Reconcile

I've severed a tie in my mind today;
it was hopeless,
you see.

Ragged breath and flaring eyes
met me at the door
of innocence.

I let it in. Offering balance.

It tore me up.
Shredded me to bits.
Barking. Angry. Violent.

A calm descended after the storm.

Rose water fell from the heavens.
I drank it in.

I forgave. I forgot.

Hope burst forth.

We watched the moon reflected on the water.
Again I let it in. Hope. Life. Etc.

It snarled. Face contorted.
A new demon revealed itself this time.

I shrunk back.

It bit my head off.
Severed. On reconciliation day.

My life overflowed. Manufactured from within.
I seeped into the ground.

Life sprang forth. A tiny shoot. A leaf.
It shivered in the breeze.
A drop of dew weighed heavy.
Sunshine singed the crease.

Hope takes too much patience.

Now, detached,
I can only reconcile
with all
that I am
today.

Forgive

Seek forgiveness
the wise man said.
Forgive.
Forget.
Let go.

Seek forgiveness?
the young man asked.
No, said the sage.
Seek to forgive,
and then you will find the Forgiving.

We carry the heaviness
in the pit of our bellies.
An ulcer murmurs,
rumbles,
and then ruptures.
We carry this heaviness,
hoping to heave it at the source;
and then to seek forgiveness,
but all we need
is to seek to forgive.

We need not Forget.
We need to Forgive.
And then, to
Let it go.

Can you forgive? the wise man tested.
No. Perhaps. Not I? thought the lad.
Forgive? said the man.
Yes, said the lad,
Forgive them, forget them, let it go.
Good, said the saint.
Not good, said the lad,
There's one yet to forgive
for the furor of life,
and he's
the one
who looks back
in the mirror.

spin cycle

There's a gain and a loss in every one of our encounters in life. Whether it is that I am talking about the people we might meet or the events that transpire; also the opportunities that come our way.

I have an eternal cycle of reflection going on in my head - kind of like a washing machine - and in meaning to rinse and cleanse, this process almost always ends up putting me in a spin.. (pun intended, of course!) Hence the often (seemingly) disorderly thoughts.

i aint no poker face

An inspired thread runs between the blogs, sometimes... it's enough to be celebrated.
I said at Azra's place just now, that we each have our prided space in enough dysfunction to keep us functioning... at an almost ordered, but often chaotic optimum.

In my case, it shows out in my writing's. Optimum is a day when the words flow unhaltingly, rivers into oceans and reaching their zenith just as I am about to crash for the evening to indulge in a read or a movie or a late night phone call to catch up with a friend... or something different. Seeking inspiration. Craving it. Replenishing it. Call me predator. My mind thirsts that way, insatiable for the most part.

It shows. When those days of being far below anything remotely optimum threaten my imaginary hold on sanity. It screams on those days. Raging, burning, and surging through every cell in my body. It shows in my writing; and more in my lack of being able to create at all. My facial expressiveness does little to save me the billboard status. I aint no poker face. That's for sure. Writing this book has proven that in oh so many ways. Zarreen's joys and fears have somewhat mirrored my own. In some cases she overcomes imagined hurdles that I have yet to surpass. In other's our lives are so far apart that it takes a little more than the stretch of my worn out muse. We need a vacation :) But not until the job is done.

I love some parts of this writing. Love, love, love it. I cringe at some of it. I cannot bear to read it! But nothing that the slicing and dicing phase can't fix. Or the delete function on my pc. But there's also some bits that surprise me. Lurking in the psyche somewhere, are these molecules and seeds of information that grow to tree's of like(ly) and unlike(ly). And they are made manifest in these creative efforts.

I want to paint again.

Now is a very good time to get started, methinks...

S

dust off your hands... it will be done

2009

hello

what will you have?

a cup of tea? with lemon and ice?

or a bag of flour to bake your own cupcake, perhaps?

i have nothing to serve, you see...

you're an unlikely newness

raking the same glory from the days gone by

a bit too quickly for my liking, i say

and a bit too slow

if it counts that

there's a war crime or two

happening in some part up north

i don't know exactly where

just that

its not okay

because those babies i heard in my dream

weren't actually in combat

the lollypop that got splattered with blood

was just fresh out the wrapper

gosh

the baby was fresh out the wrapper!

but they said they were bombing

an area of armed combatants

(with lollypops - red ones!)


so what will it be?

a glass of ice water?

a dash of tequila?

on the rocks... and the rubble

underneath which

lies a mother and her two children

the third one is just

a

splattered

mush of flesh.

doesn't count.


it's just a matter of

ashes to ashes,

dust

and clay

to dust.

white phosphorous will make sure of it!

dust off your hands. it will be done.


happy new year.

we can wait for FIFA's act,

but the games have already begun.

Borrowed Time

I don't want to do this anymore... even though I love it so! I sit here, feeling like some kind of window washer on a glass skyscraper; washing away in this repetitive circular motion with the sunshine on my face, and looking in at the wonders of the snazzy executives in the boardroom with their faces painted; first a sombre grey and then layered in varying shades of pink to fake a blush and rosy lips.

My blush reflected in this larger than life mirror is of the elements ravaging my usually pristine features and of the gust of wind splaying fingers through my uncombed hair. My shades of pink are just those memories of a time before I learnt to write. You know, when I pretended that I was alive and played on in that theatre of life, a smiling collaborator to the puppeteers jesting ways.

