State of grace

I’ve got it today, had it yesterday,

but for tomorrow who can really know

because grace is a state that comes and goes

when humans behave in the strangest of ways.

Fortunately so it always is there

buried down deep waiting to rise

and bloom like a rose to offset the thorns

life is so keen to challenge us with.

So we rise to the challenge and not to the grace

and cut the thorns down however we can

but with never a care for those poor lowly thorns

grace will forever stay out of our reach.

But I’ve got it today and I celebrate

while keeping the faith that it never will leave

but, of course, it never can ever do that

while totally comfortable within our keep.

However, sometimes it cries day and night

for lonely it is without our company

and really how much does it cost to visit

and spend some time in a state of grace?

Agony

Rain doesn’t wash the agony out

it simply spreads it around

and allows it to settle where ere it will

while waiting for times to change.

And change like a storm sometimes

and sometimes an unnoticed drizzle

but change a definite and certain outcome

after agony of a day, month, year.

It’s the waiting that lays one down inert

unable to rise to the new and untried

so the this or that lays claim to mind

and creates complete and utter confusion.

Now confusion like a devil incarnate

that overloads the mind, heart, soul,

to cause withdrawal from the meaningful

until, until, well, perhaps the next storm.

But in between the storms and drizzles

there is the sun and new growth

if we can but know and certainly feel

something’s growing behind the times.

Let there be peace and so it must be

to enable that “thing” to grow happily

without the distraction of agony

and the devil’s work of confusion!

Spinning

Round and round and round

and it ain’t no mulberry bush

but rather this thing called life

that attracts the whim of circumstance

and spirals out of all control.

Caught so in its evil trap

we fight to release ourselves

and we do when the wind dies

but, lo/behold ‘tis just a spell

before that wind comes back again.

And it blows, and it blows,

day in and day out

until exhausted we collapse

into the sleep of the dead.

Sleeping so we hope to gain

the strength to carry on

spinning, spinning, spinning,

until the next release. 

And so of that spin/release

it surely is a testing ground

but I wonder when if ever

we’ll pass that damn exam.

And as we go with the flow

we can only hope and pray

for that stillness that surpasses

all out understanding.

Strife

The sun sinks slowly, slowly, down

o’er the strife of humankind

and sits there like a devil hand

to leave no escape route.

And so the strife is quite content

to way mere mortals down

and bar entry to our state of grace

that waits so patiently.

So to that state of grace I say

don’t wait for invitations

but gather strength and infiltrate

that evil barrier.

And then, and then, what happiness

will o’er take humankind

but I wonder, yes, I do,

can that ever be.

Perhaps, perhaps, perhaps,

but then again, perhaps not!

End of an era

This is a story written from my own poem titles.

Perhaps a bit of truth buried in it.

THE END OF AN ERA

Shadows sing to the music of a moment but in Africa I’m listening to the frogs instead of Jingle Bells.  I should take a gentle stroll through the minefield of the mall but it’s a bad place to be and quite a bothersome ordeal at Christmas time so see me like a phantom in a dream purporting to be real in a summer haze.

Reality is born in the old in me but if it’s Sunday, it must be story time and the poor and needy, lonely, sad, like the fallen and the dead in a village of humanity can think that there’s a rainbow on a dark horizon when the rain falls and not think of cyclical manoeuvres felt but unseen

Winter is turning the air of love into an emotive roll but it doesn’t matter in Africa, South Africa, where life is good in the turn, turn around.  It’s not like yesterday but it’s alright. 

Someone laughs between the trees and believe I would in secrets if not for the flame, desire, walking, talking, of wisdom and hope.  Look!  It’s not as if it matters that I read from left to right when the sun, the son, is a million steps behind after the summer sun because I am love born anew in the shadows of the truth and the river sings beyond the limits.

Someone whispers Christmas thoughts and wishes but nothing makes any sense and so I dream again of rich and juicy plums at the edge of need.  No one needs to know about the jump and spirit plans because goodbye is just a word in the mind of a woman.  I didn’t die but I believe it was me with blue eyes and backbone in the garden of love on wash day.  I’m waiting for the sun, the sun, and not the wind and bricks of change!

How the people lie – don’t ask me why but there’s always a sign beyond the tone when I’m sleepless in S.A.  I am the will to believe in love because and simply so because of evolution, you see, and not because I throw “them” bones.  And I dream of the weatherman and what to wear these days if not paradise clothes when I don’t look down like an artist on a wire.  But where do dreams go?

