Thursday Poem: The Seas Of Life

The Seas Of Life

Do you still go down to that shore these days
To search for something new on the horizon?
Do you still dream, or do you turn to walk
Away slowly, back to that same old house

To sit and fill another dusty glass
With dark red memories of an old life
You used to know well, where the seas were not
These seas of regret or forgetfulness

But rode you across their tumbling white waves
To lands of freedom and of promises
Where young girls would wait on sandy beaches
For the gods of the seas to bring a man
Back home for them, who would take them to places

Only found in so many stories told
Around the fires with the sad distant looks
Of older women who sat staring out
At the horizon, waiting endlessly
For a return that would now never come.

The Growing World

I never knew the secrets of planting for the future, preparing to tend for the delicacy of shoots. I was too busy searching for some moment that I could have to hold in my hand and keep as though it was some kind of precious thing that I would not need to let fall from my hand… ever.

I did not think that the growing world needed me to tend for it. I did not belong in its gardens and among the growing things. I was not connected to the world I ran through, searching out all that was new, bright and shiny. I turned my back on simplicity, confusing the simple with the stupid, whereas now I know it is those who turn their backs on the world that are the really stupid ones, the ones who think they are too precious to touch the earth, who keep a distance between themselves and the wind and the rain.

Out here, where the real things grow, far from the streets where I ran my youth down, there is a calmness, a rightness about life I never found amongst the bright young things, among those who believe themselves clever enough to see clearer than the rest. They were just as blind as the fools they despised, and I was just as much a fool for wanting to become one of them.

Wednesday Story: The Mystery of the Lupins

Of course, it goes without saying that the lupins were a bit of a mystery, after all you don’t expect that, do you?

…Or do you?

I must admit I’m not that up-to-date on these things, so perhaps it is perfectly normal for a woman to show up at your door, naked under her coat except for a strategically placed bunch of lupins.

Quite possibly, knowing how these things work, there has been an article in some best-selling women’s mag about ‘how to add spice to your love life’ which featured the aforesaid carefully-positioned lupins as a way to add glamour and excitement to the whole business for those not in the first flush of youth.

However, as I said, our love-life wasn’t jaded, it hadn’t begun. We’d never met, not really. We’d spoke over the phone, over the internet, webcams and so forth without either of us being put off by the other. I was watching for it when we first appeared live on Skype at each other. Her eyes only widened slightly… well, I mean at our ages, neither of us was... shall we say, factory-fresh, but there was no sign of out-and-out revulsion on her part when she first clapped eyes on me. By the way, for the record, I found her more than easy on the eye, perhaps because of an experience or two early in my life I’ve always had a thing for the older, more experienced, woman, and well, now that I’m older too, I still prefer them to the teenage leggy blonde of alleged popular male fantasy.

We seemed to get on all right, chatting away about this and that and so on, without… well, without – or so I thought – any great passion. I mean, neither of us tried to dive through the computer screen, eager to get our hands on the other, but… well, like I say, we got on all right. Well, more than all right. I think we ‘clicked’ as we used to say, back in our day… or did we? It has been that long I can’t remember when 'our day' was.

Both of us, Liz and I… I’m Steve, by the way… were the losers, runners-up in the great divorce roundabout game that everyone seems to be playing these days. Very similar stories, married too young, too soon, to someone who, when the kids grew up and left you alone together, turned out to be a stranger to each of you.

Anyway, there she was Liz, at the door, naked in a long mac, holding the lupins.

'You said you liked flowers,' she said, as though that explained everything. Well, I suppose it did explain the lupins, if nothing else.

I just stood there like… well, like a bloke confronted with a rather lovely naked woman. It is possible that I gawped…. Although, I hope not, standing there looking like a landed fish is not an attractive look. But….

But….

There are times when I, and I presume others too, just seem to stop, something like when a computer gets stuck in a program loop and nothing seems to happen, no matter how many keys you press or how inventively you swear at it, the computer just sits there, staring back at you.

That is the way I stood at that doorway, staring at Liz naked in that coat. I could see the doubt starting to spread across her face, see the urge to turn and run away growing in her, almost sense her turning away and rushing off in tears convinced she’d made the hugest of mistakes and blown it completely.

I wanted to say something like 'No, stop. It is lovely and you are so beautiful. This is one of the greatest moments of my life. I will never, ever, forget this moment and that way you make me feel now.’ All I could do though was stand their and stare, possibly even gawp. I couldn’t get the words out. I couldn’t say anything.

Luckily, though my body thought faster than my mind and I found myself holding out my arms towards her. I could feel my face escaping from that programming loop too and changing from gawping imbecile to a normal human smile of welcome.

Immediately, I could see the change in Liz; the relaxation of relief in her body and the way her face lit up as she realised she’d done the right thing after all. That it wasn’t the biggest most embarrassing moment of her life, not something that would make her wake up in the night years hence in a blind sweating panic at her own idiocy. I took the lupins from her and placed them down carefully on the hall table as we clumsily embraced and I brought her into the hall, kicking the door shut behind us.

Alone, together, at last.

'I… I thought…' Liz tried to say, but instead I kissed her, long and deep and with – I hoped – enough passion to make her realise how much her arrival dressed… or rather, not dressed… like that had impressed me.

It must have worked too, because when we broke off and came up for air, she just looked up at me.

'Well…' was all she said, pulling my face down to meet hers for another go as she pressed herself against me.

We left her coat and my clothes spread down the hallway as we made our way to the bedroom, not that we got there the first time... or before the first time, as it were.

