Half-Burnt Logs

and we sat under the stars,
skin to skin,
eye to eye,
heart to heart -
little points of light
growing
dark and heavy
with the descending
heavens,
coming to meet
the curling smoke
spiraling up
from the guts
of a sacred fire,
crying out the song
of half-burnt logs
and the tyranny
of being human.

Touch Me With Your Skin

peel off your mask,
it is not your skin;
it yearns
to feel the warmth
of a giving sun
through its every pore,
to breathe into the wind
that rushes through
stirring every cell awake,
to touch the moistness
of the holy mud
that embalms your spirit,
and to simply remember
how it feels
to touch another
with your human skin.

I Bring You Myself

I bring you my myself, my all.
Every time.
Will you meet me where I am?
Now?

I bring you my lingering melancholy, my heartache, my sadness that sits on me like a heavy cloak as I walk miles and miles of emptiness on a long wintry day. A cloak that bears down on a frail frame, that sometimes finds it hard to carry its own self and take just one more firm step into the grim wilderness. Sometimes that cloak keeps me warm and cozy and I need it to get through this winter. Sometimes I want to take it off and feel the cold bite my taut, cracked skin. And so I bring you myself.
Will you stand with me in that frozen landscape and watch the falling white and the rolling greys and blacks, without asking me to think of spring that's just around the corner? Will you carry my weary load with me? Will you snuggle inside and make light those endless miles? Or will you watch me from afar with pitiful, laughing eyes that have forgotten, even for a moment, what it feels like to shiver and freeze, and carry a heavy load for miles and miles, all alone?

I bring you my shattered dreams - precious pieces of that beautiful crystal vase that once held a single rose of hope and love; perfections in the dainty dollhouse of my mind's eye, that could not be broken. But they did break like all fragile, impermanent things, and I cried and wailed as every shard that fell, dug into tender skin, that did not know what it meant to be touched and held with love. I bring you those wails and wounds that sting and bleed, smarting with the salt of those pain-filled tears that never found a warm home. And so I bring you myself.
Will you sit with me as I hurt and die into those piercing shards still intact, not for once wanting to pluck them out, to stop the bleeding or the wailing or the tears? Will you hold me in your arms, will you collect all my tears and sing me a silent song that falls like gentle rain, numbing the pain and the loss, like balm for a flailing soul? Will you know as you patiently caress my broken heart, that those dreams were as real as the lit up lanterns of wonder and magic in a child's innocent eyes, and not the wispy clouds that disappear over an impending horizon that never arrives? Will you whisper to me then that it is okay for me to dream yet again, knowing that there is a beauty in that humanness, that creation and its death, to nurture more life?

I bring you my memories pressed between the pages of my life, like pretty flowers and leaves picked on many a walk into the wild recesses of my soul. I bring you all of them for each is the beginning or the end of a chapter, a tidbit of my life. I know that there is prettiness even in the most ugly of them, even if I don't see them that way now. And that is why I bring them to you....so you will see them as I see them now. I bring you the depressing ones that are hidden in the darkest corners of my heart, that come back to haunt me like shadow puppets on a stone wall, and some that hurt like stitches still unremoved. I bring you soft memories of the special people who touched my life, some people who are no longer there and some who I have wished away. I bring you myself.
Will you turn each page with the slowness of the moment, losing yourself with me and those wild flowers, walking those forest paths all over again, simply because they are beautiful and wild? Will you keep each page open and listen to me, until I am ready to turn the page myself and close the book for now or forever? Will you listen to the stories that each flower speaks this moment, and know that they are there now for a reason that still serves me; that they make me feel alive and real and messily human?

I bring you my words - all garbled and scrawly and muddy as I speak, even as I know that they rise from the clear spring deep inside, and I bring you my silence, that fills up the crinkled white paper of a tongue that cannot move freely. I bring you the pain and the joy of that womb of silence where spoken words are like messengers who have lost their way. There are beautiful stories that live in that forest of silence - stories set free by message drums and not shouted out from treetops, because there is a grace and rhythm in that silence. And so I bring you myself.
Will you listen to the deep cadence of that pain and joy and collect all of them, all my words, like pebbles from a forest stream? Will you dip your feet now into those muddy waters and splash around with me like a little child who doesn't care about the colour of water, nor wanting to walk on upstream? Will you join me in a song or dance to the drumbeat of my throbbing heart, or will you wish for another song?


I bring you my trust, both strong and fragile, like rays of sunlight slanting through a heavy, unrelenting sky, or like dapples of light dancing on newborn leaves, bringing everything to life. I bring you that flickering flame of a tea-light that dances with the fickle wind, because I know that it is my burning that lights me up and the dark room where you sit. I bring you myself again and again.
Will you watch me dance until I get tired and rest in the folds of your dark room for a while, only to be lit again some other place, some other time? Will you hold me close and wall me with your palm, just so I can dance a little longer? Will you light up yourself just so we can dance together awhile and spread a little more light in a dark, gloomy world?

