Entangled

You are wound around

Woven into my lungs

You tether my breath

Unsettle my sleep

How beautiful your mastery of me

How complete it is

How compelled I am

Beholden to respond

Bidden to bend.

Perhaps I am the thread

Unceasingly unspooling

Before you.

Small Boat

 

Bites 

    Interrupted

Of 

    By

Her 

    Their 

Fourth

    Screams

Cherry

    For 

Bakewell

    Survival

The Letters

One

You swam lengths

Diagonally 

Your avoidance 

Our disturbance

A lone figure

Cutting the water 

Great technique Dad

What a shame you can’t out-swim 

The sound of sorrow

Your grief will follow you

And one day drown you

That pool was always too deep.

Two

The cord that binds us 

s t r e t c h e s 

through years, 

beyond time and land and pain.

You may think you have it 

severed 

but

the lengths have reached you over and over  tangled themselves around you

body and soul. 

The thread must 

be tended to 

or 

you 

will 

suffocate.

Gabriel Adrift

 

You were gone

I felt myself leaving too

Piece by piece untethered

Vision unclear 

My fear

Lit the way  

Around and within 

My skin

Wet with rain

But

Heavier my mind

And 

Splintering my heart

Undone by the unknown

A panicked call

A whispered wait

I see something 

He is home

I ran then 

Desperate for you

Holding 

Healing 

Flesh of mine 

Found.

Sisters

You three

Who longed to be free

To taste Italian tomatoes on your tongue

To know the joy of pizza 

And perhaps the safety 

Of an unencumbered sleep

And sleep you now will sweet ones

Your vision untainted

Pearls not taken by the sea

But made alive in it

May you always shine.

Him

Where peace and wild mystery meet.

I am tamed and held and caught up.

Never safer, never more free.

You are the sea to me.

 

Unfurling

 For my dear LJK, you are ever lovely.

May you beautifully befriend 

Your becoming self

Welcoming with love

Any unexpected unfolding

For the river’s turns

Still lead her winding 

To the vast expanse of sea.

Palestine

 For Palestine 

Who has many voices never heard

Keep on singing

Your freedom is louder than their captivity

The seas will return to your shore.

A home may be something you own 

But it is not your bones, your flesh

That which you caress and hold and carry

Deep within, unseen by them.

Impossible to bulldoze.

A well you keep that cannot be drained or named, shamed or contained

My country lives still

                           Relentlessly defiant.

A Moment of Calm

 

My soul finds words in this silence

Unutterable perhaps

Difficult to decipher

These are quiet sounds

Formed in the absence of presence

The rhythm of breath inhaled 

The call of the bird

Giving voice to what is unspoken

These are quiet sounds

Formed in the presence of absence

Sabbath

Take away noise

 Take away sound

Give me instead the sheep and the cows

Take away words

Take away hands

Hide me inside of the ancient lands

Take away excess

Take away lack

Hold me close to what brings me back

Take away fear

Take away loss

Lead me to the foot of the cross

That I may find that I am found 

That I may see that joy abounds

In giving it up and letting it all go

In trusting in your word that says no and yet says yes to more than we know or could dare to dream or imagine, that shows love beyond what we can fathom. That gathers and enfolds, where we are told, you are not forgotten or too old but you are new each day and free to say I trust you Lord. Have your way. 

This is a year that starts with You.

One Body

 You and I 

Are the sea and sky.

Our salty lips have mingled and met and yet 

how 

quickly we forget

as the distance we traversed 

is now 

rhythmically 

dis joint ed.

The Magic of Water

The sound of the water

leads where you must linger.

Follow it in its steady drip, in its heady grip, in its unrelenting hit.

Follow the smell of the rush,

of the crush,

of the crash, 

of the thrash, 

of the truth, 

of your youth.

Follow the noise that makes old men boys, that makes hearts ache and quake but not break.

Follow the path made by lost sheep and wandering feet, finding they stand in unseen lands.

Follow it because you may and because you must because in doing so you might

just

find again

that which has long been held in its pools and hold it at last in your own two hands, drinking it deep, you and it and the memories you keep drawn down down down. Hiding, hidden, home.

 

T

 

He threw off that which hindered

No longer entangled by sin

In royal robes, never not worn

A joy that never grew thin.

His eyes were fixed on Jesus

Looking full in His glorious face

He had run with perseverance 

It was time to finish his race.

MF

 

Who am I when who I am is dim

When it looks so much like him

Am I there inside, buried deep

I try to search, to burrow, keep

On going. 

Keep   on    g o i n g.

If I dig through the layers will I find myself

Will I get to the core? Will I wilt? Will I melt?

Is it easier to not even ask

To accept my fate, it’s late

Can I change or ingratiate

Anything new or anything gained

Or will I just remain the same 

Old

Man

But a boy lives in me too

Never quite allowed to bloom and so I chew 

Upon this misery and sink into my destiny

Je suis déjà terminé.

I am alone in the shadows of my mind 

But surrounded on all sides 

By those who need me to be better

Who can’t see that I am fettered

It is hard to answer questions about daisy chains when you need to hide

When you’re trying to find 

a way to say 

I am not ok 

that doesn’t end in shame.

What if that end of yourself

Is the start of something else

A place to see and be free

Where you can be held

And told and told again

You are loved 

You are loved 

You are loved my friend.

IWD 2024

 The Insurgence

He crushed

Brushed me

Aside 

Like crumbs on a table

Only he preferred the bread

He wanted me dead

He lanced me

A boil leaking

Unnoticed

Only my frame remained

Empty

A good place to begin

Before Him

To let the flow in

Rush deep 

Into the seas I swim

A gathering of pieces lost

A space you cannot win.

Resolution

 Fully. Wholly. Holy.

She took off being lonely.

Held. Heard. Unfurled.

She put on being lowly.

Community

 The net that holds

The arms that fold

Suffering into the centre

Turning it into pizza.

Him

 You slowly stripped 

our souls.

With fists that dripped

malevolence.

Words that chipped

holes.

Into our bones.

One 

disappointed 

sentence

at 

a 

 time.

A List poem on Grief

 Absence louder than presence

Pervasive pain

Ruining my egg sandwich

Tastes good with a red

A long held longing

For that forever gone

The dead and the dying

The fear and the flying

 Who am I without them

My edges shaped by loss

The thick of night before dawn

The day which never comes

Surprising laugher

Guiltily smothered

A hushed embrace

The silence of those

Who don't want to get it wrong

Carrying a quiet void

Not quite hidden by eyeliner

That ever shifting sand

Oh I think I'm ok now

And then I am drowning.

Fire

I am unafraid of the apocalypse

For it already lies within me.

The burning bush is no matter 

When my insides are aflame.

The destruction that abounds 

Is no match for the unceasing

Screaming of my soul.