In fact, when we did finally get to the bed we lay there, side by side, both breathing heavily and staring up at the ceiling for a minute or two.

We eventually turned to look at each other and grinned. Liz must have seen the question I was trying to frame in my eyes.

‘It was that old joke you told me,’ she said.

‘What old joke?’

‘You know the one,’ she replied, snuggling closer to me. ‘How do you impress a woman…? With flowers, chocolate, understanding and all that… then, how do you impress a man…? Show up naked and bring beer… that one.’

‘Oh right,’ I said. 'That explains the naked, but not the lupins.’

‘I forgot I had no beer in the house and I wasn’t going to the shops dressed just in my coat. It was scary enough just driving here like that, terrified of what would happen if I broke down or something.’

I nodded as she looked up at me. ‘But what about the lupins?’

‘Well,' Liz said, as her finger traced down the centre of my chest and down over my stomach. ‘I think a woman needs a little bit of mystery about her… don’t you agree?’

‘I….’ I noticed her hand had stopped moving down my body as she waited for me reply. ‘Yes… yes, of course, I agree. A woman does need some sense of mystery about her,’ I said quickly hopping the hand would begin moving down again.

It did.

Where the Hours Halt and Spread

Even if the world moves we remain at this still centre where the hours halt and spread out across these crumpled sheets of yet another hasty coming together taken in the middle of lives that only meet for these snatched times. Here our two worlds meet and our two separate times fuse together as we cling to each other, both wishing that time would stay behind at the door and leave us here alone inside some separate universe where hours, if not days, pass in less than an eye blink back in our own lives.

We step outside those lives to come here, to meet here, whenever our two separate worlds can intersect, whenever we can calculate that their two orbits will be near enough to each other for us to feel the pull of each other’s gravity drawing us back to this room.

The curtain at the open window billows in the breezes that sneak in from our outside worlds, carrying the distant sounds that remind us that soon our time here will be over and we will have to go back to those separate worlds that wait beyond the door.

Already we are moving apart as we lie on this crumpled bed, as though our gravitational attraction is fading as our separate worlds begin to pull us apart again. I can feel you withdrawing back into your life as I stumble away to dress myself in my usual life, ready to walk reluctantly back into my world.

Over-Boisterous Philosophizing and its Dangers

When first approaching the donkey from the northeast always remember to keep any necessary philosophising down to an acceptable noise-level, especially during the hours of darkness or on a weekend.

Obviously, to most of us such a local council by-law is completely unnecessary, as we all know the dangers of over-boisterous philosophizing when in the presence of any equine, especially of a nervous or belligerent disposition. This is mainly because anyone over a certain level of educational attainment will be familiar with what happened when Schopenhauer over zealously instigated a paradox in the presence of a shire horse back in Berlin in 1821, resulting in severe damage to his sauerkraut.

However, such is the dire state of educational achievement in the UK these days, it seems that several local councils have had to introduce such by-laws concerning over-loud philosophising to prevent undue distress to horses, donkeys and sometimes even cows and sheep in more rural areas. In Wolverhampton the council has also had to introduce by-laws to prevent some of its more superstitious and credulous residents from being frightened by any sudden exclamatory philosophising, or other such unwarranted speculation, in the Town centre shopping areas during the normal hours of business. Which was bought about not long after one pensioner collapsed when confronted by someone declaiming Descartes’ famous dictum just outside boots the Chemist on a Tuesday morning.

In some cases, it has been found necessary for some of the UK’s police forces to set up Regional Anti-Philosophical Excesses Squads. This enables rapid response anti-philosophy units to be on the scene of any over zealous philosophising in a matter of minutes, especially if there is a danger of the possible over-use of Nietzsche, or unlicensed Kant declamation, especially in near proximity to a field of horses.

To those that claim this is in any way a curtailment of the British citizenry’s historical right to free speech, a spokesman for the Metropolitan police replied:

Listen to me, sonny, We know where you live… understand what I’m saying? Now mind how you go, and make sure you steer clear of any Plato anywhere near some ponies on your way home, right?

Staying Hidden

Then there are so many times when the words seem reluctant to emerge, as though they are timid creatures, wary of the world. They like to stay hidden under their layers of meaning, not venturing out into the wide-open spaces of the empty page until they are sure no-one will swoop down from out of the empty sky, sweep them up and misinterpret them.

The words only want a quiet life out there on the wide-open plain white page. A place where they can herd together and create meanings of their own, out of their sentences and their paragraphs. A place where the words can feel safe amongst their own kind is all they want or need. They just want a place to graze upon the emptiness of the page, a place where their sentences can grow into paragraphs that are strong and tall and spread out over all the empty pages of this world.

Out there, though, are creatures who will swoop down upon these poor innocent worlds and tear into their sentences and paragraphs with their talons and teeth, Then ripping the meaning and the sense out of the poor bewildered words that flee across the pages in terror. All leaving their meanings torn and bloody upon the once plain white page as the sentences and paragraphs that depended upon them fall and tumble into meaninglessness.

Monday Poem: Almost Touching The Sky

Almost Touching The Sky

Our route takes us on through
so many empty valleys
Where sightless indifferent mountains
Brood Above our heads,
Glimpsed through the trees

As we climb higher,
The sea flickers blue
Between the trees,
Stretching silent out
To where it meets the dawn
Rising out of the distant horizon.

We will meet the risen sun up high
On the cliff-top, in the open
Near the clouds, where the sun feels
Almost close enough to touch
And the endless sky
Seems within easy reach
Of our hands reaching out.