The Spring

There were baby birds, chicks, nesting in one corner of the house.

In another corner lay the old lady, making noises in her sleep

- groaning, coughing, wheezing with the effort to keep breathing.

The chicks made such a noise, chittering, jagged noises in the air.

Mosquitos buzzing away in one’s ear.  

Life seething pulsing as always.....

They would not let go.

The thrum of trucks, mini buses and taxis (not to mention private automobiles) racing up and down

The dirt road behind the house - 

And the drilling buzz of the construction machines - goodness know what their names are -

All signs of living breathing hope, I suppose

While the old lady lay wheezing as life slowly seeped

Between the bed covers and the mattresses,

The toilet papers and the combs/toiletries

Many things come to us all at once

We cannot take them all

Nor give them accommodation

We stare, avoid, avert our eyes

Fixate on those that we understand

Can calculate and portion away

Our flesh teased and plucked

We nevertheless would give, 

rather than fight

And the old spinsters

bachelors

widows

widowers

and near-as-damned-widowed

They protest

Say no

they will fight

They are not the ones to take it lying down

Not the same

But death comes to all

Death with a small d

And above all

The eyes, looking watching

knowing

Your eyes your own eyes

They have seen what you no longer wanted to see

They know the truth you no longer wish to acknowledge

What is and is no longer embraces

All of you

And you fall into the folds

Banks of clouds 

Of heaven of passing of the ladders 

one climbs

Of that moment

When you know, 

It is enough.

Sunday

Rooted in this moment
We caress the trunk of life
Bring us to earth oh lord
Gracious sacred Sunday you have granted us
Let us learn to treasure each second minute hour
Time we cannot collect nor give back
What was it all for
We ask
Answer you give none

Two minutes to the hour
Sand slips through the whole hole

One minute to go
And time to leave

Apple in the Jam

I like the ancients - and finding out about how the ancients lived, thought and perceived the world. But I am also always thinking of the future - trying to understand what it is we are running/moving towards. Because I believe deep down that is where the meaning of our existence comes from, the purpose of our being. For example, I don't believe we are here to perpetuate the past - to be a re-enactment of what has been. And the choices we have to make are all to do with the future. But what do we mean by the future, what exactly is the future?

Last night I said to a friend that all we do is backward-looking. We project what we have learned from our parents, teachers, colleagues, friends, world media around us and reflect back the tastes, opinions and (above all) desires we have taken from them. So in a way our choices and dreams are necessarily born out of those influences from the past and therefore of the past. But the future is something other than the past and if we are to experience and understand the true meaning and nature of our future, surely we must be able to divorce this from our past to some degree.  It is like wishing to taste the apple on its own without the interference of the sugar in a jam. Or at least to recognize that part of the jam that comes from the apple and not just assume the jam itself is what the apple tastes like. The reality of our future must be jam, there can be no future without an admixture of the past, but do we really understand the meaning and potential of the future itself, the apple as a thing separate in birth from the reality of our past?

So why is all this important? Maybe some of the crazy decisions and ideas we see proliferating in our world nowadays are driven by a lack of recognition of the extent to which we are taking the past with us and a failure to understand what that means in terms of the future. Maybe the lesson to be learnt is not just from the past but from understanding the relationship of this past to the future that is to come.

Garden

Let us go jollily down the garden

To the waters underneath

On the train

What strange lives these women must lead
Whispering their secrets with such intensity
Mouthed at each other across the table
Using mirror reflections to check out fellow passengers
Black eyes darting everywhere
Ever vigilant
Sibilant breaths drawn

I hear the spitting and hissing of mouths drawn
Hands desperately elegantly drawing in the air

Glug glug goes the wine
The crisp crunch of potato chips
All sounds would they drown if they could
So smothered with care

Then maybe the truth dawned on me
The curse of the lost voice
Deaf and dumb perchance?
But no, it was a choice they made

Gender

Men abound on earth
Of different hue
And make temperament heritage
But all with an iPhone
or a Samsung Galaxy, an htc or a Blackberry
Talking in different tongues

And then there were the women
Looking over their shoulders
Sitting on daddy's shoulders
With the strange power to embrace
the vulnerable with the strong
Jezebels at heart
Pirates in spirit

Supplication

I do not presume
But I would like a little something

Three cascading drops of pearls
Falling from her earlobe
In ascending order of size

Elegant arch of a disdainful pale face
Red bow lips and sleek mouse
Coloured hair

Tearing away the gaze as eye
Catches eye - his eyes
Enquiring yet non-committal
Hot nor cold

Holding worlds of possibility
And of nothing

We slide on along the
Gravy train.
Try this, try that, Sir, Madame.

Till we find the seat to slot
Ourselves
Into.

Gaa-Yaa-Guem

Music alters our being, the DNA of our senses
Our thoughts, perceptions, the air we breathe

I sought the droplets of sound from my past
Sometimes whining, twining, arching elliptical
Notes I never heard....

Trying to make sense of where we are
All from -
Has never been easy

Hearing the news of another
Muslim girl/boy
Fled to a warring battlefield to face

The destiny their parents deserted

The heritage that never was (was it pure terrorism)

Someone somewhere (CS Lewis? but not just him - so many before, and after)
Noted the call to belong
Ingrained within our DNA

I have a way back
Not many have that luxury
But will I use that power
To find my way back
And maybe it's not the way
Back

They say between love and hate there is but a thin line
So it goes with high art and clichés

Such a fine balancing act we must put on -

And between the future and the past
An even thinner partition
That hardly divides
But is another blossom
Gift of gods
To us.

Costable and Turner

Apparently Constable said painting is feeling....or something to that effect.  And then he decided really that painting should be a form of science (and presumably awarded similar regard???).  Isn't that a bit of contradiction?  But perhaps not, if we end up seeing that science is nothing but feeling....for those who cannot see where this is going - I urge you to read those scientific journals so full of subjective opinions and preconceptions, it reads like a veritable old woman's gossip column.  OK, maybe not soooo bad.  But so much that we assert as scientific facts, are little more than fads of the time we live in.