I think the energy of soul is the sinking sun and not the bread of life when the power of love like one last flickering fire in February memories but this isn’t confession time.  It’s a story from titles and the words I heard before a summer rose sank in the quicksand of goodbye.  It’s not echoes of indecision or a story of a “she” but men of the land, beware because she cries again and Sunday’s nameless woman, a once beautiful china doll, now just the words of spring from me to you.

Thunder rumbles when a river meets the sea and waves of thought like dream energy come back above my head in the blue, so blue, of sky and tonight perhaps I am now like a willow tree in the game of life and not a girl turned woman, older now.

Who writes of love’s awakening and what the spirit knows in the silence of heartache?  What is love?  Hey you!  Why don’t you let it out?   Love is a friend they say not the happy-sac of heart in the shadows of a picture un-perfect. 

It’s the wall of truth fresh from the earth in spheres of the natural where once a budding rose, my heart, folded first in the deal.  Be calm.  I love alone in the waiting game like a lily amidst brambles, thorns, of life.

Wine, women, and song and the matador and the bull like an acorn in the lost lining of sweetness in the pit of a soul.  Left or right over a mountain?  I cannot stay at the crossover point in the mist in mid May in case the demon of need would catch, grab, and keep my head/heart and the eyes of a woman.  Perhaps but maybe not the time has come for spirit love.

As a river flows so my train of thought of what I don’t/do want to know about love’s empathy but, really, I won’t go there no more because the skeleton of doubt like formations of rock when I get there.  Intuition tells me that if time could know more about winter roses and crosswise manoeuvres, there would be no deceit.

Spells are cast over dying trees and the common heart and love and someone needs to pay attention because the call is for growth spurts.  To think there can be rainbows in life’s tapestry when the wind blows cold just illusionary sketches in the silent spaces of a last plea. 

Behind the voice of thunder a flower blooms similar to the perfume of a heart and that’s alright because the air I breathe brings peace after the tears.  Oh, to love like a lovely lady but where I’m at there’s no love’s hold in the circle of my soul and this is my confession.  I could go to a land called Swaziland for just a release but sun touches windswept roads in the overthrow of summer and I might imagine things in love’s sky.

How do you feel when exhausted with no hope or new car under the African sky?  Only one tree as a symbol of human need in memory but be still because in the grooves and threads run leprechauns and ghouls to frighten a caveman not to mention the termites and rats. 

God saw it was good that she dances again and so I write the words of love at the start.  Praise me for this bonus pain because partners like the sea and the shore have knock-on effects in unholy matrimony.

It’s been said that the music makers pull the strings off the wings of simple things but that’s just a ramble for the good of soul transplanted in the grey and not a last and final call for memories to play ball. 

The grey sky in descent like handmade footsteps of dreams and how knowing this progression around the mulberry bush of unrequited love but I’ll remember today/yesterday and the glow of summer over rolling hills until one to twelve, the end.

Emotion speaks in the swing of time, “Be my Valentine” but decisions, decisions, and who gives way to new life?   In simple terms it’s simply this; it was only a dream of your touch and her walk into withdrawal only shadows in the glare of necessity vs. need.

Court is in session.  You did it all and on appeal I’ll give you a woman’s tears but it’s not the usual please pity me or story of a monkey because it’s all in the mind of only an “I” of the gender feminine where once no unconditional love. 

Heaven isn’t bliss but God speed the stream of ecstasy and the voice of a poet to the morning after when it’s the need.  One fine day when I know the air of dreams is at the window only me perhaps will see a woodman’s fire and say, “thank goodness it’s Friday and not a collision in sky”.

No one is driving complacency like a stream in heaven because backward energy is lazy sometimes and wayward steps make no impression when the light changes.   The sun, alone tonight but at ease on the ride, asks, “What if I hear her pray for the plight of innocence and I think it’s about me and not love’s rope and the colours of a heart?” 

The “thing” or “things” in value-pack bags in the artful warp of time like a volcano shooting pebbles, mere pebbles, at the base of my heart but in the likeness of man is Mike from the north and this I know from the murmurings of sea and the night sky. 

Where is the river of my yesterdays?  In the groove on the edge of love’s punishment as yesterday when Sally broke my heart? 

