April 8 : Inside My Head (And Out)

Unable to start something new

before I wipe out the old.

I can live in a dump

(inside my head

and out)

but I must clean up

before I can move.

I must empty every drawer

and sift through the piles

of debris that gathered 

over years of neglect

(inside my head 

and out).

I must wipe it clean

to let new dust settle.

I must throw some -

vehemently crumple it up

stuff it in the trashcan and

never ever let it out -

and pack away the rest

must put away precious memories

wrapped up in old cloth

in shoeboxes in bottom drawers

(inside my head

and out).

I leave behind 

some of it, and

recreate some as I look back

in the drawers (of life).

Build up new piles

of papers and rocks and

pencils and socks

and broken remnants of

computer parts and glasses

and notes that meant something

but are now illegible 

and bills and books

and keychains (and smiles

and tears and hugs and

music and feelings

and smells and sounds

and moments and days

and walks and despair

and perfect kisses and

phone calls and 3 am 

conversations into the 

heart of forever and memories

all memories.)

So precious - so painful.

Every day they hurt -
the loss of them, perhaps,

but every day they 

make me smile - and

yet I would live them 

the crumpled chits and

chocolate wrappers and

conversations and smiles

flower petals that meant 

something (perhaps everything)

when I slid them in this drawer

(in this pocket? in this life?).

I would live them all again

and I would be my crazy self

loving posterity 

and I would save them all,

I would pile them all up

if only to clean them out.

April 7 : Ode To A Girl (I Love)

Her long brown curls dance around her laughing face.

She smiles, and I see
the whole world in her eyes.
Her eyes hold the stars themselves.
Shining. Full. Complete. The world.
Stardusted and rainbowsprinkled,
a suncoloured world if there ever was one.

She's beautiful in a million ways -
but the most beautiful (more beautiful
than her smile, than her wrinkly hands,
more beautiful than her eyes with the stars)
is her mind. The most beautiful is her joy.

And she knows not how she spreads
life (and love, too, and joy), and she lives.
She's sad sometimes, low, but she doesn't know
- doesn't know how the light within her (the
light, shining with the power of a thousand stars,
- all tucked up in her eyes, of course), how the
light within her is bright, too bright
to be dimmed by a day (or a year
or a lifetime, or more).

We shall live a lifetime (or
so I hope) of happy walks
through purple sunsets, with chilly
breezes on long sandy beaches, and
mountain streams bubbling along
through mossy rocks and caverns
(and we shall bubble along, I hope,
our own mossy paths and turns).
And we will (I know) look to the sky
and keep the sun for ourselves - we
will float along in the clouds, higher
than everyone else. We will
(we will always) go back to being happy,
for the world (and today, and tomorrow)
is too beautiful not to be (forever, happy).

And I hope I can tell her someday
(through long winding grassy paths
of forevers and sunsmiles) how she
helped me along (silly me, little me)
and reminded me (just now it's been
so little, the time, but it will be, someday
a long time since I met her, and then)
that the important things in life are always
(always always) the little ones, that
being alone is better than being unhappy,
that the sky and the trees will love us still
(children of the rainbows that we are)
when all else (all else) fails us.
And I hope someday (far into the future,
perhaps, hopefully only, when we're old and
cuddle with cats and flower-patterned blankets)
if she's ever down so low she can't
pick herself up, I hope I can remind her too.
Someday.

April 6 : Himalayan Trek 2012

The stars shone
(hundreds of them,
thousands) through
the thick blanket of
darkness (darker
than evil, darker
than darkness herself)
cast over the night.
They pierced through
the 8 pm blackness
with ease (so many,
oh, every inch of space
was taken up by the
shining points of light)
and danced overhead,
in constellations we
marked out in our journals
(and constellations we
will never see) and they
were silent. The fire blazed,
higher, higher into the sky,
crackling and sparking,
throwing light into faces.

Faces that shone
with the simple joy
of being at that moment
then. Faces that grinned
and faces that laughed.
Still faces, with the
overwhelming silence
of the night time and the
silhouettes of the mountains
against the infinite sky.
We sang, swaying
in the light of that night,
we spoke, shining
with the heat of the fire
and the cold. We hugged,
we giggled, we held hands,
in the face of beauty
so powerful - we loved
each other, and the sky.
And we lay on the ground
(but really, we lay
in the sky) and we pointed
out sights more amazing
than the last, and we
were silenced.

