Monday, October 14, 2019

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?

Saturday, September 14, 2019

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!

Sunday, August 4, 2019

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.

Friday, July 12, 2019

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!

Thursday, May 2, 2019

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)


Friday, April 26, 2019

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?

Monday, April 22, 2019

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!

Sunday, April 7, 2019

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!

Friday, March 15, 2019

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!

Sunday, March 10, 2019

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!

Saturday, March 9, 2019

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!

Thursday, February 21, 2019

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!

Friday, February 15, 2019

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!

Thursday, January 17, 2019

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!

Thursday, January 3, 2019

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!