Painting with words - I

Prologue

The Beginning

Reason invented itself – set aside from motion – as the point expanded.
Armed with a pinch of Love,
The story of man began,
a long time before man could know.

The spirit transgressed across all boundaries, without having existed,
And once reason had justified its being, became a burden upon its creator.
Just as a mother opens her forgiving arms,
At the returning sight of a once fleeing suckling
determined to taste the wonders of a soured dream.
And just as the soil embraces the frail remains of a once adopted seed,
When the sun turns his back on their words of glorification,
The circle of life
goes not around a circle.

To know is to know. Yet one who asks, knows more.
To see is to see. Yet one who looks, sees deeper.
And so the senses gave the reason for life and living became the consequence.
For all must surely know the depths of reason, whether in this lifetime or at the end.
Reason is God. Yet he extends beyond reason.
For try to reason love, and you surely fail.
Know that, if your love falls within reason, then it is not love.





For my soul, and his guidance of unspoken word…


“I do not understand the world and
I do not understand love.

They are both an addiction and a nemesis.

In spite of loneliness,
Akin to darkness,
I won’t loosen my hand, of its grip.”
…

The break-up.

Unbound of life’s intent,
I travel.
I go where it takes me.
For want of soul’s accomplice,
I seek.
I listen to the hastiness of joy.

There exists no time, in which
The wanting soul
Untangles its swindling self.
It seeks only truth.

I have now, a greater truth to hand.
Just as words on paper, remain on paper,
The scars of love are much maligned
To the bearer of relentless beauty.

And to the pursuit of distant pleasures?
Their proximity begoes their entrancing wisdom.
The pursuer looks over the hills of love
At souls, dressed on the outside.

I too gazed over the hills.
My eye distracted,
From love’s light refracted,
I dispersed the teardrops of a maiden soul.

The love I found, found me not to be now
As I was, in our acquaintance.
Its smile faded, it seeks a new found day,
In which to forget a yesterday gone bleak.
It tries hard to incise the wounds, and expel the depths of emotion
That septer in its happiness.

With each smile, it spreads and becomes the begoer.
Its vision, mythed in blurriness and reprised in wanting,
The soul pulls on its cloak of worldliness
And becomes an outer wall.

The depths cry; in mourning, they await their solace,
Their resentment instifies a once forgotten voice,
that grows with timeless passion in the shade.
The light it sees no more, the walls strengthening their bond.

The worldly wall yet again removes a soul,
From love’s endeavour.
Upon the wings of hope,
Therein lies eternal affection
Whose grace, it seems, endears even selflessly,
its timeless resurrection.


Dream


“There is no place like home”
– at least no other home like home.

Dream as you wish to dream and it comes true,
for want of others’ dreams.
If you let those extend a hand to your dream,
it is their’s that you’ll see.

I dreamt once of clouds upon clouds,
upon bridges of clouds.
Flew it did, high upon on life’s sleeve,
and gathered no dust,
With each heartbeat a reminder of it’s reality.
A tick in time’s face; its surrender to life.

I stepped in shrouded vision, towards an ungainly truth,
That my dream was but a dream.
Clarity became a teardrop well,
With no surrender in tearing apart innocence, good-will, belief.

My hand lay outstretched in want of love’s absence,
My lips dry in waiting for mercy,
I pleaded with the world to let me be,
Not to have to change and stay a beloved.

But change came at once; a guise of disappointed exuberance.
The disappointed child was me: a man of the unworldly,
Exchanged.

I too got drawn into the meaningless meaning of a drawn-out life.
What once were rough lines of uneven disorder
Became an image of visible perfection;
Disillusion at its best,
Showing clarity of print.
A tint of a brushstroke
– forgotten in its midst.

The artist was gone and remains unknown.
The soul no longer seeking,
As I splash in the colours of earthly reward.


Winning the world

To have spoken out loud;
It’s what I do best!
I’ll accept all praise in loud fashion thanks,
So that I speak louder,
The next time we race.


The Rose Path

“Thornication” I call it’s course.
Its how lovers engage; – treacherous thickets of stem
Allure to lover’s gloom
Abode of besotted bloom.

And when spring does come
– or will it this time?
Yes – will it this time!
Want it to come!
Hand perforated of love’s
Grasp. I beseech it to run.
“Open!” the bulbs for blossom and
Lay bed to naked bosom,
And I’ll plant the lover’s seed
To feed
Thirstened soil – a reed to season’s dance
A nectar in numbness’ reside.

…

“Spawn of mind”, I decide.
Oblivious of spike;
A forgotten winter, a piercing climb!
Fearless now – an uncensored change of time.

