Day 1 – just my cup of tea

Life is like a cup of tea

We take it as we like it.

Some people drink it plain and weak,

Some make it sour with lemon.

I like my tea dark and fresh

With just a little sugar,

Rather as I like to live,

Strong but with some pleasure

Dazzled

I look around
and see the life
that glows within
and shines about
from every place the sunlight falls
and I recall
the times before
my sight was dimmed
by crippling grief
and realise that I’ve been blind
to all the joys that once I saw.

I sense a sunrise in my heart.

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.

Before the Fall

Out of silence,
out of song
rise the mountains and the seas.
Out of mud,
out of slime,
ignited by a spark divine,
crawls the worm,
swims the fish.
The birds their muddied feathers clean.
Out of thought,
out of dreams,
springs the seed, the bud, the egg.
Beneath the trees the Lovers slept
awaiting the eternal beat,
while up above, in balance kept,
the stars formed patterns in the sky,
the sun and moon held pace with time.
Now sounds the drum
of wood and skin
to summon up the tribal kin
to join their hands
and stretch their limbs
in complex, crafted, leaping steps.
The dance of life and death begins.
Warmed by winds and gentle rains,
the harvest fruit is gathered in
with care and deep respect.
Spring, summer, winters cold,
all was pure and full of light,
before the weary world grew old,
before the garden, in neglect,
began it’s dreadful Fall

 

 

Behind the Bells

what is the back-end coding?
who sits at the screens and creates?

all is one plus one
minus the final sum

was there an original One
who caused that sudden explosion?

assuming that happened at all
all i see

in front of me
is a winding prodigious scroll

how the mighty ones roar
gnashing their bloodied teeth

far away in the distance
the apocalyptical choir

is humming a deep throated chord
that only a fool can make clear

life arising from ice
cast in original fire

such architecture
stalagtites strung on a breeze

scattered sounds on a wind
that swing in fragile strung chimes

strike a note
for whom the bell tolls

might be me
it’s a joke, it’s delicious, it’s fundamentally pure

oblivious wonderment
reflects in a windowless eye

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

To Lizzie (when we were eight)

I remember you little girl,
I remember you so well,
(still with a smile in my eyes)
and our home in the hidden hedgerow
and your pink tray with painted roses
you’d dragged from a tangled ditch
and scrubbed clean as a whistle
to serve me tea, one day, long ago,
when i returned from my wandering hunt
in the unfenced, treasure filled hills.

I remember your bouncing braids
as you ran and skipped on ahead,
to the shade of the bluebell woods.
I remember your chapped lips,
dry, from long summers suns;
the lips that i kissed so chastely
and thought it a daring deed
that I waited for days to repeat,
knowing you wanted me
to practice more kisses in play.

my princess of summer meadows,
my princess of virginal snows,
my princess of warm rains and ice,
my princess of the beckoning
who thought she was only a girl

we knew how to savour life
we knew how to live for one day,
and never for yesterday.
we only wished our tomorrow
to be the same as today,
in the simple trust that it would.
now, i remember you, little girl,
i wish that it always was

Hawk and Hare (a San San)

A sudden hare, across the field,
Swerves and shifts, avoids the breath of death,
In shadowed cloud and sunlight leaping.
Against the light, dark wings revealed,
Downward sweeps, a shifting hawk,
A breath held tight in frozen time.
The hare escapes the talons keeping.
This life, this shifted breath, this joy, is mine.

My Prayers

i wish i could wipe away all the tears
wherever they may come from

life is so often unjust
or do i not understand?

is some god only playing with us?
or are we so deficient in learning?

my prayers, so rare,
are always answered

but not in the way i expect
and not in the way i would want

my prayers are far too powerful
in the hands of a mortal like me

an unwitting player of chess
I can’t see ahead far enough

whatever is given to me
has been taken away from another

it’s worse when it’s someone i love
why must fate be so cruel?

the lessons so seldom are plain
i may never pray again

not until I’m on my death bed
with submissive thanks

what’s the purpose of prayer
when i can’t recognise the answer

The Princess & the Snail

Long ago in Timbramil
There lived a princess fair
Upon a lofty hill she dwelt
A crown adorned her hair

Her name was Princess Tourmaline
She rarely ventured out
So little had she seen of life
She never went about

One day her fathers Squire came by
He persuaded her to go
And look about the world a bit
Her agreement was quite slow

But at last she ventured forth
Through the garden gate
She saw the flowers and fountains there
And lingered til quite late

Her little feet were growing tired
so unused to walk
so she rested with the Squire
to have a little talk

Ah! then the princess saw a snail
Beneath the scented trees
Her face became quite pale indeed
She fell upon her knees

‘What is that?’ she asked the Squire
‘that spirals round such flesh.
Do the people eat these things
And do they eat them fresh?”

The snail looked up in total shock
”Surely you aren’t FRENCH!?” he said
Curling tight within his shell
and fearing he’d be dead

”Oh, he spoke!” the Princess cried
The Squire looked away, unsure what to say
The Princess took the Snail straight home
And kissed him every day

The moral of this story is
‘A chance remark and innocence
Can make us fall for anyone
And lovers have no sense.’