What is it about people
and wanting to save memories,
hold them and keep them close
to your chest so they never escape
(except sometimes to your dreams)?
I was in that moment, swaying
to the music of two dozen voices
I love, I saw those faces lit
by the light of that night, and
I loved them ever more. My
hands were warm and my back
was numb, and my heart
was so very full. The mountains
laughed with us that night, grand
and tall. The sky loved with us.
The stars knew us and liked us
the better for it, and I kept that
moment (with the heat and the cold
and the love and the songs) in my
little cove of memories, deep within,
because it was too precious to lose,
now or ever. The stars knew it too.

April 5 : Dusky Rose

Her shoulders shone in the
elegant evening sitting-room light.
Her fingers were slender and still.
Her dress was the color of a dusky rose,
and her eyes were the grey of the sky.

They all saw her glide gracefully along
and pick out strawberries from large blue bowls.
She was quiet unless spoken to, and always
always said the right things. Her legs were long,
her knees not brown, her smile a perfect curve.

Her mind was beautiful, they said, trying
(unsuccessfully) to not talk about her arms.
Her hair was the color of the starless night
(the stars were all tucked up in her sight -
her beautiful, sky-grey eyes). Together,
all, they admired and envied her. Looked.

Her collarbones were splendid, majestic;
her cheekbones high and lovely. Her skin
was the brown of sleek, supple, waxed wood;
her mind, they said, was divine. Someday
she would be old; her wrinkles would stretch her
and command her fragility until the wood melted
into leather and the shine wore off. Someday.

Until then, she clasped her second glass
of pink-bubbled champagne, her feet poised
upon the floor (almost ready to perform).
Until then, she smiled absently at them,
Quiet in her blanket of many-petaled beauty.
Her eyes (sky-grey, with all the stars) slid
around the grand room. Never stopping.

Her mind was underwater, with the
colorful fish and the deafening silence
and the smooth rocks and drifting thoughts.
Her slender fingers (upon her starched dress)
were still. Collarbones out. Feet poised.

April 4 : The Long Dark Teatime Of The Soul

The clock ticks. The sun sits fatly in the still blue sky.

And I clutch my cup
swaying to the music
my mind meandering
through lanes and
untrimmed hedges
of sepia-toned memories
that I put away safely once
in shoeboxes and envelopes and drawers.

And there's nothing to do and
nowhere to be. There's no one
I want to say these things to,
                                least of all me.

So I pull the curtains on the world
and I pull the curtains on myself.
Leaving me in a dark, dark room
with nobody at all, nobody to be.

The music is slow and the music
is sad. The lamps are bright but
the light is still. Who knows
when the sun set? Who knows
when it will rise again?
My lamps are bright
and my light is still.

Happy memories,
of laughter and smiles
and being close, of
moments so precious
my glasses misted over
and I wanted to save it
(and I did but only in my head)
- they too fade. They too change.
Like roses, fat and red once,
now pale and limp and sad.

Now there's simply joy...
joy you had and left behind
and joy you would have had
but don't. Joy in his face and
joy in her face (unmirrored,
of course, in yours). Joy
that will never be yours
and joy that went it's own way
in the labyrinth of untrimmed hedges
and grey cement buildings, paths
that lead nowhere (and thus
lead everywhere - everywhere
that you will never be or know).

The clock ticks. The sun is gone.
It is that ambiguous time
of no light and no dark.
The curtains are thick
but I walk out of the room.
The sky is yours (clear
and still and painful), but
the sky is mine. I want to be
(and achieve and live) so much
but all I am is you. And all you
can ever hope to be
(and achieve and live)
                             am I.

April 3 : Chai with the Sky

The quiet happiness of the Night Time.

The secret smiles I smile
to the moon. The secret things
I say to it.

The way the skyline of hills, soft
(lit by a thousand lightbulbs
blinking confusedly at you
lit by a million hopes
and dreams and fears
of awake peoples)
is dark, darker even
than the dark night sky
(lit by the light of trillions of stars
and the shadows of planets and
things we will never ever know
or the infinite nothingness of the cosmos).

