Fish in the sea

I see how they live in the sea where they’re free,
a community born of a deep consciousness
bound in a school and kept always together
by love or a purpose instilled in their brains.

If I reach down to touch, they scamper away
afraid, I would say, of something unknown
or of shadows cast cover their claimed terrain
or fear of betrayal from a human hand.

(Photograph by Gareth Howell)

As fish in the sea perhaps we are scared
to reach out and touch what we cannot see
in fear of reprisals or what may befall
should we be aware of life’s mystery.

Yet deep consciousness belongs to us all
and binds man to man with connecting lines
but dropped in the middle of free hungry needs
we proceed to live as an island, I fear.

As fish in the sea swim close to the shore
and enable the blind to see how to be,
how many believe God brings to us too
the means and the way to live better today?

Be it me or the fish, or a lover, a wish,
be it hope or a dream or only a thought,
it’s all meant to be the beginning of change
and we have the means of making it be!

Overflows

Love is low, deep down low, where it’s always been

trying hard to rise above stacked up disregard

and mountainous piles of inconsequential junk

to land in the awareness of the disadvantaged.

But there’s trouble in the camp of this gypsy clan

who thirsty search for water in another’s field

and make up the loving from an overflow

un-contained within by he who dug the well.

Yet be it not a sad, sad, tale of doomed to be a fool

because overflows like rain on seeds can produce a tree

and shade the path of he who walks aloof and alone

up and down, up and down, in the same old-fashioned way.

But to hold and keep forever the times of being deprived

makes nonsense of a mind’s inbuilt override

and grants regal status to sensory impulses

implanted and connected by the uninformed.

All it takes is a firm stand in one state of being

for the disadvantaged to grow tall stately trees

but until love rises up from the deep down depths

the drip and drop from overflows makes a lover, see?

The fuss-fuss dance

When time decrees the merge of soul

into what the people know

there begins a fuss-fuss dance

with stubborn hands on hips

but slowly, slowly, comes the slide

down along each side

and so bends the soul into a bow

of complete acquiescence.

It’s easier, you see, to bend into the known

and be as one deprived of insight into source

than stand a pillar fortified by intuitive knowledge

brought up from the depths of soul’s watering hole.

But soul undaunted rises up again and again

until the stretch and bend begets no happiness

and soul sinks into the centrefold

of the discarded and rejected.

Stay, stay, and flesh pleads like a beggar

but learns the moves nonetheless

of the fuss-fuss dance

and slides the hands according to

soul’s continual rise and fall.

Ha! ‘tis just a dance of chance;

a chance to be and then not be

as well and truly made!

The aperture between

From snapshots to a movie screen

and that’s how love can grow

when hope o’er lays our yesterdays

and projects them into dreams.

From winter into spring

and that’s how love can move

into the aperture between

dreams and reality.

But that aperture between

like an unfulfilled sea

rocks the boats, normality

and conformity

until a mind like the shore

stretches comfortably at ease

along the length and breadth

of what it can believe.

And I believe that sea is me

in wilful rock of boats

because screened today within

love’s sure but slow progress

from first sight unto forever.

Do not disturb this woman, please;

the end’s still a mystery!

Sparks of brilliance

A golden nugget buried low

beneath a false veneer

flashes sparks of brilliance

into the atmosphere

and these combine, entwine,

with sunshine on the rise

to make of every brand new day

a time to breathe and feel

alive to possibilities.

They parade upon the stage

of what could maybe be

if the shell from which they came

moved forward into more

and I watch enthralled and awed

until twilight time closes gates

and locks them back inside.

The source of them sad sometimes

yet welcomes home again

each and every spark that died

while trying to catch eyes

because wisdom knows another day

begets another rise

of brilliant possibilities.

But the golden nugget not perturbed

because the burning spark of love

enflames a mind with soul’s designs

from the safety of within

and wise the one who sets an eye

on a spark that never dies!

Village of Humanity

In a village of humanity where the children all grow old

double-sided rainbows weren’t expected every day

but suddenly in awe the inhabitants looked up

and radiated energy pulled the sky down to ground.

(Picture by Frank Bennett, New Zealand)

Blanketed in blue and shades of other hues

the energy confined boiled over into crime

and the mothers, fathers, children,

as one became unglued

from a value system and the merit of kinship.

Up and out they struggled one by one alone to find

the earth no longer stable had become a rolling ball

from which they fell and tumbled into a foreign mode.

In adjusting to the temperature and the intensity of change

love became as water free flowing down a drain

and collecting in deep pools beneath the earth’s crust.

There it bubbled, boiled, and today it bubbles, boils,

denied full release into the atmosphere

but through the hues of sky and me it erupts occasionally

and sends boulders, pebbles, rocks, flying everywhere.

Catch them … but they can’t

for love and foreign modes

are and will remain

incompatible!

Simple Simon

(It simply must be time for a little bit of nonsense)

Simple Simon clapped his hands on the way to going mad and said, “Don’t you know, my dear?  It’s really

very clear. There’s an extra strand of DNA messing with my brain.”

So turned the one who didn’t know a brighter shade of pale because openings are none when always

closed to love.

Perturbed she went a-scratching.  Nothing, nothing! Down she went right to the very core and, lo

behold, a little gem lay nestled in the middle of confusion.

“Ah-ha”, she said happily.  "It's a little lump entrenched” and she wondered what would be if she could

set it free. Simple Simon looked amazed.  “Don’t, don’t, you dare! It’s a strand, you know, not a lump

you should be looking for.”

She scratched again a little more.  Maybe something strange from a long ago misty morn crept in with the

breath and brought everything together but even then and there she knew the lump was love bound and

tethered inwardly by another strand of DNA.

Simple Simon clapped his hands. “Tell me, tell me, please” and she stood a moment longer in that

intensely beautiful and vibrantly alive brighter shade of pale before turning back into one who didn’t know.

She left him then standing there a simple man with love and she wondered if in years to come she’d miss

her DNA given freely to ensure love doesn’t come undone.

Simple Simon clapped his hands ~ as he damn well should!

The waves of time

Restless now the waves of time

seeking so to make it known

it’s moving quicker to the start

of new and better days.

I wait a woman humbled by

this flow of desperate means

that brings within a need

to know where I’m going to.

But silence follows all my days

and shadows me at night

to make it seem I’m cut adrift

from my destiny.

To ask of time is not to get

for who can speak to one not fixed

within a limited concept

but always I’m in sync with time

and restless toss until I find

I’m in the new and better!

Purporting to be real

Higher, higher, higher, where broken dreams can’t go

and I find I have no wings folded in my will

to overcome the memory of emotive love.

Run, run, run away, to where the ocean roams

but the river is in me and I carry memories

in the current of my feel.

Too long, too long, this corridor of dreams

purporting to be real

but death of flesh and bone no mercy for the soul

destined to rise and run beyond horizons of the sun.

Sad and lonely is the river

meandering through dreams

and losing force and volume

to life’s everyday demands

purporting to be real.

Spun and tossed in rapids of purported truths …

and still the river flows!

(Photograph by Frank Bennett, New Zealand)