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.

Advertisement

Credo

Do you believe in laughter held in truth,

In knowing that words spoken find their mark,

That a look, a touch, the gentlest hand may form

A smile that grows within, ignites a spark?

 

Do you believe that gladness grows inside,

Overflows to others open to

Receiving joy as recompense for living

When its trials and labours overwhelm and threaten you?

 

Do you believe that hurting ends in time,

That inner worlds are balanced by all love,

That questions yet unanswered cause a thrill,

Their discoveries a golden treasure trove?

 

Do you believe that somewhere inside light

The heart of matter hides a great reveal,

That nothing happens without cause effect

And perceptions make our own world feel what’s real?

 

Do you believe that logos is the word

Or that words alone confuse a greater thought,

That lips that speak the lies betray the way

And sometimes guidance dwells in what’s not sought?

 

Do you believe in fairies and in trolls,

In monster lochs where hidden depths conceal,

Do you believe in equine wings and angels,

In many wondrous stories though unreal?

 

Do you believe in suspending disbelief

To enter into fantasies that pleasure

While still inside you know factual from dream

But recognise you owe some childlike measure?

 

Do you believe that living is worth living,

That each breath you take admits a purpose here,

That nothing’s yet decided or completed

And that only you can change your greatest fears?

 

Do you believe in worlds you find in books,

In scenes unfolding on the movie screen,

In comic superheroes who astound,

Unveiling attributes too rarely seen?

 

Do you believe the essence of all stories

Conveys some truth distilled to purest form,

That much of what we honour most in tales

Are aspirations we would wish as norm?

 

Do you believe that children hold the key,

That complications thwart our best intentions,

That simplicity and innocence are essential to all meaning

To underwrite and clarify the best of lessons?

 

I do.

 

Flight Lessons

I soared there

for a second

in time,

hovered briefly

in the millenia

of consciousness,

eagle-eye internal

to the words

found wanting,

glided on an updraft,

invisible to view,

felt in the breeze,

spiralled to gravity’s

reckless abandonment,

pulled up

short

before the crash

obliterating

reality’s

nonsense.

I  flew then

for a while,

lost to reason’s

purpose,

bathed in light

sharp against

my retina,

colours faded

to acute contrast,

rods only,

no cones.

A blink in time,

a truth eternal,

flight lessons

remembered,

regeneration of

cause.

Rebuilding Bridges

Our realities were where they lived. They had always lived among us. Mingling and breeding, filtering the external ugliness over millenia, shape-shifting within families, extending their reach and influence, feeding their appetite for souls. We bled spiritual plasma to these psychic vampires; the Trolls piercing, sucking us almost dry and moving on to greener pastures while burning our bridges between the possible and the proscribed. Sometimes the medication helped, blurred the edges of the fairy tale we lived. Sometimes nothing helped. Spent souls huddled in silence awaiting the Banshee, keening their need to end the days, pleading for the stake that would ease their pain and transformation. Some bridges remained. We began the Rebuild.