Night Rain

The sound of rain falling in the deep night is a reminder that every now and then the world needs washing. The dirty streets littered with our selfish striving and strewn with the harshest words, dropped casually during the day, need to be cleaned. Hopes forcibly squeezed out and dreams stolen wait to be washed into drains, longing to be recycled and fed back in sleep’s stories. Prayers of the ones no longer here descend to rattle against our walls and fences, some seep through gaps and splits to water shoots of memory. Fall night rain fall.

We are only people

We are only people,
We tie our hands to straining beasts,
That promise only stretching goals,
Elastic expectations, Self imposed.
We cannot reach, We are no good.
We fail at what we set ourselves,
We cannot measure up.
So stop and sit and be.
And hear the voice inside release.
Let go the ropes that pull,
The one tied to what was,
The one tied to what won’t,
The one tied to the other you,
That whips the fear within.
Sit and share the tears and tears.
Stop and sit and be.
We are only people.

Peace

Peace is an action, it is not what is left when the noise stops.
Peace is a choice, it will not materialise miraculously from nowhere.
Peace is a struggle for change, not a passive acceptance of what is.
Peace must be made by the willing and the heartbroken.
Peace must be built by lives of grace and determination.
Peace must be grown from deliberate acts of mercy and justice.
Blessed are the peacemakers.

Margins

Ripping and shredding,

Torn from the top,

Wilfully separated,

On the altar of “Us”.

Sinfully split.

Painfully parted.

Barriers bolted and raised to the roof,

Lines strongly marked in the dust of the floor,

Cemented, constructed,

dividing, defined.

We built the walls,

we tore the flesh.

We pushed them over and slammed shut the gate!

We raised the flags.

We sang the songs.

We became us,

So they became them.

And now as we wane and struggle for breath,

We open the gates and we wave,

And we “save”.

We sure up our towers,

We repaint our walls,

We gild bright our faces,

And say, “look what we’ve got!”

I dream of contrition,

Of bloody, bent knee.

Of humble demolition,

Fading power released.

Father forgive us,

We know not what we’ve done!

Look deep

Look deep, my friend, look deep,

When you don’t know who it is you look for.

When the questions of the night survive the darks slow end,

And patience speeds away in breathing change.

Look deep,

for now might be the time it can be found,

Deep amongst the childhood tales,

Woven in the half sung songs of youth,

Pushing to be heard in loss and gift,

Seeking and reaching,

Hiding well,

In the remembered gaze of the loved.

In pictures painted with couldn’t care less strokes,

That had no fear of crossing lines,

And bleeding out.

Listen deep to what once whispered happy ever after now,

And span and ran against imagined skies.

Look deep, my friend, look deep.

For She may still sing.

Difference

When I see you,

I see the things that are me,

and I see things that aren’t.

We share so much and yet,

It is the things we don’t,

that give charge to the spark.

I often wonder why and how,

What scribed the roads you’ve walked?

What days have dawned and passed and set?

What fights you’ve left unfought?

And in the dark what spins your mind,

and weaves into your dreams?

If I could see your first light thought,

Would it reflect my own?

So when you look at me,

what image do you see?

Sometimes I almost wish I knew,

and then maybe I don’t.

If I was all of you, and you of me.

What would there be to wonder?

What would there be to seek?

How could we leap into the new,

and touch the sharp unknown?

If you and I were of one mind,

that edge would never hone.

Life would leak and seep and drain,

And fade in knowings dawn.

When?

When she looked she saw the same old view,

Different faces, even different places,

But still the same.

Still the same.

The breath inside her drove up and out in a sad exhalation,

Unplanned, unconscious, unthinking,

disappointingly irresistible.

Again they told her things have changed,

Its a brand new world, glitter strewn and crisp.

Whatabout, they said, remember when.

But she saw nothing fresh,

she looked hard, so hard,

there it was, not what she wanted to see, but there.

But we dreamed, she cried, we hoped,

You claimed to be on our side, we stood together.

Be patient, you said, the time will come.

But when?

Night

The noise changes,

amplifying the empty airwaves.

Distances shrink,

exposing stories the Sun failed to tell,

Tales hidden by the beating sounds of life.

The fingers of today relax and release,

Now liberated happenings float up into the deep,

Rising on earths cooling eddies.

Conversations had and hoped for,

Hard words reluctantly spoken,

Now regretted too late.

No more time to give to anxious possibility,

That moment faded with the light.

Now be still,

Hear the far away as it sings,

Hear the strange discordant silence,

Hear the night stretch its creaking frame,

Hear it quell cacophonous day,

And break the spell of busyness.

Watch as the weight of dark falls

and eyes can close.

There is no more,

No air for regrets left,

now is for sleep,

And for dream and for stillness,

Change is coming on the broken sky.

My feet

My feet are sore,

Too long standing,

Too long waiting for change,

For direction, for a road.

Heel scoring thin grooves,

Shifting loose grit,

Exposing the ancient solid,

Chasing the hard cracks,

To unexpected places,

Long time baked brittle,

resistant to gentle softening,

But friable, daring a stamp to shatter.

Still waiting, not risking the blow,

Not sure what lies beneath,

What might be revealed,

Wrapped in roots of whatever grows,

Whatever we allow to grow.

My feet are sore,

Too long standing.

Too long balancing the options,

Foot to foot, toe to toe.

Feeling the blow, the punch, the slap.

Facing the challenge,

uncomfortable on my soles.

Curling, rolling, bending,

in anticipation, in waiting,

To stand un-moveable in my place.

As the air moves around me singing,

Pushing and provoking.

My feet are sore,

Too long standing.

I’m still waiting, waiting for myself.

Waiting.

I know I should be moving,

Stirring the earth into new ways,

Painting fresh paths with my momentum.

But I fear the cracking ground,

I fear the hardness and it’s brittle future.

I fear the roots that rise and twist and catch,

Me.

I fear me.

My feet are sore,

Too long standing.

In the night

The pictures that I paint myself in the sleepless dark,

Keep building, resolving, repeating,

brush strokes finding one another,

Testing and reapplying,

with no light to shine upon the stretching surface.

No way to see the edges.

Or touch the gilded frame.

In the deep alone again,

stories twitch and nag for attention,

Poetry forming, shaping,

answering this days unmentionables,

Layering pregnant verses,

That in the seeping dawn deep drain.

The story’s happy ending gone,

A night of grappling angels,

Leaving only aches and waste,

Nothing but the bruises,

and the grief of certainty.

Another sleepless night,

Another dreaming black,

Another carried scar.

Tomorrow rest may come.