Pat-a-cake; what to pack when love cannot and will not be God, the air, emotion, or a mouse who learnt to shout like the sea when at the limit of endurance?  Rather let me die towards the end of May because life is about hands and perceptions of air when time is my master.

She thought it best to write a note but not me soon into air to ride a cloud like Will-o’-the-Wisp past moving walls when the train has no brakes.  I seek to find vintage wine not the merry minstrels or magicians of the air.  Let nobody say we cannot fly or write a little ditty for light relief from illusive love or only one silly tale for today but not yet because it’s time for Sunday’s story of a ball.

Dear Diary.   In the story of a man and story of a searcher, I would say “so and so” like a swan about love and to love following on dancing with the stars before the swing, slam, dunk, from butterfly wings of once-upon-a-time.  Oh, if I was love like the sea and the sky and not the night from the light!

She asks, “Is this the untitled and unfounded confession of sky, of daisies, or of the “This Is Me” from the inner or the outer because I could wilt like the rabbit and the tortoise?”  “No”, says the queen of the sky in wilful protection.  “This is just my thought for the day because it’s Sunday and the countdown to another Sunday!

There once was … but, no, that’s it!

Helen

6 November 2005

(and that's that - the end of an era)

How knowing

Wise are the ears to hear in a crowd

the plea of a pebble down on the ground

to arise as a boulder large and stately

in belief of a power, the great Almighty.

Keen are the eyes of limitless sky

to spot at a distance the beauty of life

multiplying and changing but never to leave

the storehouse of mind’s enlarged memory.

But how knowing the trees of mankind’s greed

and the sea in denial of hostility

still believes and behaves exactly the same 

as it did in the days before I was made.

Then there is me with a need to be true

and embrace the fullness of a new view

like a mother, a lover, a friend, human being,

saved from disease and internal bruising.

But how knowing I am of seasons and tides

and the overpowering need of these times

to uphold the system of death and destruction

as a reason to not try for perfection.  

Mortal ears and eyes; do they perhaps lie

or merely impound the wisdom of mind?

Backwards

For many years she tiptoed around

the real and meaningful

in the hope that life would reward

her brave if foolish attempts.

There were walls and circles to walk around,

very many doors to be closed

and a heart to be chained up and locked

and she did indeed do it all with aplomb.

And yet she was shadowed by the meaningful

that lurked in the corners of her daily life

till finally, finally, unexpectedly

it blocked her forward momentum.

She had to go backwards sight unseen

to find that lost meaningful

and although she stumbled and fell

she finally arrived at the door of awareness.

She was welcomed, of course, with open arms

but now she can never return

but that’s okay because she knows

she had to be there to be here.

And so of journeys let them not ever be

a complete and utter waste of time

by propelling us forward and not backwards

into awareness of the meaningful!

The mind

When all that was has faded away

there is no rope to tie the mind

to the stake of present times

so it wanders through the past

touching this and touching that

like a blind man would.

There are no guidelines or directions

and no schedule or time clock

to ring the start/stop bell

and always the mind likes to surprise

with what it decides to remember.

It mingles tears with the smiles

and heartache with happiness

and dangles on a string

a variety of peculiar things

that passed at the time

with no understanding.

Intent on its quest the mind proceeds

to traverse the times that made or broke

human strength and fortitude

and I wish sometimes it would simply bow

and leave the stage of what was back then.

Not to be; the mind’s a beast

untethered and undisciplined

and now and forever will always be

the most vile and worst enemy

of the present times!

A gypsy story

She wanted to travel from here to there

and thought the hill a mere bump in the road

so she got out her old trusted wagon

and prepared for the journey ahead.

But as she got to the bump in the road

it seemed to have grown out of all proportion

so she battled and strained, broke her composure,

and cried with the effort of going ahead.

So there she was stuck half way up

thinking and thinking what to do next

and as she pondered months turned into years

while she grew older and then too old.

Too old to go on, too old to go back,

so what was that gypsy to do?

I guess she planned in case, just in case,

there should ever be as some believe

another chance at this thing called life.

What would she be, where would she be,

and I hope she has her blueprint complete

before she decides to set herself free

because nothing happens without a plan.

She plans to this day and knows to believe

she’ll be in a place of safety and love

and that all the other attendant things

will be as she means them to be!

