Submit your work, meet writers and drop the ads. Become a member
 
I
I
sometimes I'd like to kiss you
but I think it's because I'd like to kiss anybody
and you'd be fun for that sort of thing
but I'm scared I'll have to pretend I'm in love with you
and I'm scared I'll hurt you
and I'm embarassed that I think you might have a crush on me
and I'm wary because this has happened before
and I'm uncomfortable because it doesn't feel right
and I'm secretly longing for her
and I know I can't love you
any more than I can pull the sun down into our orbit
or attach the moon to the earth with a telephone cable-
I can only love who I love
and I won't make the mistake of
thinking I can change my heart
again- you can't force passion,
it aligns naturally, and
it is not aligned between me and you.
here, i've built up
a collection of kilometers;
a fever, written out in stains,
coffee against fingertips; an
indomitable anomie. this
room gets messier by the day,
it won't be clean come
winter. spring. the day you
decide to break down and
call. there are twigs between
these disheveled sheets.
                                        i'm
stagnating. i'm fluorescing,
only for you. only, you can't
see it. just yet, at least.

increments grasp in quiet
moments. sometimes this
clay in my eyes takes your
shape. sometimes i wonder.
sometimes i wish you'd come
over. all times i fall a little
further down.

i've been here before.
but not like this. drowning
on open land. quietness
by any other name.
propinquity, or inertia.
or simple lonesome.

predictably, i lose dreams.
you lean in close,
eyes alight.
the grace of my heart
lies in the palms
of your hands
broken,scarred
and calloused
as they may be
it is in this thought
i know complete serenity.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
my husband ben
is an artisan carpenter.
his hands though battered
are gentle strong and knowing of my skin my soul
and my heart.
if you drill down,
past the hair,
flesh and bone.

into my mind
where the ego
and id  reside.
then turn to the left,
and follow the i.q.
down the alley,
you will find
a place.

where on thrones of
cogitating thoughts,
king big questions asked,
reigns in conjunction,
with, queen yet unanswered.

they watch with interest benign,
over a field of  an eternal tourney,
split roughly down the middle
by a chasm quite wide.

on one side
of the gorge is arrayed,
the banners of philosophy.
at the vanguard,
the epistemological knights;
plato, descartes, ferrier,
kant, hume,spinoza
and bosanquet.
the major forces ride beneath the banners, of their schools of thought.
followed by the lesser lights,
and those,
obscure or forgotten,
who walk at the rear,carrying the gear and
to set the tent poles.

as to the other side,
that is given to,
the seminaries of religion;
bhuddism, taoism,
islam, hindu, juche,
rastafarian, sikh, diasporic, parsis, tenrikyo,
judaism and christianity
with all its clans.
they array themselves in cadres,
according to belief.
and to the rear,
there rides,
an interesting guerilla band,
of intertestemantals,
about 3 or 4 hundred years wide.
these are the few who are  accounted for,
when god spoke nothing,
or perhaps
a lot but the message just got lost.
they number in their disparate clan,
alexander the great, ptolemy, the hellanic masses, seluecids, maccabeans, hasmoeans
and pompey the great,
not all, but the noteworthy.

across the divide,
by arrowing thought
were fought rallies of acumen
and battles of wit
and occasionally,
a persipacious fire was lit.

