mud is akin to my blood.

The flowers explode
They are fireworks.
Their petals are cups of sun.
Perfumes are gentle sighs.

None of this is mine
but I see the brilliant auras
brimming into my eyes
and stretching beyond my sight.
I love the varied colours.
I love the dazzling light.

******

The autumn leaves
round my mother’s feet
rise in miraculous whirlwinds.
I want to walk faster and faster.
Wherever she walks I must run.
Today is going to be fun.

******

Here enters death to the scene.
No screams.

Deadly silence covers it all.
They hide it behind a closed door.
I skirt around the threshold
cowed as a beaten cur.
If I was permitted to howl I would
I might find some relief
but my heart grew around the deep open wound
of that overwhelming grief,
stitched together hurriedly,
in dreadful, dark resilience.

What is and what is not
doesn’t matter now.
Everything we own is borrowed.
Time is the thing that breaks our wings
before we learn to fly.

******

Door after door
after door after door
lead to realisation.
Experience is essential.
Knowledge must be acquired.

Entering doors
Exiting doors
Exploring without liberation
Until infinite love is a memory
faintly grasped as it slips away.

Life is a search for that love.
Love searches for life
and all roads lead to the door of death.
It stands open
waiting for time.

Free choice and fixed destiny
are sadly intertwined
on that straight path home
that turns and winds away.

Years in a pulsing pit could not destroy me long.
It burnished my wandering soul.
I only want to be whole.

******

Frankenstein’s creature walks alone
abandoned by his maker.
There will be nights
he will think
he has come to know
all that there is to know.
It’s never truly so.

There are nights as cold as a witches tit
and nights that burn him with yearning
and grip his new heart in a vice.
When everything melts into sorrow
every curse happens twice.

Born fresh and made to suffer
we are part of a tiring throng
bound on a moving belt
with nowhere left to belong

To forget is a consummate blessing
until death comes along.

Words are useless.
We forgot the language of angels.
We’re turgid, turgid and bent.

Bell, book and dripping candles
and meaningless ritual days
bring me no relief.
I never believe those lies.
The spirit is rooted in earth
and reaches the vaulted blue sky.

******

If it happens once it can happen again.
This may go on forever.
It may wait for us to stop,
to renew our forsaken pledges
and show that we really do care.

God is in the garden.
God is not hidden in prayer.

******

I remember the sweetness of scented air
stretched out on the open moors
where the plaintive song
of the birds above
the high hard winds at the Tor
resembled a holy choir.

Now we walk beneath
through the mire.

******

We are living in Plato’s Cave
watching ourselves as shadows
thrown large across a wall
and failing to see the fire

The world that I entered has shrunk to this.
We are in retreat.
Delusions have swallowed us up.

My desire to create is both flight and fight
an expression of love to kill demons
when the shadows stalk my sagging floor
in the lonely long late hours.

******

Incandescence,
pure and fresh,
can still be seen through a wavering veil.

I do not cease to seek a glimpse
of the light I once so clearly saw
in the glory of life’s central core .
I’ll surmount this bitter clay
and find that powerful vision
while any days remain

Reflections in rain on ice cold glass
make rainbows of window panes.

Four ponies out there in the snow
are kicking up crystal brightness.
Their tails become heavens banners
in the fields of battle again.

I will be as I was before,
as we are born to be.
Not sad-eyed sitting here
alone, empty,
exhausted, numb,
as sometimes I become.

That light I cannot hold or name
will still on earth remain
held in the winding spirals
of infinite energy.

We surely can be the same.
Angelic, fallen, human.
Our hearts are deeply hurt
but our souls will never be lost.

Flatlining

death changes nothing
death changes everything

the day was calm
and then the sudden shock
a hell of grief
an open wound

don’t bleed!

silenced

sealed

before the sad amen

death changed nothing
death changed everything

the days went on
while i took foolish risks
and tested out my fate
i sought out thrills
i put myself in danger
to feel some deep emotion
as consolation
and a balm

it heals
but still reveals,
in every day that followed,
that everything was flat lined
neutralised
suppressed
by unshed tears

death changed nothing
death changed everything

my heart is tarnished
but the world goes on the same

i know what you would say
if you were here today

i see it now

perhaps it’s not too late

death changes nothing
death changed everything

Reduction

her gesture
was the first moment,

a first step,
soon parted by death

recalling the shock,
altered and shattered
his world

never look back
as Orpheus did

Butterflies Wings (Afternoon with Macbeth)

Time passes,
time drags,
time repeats,
time snags,

Time ticks by.
There he lays.
The room is dark.
The room is cold.
Childrens’ voices pierce the veil.
Here is the killing of a King.
Lady Macbeth reaches out.
No-one grasps her bloodied hand.