Embalming thoughts
Reassure good time’s dwell.
Should entice a summer and
Well,
a tiring spring –
What have we seen?
Few petals – nothing so serene
As summer.
Wonderful summer! Yes, yes, yes!
A mess
Of grape and
Crates of colour
Fruited in fun,
The lover’s turn,
To pierce, flower’s endeavour.

…

“A boring sun?”
– just a thought
Why so still? Sought
A quarrel, in too much warmth,
Undecided of want, need to be taught
A lesson.

Autumn perks,
Enough fear to jerk,
Enjoyment!
A berserk leaf
Shows brown; Crippled
A death to crown
A love exceeded,
Wills happiness depleted!
The lovers pushed to reason’s spout;
A bout of thorn,
A chilling sound.
Cursed path from up, gone down.
Summers drown, to a hammered frown
Of cold.
As lover’s mould an appetite
In scorn.
The next steps taken:
A roam together
In aftermath – no sound!
Shhh. Shhh.

…

Shhh.
A quiet winter - we bow, we bow.
Four hands rubbed in snow,
We show your greatness.
- No, no.
We know your greatness,
So heal and sow, the beds; the beds
Of joy.
And an ointment please – to hands as these,
A welcome ease to thicket’s woes,
We’ll go
In spring
We’ll go
Once more.



Freddy was a tramp.
I first met him after work at six-o-five on Tuesday. Didn’t notice he was there at first,
I thought he had headphones on, nodding his head.
He told me later that earmuffs were a good gift
for a tramp, especially in winter and that he wouldn’t
forget deeds such as these.

Thank goodness for tramps. You fill them up
and get a smile. It doesn’t matter to Freddy
that he doesn’t know his family, at least it didn’t
matter when I asked him over dinner after work
that Tuesday. “I don’t do fucking.” he said
when I asked him to join me. I knew I had my man
- a real man of values was Freddy. For ten pounds and dinner
he wouldn’t fuck. I’ve known a lot of chicks who would.

Freddy’s smile was tired, and his gaze was unlit
when we talked over dinner. I knew I was his master
and I enjoyed asking him why his wife and kids left him,
and telling him how sorry I was. I really enjoyed that.
An Irish gaze always seems deeper, I thought,
when he spoke, his voice bored holes in my guise.
I couldn’t keep up the lies, against a genuine eye.

“don’t ya have no friends?” – a mumble.
“Of course” – contorted reply. “But today’s been
a shite day. And I can’t face the wife” further lies.

We both started starved – he of food, and me of truth.
A frenzied feed ensued; though my plate untouched,
I was full by the end. Freddy was the master
and I, the tramp. Every day I beg for some spare change
in time and smiles, what people have left over from expense.

But I didn’t tell Freddy, in case he’d know. Tonight
I’d scrounged a friendship, paid with coins and bronze.


Daddy

Daddy’s still the same. He hasn’t changed
his ways in all of the twenty-six and half years
I’ve known him. His shirt still cling films his bulge-belly,
though it’s very much tighter now. But it’s always blue

and loose around his shoulders. I think he lost
his neck before I was born – never seen his chin
above his collar. My mum always said
he was the beaten one. The middle child

of eight, though the final son: “Everyone
always hit him on the head.” But daddy,
he never speaks about his youth. As if
no one understood, he keeps his sentences

short and stories so dull, if ever I ask him to.
Back then he must have been bald too, had
a moustauche and I think he smoked from
birth. In fact he probably always had a

blue shirt, with short sleeves and a fat pocket on
the left – his mini-office. I loved the Marlboro
red peeping into my face when he used to
hug me. Sometimes he’d drop his pen and

business cards – a stash of names and numbers
he never threw away. I don’t think he knew
them all, but he looked through them each time,
to find his bank card. Though he never used it

to pay. He always paid cash. That was money
to me too. I liked the way daddy did business.
Handshakes and words were enough
to get by. But Saturday mornings were a treat

with daddy. Breakfast at one, he’d report
back to mum on how much he’d made. The
sums would flow with the tea and I could
always see that he was irritated to explain

in front of the kids. But he’d forget by two
and we’d all go to town, and go shopping
with daddy’s money.I can’t see his face,
so I don’t know if he has aged or if he is

smaller – to me he’s always there.
But in twenty-six and a half years
of childhood I can safely say,

daddy hasn’t changed. He’s still
the same.


Peep

I’ll make you laugh – I will!

You see. There’s this man I know – a rotten old fellow, though
Not particularly rotten on Sunday mornings
heaven knows. He watches all passers by, from the bottom
of his window; a trunk of a snout, sniffing around
in a broken rim-full of glass
(thickened from years of dirt – that peeping Tom!) – next to
his crumbling window frame. I can see him now,
as I sneak a peek, to remind myself,
why god chose me to report on matters like these.

