A silent longing

This could be the best thing I've ever wrote, or it could just be another thing I wrote...

Image by VivitoArt from Pixabay

A silent longing for one came by
From out of the blue
And asked why I was knocking so loudly
On the hidden door of a perception I wanted to reach.
I was hanging onto the subliminal anchor point
That tertiary adjunct of the mind
Where the old beliefs hide
With their invisible strings of attachment
And were pulling me every which way
But the one way I wanted to go.
I had no answers to give but that perhaps
I could find a way to move forward
Beyond what was holding me back
If I was persistent enough in the desire to proceed.
So I asked myself
Where I could go that wasn't where I was
And so hoped the inspiration would come
As I travelled in my dreaming
But what a long road it has been
To get more here
Where I am and I find
The more here I am the less out there is real
And becomes surreal like some cult movie
Where the actor feels out of place in his movie.
How strange it can all seem
Yet nature flourishes under the sun
And I too would thrive under my sun.
The aardvark of an aged swansong
High on the lattice lace interlace
Put on a size large used overall
Rolled up the sleeves
And went to work in the play being written
While the intractable redoubt of absurdity
Gave a running commentary over all.
"Come get your fingers burnt here,"
It said
But was ignored as the buzzing fly
On sandpaper
In the storm of an idea that has no purpose.
In a postcard from a hollow place I wrote:
Slip this into the nest
Where the thoughts come from a dime a dozen
Then send me a postcard from there
Where I rest in the heather of my love
And later, crawl back again for more.
This dish is an old plate of things
That I escaped from in the long ago
To find my fill with my turnings coloured
With what I found there and
"No matter how I loved you I loved you all the same,"
I said to the one I loved then.
Then into that big suitcase we came
With all our gains to lie in the dark corner
Where we came from
And lying there still
It asks for passage back to the dream
Waiting for its chance to fly home
Even though a lifetime has come and gone
Since then
And the sands have long since been washed clean.
But I am a little bit full of this
That makes the blue dream spiders hiss
At all the crazy
As the ladybird of love climbs on my page
This way to say hello
While the winds blow silence
And the king sighs
From somewhere in this that listens.
Now the twilight is here
And I am fascinated as it falls around me
It’s deepening fallen out of the skies this way
I want to jump out of my skin
To blow apart this blown apart
And make it new again to feel grand.
Now the night is calling to go somewhere else
But here
Where I am is stranded
So I jump into my skin
And find I am still here
What am I waiting for?
Bird of love come back
And show me the way out of here
You were here
And now I find I am longing for you
And I am left without you
In this space that is too long
With a bucket of tears in each hand
For shame to ask is this enough?
But I would be inured now
From all the other suffering long gone
And anyway
I’m alone with these thoughts in the verbatim vernacular.
"We are that left here all that we could
And this is the secret key,”
The old thoughts said
And ran off with it to run away most assuredly
And not stay there anymore.
They are not what they seem I sang
To seem this unseemly thing
And then I saw a Japanese couple eating chips
And I knew the world had changed too much.
“This is too new,” I said
But I knew the new was unstoppable
And so I pressed on
Once again into the new
And left behind all the old
Because I knew the new was better than the old new
Come now you know this is so
That the new is newer and better
And give my regards and condolences to Doris
Who passed away last century now that I remember
She would have agreed with me.
By the way there is a new sale on
To sell all that can’t be sold to those that won’t buy.
“We’ll teach those buggers what’s new,”
Doris would have said
And I always had to agree with her
Never mind what was being said at the time.
But never mind that now
Today I saw many things:
Today I saw a man lying on the grass
Wearing little more than wellington boots
I could not guess what he had been doing.
And a cart, left in the road
With ten bags of ice
Dripping, melting fast in the hot sun.
And in the river were dead fish
All striving ceased, to breathe the dirty water.
A tourist on a stretcher over in the crowd
Was being put in an ambulance, fighting to get off.
Walking on I saw the disappointment of another man
Who had had everything stolen from him and
Now trying to get home
Listening to the shadows whisper from a woman
Standing perfectly still in the moving mumbling
Her ideas close to a beggar, dirty and old
And near to that scene, a small child
Shaking the tin beside the road
Pleading and looking in everyone’s eyes.
Then a lone blag-man rumbling along
On a mission was beset by a child screaming
And another one smiling
And another asking a question to which another replied:
"This is the way to do it,"
And ran in fast to touch the blag-man on the arm
And then run away to not get caught.
A little boy ran through all this
His head full of hot thoughts.
And then I saw a dog under a table forgotten, fast asleep
And a yellow bug, confused
And another man, skinny and soulless
Melting into the hot pavement
And I could not help but notice
He wasn’t wearing wellington boots.
I saw a small tug boat, going up the river
Desperately pulling five barges full of a million tons.
And I saw Gunga Din, mellow as saffron
Go aboard a boat full of faces.
And I heard from many the call to say:
Today was the day to be counted
But I lost count of the many things to be counted.
In a cool solitary place, I found joy and a relief from it all.
In the ravages of the day were many equations
And questions running around
And the lost blest, indecisive about their next move.
I saw dreams and ghosts and desires
And bottomless pits
And hair that went on backwards
And make-up that came off everywhere.
I heard laughter and anger and silent cries of anguish.
I saw leaves full of people sweeping up
And children in their school clothes
Eager for a place in the world.
And by a drinking fountain
Where the moon-dust had blown them
A bunch of old hippies
Soaking up the heat near to an old tractor
Lying in the dust, rusting away
And abandoned forever.
And another beggar, and another, and another
The city churning them out as fast as you can count.
And one million protesters everywhere
As two fat ladies counted their sleeping children.
And then the night came with a fort full of guns
Bristling into the darkening
That fell on an Englishman with a moustache
Who loosened his tie as a Chinese man ate his toes.
The night will give you mushrooms for toadstools
With watercress that you can take
For your ailments to call it even
Like the shoes left at the temples on Buddha day
Gone to sleep on the steps
While a frog woman will sell only frogs and a mango in a pair tree.
Yes, I saw many women wear their attractions in public
And many men who fell through these holes
And the chicken fried rice came
And the watermelon juice
And the hot heat and the wind-blown
In the wandering was the flavour.
Today I saw a lion lie down and give up
In a dirty bowl of surrender
And a bear sing of love with a yearning
Only hungry lovers know
And an empty onion drinking beer.
I saw sex on a stick that didn’t know what sex it was.
And I saw the blue dream spiders again
Forever in their dreaming.
I saw the wild man, tamed
And the dust that healed his wounds.
Today I saw the blessings in the carnival
And the time it took to count them
In the endless progression of time that runs out too soon.
Today has gone in the shimmering of time
In the black dust along the walls of countless borders
Where the dispossessed packed their bags and left home forever.
Today was a day that will not come again.

Image from Pixabay