Last glance

She leads him

To the mirror pool

Where she tells him to dip his hands and drink.

She doesn’t say when to stop,

And so he continues, draining the pool.

In his belly, the shards of the mirror form, and

He sees not the blood from the wound in his middle,

But the faces of his children as they play,

Oblivious, in the fields below.

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Jokers

Thank you for your hands that keep me safe

Reassuring with a gentle grasp

And strong enough to withstand my anxious clutching

When it all gets too much.

Thank you for your attentive gaze,

For seeing the things I so desperately try to hide from the world

And doing all you can to help me out on days I struggle to raise my head.

I offer the same to you. When you need me, I’ll be there.

We are both jokers who have finally found each other inside the deck

And nothing will separate us from now on.

 

 

Crude

Pine fresh, they say
stepping from the dark pool
that was flora, that was fauna,

that was lost, that was found
and now is used. Its lifeblood spilt.
Split into molecules, measured for worth, for potential
for making cloaks of green paper
with no chance to rest.

The ghosts of it chant as they chug from engines
itching to join the mists and rain back into the soil that was home.

Some do, only to find they have become poison and turn the earth black.

Weather change

If the breeze could speak, I wonder if it would tell us where it’s come from.

Tell us about the butterflies that have surfed on it, or the parachuting spiders waiting to paint the trees with silk.

How many bodies it’s brought together,  channeling life from flower to flower,

catching dreams and sending them by sky post to Mary Poppins.

Would it tell us about the cut trees it’s seen, the hunters who have no hunger to warrant hunting, the water that was ice and the islands not made of rock or soil, but plastic?

Maybe it already is speaking and we just haven’t learnt how to listen.

Falling

Spirit. The spirit in your bones,

In your flesh,

Lurking in the fine connections of your brain.

Lightning. Ideas. Drive.

Dive from the precipice,

Weightless and heavy, both.

Free falling

Into the beautiful chaos

Of the lifestream,

Igniting your inner universe.

There is no disappointment,

No fear, no expectations.

Only the blinding essence

Of you.

Platonic

Most of the time when we say

I love you

it’s directed at our spouse, our lover, our other half

but

what of all the other loves

that fill our hearts,

give us warmth, comfort, security?

What of the people

who make us feel like us,

who make us so at ease

that we couldn’t hide ourselves if we tried?

I think it’s time we

told them, too.

So here it is,

plain and simple, my friends:

I love you

 

Step up, young dreamer

Welcome, welcome,

to the dome of the mind,

cast out in spirals

and labyrinths

to lead spies astray.

 

Welcome, welcome,

to the circus of the subconscious,

where everything and nothing exists at once,

paraded in colours and banners

that will surprise and delight you

and then leave you in darkness

once you realise

there’s no such thing as being full here.

 

World Book Day

When opening to a page and getting lost within,

whether fiction, non-fiction, poetry, short stories sweet or grim,

remember that those words, before they were inked,

were the ideas, imagination and experiences

of those creators with whom you are now linked.

A spin on Pippin’s song

Behind the world

is home.

Home is where you are, where we are.

Home

is where our hearts go

after we tread the many paths,

from night’s furthest edge

to the closest shadows.

Home is where

we

will never fade.

Mind Games

When you think of a brain –

all those fleshy, pinkish

folds, a bit like the goo

from Ghost Busters 2 –

do you ever see the star map inside?

All those electric connections

zig-zagging their way

across the galaxy

(no, not the chocolate bar,

tempting as it is).

Can you feel each little jump

from synapse to synapse,

like Mario in invincible mode?

I don’t all the time. But

sometimes I do, and I wonder

if that star map is the same as mine,

or different.