A patch of steam, as he leans towards the glass; I see it each time
when the neighbour’s daughter strolls by. Though
she really likes to give it some – a hum of a song, and its not long
before the blinds are rattling. That old pervert!
From Monday to Saturday, he really does work. The jerk!
Though in earnest, no one knows, apart from me;
You see, I do the father’s work.

The one time I met him, though it wasn’t a long affair, a Sunday in church,
you’d think he was a normal fellow, if you didn’t know his game!
When I shook his hand: a fermented clasp
– the lord told me:
“thine eye shall not pity;”

I set about the father’s task in quiet fashion – funnily enough, the pervert asked me
why I never left the house in the day. Did I write at home?
What cheek of the brute! To think he watches me too
– apart from the journal I do keep, though mostly his misdoings,
I do not write. My work is for the lord alone – “better than any job”.
I know.

Since then I’ve watched him more and I’ll bore you not now with details.
But a book’s worth I have almost, before I show god
On the Sunday. The mundane hymning, spiced up with shame;
His lame old frame, now seventy-two, I’ll put to test and rest-assured (with Church on-side!)
He will say, “Aye”.

For at fifty-eight, I too must think about a bout of marriage and perhaps a boy.
But this report – it wasn’t short: forty years of four hundred pages
is not an easy sort of thing to write you see
– a man of the lord like me, should be fair.




Business

I’m a suited poet.
My words laid in knots
they’re tied together to choke
and throttle the senses.

My belting expletives –
a pen in your eye,
briefcased emotions
traded in rhymes.

Do I look business to you?
Excuse me sir,
Do I look business to you?

Well it doesn’t come off –
the suit, I mean
– it never comes off.

Stuffed too much in its pockets
and now I wear it to bed.

“Try and sell it”?
To whom?

But its so used!
The gleam gone – it shines now
abused in cleaning
of all creases hidden.

I’d always enthused to wear one –
though bruised inside,
the suit’s fine.
It lies!

The cries and shouts are depleted now,
A better fitting
each time its shown.

I’ve thrown away a master.
Apprentice grows in wrongs.
A donned world
– it glows.
But not of light,
the linings scold and burn
the frame,
where its wirings stitch
and pierce the sense.

A pining for air,
as the flames tailor
and hang
well-pressed to chest.
The suit I wear, is a burdened mess


Childkilling

My words are so ugly!
A bitch of a son
A fucker of a husband
A mongrel to a friend.

Today I loved too much.
Such a pain to follow
It always seems,
Yet addictive in taste
And a moment never ceased to hasten forgetfulness
When it’s painted in so much colour
- a touch of red here and
A splash of blue.

A knock on a door – a moon shines a light through the curtain – to forgive
To beg for forgiveness.
To ask to forget it’s hurt!

Is it so easy for you? – a soulless lover you must be!
What soul could sell a lifetime of gift, for gifted poison?

Maybe that I don’t cry – this love must be a fixation inside?
So then why do you shed tears each time?
With each drop, a forgotten good,
A long best-before expired deed to you.
Today’s date: The now.
New deeds as of today, count double,
To you are seen.
…

One day a young prince woke up from a thousand years of sleep.
A complexion he caught in a moonlight, trapped across the darkened room,
Inside a dusted reflection, struck off a mirror’s edge.

His fingers raised, touching what he had always known to be his face
Yet in so much time, had not aged a drop.Distant music had played out his dreams to every night’s delight.
A prince again, a smile caught a familiar tone, to match the night’s endeavour.

With a step up, the prince saw his whole frame in the mirror.
A bag of bones, the face though unchanged.
“Why?” he wondered.
The truth he knew, of a smiler’s fate.
Too late for body it was, though,
A victim to its own waste of passion,
A prisoner to it’s senses.

He stepped out the door, the dancing, apparent amongst distant trees.
A party he had dreamt every night – to now taste
Would be a mighty touch of love.

In running, he reached an ocean of a crowd,
A wave of hands amongst a guard of a forest.
A dance he would never forget.
Alone.
A lone wish to find
Forever pleasure.
…

“You are not hard enough” repeated – helping advice?
Told to “hurt” the others – more advice?
Though a truth
– it hurts so much to near the truth and see it sometimes
And then to see it once more,
After black.

I come back, and back, and back.
To point zero.

I am zero.

I am nothing right now.

I build, and build, and build,
To fuck, fuck, fuck!

A finger up it’s arse, to lover’s told stories!
A farce!
Entrancing as it was at most,
To me a lifelong haul,
I saw no soul today!

As I started a new dream, the prince was choked.
A drown in suffocating words,
A pillow over his head,
Advice won
Crown fallen off.

Though in dying,
a smile nonetheless.