but there is one more player,
to mention.
apathy,
the great hulking ******,
who for want of gumption, and get up and go,
sat crouched,
(quite uncomfortably so)
on a spire.
made of mediocracy,
cemented by woe,
in the iddle of the rifted abyss.
unable to decide
with which team to go.
another 3word writing
exercise
epistemological
intertestimantels
abyss
here i am..
walkin the line,
that's blowin in the wind.
suantering down the
pathways of my mind,
not knowing where to
begin.
cause i've seen fire and
i've set fire to then rain
had sunshine on my shoulders
been addicted to  the pain
run for the roses
on the glorious road
sat on a dewdrop
carried a ain't too heavy load.
danced in the rain
turned the tables
read the fables.
been another brick,
in the big brick wall.
conversed with
the mildy insane,
went to the chappel.
drank bucksfizz and
straight champagne.
been to paradise.
been to me.
waited at the copa,
wanted to be bornfree.
sat on the dock
and watched the
bad moon rise.
walked 500miles
saw it rain in spain.
knocked on the green door
of the lobstershack.
took the stairway to
heaven,
by the dash board lights.
rode a avalanche back.
built this city,
had a drink at the pub
with no beer.
talked to the solitary man,
about the days of the old
school yard.
laughed a lot.
stood down on the corner,
thinking of  fernando
and red red wine.
sent my message via a bottle,
to be heard on  the grapevine.
got my self all dizzy,
dancin with myself,
at the the fairground.
but didn't cry out loud
found my true colours,
tarnished and dusty,
in of all places, xanadu.
waiting now with bright
eyes, for my baby to arrive,
he took the morning train
me i am keeping busy
watching the world drift
by on granma's featherbed
all the while the nips are getting bigger. send in the
clowns to run amok
downtown and i will sit on top of the world lookin at bothsides now.
see me trying for
jumpin jack flash  
gas-satisfaction.
whilst losing my religion,
after six months in a leaky
boat and four seasons in one day.

all i've really got to go
with is:
obla dee obla da
life goes on
blah......

life goes on.
thanks to r for the inspiration
had a lot fun with this
also a big nod to all the artists whose lyrics are running round my synapses
And it was at that age...Poetry arrived
in search of me. I don't know, I don't know where
it came from, from winter or a river.
I don't know how or when,
no, they were not voices, they were not
words, nor silence,
but from a street I was summoned,
from the branches of night,
abruptly from the others,
among violent fires
or returning alone,
there I was without a face
and it touched me.

I did not know what to say, my mouth
had no way
with names
my eyes were blind,
and something started in my soul,
fever or forgotten wings,
and I made my own way,
deciphering
that fire
and I wrote the first faint line,
faint, without substance, pure
nonsense,
pure wisdom
of someone who knows nothing,
and suddenly I saw
the heavens
unfastened
and open,
planets,
palpitating planations,
shadow perforated,
riddled
with arrows, fire and flowers,
the winding night, the universe.

And I, infinitesmal being,
drunk with the great starry
void,
likeness, image of
mystery,
I felt myself a pure part
of the abyss,
I wheeled with the stars,
my heart broke free on the open sky.
It is quiet and secretive, not telling out its message from the first, but from later on, later in the day. The afternoon was where it usually began, the morningtime being far too bright, except on an autumn day of mist and mellow fruitfulness. Keats knew it, looked out of windows for it, wrote letters full of it for the girl he loved, who was, quite naturally, quite taken by it. Has it to be it? Are we afraid to say this word too regularly in case its quality dilutes?

If one is of a sensitive disposition it can be so easily achieved, this state of grace. He would say it was watching her cross that sun-filled room, early autumn sunlight filtered through damson leaves bathed her quiet figure with shadows falling across a full grey skirt with its deep pockets and camphored hem. She held a bowl of figs in both hands, to place on the blue tablecloth. Better not go there he thought, the touch of fig on the lips, then its open fruit beset with seed. The rest is beyond and far away.

Is there such a music? A composer I know who believes so, and says for him composition consists of the enchantment of the audience through sound. There’s a little song I wrote when hardly out of my teens that conjures up this very state. Carousel it’s called and carousel it does.

A green table,
on it a fan.
Black plays white,
big versus little.
Each with green
gripped by delicate fingers.
Laughing both
the little one wins.
J’ai une maladie.
Yes –the world is for little people.
For children it opens its petals,
for the old they crumple.

Oh yes, for children the world opens its petals. My daughters being cats hiding in boxes, my son his eyes full of stars on a Welsh mountain under a winter’s sky – the memory so quickly fills with the enchantments of children.

And for lovers this word displaces the ordinary and surfaces with the barely credible. Not the first kiss, but on the thousandth brush of lips so light their bodies shuddered, their breath quickened, and there in that moment the perfume of passion enveloped them. In the silent bedroom they emptied themselves into love’s soft shadows and could hardly open their eyes to make sure they were really there and not elsewhere: they had walked from the slow curve of the sheltering beach to the flower-filled pasture, past indifferent cattle and through a tenderness of kissing gates where every embrace of lips gathered momentum towards, finally, that deepest kiss of all; enchantment, more than any loving, wholly and unforgettable.
Next page