My shades of grey are the shadows from that time. And the reminders that theatre is fiction; and real life, well... that's not for novels, dearie. Why, that's made for living! If you dare.

I remember his words now, when I told him to keep breathing. 'Everything else is a bonus,' he said. 'A bonus.'

This is borrowed time. I just remembered.

And I want to do that thing that I love doing. But I also don't. I really don't want to. Not tonight. Tonight, I just want to breath again.

Tomorrow I will go back to being the best window washer in the whole wide world. But not today. Today I want the grime to collect on their windows keeping the sun out for a day. Just a day. Then tomorrow, I will borrow time to be me again. Tomorrow I will do the work. Tomorrow, fingers will tap dance at keyboard. Tomorrow the windows will be clean again.

But only tomorrow.

Today I will rest.

After all, this is borrowed time.

I just remembered.

evolutionary, my dear

Minds are important things. I just had an evening visit with friends. And we got into this long winded discussion about minds. And survival. Of the fittest, that is. Fittest mind? Fittest soul? Not fittest ego, mind you.

Well it started out because we decided that we should measure some amount of emotional growth or change in ourselves. How, we asked, should we attempt to measure such a thing? Memories gave us a starting point. Then, as we moved along the years bringing us to a kind of resting point in the present day, all we needed to do was look back down the mountain we had climbed and to reflect. Sounds pretty easy hey. There were tons of moments for a laugh or a nice smiley memory. And since life never really lets us forget the stuff we'd rather not remember, yea there was room made for even that.

So many good memories. So many coincidences. So many mistakes. Thank heaven for mistakes! (They say some people marry others mistakes:P) Okay bygones. I can only think of one a relatively long time ago, and even then its only me making fun of things. Life is too short for regrets and what ifs. It is. Or it isn't. Thats as plain as day.

But one thing stands out for me in all of this. People need emotional compatibility. And intellect does not equate to emotional evolution. I have always been intrigued by a sharpened mind and a caustic wit. It takes some doing to be quick on your feet regards life, etc. And adding to that, a deep consciousness of self and humanity. Not ranting raving shows of purgatory. Just real humane respect for self and others. And a conscious disregard for naivete that makes one open to all forms of gross manipulation when you least expect it. Is that too much to ask for? I guess in some cases it is.

And in some cases... My mind, muse and fingers at keyboard are enticed to play a festive music to the stimuli of words and to tap-dance in tandum to the wit and mastery of The Mind. Green Geisha, I need your platform for further posts :P

deuce juice

I am reluctant...
fundamentally flawed by the curse
of a day gone by.

the end.

and the beginning, a bitter reminder
of some inner longing
reduced to a case of ulcer
and putrid
gas.

what with the price all so shaky at the moment,
the oil-rich look less shiney
and the starved look somewhat
a trendy artists grunge inspiration.

aah, the pathos of
a new condition
regurgitated from the machine
of an over-worked mind
and a rather battered muse;

with a juicy social consciousness squeezed from
the-eye-half-closed to wrongs,
an airy fairy soul still struggles
to cling onto
plastic wrap
and staples
in the hope that the competitive edge will
inspire the one to entice suffocation
or the other to slice
wrists damned by
the clerks
choices!

for now, head-to-head
are dreams reduced to deuce
with so much work
still left
to do.

...and love is the tool of healing...

Self-doubt is probably one of the most disasterous of man-made devices ever built. I imagine that it was first designed on some malfunctioning unit of human being, ready only to self-destruct or render itself to smithereens due to not liking the game being played. And so, the psyche beleagured, wrought the addition of a grand mutation in this form. Human beings were designed for love and Love. In no particular order. Love Creator and love creation. Simple as that. So then why oh why do we complicate matters so? Self-doubt questions worth. Diminished self-worth questions being. And purpose. We fail to see the divinity inherent in being part of that great thread of soul energy. Because thats all that we are. Energy. We are refueled by compassion, appreciation, and love. We are drained by self-doubt. Fear, pain, resentment, anger. All are children of self-doubt. Why do I keep harping on about this one icky little word? Its because by implication, doubting self causes a pain that is self-inflicted. And pain translates into anger. Self-processed. So theres no room for victimhood here. We're able to make the conscious choice. A proactiveness is required in being able to undo the self-flaggelation tactics. To get a grip, and see the harm that we wreak on self and surrounds. Crimson Shimmer's new poem says it well... Fear is the weapon of self-destruction... and it follows then, that Love is the tool of Healing...

I write these posts in reflection. And they are free-written with little thought of grammatical error or structure. I write as I feel. Or maybe these words are messages that my subconscious wants to reveal to me as lessons to self. I am not free of qualms and quirkinesses. I am, a work in progress. I just hope that I am learning from my own mistakes, that I am forgiven my many mistakes by those who I may have wronged... and I hope that I am able to discard the regrets and not hold resentment in the tiny space of my heart. If it must expand, then let that be with compassion. I have so much yet to learn. And there's so little time.

A Post About Nothing...

lamenting the food crisis

Breakfast - in the lap
of bourgeois warmth,

with talk of food
and
its
rising prices making us
choke on scrambled egg

and vintage cheddar
and a basket
of french bread,

quickly
turning into crumbs
fit only for
skeletal pigeons.