I bring you my hate, my anger, my failures, my terrors and my shame - those weeds that grow over and over again, in a garden that I have been taught to keep pruned and pretty. I bring you the exhaustion of overworking at pulling them out every time they pop out from the giving soil, hiding the beautiful flowers that everyone wants to pick and keep. I don't want a manicured garden where I can sit on a deck with a book and sips of warm tea. I want a wild backyard which is home to dancing butterflies and wiggling worms, where I can find myself and take a walk bare feet.
Will you walk with me in my little garden, holding hands and singing a song, as we watch the weeds and the butterflies and the worms that crawl along? Will you stand with me unafraid and open-chested, kick off your well-worn shoes and step with me on the rugged stones, gravel, soft grass and thorns?

I bring you my love, an offering of a single rose at the altar of sweet self-forgetting; the swell of an ocean that never relents to the sky or the earth and yet dances with both; and the bright light of the ever-exploding stars in the distance . A love that doesn't need sunglasses, cloches, life-vests or armours. A rose that lives amidst thorns, because that is what makes it a rose. An ocean that rises and dies into each moment, because it knows how to live and love. A star that burns itself up just so it can light up another world. And so I bring you myself. My whole self.
Will you take off your shields and masks that don't become you, because you don't need them when you stand up and look in the eyes of love? Because love can only look into itself and reflect its own light and beauty into the eyes of the beholder? Will you bow down at the altar and make an offering as you pick up that single rose? Or will you look away, with that half turn of your face, into the desert sands of dead habit, seeing everything as a mirage that can never quench your thirst?

I bring you my myself, my all.
Every time.
What will you do?
Will you meet me where I am?
Beyond those fields of right and wrong,
in the absence of all reason,
in the thick of all seasons,
in the presence of raw humanness -
yours and mine,
and look into the empty vault
of infinite possibilities?

Meet me where I am.
Not where you think you are.
Not where you want me to be.
Just where I am. Now.

Memories

memories
orphaned, like
glistening sea shells
strewn
on a desolate beach,
washed ashore
anew
with every ebb
and flow;
some broken,
some opened,
some empty,
some intact;
a myriad colours
and forms,
each one holds
a different story
waiting to unfold;
as two tiny feet
upon the shifting sands,
stop awhile to gaze
and pick them up -
shards of an old
broken heart
and a blotted out world,
that long to find
a new home,
in her warm
precious folds;
reminders
of what it means
to be in touch
with what is
real,
broken,
human,
alive.

Wounds

some wounds
they bleed
like pearly sap
from tender wood,
drying out,
hardened
over time;
leaving scars
that blend into
the knotted bark
of a nubile tree,
looking out
to the blue sun.

some wounds
are not
stick-it notes
ready
to be peeled off
at will;
some wounds
they stick
like leeches
to warm skin,
drawing out
dark gold
from within;

some wounds
are holes
that thread us
with a remembrance
of a shared moment
of being fragile
and
utterly human.

some wounds
still smart,
sanded by time
or an earnest
forgetting,
for they
are branded
not on an
unforgiving soul,
but etched
on the soul
of our shared
humanity.

Needs

needs
sit in me
like pins
and needles
stuck
in a
pincushion;
some prick -
to remind,
some numb -
left behind;
waiting
to be sorted,
pulled out, and
thrown away,
one by one;
sticking points
that hurt
only to heal,
to feel beauty
in the pain
of being human
is what I need.

Soul Whisperer

I hear you whisper
beneath my skin,
breath drawn
and freed,
within;
flying birds
follow the sun,
to return home
as the blinds
are drawn -
clarion calls
from the
soul whisperer
through the many
shades of dusk;
life's longing
to break free
from
this trapping
that we call
human.

The Blue Vase

the blue vase
sits by herself
on the centre glass;
thin lips
that don't part
so much,
a graceful waist
sculpted
by light and dark -
playing with her
patterns and curves;
she stands unchanged,
holding clear water,
trusted with
a tiny breath of life -
a wildflower
by the road-side,
given a new life.

the blue vase -
yes, she has a form,
a personality,
a story
from the dark ages,
of heirlooms
and oft-trodden paths,
of rebellion and mediocrity,
dreams
of sun-kissed mornings,
beliefs that hold her
in place
on that very glass, where she
finds herself;
one blow, one fall,
and she's gone!
to pieces
that cannot fit together
in the same way,
to form the same form;

the blue vase -
she returns
to her formless form
sometimes,
kneeling at the altar -
a poet, a pilgrim,
a wayfarer, a murderer,
or a little child,
sometimes,
only to forget
for a moment
the impossible weight
and impermanence
of being alive;
a blue vase
yearning to drink
the clear water
she holds inside.

Simply Human

I am an infinitesimal piece
of an endless jigsaw -
I don't want to compete
with anyone else,
I don't want to spend
an entire lifetime,
trying to find out
how I fit into the whole;
to complete a picture
that can never be completed;
I want to live on the edge,
and stretch myself to my limits,
to fill my own tiny broken self
with all the pain and joy
that it takes -
to be
simply human.