Out on a limb
Hanging on a thread
A crystal swings and turns
Capturing lights reflected.
Like my life.
A brief flash of fire in the dark.
light
Day 13 ~ Horizon in Arcadia
There’s poetry on the horizon
on a far away beautiful island
surrounded by golden light.
Peninsulas, oceans and islands
blending in shades of soft clouds
fading away out of sight.
Ocean meets air and turns with the tides
and reality hides behind dreams.
Day 28 ~ What I Saw in the Fairylands of Wales
~
What I Saw in the Fairylands of Wales
~
I was sitting knitting when I dropped a wayward stitch,
a stitch in the web of the worlds.
I saw a one-eyed fish and signs of sudden rain.
I saw the wren new-washed.
I saw hills that were cast by giants.
I walked through warring trees
and heard the starling speak.
I followed him through twisting streets
where all the lights were out.
We left salt at ever house,
to exalt the rising sea and summon subtler dreams.
Then the Wonderchild stepped out holding a burning lance.
He swore to the sinking sun and the valleys filled with light.
The river-crossings and wells swelled with sparking water.
He refused to be baptised and vanished into the wood.
I stood there watching, wishing I’d caught his glance.
© A.Chakir 2023
Day 3 napowrimo ~ Sunshine
the morning is gloomy and overcast
the weather forecast says it won’t last
but that voice on the radio sounds kind of dead
it might only be the state of my head
the day may improve when there’s more light
I was tossing and turning in dreams all last night
I forgot to turn the clocks forward an hour
outside the window primroses and daffodils flower
a ray of light is hiding from sight
a swallow appears in high looping flight
amassed clouds take on a fine luminescence
the sun breaks through, a glorified essence
a bright golden glow bursts through the gloom
a shaft, a sunbeam breaks into my room
I’m bathed in bright sunshine the room can’t confine
I feel uplifting joy, amazing, divine
burning and turning my heart is a choir
singing with joy and celestial fire
spinning and whirling, breaking free and ecstatic
knowing my moods are often erratic
the shadows have broken and I’m still alive
the sun has arrived
© A.Chakir 2023
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.
Shine
my answer was always going to be no
all of my instincts said i must go
dreams are not only a thing of the night
you didn’t express it, when i was there,
when i was in pain, you were so scared,
but our purpose in life
is to travel and grow
come out from that blanket
breathe in the air
darling just shine!
look at the light
The Rose Outside the Church
The yellow rose,
like sunshine,
stands outside the door
of the founded, waiting church,
having more to give
than the sermon heard within
To see God, see the rose
From bud to bloom
it follows the sun.
It shines.
You saw it as a child,
this light,
and, though it decompose,
it is a prayer,
a perfume on the air,
a symbol of Gods love
in which we share.
Butterflies
see the butterflies
flying in a light formation
over sunlit, dew-wet meadows
where the cornflowers
bow and sway
love brings pleasures
with the glorious newborn day
the sun will reach its central zenith,
and it’s light will cast no shade
we may burn,
but day is short
and in turn,
by the evening’s well-stoked fires
sweet memories will grow, not fade
the light will deepen into night
when the moon and stars arise
and paint the fields in gentler shades
their magic light dispels the dark
’til sleep brings rest to closing eyes
and in the morning,
rise the lark,
rise up,
rise up,
higher,
soaring,
day is dawning
see the butterflies
flying in a light formation
over sunlit, dew-wet meadows
where the cornflowers
bow and sway
love,
beyond the weight of measure,
rises with the glorious,
precious,
treasured,
glowing pleasures
of the shining newborn day
A Girl in a Yellow Field
the girl in the park squats down
her head almost down to the ground
she is taking close up photographs
of crocus spread out in the sun
i take a more distant view
i see a girl
in a field of yellow
that shines
i know her obsession well
she is oblivious to all that’s around her
focused on one yard of earth
i used to carry a camera
to capture that special light
it’s a study in glory
wherever it’s spotlight falls
now i carry a notebook
i enter the girl on my page
– another small study from life
the lovers sit on a wall nearby
wrapped in each others arms
lost in each others eyes and dreams
they notice nothing at all
Spark
The crocus on the frosted green
for six short decades I have seen.
I’ve gathered treasures to my store.
There will not be so many more.
My troubles are not any less,
I still have reason for distress,
and yet I feel my spirits rise.
This sudden light, a sweet surprise,
As spring reveals a summer sky.
Hope returns and does not die.
It’s raining now again today
but I remember yesterday.
I feel the spark of life within.
It trumpets loud – begin, begin!
The Dreaming Path 