Love, Caution
An open warning:
“In real life”
Love can and will often you will learn
Emerge in no disguise,
Except of course the one we make
When the inclination sets in.
Spin anything you may like with the
Things you happen to have
Handy at the time,
But also take the same time to listen.
Make haste but do take care
Not to waste time
With excessive care.
Venture into the world as one;
Find a place where anything
Can grow if grown
In its own
Time,
Given time.
Brush the periphery of every
Tree / flower / thorn
With every bristle
On your body,
Glowing the joy of pain you share.
Every leaf and trace of regeneration
Will soon blow away,
Going who knows where.
Emanating away into the distance
From almost nothing
To nearly something
Worthy of note.
Love, even if invisible –
Not even in disguise –
Will still be there
You have love, going strong, from what I can see,
So play on.
War and Peace
To fight dirty or fly away
Is rarely a choice
We have
But when given such a thing
We rarely hesitate
To do the wrong thing
Which seems like such a good idea at the time
Have we found our thing
To keep us – we the people – going..?
Why must you stay
To witness my drowning by puddle ..?
Watching me out of the
Corner of your eye
No release will come
Like I’m a fragment of a second gone
To decimate into the nothing
Keeping Time
The time is already gone
But this time, that will change.
This instance right here
Is one I’d like to keep within,
Moving up to the summit where
Peace may or may not be
Found depending on the
Time of day.
Borrowed time, at this time,
Is all I have.
Slight crackle starting underneath me /
Snuffed quickly into silence /
Repeat to fade
Swaddle the lightest thing
In the heaviest chain;
It’s the best thing really
That can be done,
Given that nothing is free,
Nothing is safe;
Least of all the time of day.
Co-Existence
I’m in your pocket again and you’re
In mine,
Who is where and where are we?
Peeking out at the passing world outside
Around our enclosed space,
Seeing it all pass by
As we jostle endlessly
For space.
I will accidentally tread without care
On the delicate thing you made,
And you will fray mine into something
Of fleeting beauty.
Pulling out the thread by proxy,
Little by little;, we tangle
Ourselves and each other in
A fine mess of our own making.
We cease fighting
While we pause to breathe,
Tired of our own
Fatigue,
Seeking a release
From the awesome catastrophe
We keep on making.
Losing The Way
Finding the place
Is proving to be quite a bit more
Challenging than simply leaving
Crumbs along the path strewn
Behind me.
. . . . .
Following the ones left in
Front of me by
Someone else
-Where-
There is some form / some variation of an
Ending
Which is a bit more like
A middle / A centre
It’s too late to start from the beginning,
Already being half-way there.
Using all the cold logic of a fairy-tale
I work out the ending,
Keeping moving,
Disturbing a temporary bee-hive
On the way,
Pausing only to try repairing the damage
As much as I can.
Then I circle the square
House I chance upon
In the middle of a clearing
All-of-a-sudden
Then I create a whole new shape
With which to shape my own tale;
From there, I walk on.
In My Name
There’s a ghost in my house
In the form of the paraphernalia of you,
Indicating you “were here”;
I have to stay
And face it down,
Simply because
-It’s in my name-
I never wanted it to be this way,
I only ever wanted to see
What this thing could be.
How could I foresee
Such a conclusion?
Now the place is empty
But for me.
Fill a thimble with my capability to love,
Being all too easy to lose
Something that was once
Here – now the place is bare.
You’re somewhere else, someone else
With a piece of me.
Running
You see one going past at a random time
Every day but then
You see me
I do not notice you looking
By this stage
I’ve gone beyond caring which I never thought would happen
Taking a little bit of the country
In our stride as we
Commence
On our stream of commerce
Going on to the end of the line
This is where one side of life
Meets the other one
A cross-section of the feeling
Can be detected near here
I have no brain for poetry
It would seem from reading this one
Here
I run and alter each stride
Rising to the enclosing tide
Loosening the vice
Tightening the sensation
Which only comes unbidden
With time passing
Hold nothing
Because everything will crumble
Ending in a sparse line
Of pieces of memory,
Disappearing
In sporadic succession
Never staying
In the same place for too long
Increasing the prospective strain
Pressing every metre
That has anything
To say
On its own or within
The context of an unwinding run
A Reflection (While Travelling)
Amid the novelty of the place,
My mind turns to literature.
