I slept nine hours last night, she says,
I dreamed of you.
I asked if that was why she slept so long.
Only joking.
She laughs and say for sure it was.
Warm weather here.
Cold there.
Spring, how lovely.
Flowers and butterflies.
Yes.
I smile.
She always thinks of something pretty.
The taxi driver had a Brooklyn accent.
Like all the films, I think,
and remember Sophie’s Choice
Timbered houses, gables.
Tragic story.
Quick slices of happiness.
Madness.
Thinking of that I miss her next two sentences.
I come back to her.
Heavy luggage.
Last night was full of sirens and voices.
The Broadway shows cost a lot.
Traffic.
We’re leaving here soon, she says,
and I can’t wait to see you.
Everything is going to be so good.
Every word she says, is interspersed,
with saying how she loves me
and how she’s longing to be near me.
love
If Only
If we could, if we did,
If the time was right
If I understood all you said
If you had loved me more
If I had loved myself
If I had listened to you
If you had trusted me
If it had all been different
If only
If only the fates hadn’t conspired
and left us no choice and no power
we’d be somewhere else
not ourselves at all
and would that be better for us?
who can tell?
when I think of all that
it like hell
and no heaven in reach
only circles
they go round and round on themselves
If only
If wishes were horses we’d ride them
across the far planes
out to the wide shore
the landscape of all that’s possible
with no hill too high
like free birds we would rise up and sore
If only we could decide what’s best
If only – a phrase I despise
I’d rather live in the moment
and make an attempt to be wise
and learn from where we have been
Beauty
By the spinning of genes through the ages
no fate is ever the same.
Some receive beauty’s blessing.
I saw a boy at the bus stop
Oscar Wilde would have died for
that full sensual lip with a curve
and that nose, so defined,
and the girl with the sultry eyes
by the blue open door.
I was floored.
She’s the trace of a rose incarnate.
Where are such faces created?
Do angels fall down from above,
and are they gifted also with Love?
I think they’re not.
Far
Truly yourself you are.
You touch me,
so nearly there,
yet far.
Sun-splash
we crossed the bridge
grey river
hard pavement
heavy bags
traffic
you nudged against me
laughing
and there it was
the sun splash!
bare cafe
formica tables
coffee tastes good enough
food just doesn’t matter
people chatting
you smile at me
that little light
in your eyes
and there it is
sun splash!
it can rain
it can pour
the wind can howl
the town can fall about my ears
i feel your warmth
close, so near
i don’t quite reach to take your hand
but there it is
sun splash!
everywhere
sun splash!
Reaching for Heaven
when people talk of desire
they speak of fire and heat
but a fire can be extinguished,
in itself it’s not complete
desire is the beginning
the waking of stronger powers
that sweeps you off your feet
and put a stop to time
only when you are mine
that power comes with a passion
far beyond ourselves
it pushes, it tears, it’s agony,
it’s joy, it’s free, it’s sweet,
it’s the urgent demand of life
when the wind comes down from heaven
and whirls true lovers up,
groaning and gasping,
flying,
upward,
through the longing stars,
they cling with desperation
there’s another dimension
to the grip of their grasping arms
until they fall together,
soft to their tumbled bed
you touch my beating heart
we can talk
or fall asleep
we know we are one whole part
i feel such tenderness
it’s then i can stroke your lovely skin
and cradle your gentle head
excite me, ignite me,
never needs to be said
the fire of desire will return
we’ll go to heaven again
by a slower, gentler path
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.
I saw
I saw who you were;
no empathy,
no vision,
no virtue,
that’s sure.
You went to her place
and took her to bed,
then left her alone for the night,
no phone call for days.
Too busy?
What goes on in your head?
And then you show up at her party,
not even a kiss at the door.
You dance with another girl
and leave her to watch from the walls.
You claim that you have a heart.
Where do you keep it?
Tucked away in your balls?
Now in the kitchen,
over a beer,
you tell me you love her.
It’s clear
that you don’t even know where to start.
Your arrogance sets you apart.
When I look in your eyes
they are dead.
Proverbs
I wouldn’t dare judge a book by it’s cover.
I might miss the silver lining, hovering there.
There is many a slip twixt the cup and the lip
and a worm can always turn.
Cut your coat to suit your cloth.
There are still more bridges to cross.
The age of miracles is past
but the exception may still prove the rule.
Speaking of rules, there is one rule
for the rich and one for the poor.
Power corrupts. Here is the wish I would grant;
May their bread fall buttered side down.
In this world of Chinese whispers,
distorted facts and appealing fictions,
all pearls roll before swine.
It will unravel in time.
If we listen with care
we may hear a whisper that’s pure.
April showers are plentiful
but they bring forth the flowers of May.
Children and fools tell the truth
and let’s hope the truth will out.
We live to be loved, and to love, again, on another day.
Blue are the hills that are far away.
The Saddest Lines
Puedo escribir los versos más tristes esta noche.
Puedo escribir los versos más tristes esta noche.
Escribir, por ejemplo: ” La noche está estrellada,
y tiritan, azules, los astros, a lo lejos”.
El viento de la noche gira en el cielo y canta.
Puedo escribir los versos más tristes esta noche.
Yo la quise, y a veces ella también me quiso.
Tonight I can write the saddest of lines.
But these words above never were mine.
I encountered death as an infant.
I created myself as someone I’m not.
I wasted my gifts and took the wrong turnings.
All that I loved most faded away.
Sometimes it’s hard to put food on the table.
Each day is a struggle. I think I might break.
Are these tired words sad enough for you yet?
Let’s step up the horror, in case we forget.
Seven million people died of cancer last year.
Five thousand people sleep rough every night.
One hundred elephants are slaughtered each day
They hack out their jaws to trade in the ivory.
The ocean’s polluted and forests are dying.
The politicians are lying.
No one takes action.
Everyone’s looking for things they can’t have.
Don’t speak to me of her love you once had
or play with the thought of her infinite eyes
and the way that you lost her love and ask why.
Pablo Neruda I hear you complaining.
Pablo Neruda silence your cries.
Each moment of love is a gift. Don’t expect it.
There’s perspective above,
in those trembling blue stars.
~~~~~~~~~~~
The quote in Spanish is from “Poema 20” and is part of “Veinte poemas de amor y una cancion desesperada” (twenty love poems and a desperate song) from Pablo Neruda that was published in Santiago de Chile in 1924.
The Dreaming Path 