How much has fallen?
How much more still stands, intact?
Does the act forget?
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2
Would you not conform
in riches and belonging?
Or have otherness…
1
Trees grow among rocks
Granite boulders overhang
Lichen covers all
–
The zealots came – as always –
draped in purity, to press their claims
~ which would erase our nuances,
reduce our subtleties to slates;
as if a blank could live
~ in which the glories of creation
would shrink to conceptual art,
like angelic voices ringing
locked in a crazy head
~ on roads too thin to travel far
as life was redefined, abjured
to strip it clear of heresies
like cockroaches.
You and I
I held you in my wallet, to keep you safe from harm
in a dimming store of memory, with our devalued currency
that was a little worn with use and age, but easy to access;
You formed an aperture into a version of our past, beyond revision
once framed by shutter speed, in silver salts or pixels /
or inked in composition, rolled out by the press /
or sketched in oils or charcoal strokes, brushed by human touch;
a fragment apprehended in a narrow view, blurred in shallow field…
At times I saw you looking back at me, caught in the act of looking,
reflecting both a composite (of me and you; of now and yesterday)
and composing a reflection, evoking thoughts and feelings
without asking or concerning how they could be requited;
or if that moment’s image was perfect or a lie, or something in between
Because you are not mine, or ours, or motion catching breath
but a subtle model, to represent reality; a peeled-back flake of time
torn off the torrent in its flight and left with me to watch
while other things that were once new have aged in turn:
to become part of the fabric, then begin to fade away
While you remain, a tainted arrowhead lodged under my skin and
trapped against a nerve; both a wound infected by the past
and a seed to germinate belief in never letting go…
Compass words…
I liked my words piled up like rubble walls
without the glue of mortar, or the craft of dry-stone dikes –
while rhythm, although it was my heartbeat,
sometimes passed me by, or faced-off the wrong way –
for I enquired in alleyways: wracked like conscience
(a fleeting visitor, discovered in the night)
by a voice, speaking flint-like through the darkness,
sparking words like trust – called truth – from flagstones;
Words which (flaring) vanished… in acrid smoke
clouding across an island packed with attitudes,
broken from the main and skewered on its self-made hook
of certainty (belled, tolled, caged in formal punishment
by flaws of education – and the parts it did not reach)
leaving a residue of loosely bundled letters, peeled raw;
too sharp for some, shot through with veins of mineral
hardened in the air by exposure to the oxygen of life,
served dry and stripped of meaning;
Lacking framework, those words have left me bare;
wondering, what should guide my steps
once obligation has passed by?
Or languishing, in comfort, since my compass failed…
How far we’ve come, how far
Do not forget, we were amazed when it was new.
Now it’s overlooked as everyday: faintly dismissed…
(although when we were young there was no story
unless someone crawled and wept)
Still. We all stand…
The thin and the fat. The healthy and the ill.
In healing or in stasis or decline.
With futures we may get to have: no longer
short and sharp, mostly, but chronically defined.
Dangling in the open, unreconciled –
were we but honest with ourselves –
although we co-exist, in the wake of an identity
A quest. What cause? What caught you up?
Maybe worry has no base, there is no reason for anxiety??!
Only… Why did we come this way? Was it short?
Who has come with us? Who have we left behind?
What if connections mattered less, and failure not at all
while we were still ourselves, and learning, in our rawness…
Skirting years of revolution for longer days of progress,
mercy, and dissent: creating value of our values ~
Forever next. Shared or solitary. We all stand.
The time is right to say goodbye, but Wenger’s legacy will endure
An era comes to an end and we move into an uncertain future, with hope – always with hope.
Thank you, Arsene!
https://arseblog.com/2018/04/the-time-is-right-to-say-goodbye-but-wengers-legacy-will-endure/
drill
Heavy with experience and years, and growing stale
as I’ve grown dark, but not in colour (greying at the edge),
I glower round anxiety and tense the badly printed jaw
forming the overwhelming mouth which infects the skull
of my lopsided skeletal rack; chaired by my consent
into a passive beast beneath the kick applied by medicine…
Waiting for the finest drill to bite and whine its trace
into the measured root, I pause and hold to join
the lowest outer rank of silent honest fellowship;
I have come sideways to accept my birthright is to swim
among a sea of souls, who all share a trail of sentience
beyond confusions, coincidences and our suffering.
Dazed, upright, I am released to splash my calloused feet,
to paddle in the shallow clear and warm lagoon – before it
opens out beyond the fragile reef to darken with a shock
to indigo; a border marking the domain
of my acquaintances, those stalked by the white ghost
or hosting their mutated living cells…
EQ (weasel words)
We agreed not to look at any cracks in the construction
as if – we may have thought – that would make them go away.
They might have seemed too difficult to fix, anyway…
We liked each other in the gaps along our conversation
which is more important than your task, anyway…
So we used our tongues to draw for us
a world of the mind, like draughtsmen in our dreams…
Until an earthquake happened
Who could have planned for that, anyway?
There’s only so much that anyone can do!
Running fast to keep from falling, I stumbled anyway…
It’s not possible to win, always.
I was never very good at learning what was critical or not…
I did my best – although I know mistakes were made…
Anyway, I was entitled. Wasn’t I?
