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.

Finding…

Finding is only the end,

It’s the aching arrival,

The ceasing exhale,

The stretching of never.

Feeling the blood pool,

The earth creep up tired limb,

Sit they say, sit.

But there is peace in the in-between,

In the swing between planting,

Foot after foot.

Peace in the movement,

Peace in the progress,

Peace in the stretch.

There is peace in not knowing what comes next,

Only that next is inevitable,

Next is coming.

Next is yours.

Peace is in the search not only the finding.

Blessed are the survivors

Blessed are the survivors, those who drag themselves out of bed each morning and just because they have to. For they show true heart and guts and they will know admiration.

Blessed are the bruised, those who carry the scars and wounds inflicted by the jealous and the angry and yet keep going. For they will leave their attackers behind them and find clear road ahead.

Blessed are the strugglers, those who fight each day to shake of their doubts and fears just to give themselves a chance to breathe. For they will draw deep on their true spirit and will feel the touch of the divine.

Blessed are those who set their face to the future in desperate hope and determination, for they will know themselves and they are seen and known and loved.

Are we insignificant?

Sometimes I feel so insignificant,

When I look out across great horizons,
See how simple water shapes monumental lands,

A breath of air cuts rocks to ribbons,

A few degrees smashes our hardest endeavours.

Sometimes I wonder whether we are just hitchhikers,

Parasites crawling through the coat of this planet,

Irritants yes, but specks of sand easily blown.
Insects with exoskeletons grown from misplaced pride,

We make this world twitch and writhe but for how long?
We dig deep though, rooting our egos in the earth.

Sucking nourishment from its core,

Hammering piles into its substructure,

Fighting to control its rhythms, regulate its pulse,

Make it beat to our time signature.

If we cannot make it dance our dance,

We will not be insignificant,

We will blame it when it fights back,

We will name its ways horrors,

We will drink it dry and sup it bare,

We will not be insignificant,

We cannot stand it.

We will kill it for our convenience and say it doesn’t matter!

We will look out across the great horizons,

And say the sun will rise, the sun will set,

What are we but creatures, tiny creatures,

What are we but passengers on this mighty beast.

I wish that we were insignificant.