A quiet moment,
Rarity, held in a palm;
A pulse,
Kept warm and safe;
Allowed to echo,
And, grow;
Into an enchantment,
Found within its song,
Now, cradling your soul;
Providing you solace,
Like a mother to a newborn,
Save, the roles have reversed in time,
The child has grown,
And, it is he who now holds your frail body,
Whispering words of comfort,
As you die.
On the midnight train watching the world pass by;
You’re a porcelain doll sitting opposite,
Subtly, dolled up to the nines,
With eyes vaguely blood shot,
Shedding tears of sadness,
For a loved one no doubt,
Trying your best to wipe them away on your sleeve,
Yet they just won’t stem the flow,
A kindly black lady beside me offers up a entire pack of tissues,
And, you accept it with a graceful ‘Thank you’,
Managing a embarrassed smile somehow;
We may not be a homogeneous whole (if we ever were),
We are though part of a collegiate,
Of common courtesy,
To observe from a distance and not overly pry,
And, I’m proud to call it my second home:
London town.
A spine of steal,
Beneath a mummer’s face,
Shrewd, wiley and full of cunning;
Observant and perceptive;
Singularly, self-serving;
Topped by an unshakeable self-belief,
All, qualities, aspired for and shared,
By schizophrenics, leaders of industry and celebrity alike;
While mad David battles Goliath,
What is the bystander who shares none of these qualities to do?
Dodge the stones and swings thrown askance,
Guard your modest flock and home,
Take comfort from the simple pleasures others tend to overlook:
Like watching the sun rise and fall in changing hues,
Casting reflections on a tepid stream that abuts your home,
Taking modest sips to quench the thirst of you and yours,
Ensuring you’ll have enough to sustain you today and tomorrow,
And, hope and pray that others further up the stream do the same,
Appreciating the gospel truth:
By the grace of God, be I and mine;
For horror and suffering are bottomless pits,
And I must tend my flock as best as I can with what I have,
Until I take the final bow from this minor re-occurring role at the theatre of life.
Absorb the unrelenting pain,
Whatever the cause;
The challenges it brings,
Consider and reflect;
Distil it,
To see what few others can;
Let it become an obsession,
Take great pains to turn it into something beautiful,
For, the best artistic endeavours are labours of love;
Pain is an inevitable part of both loving and living;
Mastering a source of unrelenting pain,
Beckoning creativity from it,
To transform into something breathtakingly beautiful,
Is another reason they call the end product,
Done well:
A ‘masterpiece’!
Blood lettings in the distance drawing near,
Preceded by an almighty sandstorm;
Many flee in its wake,
Some wait it out,
Fewer still seek it out;
No matter who, no man chooses misery for him and his, if he can help it;
Desperate inhabitants of an oasis amidst a frightening, unending, sandstorm,
Risking all in pursuit of sanctuary,
While rulers far and wide fuel the winds of chaos this way and that,
Few will offer water to quench the searing thirst of the dispossessed,
Even in the lands of plenty,
For chaos is evidently cheaper to fuel than salvation is,
When the mother of democracy has birthed a generation of stillborn leaders,
Nurturing inaction, if not yet full indifference to this exodus;
We might as well be ruled by stone mannequins!
Plenty have tried,
Few have succeeded, they say;
‘Cause, you can’t change people,
You’ll be a fool to try;
I wonder:
How are we all still here, then?
It can’t just be coincidence, surely!
Perhaps, it’s influencing the habits;
Linking need to goals;
For, people ultimately change only if they chose to,
All you can do meanwhile, is:
Earnestly, advise.
Don’t let success go to your head,
Don’t allow failure to do that to you either;
Savage words and deeds will take its toll on saint and sinner alike,
For, the core of all men is forged in adversity,
What’s left behind, none can say for certain;
Only the principles that have guided you throughout,
Will hint at your motivation and character,
For those interested, to casually speculate upon, or not.
Reborn in a firestorm;
Trapped within the cooled embers,
Shaped into a trojan horse,
Unremarkable to look on,
Learning to observe the minutiae from the interior;
Of all the happenings in the exterior,
Unable to partake and forgotten by the wayside,
Learning the reality of the surroundings within the neglected irrelevance;
Until you’re ready to walk beyond your enclosure,
Like a child’s tentative first steps unaided,
To walk, run, work and play, avoiding the potholes;
Demonstrate the sum total of your observations and experiences,
To add your unique perspective to the mix;
And, yield maximum impact.
A figure stands sentry bathed in moonlight,
It’s a crescent moon;
So the light is not as bright as on some nights,
Frozen marshes span out to either side of him,
With piercing winds whipping and buffeting what little clothing he has on,
Leaving bare skin numb,
Pain follows,
As the cold absorbs into flesh,
Beginning from feet and head,
In an inexorable journey,
To meet in the middle;
A pincer movement,
Bringing terminal decline to the host at reunion,
What spell is this sentry under,
To permit this grim inevitability?
Perhaps, nothing;
Perhaps, everything;
For, journey’s end is always ugly,
And it is your character that denotes,
How you will face the final showdown.