Soulfilling relief as the endgame draws near,
One slow plodding step at a time,
Dawn reversing back over distant now jet black horizons,
Still I can hear the edge of reason call
Me back to where I was, once upon a time,
Without any real excuse, I crash
And ultimately feel the better
For it, just another cycle
Of up and down life,
Just one more breath in, held
Too long, then let out, just one more
Self-promise broken, no biggey,
I say, because it really doesn’t weigh
All that much, on the scales of yesterday
Tomorrow will come, come what may, and this rhyme
Will end, all I have to say.

A slight collapse,
Weight baring bridge sagging
Under one load too many
One more admission of defeat
Another day older, uglier
Here for life, if not forever
Eyes wide in a silent wish
To stay here, but that is not
What makes me sad, this is
Not the sadness of sagging defeat
But the release of pent-up pressure
All too long held at bay, with
Nothing more than pure iron will
Now wilted beneath the glaring truth
That I am but human, another one
Like all others I see, not super, just am
How hard is this to take, why does it
Feel like such complete and utter
Collapsedefeatlossfailure, that only
The reminder of greater good, stronger people
Keeps this frail emotional web from collapsing completely
Gossamer threads once strong as steel, and as reliable,
Now tremble with vibrations of moving earth, as if
My very basis of reality were shifting
To let in the bare light of truth, my fear
That all this will reveal is the dangling bare bulb
Of life’s saddest joke, and seeing this
I would need to close the door on reality once again
Turn to my child and say,
All is rosey, all is love,
All is beauty, knowing full well that
What I stated verbatim was pure lie,
How would this earth-shattering revelation leave me,
No more a shell than I am right now
Mirages of my own making stand all around
As lost shrouds befuddle a boy standing stock still
The breath of some ancient beast fogging up
The air behind the sheets of ice-thin reality, no more
These are all just excuses, a long enough reason
To twist and turn my way to harshest reality
That all will be well, no matter how hard or not I try
For that is the way of all things
Life beats on through the heart of another.

After all, I am spent,
And dog gone tired,
This silly little dance, a final pirhuoette
And then the fall,
That same thundering internal silence
That comes to take us each
All.
What’s more?
Nothing. Everything.
Pain.
Freedom
breathe

Smiling he recites
His love unabashed
Her encouraging words understood
Laughter encouraging the blossom
Of love. His attempt to speak, gutteral
Her language as she laughs, in love
Playful, hands stroking each additional tone
From strange lips, she swaps to English
In love he continues. To prove
His knowledge, dedication to her mother tongue
True love spoken, encouraging hands
A kiss to light the way, deep sigh to mark the time
Is now for sweetest love. Even deeper he goes,
Bringing her down to personal soul
Continuing the stretch to her understanding
Refusing to speak his own mother’s tongue
He shows his truest love, this is dedication
He is in for the long hall, and to interrupt
Even to say, ‘Bravo’ is sacriledge
The worst of life’s crimes against true loves
They do not need reminder or help
They are in their own world
He loves, and is loved in return.
Someday this joy will be mine
To cherish, but not interrupt.

When you live long enough,
To revisit every bit of misery
That you ever swallowed down
Bit back and internalised,
Whether through constant silent self-recrimination,
Or simply moving on more quickly than is healthy,
For both soul and self to acknowledge damage done,
All those festering sores, of could have
Would have, should have beens well up
In the throat, choking torrents of years jerked child-like
Tantrums of salty rain dried on cheeks lined with years,
Laughter leaving deeper grooves than pain ever did
On the surface, but pain and suffering is only truly felt
On the inside, where we hide with our own skeletons,
Jacked up in our private nightmares, blaring landscape
Flying by at hellish pace, quickening as the taste of death
Flings the dry spittle of yester-years forgotten pain across
Your face, once again just a loose end,
Flapping ragged in the breeze, tied to the pole
Of our own self-denial, too arrogantly self-assured,
Too inwardly borne to realise how outwardly blind we really are,
This life nothing more than a stark mirror
Of our own selfish desire, to repeat the thro’s of the past,
Like some sadly lost caged beast,
Depressed animal all alone staring out of the barren internal landscape,
Not knowing what truly surrounds us
Is the eden we all feel thrown out from
And each other being the Adam and Eve of our own first birth,
To return back round inside, to our own private fallacies,
And in seeing them recognise each other
For what we really are
Fellow human beings
Floating, through the vast emptiness of vacuous space,
Precariously perched on the outer edge of a massive living rock,
Carbon and the thin film of atmosphere our only hope to continue,
Feuding and picking, fighting and blaming, pushing and shoving
For another little piece of
What? a rock floating through space.
The same cycle ends where it always begins,
Sadness to preacher’s words,
No more real than anything else verbal
In this world, if we do not at least thank our fellow human
For smiling as they help us through another day
What is the purpose of this sad charade?

I stand still, walking slowly
Through indifferent crowds,
Echoes of cares and stresses
Bounce through the empty gauze
Between my ears, decisions made
Or only dreamed, remember ‘right thought’
So what is real, or is that also grasping,
Another sad attachment to the world of misery
Of distraction dressed up as fate,
Tastes of old and young inter mingle
To make us what we are today,
This path walked down, padded earth
No space to think sideways out of happiness
Into the bright blue skies of comforting sad
I miss the one I cannot see now,
And tear the pain from my own inside
But instead release it safely guarded
Secret loss, aired outside
There is a method somewhere lately,
A statelihood I cannot reach,
But stir and swing on loss’s rainbow,
Pierced right through by love’s bright colours,
One range happy in life’s miraculous birth
Of newness even when loved ones leave us
But what to do when choosing paths now,
Which way to go, nowhere to hide,
All that’s left with me is anger’s impotent sadness,
Tinged with the guilt of a small lost boy,
And the sweetest memories of angels gone
But not forgotten.