Holding on to the truth

The most important things are the hardest things to say. They are the things you get ashamed of, because words diminish them-words shrink things that seemed limitless when they were in your head to no more than living size when they're brought out. But it's more than that isn't it? The most important things lie too close to wherever your secret heart is buried, like landmarks to a treasure your enemies would love to steal away. And you make revelations that cost you dearly only to have people look at you in a funny way, not understanding what you've said at all, or why you thought it was so important that you almost cried while you were saying it. That's the worst, I think. When the secret stays locked within not for want of a teller but for want of an understanding ear.

Stephen King - The Body

Careless, love

My love,

how careless you are with my heart,

accepting with such disregard

affection I can’t help but send your way.

Not uncaring, but so unaware

how you play me for a fool

with no intention, no idea.

Creating chaos with a glance,

devastation in one soft sigh.

And when we touch,

in your innocent arms I am lost,

sparking on sunbursts and iridescence,

thrust into a fantasy of requital.

And for an instant my world shimmers.

Then reality returns,

wicked intrusion,

daydream dispelled,

and somehow it slips away

and we go back to being

just good friends..

Black Man Returns

Hikmah walks in sporting a straw hat:

Hikmah - See my hat - I'm Black Man!

Me - You're Black Man?

H - Yes I am.  I have one noses, a black and white belly, and two legs!

Well, I guess those are all important features in fighting crime...especially the belly.

A bit out of place for the current weather...

but nevertheless

----You'll catch your death---

Sitting out in the snow

that night

wasn't as crazy

as you think

when you consider

it was so beautiful

my heart ached

my throat got tight

my head felt sure it might explode

from trying to contain

all the thoughts and memories

metaphors and similes

imaginings and fantasies

evoked by the sight

of shadow clouds racing across

that smooth crisp plane.

The moon gasped, a full 'oh' of delight

appreciation at the 

wonder of all it illuminated

that night.

Even in that freezing cold

in my flimsy jacket, never meant to

share in the splendour of such a sight,

even as I sat there, back against the stone cold wall

backside downside on grass frozen white,

I felt cocooned, lulled by the hush and rush

of snow-stifled wind whispers,

wrapping me tight.

And even if I had caught my death of cold

that night

unaware of the passing of time

forgetting myself

sheltered by the dark from the far too bright

inquisitive intrusion of indoor light,

perhaps it would have been somehow more right

than standing, stretching, trying to step light

but unable to avoid leaving my mark,

walking away, eyes down

so as not to upset with refreshed sight

the perfect awe I carried back

from sitting out in the snow

that night.

The bells

I haven't quite gotten round to going to bed yet tonight (last night...),  My head is beginning to feel it right about now, so off soon for a few hours.

I just heard the bells of a local church tolling, though, and it reminded me of some years back, when I was up around this time.  I'd stayed up to finish reading 'Chocolat', and heard those same bells.  The whole thing resulted in the poem below.

Peau D'Orange

-------------oOo----------------

Somehow sad and bittersweet

Like memories of holidays spent with relatives long since vacated

A crystallite-nostalgia, fey-like in the heat

Fragile and frayed memory of childhood days

Clear as the haze on holiday-packed tarmac

Ice-cream hands and sugar-sweet stains

Traipsing it all back home again

To the sound of crying in the rain

-----------------oOo----------------

Irrational fear of what just may be

Constant craving for what never was

Elaborate fantasy replayed to perfection

Touched and tempered by cruel intentions

Streaked through with crying in the night

All that has not yet passed is yet to come

And hardly ever a thought of what is

In haste overlooked and unreflected

In favour of memories soon to be made

Enmeshed in the clamour of times half –forgotten

Anticipation of the to come enlivens

Fatal attraction to the irrepressible evoked

Mingle and dwindle to four seasons in one day

-------------------oOo--------------------------

Scuppered by cunning, ticking streams

Moments elude and slip by without apology

The snapshots blur and outlines smudge

And now is imagined, a study in quicksilver

Sitting back to observe and absorb in the name of love

A vague lesson in suspended animation

Subdued in the reverberation of the chimes crying freedom

                                                Monday 19/8/02; 4am-5am

La vita nuova

It was a beautiful day...

so i guess i went for option 1...

----1st try----

i

struggle to recreate me,

transform, inhabit a different she

one closer to the ideal that he,

in my mind, would rather see

but

to become another

for the sake of one other

who is, in fact, yet to discover

that i wish he could be lover, brother, child, and mother

there is no way on God’s good earth

that, not with child, i can give birth

to a new me that is somehow worth

what i have deemed to be his dearth

and so

i set aside pretension, 

re-evaluate intention,

accept futile re-invention

will no way stem apprehension

at the truth I’m still too scared to mention

or yet accept - somehow, someway,

the way I am right now, today,

the me I see, trembling at he,

is the only she I’ll ever be

2.15 a.m.

My little brother came home this weekend.  He played me a Wiley sample, and rapped over it.  He's inspired me to attempt to write something that rhymes, for the first time in about 10 years.  And I'm contemplating whether to carry on attempting to create this thing, in a way that it won't sound like a nursery rhyme; baking a loaf of bread; or just switching on i-player til Fajr time...

It's one of those 'is that really the time?!' nights.

---Stainless---

Steel kisses
trace the lines
of pulsing veins;
soft, firm, incisive,
part this tired canvas;
trails of crimson bloom,
ebb, and flow
in the wake of their
sharp cold love.

One for Mia, one for me

----Basta---

Do you remember that time

in El Corte Inglés

I crumpled,

coiled around sudden shock

waves of nausea

radiating from each mini-crest of pain.

You took me home

sent me to sleep;

single matress, cool, in your dark room.

You worried, when I woke,

that I shouldn't hear 'volare'

from the street

in case it should remind me too much

of him.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - 

------Woken------

Shattered

Dashed

& I can feel me

already

doing that thing

where I draw back

and close off

and shut down

and pretend I didn't even care

                       I didn't even hope

                       I didn't even just die

                                                        a little

                                                            tonight.

Just. One. Line.

Enough to read

                     a whole life

or rather,

                 two.

Neither mine.

wait for it

Today, bright sparkling, suntastically disposed,
Twinkling all over, head to toe dazzling,
Radiate the magnificence of my mood.
And all is excellent, fantastic, amazingly sublime.
Crazy feeling, love and affection
Bubbling over to bursting point,
Beaming on through forbidden grin.

But all the while,
As this good feeling glows,
As it skitters, and scatters, threatens to explode
A mass of endorphins; too buzzed to contain
Shooting fireworks of fancy out of my brain,
A part of me waits for that fuzzy feeling to fizzle out,
The part that knows how all silver linings come with a catch.
Prediction, even through this glittering, glorious, sun-drenched dance,
Of the storm fast approaching my personal joyville.
These light tapping feet will drag to despondency
In the murk of the gloom that is bound.
And it promises dense, that feeling;
It will crumple and crush as I reach
That dip at the end of this rollercoaster.

I can feel it all over

I should work - I have to work - but right now, I just need to sing.

Is it normal to be so delighted by the sound of one's own voice?