Time rolls round
and time rolls round.
The end is set
by moments marked on a digital clock.
Death marks the walls with fast drawn chalk.
This is the circle ambition brings.
Generations repeat the sin.

In the street outside,
with early signs of April rain,
the swan bends down and folds its wings.

In the cafe down the road,
by the window where light falls
on polished wood, the books are glued,
their pages shut, their words unknown.
An old man shuffles by alone.

On every table in the room,
the yellow rose is in full bloom.
Shakespeare’s lips are butterflies wings.
Four friends meet and seal a bond.
They all know the plays the thing.

The Saddest Lines

Puedo escribir los versos más tristes esta noche.
Puedo escribir los versos más tristes esta noche.
Escribir, por ejemplo: ” La noche está estrellada,
y tiritan, azules, los astros, a lo lejos”.

El viento de la noche gira en el cielo y canta.

Puedo escribir los versos más tristes esta noche.
Yo la quise, y a veces ella también me quiso.

Tonight I can write the saddest of lines.
But these words above never were mine.

I encountered death as an infant.
I created myself as someone I’m not.
I wasted my gifts and took the wrong turnings.
All that I loved most faded away.
Sometimes it’s hard to put food on the table.
Each day is a struggle. I think I might break.
Are these tired words sad enough for you yet?

Let’s step up the horror, in case we forget.
Seven million people died of cancer last year.
Five thousand people sleep rough every night.
One hundred elephants are slaughtered each day
They hack out their jaws to trade in the ivory.
The ocean’s polluted and forests are dying.
The politicians are lying.
No one takes action.
Everyone’s looking for things they can’t have.

Don’t speak to me of her love you once had
or play with the thought of her infinite eyes
and the way that you lost her love and ask why.
Pablo Neruda I hear you complaining.
Pablo Neruda silence your cries.
Each moment of love is a gift. Don’t expect it.
There’s perspective above,
in those trembling blue stars.

 

~~~~~~~~~~~

The quote in Spanish is from “Poema 20” and is part of “Veinte poemas de amor y una cancion desesperada” (twenty love poems and a desperate song) from Pablo Neruda that was published in Santiago de Chile in 1924.

Knight at the Crossroads

Tired, he came to the crossroads,

to the place where his own dead were buried.

His horse halted without his command,

its head bowed down to the bone dry dust of the arid hostile earth.

Even the birds were silenced.

No water was here to be found.

 

His life had no purpose now they were gone

but still he must travel on,

seeking the grail as he always had,

for the grail was his last long hope.

Like a Bird

I struggled to keep a small bird alive.

The bird, tight beaked, was unwilling.

Now my mother lies curled,

The same as a bird,

Tired of this thing we call living.

If we let her go now she can open her wings,

the windows are open, flung wide.

I defend her souls right

To escape in the night

And fly into sweet oblivion.

 

 

 

The Bed

this daily journey, marked by constant icy rain,
filling streams and hiding tears,
brings me to this silent bed again

outside the windows, blossoms slowly fall in gentle wind
but these are not the flowers she see
as she leaves here, by degrees

Here, On the Shore

there is nothing to lose here
and nothing to win
out here by the ocean
cast up on the shore

grains of salt
in damp sand
fragments of shell
bubbles keep rising
to break in the air

nothing more
nothing more
nothing more
nothing more

briefly cupped in a hand
the water of life
soaks back to sand

we go and we go
and we go and we go
we go, we go
we go into the flow

spiral and helix constantly spin
it’s part of a vision
too vast to explore
I’ve seen this before
and before and before

From Acorns, Oaks (a haibun)

I was an acorn, many years ago,fallen from an ancient tree to the earth below.
One day Arthur came, dreaming of the land and his ambitious plans. Absent-mindedly he stooped, bowed down to me, reaching out a hand.

with heavy footsteps
men will come, their battle plan
disturbs the forests

He held me in his palm. I saw him softly smile. He placed me in his pocket
where it was dark and warm. He was not a king to me, he was just a man. I stayed with him throughout his golden age.

here amongst blossoms
they sit and speak of glory
petals softy fall

When Arthur fell,I fell too. He fell into his long sleep of death. I fell to my birth, pressed into the earth by a careless foot, an unwitting gardener pushed me into mud. I was cradled by the earth while the country still mourned.

cradled by the earth
in knowledge of high branches
I reached up to light

I reached up to light and became a sturdy oak. Now we are a forest. We whisper this old story as wind sighs through our leaves. My children tell the tale.