imaginal

To have and to hold…

This is the question I have.

How do we find a balance between the commitment we made to have and to hold in sickness and in health and living in an environment that is not good for us? Whether it hurts us spiritualy, emotionally or physically. Perhaps it is as simple as living an environment that does not allow us to evolve. Perhaps it is an environment that does not allow us to be or to become who feel we are meant to be.

Where do we draw the line between loving the other and loving ourselves? When is it ok acknowledge that the other person is failing in their commitment? Failing to such a degree and for such a long period of time, with no sign of change, that I’m absolved from my commitment? That it is then reasonable for me to love myself first and take care of myself first, whatever form that might take.

Or to be even more nuanced: what if we realise that the environment we have planted ourselves in does not allow us to grow and prosper? That it, in fact, has nothing to do with the other person’s possible failings but simply the result of the context in which we find ourselves. Then it is not personal at all. Then asking the other person to change would be cruel since we are asking them to do something that we ourselves have tried and we came to a conclusion that it is not healthy for us. How do we own this fact? When is it ok to go and find a place that soothes us and people who give us what we need?

Or is it our duty to have and to hold?

I suspect that the answer must be an inner one.

Any seed of doubt, any deflection of responsibility or unjustified projection of blame will poison the process and therefore, the outcome.

A Child Cries

Your cries I will hear not
Not from your bell towers
or your minarets
Your inner chambers
or from your public places
For
There is a child crying
It calls me by my name
you hear it not
You say that thing is not mine
So I say I know you not.

Words for the Wise

The wind used its agile hands
grabbing words from my mouth
made it tumbleweed tumbling
across a never never land bridge
to the home of the mute and lost
hoping to bring words to the wise
and silence the all knowing.

Castaway

I traced the skin of your back
like an explorer charting a map
a beautiful new blue ocean.
Where I discovered an island
fitting in the palm of my hand
it became home to me.
In endless hours of the night
when your heart beat drums
a new life raft next to me

Pause

In the solitary silence,
engraved in the empty space
between the beginning
and
the ending of your pause,
my entire world collapsed,
over the edge of the universe.

Autumn Rain

Street lamps with grey heads bowed
Stoically shed the cold midnight tears,
abandoned by drifting autumn clouds
unable to carry the burden any further.

Creating glittering babbling streams
carrying away the last stubborn grief,
painful words of discarding goodbyes,
to a wide forgetful ocean of yesterday.

The Practice of Now

I saw a single word dropping silently
into a quiet and unimportant moment.
Where it cut through the dark surface
of the still and reflective pond of I am.
Rippling a perfect pause of awareness
between a breath a sound and a to do.
Drawing forth with calm effortlessness
the light of being present to the now.

Light and Dark

How long will you demand this veil?
This mask of superficial purity, white?
I want to rip into this suffocating lace.
Tear it from my tortured beaten face.
Revealing black haunted eyes to light.
How long must this macabre act prevail?
Come to me my lost and reprobate angel.
Liberate me with your love in dark places.
Let me bleed into the white empty spaces.
Bless my union in the dilapidated chapel.
So that I might be resurrected to the night.
Divinely ordained in pure black and white.

Autumn Bedroom

Golden lava-flows of stars plunges
in waterfalls over the edge of a bed.
A faithful fan performs its Sufi twirls
cloistered, as is proper, in obscurity.
Whilst the guitar whispers love songs
an audience of plants listens in silence.
Soft cotton covers hug my naked skin
like the warm touch of an absent lover.
Gratitude dances on my heavy eyelids
as I drift into a sleep void of storms.

Orphan (Revised)

In a small waterfront bar in the old Cape of Good Hope,
a place created by the gods for lost souls and orphans,
we drank warm melancholy cocktails out of old bottles
wrapped in cheap brown paper bags to hide our sin
when your soul unexpectedly spilled in from the cold dark rain.

A thousand miles away I lift my eyes to the clear blue skies
and remembering and wondering about the crossroads of life
wrapped up in the inaudible plea drifting up from your voice
wordlessly telling me of pain that the universe holds in my heart
because it sees you and wants to throw its arms around you.