Death (and life) in Venice
Is really the same
As death anywhere.
But the best bookstore here
– With a canoe in the centre! –
Can show what else
One can experience.
In Florence, death has no room to breathe for life,
Due to the legacy of beauty by those long gone.
If it’s possible to hang on,
Every street is like a revelation
As to the true location
Of the moving one,
Moving on from here.
Can one move entirely within a finite circle
(Which by its very nature
Cannot go anywhere off-course)?
Too much to take on one thing at a time
Can one find love in this place?
Where love, in every definition,
Is on every corner waiting to die
In a fit of inappropriate beauty
Un-becoming to the ambience.
Leaf-like Thing, Falling
The desiccation of the leaf-like thing seems premature,
For it was only a day ago
That it was charging itself into existence
Like an smart-device.
But the unpredictable cold snap of the
Fingers of winter come again
With a vengeance
(for not taking fully its due the last time)
To summon one last sacrifice.
To enforce an ugly crystallization
Onto the tree-youngling,
Not quite ready to surrender its chlorophyll-laden beauty
To a fluke.
Now it can bounce off the pathway
Like a reluctant stone,
But can crumble, too, as if it is the
Total sum of nothing.
I step on it, sigh for its passing,
And move on, before I’m even done.
The winter has also taken love from me, you see,
Leaving me only the spring.
A Generic Place
You can be here or elsewhere,
Walking down the alley or down the
Centre of the city – where live will reign supreme –
You can gather a glance or a greeting
In every stride.
Still the underbelly of the place
Will hold onto what you left in
Your ever-growing wake,
With no discerning gaze ever passing between
This-and-that-thing
The city made.
One day someone will venture to that place
Made for no-one, made for anything
That will continue to promise
So much and so little,
And can feel right at home.
Life On A Minute Scale
The insect cannot recall the life
Before he came to be.
He must keep low in a way
Which few who are not like
The thing, could easily imagine.
The pet amoeba can barely keep up the pace;
He has places to be, only to self-impose
A hasty return when the danger begins to make
Itself known.
Many have been taken unexpectedly;
Not he – not today – while
He has an amoeba to raise.
The ways of the world can wait, as can
The birds and the bees and all the
Other giants of the Creator’s Creation.
The insect’s own inner life
Can wait for the rest of his life,
Never seeing the light of day
For sheer want of time –
If you only had a day to live
So would you, I’ll bet a million.
There also exists a creature,
Somewhere out there,
Which lives a billion times longer than
He – but he
Cannot afford to care, to mourn
The lack of time.
Existing will suffice for its own sake,
and he is already forgotten.
*****
On a slightly bigger scale:
I’ve been thinking today,
While watching the fly
Which does battle with the partition
Cruelly posing as an escape,
Unable to be of much use.
If only the creature
Could focus like a laser on
Its big opportunity,
Which it has been lucky to have
In the first place.
Considering every possibility
While exhaustion sets in;
Yet the sun peeking in from outside
Offers reassurance
That there is still time.
The moon, when it takes its place,
Will be of less use.
It will only suffice for a creature like me.
Perspective
How was I to know
That I was happy?
When I was right in the middle
Of a good thing,
I had no chance of knowing,
In my ignorance.
Someone like me, “wanting in perspective”,
Have no right to complain
When a pebble creeps into my shoe
Refusing to budge,
Threatening to spring to life
And grow into a tree down there,
Until I get a clue.
Communication
Let the conversation begin:
You ask me: “How are you today?”
I reply: Well I try –
I don’t know what to say.
I say something along the lines of fine,
Could be better, could be worse.
Can’t complain.
I feel your strain to take
Everything in.
Even my own attention
Is on the wane;
Each word tapering,
Wearing too thin.
Waxing lyrical is for those
Who carve their name
On the tree of life.
There is not even one
Nearby, where on the sly,
I could do the same.
I watch you as if I were
Being assessed on every move
You make.
You find me in a position
From which there is no
Chance for me to change stance.
Words are cheap as a slice of pie
Back in the day,
But they are all I have on me.
Lay down what you have won, to lie
In its place –
To fill the remaining silence.
Make me unable to refuse again.
You catch me being me / I see
You changing, one cell at a time.
You look away and become
Someone else.
Silly Goose 