Damp Emotion

As if the rain brought with it
A sadness of cloud;A crying inside, to hard-pressed chest –
Suppressed: to muffled thunders
An ear-plugged cleft.
The sky reflected in colour: my face.
Although darkly, as it could be,
With a grey dull smile: Smirking,
A shelter from light.
Blinded by dimness, as the wind screamed
And toyed with lifeless souls.The dark hand of a tree leaf
The only saviour,
As it lay
Sole.

From a distant world returned the mighty,
The beauty of a splendour of light.
Breaking into a thousand pieces
And scattering,
Of panic-ridden clouds.The rain retreated
Its course: a nothingness.
Wind cheated;
Greyness at its heel.
Forgetful joys, to blue restored,
Atone
The pain - a birth complete;
A painted hell, with Autumn, stoned!
My illusion’s gone.
A dampened deceit.


Rendezvous with Hope

Today I met hope.
He looked at me – a stare, as if from the past acquainted.
The moment our eyes met,
I turned.

The undressing gaze, in a second, dropped the man I had built,
The plaster shell crumbled.
A mere chiselling sight of what could have been,
What I had sold of me
That had been before, eternally mine;
To have bought of that, which I would never own.

What use is poetry to burden the lips?
The weight of tastelessness keeps them tight,
The night lays out the stars at day;
Never ending sleep: to sleep today.

He told me to “surrender”,
That he did not wish a fight.
My soul he had to take
To remind of dreams it once knew.

I took a step back and had a thought
Of ruggedness, of unevenness and imperfection.

Accepting, I bowed.

How I missed it all, in the course of a perfect thought.
How I missed the wrongs and the faults…

The soul floated under his wing, both paced into distance,
A mere glance back at me.
I saw his tired frame
– too tired to protest.

A beaten soul
A beating not of hand
But of heart
An incest. Struck in its nest, by a weakened father.

His head sunken, herded cattle
A sacrifice to a man
A slaughter’s shame
A timeless pain
Shepherded by hope.

A beating heart I keep, until I see him return
Although wanting of its soul,
It carries the promises of a hope – my hope.

My Hope.

my hope…

Were it ever to return,
Though when would that be?
It’s a long road back
Where we held hands last.

How strange that I should lose a soul to hope
When I had lost hope of a soul.
A naked man, inspired of world alone
Until the soul returns, reformed.

Yet better naked, than clothed of wrongs.
The soul of old, worth waiting for
Will come again
With messages of hope.


Mother Rose

A thirsty flower, turned grey
In black and white,
Drained of its colour and rootless
In a field of dreams.Wilting slowly in the silence
Of its thoughts. A distant memoir
For the red and the white
And the pink, that it once bloomed.
Bearing still, a sole smile on her rugged face
Painted grey with lines of wisdom.
Each one telling a story in colour,
For one last time.
When I return in blossom,
The soil takes back once more,
A grey old friend to whom he once swore,
That he would see her again.

As I shed a leaf, for old times sake,
A brightness fills her once grey spot.
A new smile appears young in colour,
As the soil whispers, a familiar promise.


En-aged

Turgid as a turnip.
In vain of heaven’s company and adored by vilified thought.

Youth, it seems, is no longer upon me in completeness
But fading – the dimmer switch long gone past its voltage maximus.

“adieu” my comrade – but no terror required this time round.
I’ll take the walk myself thanks, and plunge, though not despair-bound.
My dignity I’ll dig in deep, to any plank I might walk;
A straight line it’ll be – a non-meander in my thought.

“Steadfast ageing” I call its course.
A seeker: of help? of signposted paths? - all at a loss.
Don’t you know old-man?
A sage in searching needs no remorse!

The End

Unschooled thought
(conclusion)

In shadow’s lure, was best invested,
A time to think,
A truth
- deserted!
As Lucifer’s tale, beneath earthen toll,
Meaningless words, reveal nothing at all.

In seas of fountains, lie no single source,
As the seeker wreathes in adorned remorse.
To become what was
- a life’s safari,
Would undo most,
As pleasure’s marry.

Seek as you have, freed
In searching.
As your fires propel, the seeds
Of testing.
Inspected vision, corrected at lens,
The next time gazed, will remember well.

The untaught student, in hapless shell,
Unseemingly bides in lover’s dwell;
Where teachers flow, to disdain reason,
His guise is masked, to preserve in meaning.

Treason revered, as believers sought,
The believer’s tale, where each one fraught
A path in time, of judgements perverted,
To make believe, a life fermented.

Wined of truth, unkegged of glory,
As delighted seers corked undrunken stories.
My schools unmade, no need for glass,
Inhale the substance - the lover’s mass.

The journey made, is a journey lost,
If crossed in tandem, with a teacher’s host.
A world unravelled, it was always to see,
The student fails already,
with an a b c.