The silence of the moment
complete and perfect
in the white roadside flowers.
Pleasant conversation,
laughter, wonder,
joy at being alive.

Cars come. Bright lights
against the bright insides of our eyes.
Why are other people awake?
This is Our time of night.

An infinite number of constellations
sit in the sky. Bright balls of fire
(and hope and heat and hydrogen)
dot the dark, deep ocean
Above. Somewhere
a man with a white beard smiles
at what he made (or
thinks he did).
The trees are happy too.
And the stars smile
and the moon smiles
and I smile back
(secretly).

We drove. And when we found chai
and woke up the sleeping man
and I burnt my tongue and almost
dropped the glass and we talked
about how I scared people

I wasn't having chai with you.
I wasn't having chai with him.
Really, I was having my private Tea Party
with the forces of the universes.
I was having Chai with the Sky.
From my warm spot in the car.
But she knew, wise sky that She was.
She had tea with me too.
In Her own wise ways.

And we drove on.

April 2 : Monster

Dark and quiet, it sits.
It gives no reasons, no excuses.
And I always like to know
reasons. And excuses.
So I tell it not to exist.

Monsters do not listen, though,
Monsters live on. So I say
it doesn't exist if
I don't want it to.
Vainly presuming
that I have any control
over what happens inside of me.

I don't, of course.

And I'm afraid.
It's a silly little monster.
An unimportant insecurity.
That guides me and constricts me
and knows me and binds me.

I can't kill it and I can't ignore it,
I can't live with it and
(because, of course,
all it is is I, made up
of my fears and
hatreds and lies
and all the darknesses
of me that won't be
suppressed)
I can't live without it.

So, ever so often
I am reduced to hiding
from myself.
Hoping to win over
this thing
that is nothing
but myself.

And what if
(oh god I hope not)
it is a big part of me?
What if I think I am all sunshine
with some dark insides, but
really
all I am is dark insides, monstrous
with a sprinkle of sunshine on the edges?
What then?

April 1 : A Good Time

Beginnings.
It's a good time
for beginnings.

For somedays and forevers,
wrapped up in blankets.
For ifs and buts and nevers
to be quietly put away.

For typewriters and fairy lights,
pretty music - ah, all this joy.
For forgetting tear-tinted sad nights
and perhapses and marmalade.

Because Now is the Tomorrow that we muttered about
(although that
was in a far-off purple yesterday),
And who ever knows when it will come again?

So curl up (for now) under the stars
in your private clandestine sky.
Among the sunsmelling springtime flowers,
I'd say it's a good time for home.

It seems to be a good time for sleep,
and a good time for forgettingness
(let it, upon you, gently creep).
I'd say it's a good time to write.

Time

Time unfolds herself,


                            That precocious wide-eyed

                                                             wild child

                                                                       of the Universe.



She is an infinite


paradoxical sea


of Patience.


So still as she crashes


from rock to shore -


harsh, a hurricane on the horizon.






She is flawless, unflinching,


She is true.


Infinite in her silence,


in her ever-forgiving violence.


An Eternal Fool.


As innocent as she is cruel.






The sands of time


slip through her unassuming fingers.


The sense of falling


around her swells and lingers.






She treads gently,


For the soles of her delicate feet


step over the grains of times past.


Bruised by unfulfilled dreams,


Marked by a multitude of memories vast.






Unlike you, she is comfortable in your skin.


She finds all your fears, sees through every sin.


She knows you watch her warily;


She knows you, and she grins.

Restless Thoughts

I shall fold up my soul


And hand it to you,


For I trust you to take it


And teach me to be true.






And when is it ever time, really?


When is it okay to leave?


When is there love ever to spare?


When is it fair to believe?






That endless blue sky struggles,


Through the grey it breaks away.


But will my particular infinity


Be what you need today?






And the sun rests behind


The silhouettes dark;


Brilliantly bright, self-consciously white,


Impatient for darkness to alight.


And the birds fly around


The silhouettes dark;


Swiftly along, their hearts still strong,


Many a broken wing in the throng.






And the beast was always


Within. And it's shape was always


Yours. And all I am is you,


And all your suffering is true.