The Hollow

Let us go unto the hollow

where the well of deepest drink was dug before,

To sacred shaded hollow, carved from landscapes

told in tales from long ago of ever more.

Trust we in the hollow

whence abide relinquished dreams, past buried fates,

Restive shelter within hollow where,

with purpose, we will serve among frail wraiths,

Ghosts that haunt the hollow

seeking chances lost in pasts of empty tales

To drink again of dreams and fates,

sip nacre, dipped from hollowest of shells.

There in hollow shadows

we shall find the well again,

Unresisting, drown all sorrows

from the hollow of our pain.

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Letter’d Lives

Though we don’t write the endings to our stories,

We’re bound to tell the passages between,

Letters written, words too oft confounding,

On life’s parchment, scripted scene by scene.

Underlying themes and sub-plots merging,

Combined, refined, relate the years we’ve seen,

Central characters all pulled together,

Writing book of life and where we’ve been.

Sometimes story plot becomes confusing,

Characters won’t say and do all that they mean,

Deletions happen often though they hurt you,

No one likes to lose the plan they’ve weaned.

Conflict often rises though unplanned for,

Resolutions too, when hope it seemed

Had fled the prose and left an empty page there,

Tale renews and onward goes as schemed.

Standing back and viewing sometimes helps here,

Perspective on a scale too rarely seen,

Judgements made, a brand new tack is taken,

Weaving all perceptions that we’ve gleaned.

No, we don’t write the endings to our stories

But try to polish them to worthy sheen,

Chapters running, coming all together,

Life lines written, speaking volumes in between.

 

Here And Doubts

In the arms of distant travel there’s a stranger

Promising a land of faraway, a gentle mask

To all the dreams of yesters unaccomplished,

To all the hidden questions left unasked.

In that journey of a thousand million wishes,

Soft upon a dream that never was,

There are faces that, as yet, are undistinguished

Biding time, for me, in just because,

Upon a place and medium I cannot know

For time and space and distance choose the ways,

Adventure of the spirit seeks a passage

And ticket is a willingness to pay

The price of what I have before me in this present,

Faced with comparisons I cannot do without.

There’s a life and world I never lived but cherished

In the worlds within the worlds of here and doubts.

What If?

What if every place you’d ever lived could tell a story;

A recounting of your life by many walls?

What if every word you’d said and deed you’d done there

Were embedded in the rooms and in the halls?

 

What if one day when you wanted to remember

All the living that you’d done in houses past,

You put glass to wall and stories fairly poured forth?

Would you recognise the days and years all passed?

 

If a record of your days in each was written

And portrayed poetically in film or book

Would you read, survey, enjoy all that you saw there?

Be happy so to have another look?

 

Or would walls be haunted by memories that maimed there

And bleed distempered paint into the rooms?

Would the years and months and days be reflective of your dreams

Or a nightmare lived, encased in fetid tombs?

 

What if those you’d known and loved were all still present

In the fabric of the buildings that you’ve known?

Would their eyes be wide like yours at the secrets all revealed

At the manner of your ways not always shown?

 

What if where you lived right now had all new plaster

And a sheath to shelter brick from broken tithes?

Would you take the chance to start afresh and try there

To edit and improve upon your life?

Senseless

I never felt it coming;

Spectral form seeping through

And into,

Wisping and mingling

With my air.

Breathless seductions

Tasted,

Inhaled to mix with my blood;

Cells cleaving,

Time transfigured.

 

I never heard him leave.

He glided through the door

Soundlessly,

My sigh at his parting

Louder than

The soughing air

Around his form.

He melted into nothingness

But left with my heart.

I never saw it leaving.

 

I never sensed such silence;

Void without his voice,

No beat from a heart.