Belated Day 30 ~ Where Are You Now?

Where are you now?

~

All the things that matter to me, mattered to us,

matter so little to anyone else

if they even matter at all. It’s all so intimate. Small.

No-one but you could ever remember how we sat in that bar.

Must be fifty plus years ago now.

I can try and explain, paint a picture, tell the tale of our joy and the blight on our stars,

But why should anyone care?

~

No-one but you can know or remember that one special night

when we met in a world that was flooded with lights.

We were there. We were present. We were so very there.

No-one but you can remind me of words I have forgotten beyond all trace.

I have to scrape every shadowy cave of my brain just to recall the shape of your face.

A face I so loved. A beautiful face.

~

No-one but you could make me keep looking, hoping to see you around every corner, through a window, in a crowd, alone on a bench, out with your kids (assuming you had some), walking through galleries, buying fruit at the market. Do you still play guitar and sing in the street? Do you visit our favourite tree in the park? Have we passed each other by? Maybe you can’t even walk anymore. I don’t care as long as you’re there. Somewhere, still there.

~

I’m so frustrated looking for you.

© A.Chakir 2023

Olive Oil

through passage-ways in shaded morning

heeding not the subtle warning 

of the burning sun to come 

I follow you as best I can

after all, you are the man

all we explore is known to you 

to me it’s strange 

though once before I wandered here

in some dreams I had alone

and so I feel it is my home

we pass the mosques where people pray

we pass the dates and figs piled high

I catch a glimpse of you ahead 

if we are parted by the crowd 

will I be lost or only free?

your words repeating in my head

‘go to the cafe by the door 

wait for me if you are lost

ignore the crush, meet me at the olive oil,

there beside the beggars gate’ 

oil to soothe?

oil to blend?

oil to smooth a slippery path?

oil to heal your ravaged skin?

I turn away

I turn and walk the other way.

Day 6 ~ In Earthly Paradise

in the earthly paradise
birds will flock and fly
their songs will be the only sound
to rise at break of day
the sky a pale cerulean
the air so pure and clear
we won’t be missed by anyone
we have no special worth
everything we ever made
was only for ourselves

Paranoia

we went out late that night again
the moon was full above the wood
our shadows stretched and shifted

we could have gone another time
it all could be quite different but
we went out late that night again

i wish we’d gone another way
i wish we’d gone the time before
our shadows stretched and shifted

before i lost you in the wood
you hoped to see the stars and so
we went out late at night again

the path we took became unclear
the moon was hidden by dark clouds
our shadows stretched and shifted

if you had trusted all i said
we would have stayed at home instead
we went out late that night again
our shadows stretched and shifted

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.

Fragile Dust (a tritina)

like lace these fragile flapping wings,
new born from the chrysalis, pale butterfly
drying under a yellow sun, bright burning

full of life, vibrant, short lived, time burning
stretching out its virgin wings
clinging to a tender stem, this butterfly

climbing upward to your journey, butterfly
prepare to fly away, as I, burning
with desire to touch, with care, your wings

an awful thought, lost dust, wings burning, butterfly

Possessions

Our lives are full of disposable objects;
things we are given, things we buy.
From our birth to our death
we are magpies hording trinkets.
When we die they’ll be scattered
Others will decide
which ones mattered
to their own memories
or settle for intrinsic worth.

Some objects hold nothing,
others are full of feelings, stories,
warmth that leaves a long imprint
to be felt by some perceptive stranger
in a junk shop pile of the forgotten
the lost, the unwanted, undefined

the bowl with the flying swans,
their necks wrapped around each other,
was a gift from a lover

the stick with the broken handle
that once held a whistle
all that’s left of a father now

the stone from a beach. the gift of a child.
whose legs were still unsteady
faded petals and feathers in a box
the teddy with a skin worn thin by cuddles
the decorative key that fits no locks

a golden ring, an angel fish,
bracelets, baubles of no value,
a locket with a folded wish,
old and faded, hid behind a photograph
where no-one now will ever find it
or understand it if they did

a tarot pack, with one card missing,
because the Fool is lost and gone
every traveller journeys on

The Oak

where to go
when i am lost
i know i knew
it’s somewhere there,
beneath the oak

when the rain fell
though the leaves
i heard them splash
and felt refreshed,
shaded by tranquility

shelter still beneath the sun
green light filters
reaching branches high above
reaching always for the light

clear bright veins within the leaf
an open palm, resembling mine

Forest Night (new edit)

In the centre of a forest
I find myself alone.
I am truly lost.
I look behind the way I came;
Broken branches, sodden leaves.
I crashed through there in dreams.
I hurt the wood.
I see no path ahead.

Night begins to fall,
no sky in view above. I stand transfixed,
the ground beneath my feet,
unstable now, green leaves above a pit.
I cannot move. No footprints lay ahead.
I can only wait, deserved and destined fate.
I ask the spirits of this forest
for a way to see the path.

I hear no answer, just the hollow echoes of my voice.
I will stand here in the night and wait
until an answer comes.
Darkness gathers round.
In the morning
when light returns
I’ll try to find a better path
and attempt to make amends.

Never Lost

Does the path through the woods feel my feet?
Does it care I am there, not lost?

I never sat down beside it and asked it
that question.
I only know it’s there,
seeming to beckon to me
through the trees
when I stray.

Whether the path notices me
or not,
I am still walking along it,
thankful,
I will never be
lost in the dark.