Sadness

When there’s sadness in the psyche

it creeps up to the eyes

and sits there like a predator

waiting to pounce and devour

settled composure.

It’s mostly happy living there

but seemingly for no rhyme or reason

it needs a change in scenery

and propelled by an unknown force

runs swiftly down the cheeks.

Soon, too soon, it comes face to face

with determined intent

to quickly wipe away

all trace of its existence.

So then it dies all alone

outside its comfort zone

sorry to have decided

to go on walk-abouts

or so it is thought.

Instead it simply returns again

to settle in and be content

deep in the psyche

until restlessness sets in

and it prepares to pounce!

The heat

She reads the words and nods her head.

“Just like me” she says to self

and knows at last she’s not alone

in the fierce and unrelenting heat

of life’s, oh, so harsh demands.

No energy or will to fight

those demands that test her faith

and as the heat sinks deeper in

she knows it’s looking for her soul.

But in the still and silent night

soul rises up to fight, fight, fight,

and dawn breaks on a cooler state

to help her face another day.

Caught in cycles all are we

from joy to sadness, hot to cold,

but there is solace in the thought

that all things pass away.

And so she waits for the pause

between the good and the bad

so she can build a stronger soul

to cut the heat off at the pass.

Where will it go she wonders now

but frankly, my dear, she doesn’t care!

Green leaves

Soon green leaves will turn to brown

and what was once so beautiful

will simply fall to ground

and the tree will stand as one

barren and bereft.

And in this state the tree begins

to contemplate the past

and to think that surely, surely,

the pain and anguish, heartache

will not come again.

It takes a time before the tree

decides to take a chance

and bless the world again

with the beauty of green leaves.

But growing up so very hard to do

and soon the pain and heartache

creeps into all green leaves

and the suffering begins. 

And then silently they carry on

waving in the breeze

and doing what leaves do

in the world of man.

The tree watches and waits

for the season to change

and asks, “can I, can I,

do it all again?”. 

I don’t know for how can trees

grow the, oh, so beautiful

that are doomed to suffer, die,

and then disappear from mind?

And I watch and I wait!

Love's will

Instead of celebrating that gypsy mourns the times

of sun and sea and forest trees and wind through her hair

that spoke, oh, so silently of love’s will to live

and to be well and truly known.

But who can know of love’s desire in totality

when life’s so many little things enlarge and procreate

more and more little things to keep the mind engaged

in the act of survival on the earthly plane.

Survive we must but how to be mindful and aware

and still appear as one divorced and separated

from the meaningful that demands attention

in the still and silent night.

And then we awake with a brand new set of cards;

laugh, make money, have fun and jump around,

and we shuffle, deal, shuffle, deal,

but the meaningful not included in the pack.

Easy then to say it’s really not our fault

when the card that should be played not visible

and I don’t know how to overcome that simple fact

except to say seek and find and to trust that you do.

I trust you will, I know you will, this lifetime or the next

or the next, the next, the next, until a new day dawns

and we participate in this play-act of life

with a full deck of cards!

Sorry

It’s a little word but how it means

so much when said out loud

because it closes gaps,

opens up brand new paths,

and lines the journey forward

with better understanding.

Not often heard it’s like it is

something foreign to the psyche

and time and time again

simply rejected outright.

And not validated it shrives up and dies

but there is no proper burial

for something considered worthless

and thought of as trivial.

Many years later there may come a time

when its value is well and truly known

but how to find the discarded

not a quick and easy task.

Much better to find a safe place

close at hand and easily accessible

and then use, use it, use it,

even if (sadly) it’s time and time again!

The sea

It’s been a long time since the sea moved at all

but ask anyone and they’d say it’s not true

because there are waves and currents and tides

that make us believe it’s all as before.

But always beneath what appears as the norm

there’s a world unseen and not ever known

where the sea lives a life just like the shore

still and silent and unchangeable.

There was a time when the sea thought to be

a moving force with no settled view

but it learnt over time that there’s no escape

from the essential truth of its very own soul.

And that truth so at odds with expectations

forces the sea to go through the motions

but there in the depths it writes its own story

and immerses itself fully therein.

Spare a thought but please don’t be sad

because it’s just life that frightens the sea

out from the truth into ways of the world

to toss and turn like it knows to do.

The sea is happy but, yes, it prays

for the world one day to change its ways!