Shades of Summer

Sea
Turquoise and blue
These shades of summer
Of you
Brilliant, endless
Full

Sky
The final line
Your quiet decision
Tears
Open, truthful
Still

Sun
Our loyal fool
Constant, relentless
Distant
Yet close enough
Burn

14 to 15

A toast
To hope, progress and love
A promise
To seek and rise above
 
A time
Of renaissance and rapture
A night
To breathe the adventure

A chance
To spill and take in words
A start
Journey North, onwards and upwards

Lines

Lines, lovely lines
An effortless dance of vanity
Between and across
Blank pages of my sanity

Lines, lonely lines
You knew the paths to my mind
My soul of scribbled letters
Born, worn, jumbled by the grind

I remember those lines
I remember that script
The acute twists and curves
The strokes that were your streets

All roads and all the lines
From the word mill did spill forth
A metronome in disarray
Yet always pointed North

Without the warmth of signs
Each rhyme and crossroad lay
Yet you knew which way to turn
As the instruments work and play

Lines, lovely lines
How they dance on endlessly
Ageless, formless, mystery
Upon the chapters of my sanity 

Postcards from Paradise

Cards
Your cards
They are on my table

Postcards
From paradise
My reason to go postal

Your art
You're art
Framing my walls

Bare-boned
Gasping heart
I'm still ready to fall

Contradictions

Imperfect
As they are
So am I, even if I don't think so

Judgement
So quick, so sharp
Alas is a blade with two points

Differences
We're all equal
But I won't accept, what I don't want

Expectations
Poisoned reality
The unavoidable, inevitable letdown

Humanity
We are lifted, raised up
Yet burdened in every way by this gift

Hope

We need, yearn and know it

Yet struggle to hear and decipher its languages

Our future

Self-fulfilling prophecies
I guess we may never learn

Finally

Finally when we have nothing
Nothing to hold
Nothing to keep
Nothing more than humanity

We will lie, a twisted heap
Of paradoxes
Contradictions
Held together with broken seams

We will call out our questions
In hope and in vain
With peace and rage
For answers, no, justifications

We will look upwards, for the divine
And inwards for the replies
And outward for the signs
The missing pieces to our perfect design

We will surrender, eventually
After the anguish
After the denial
When stillness comes to claim humanity

We finally listen, quietly
Calm but open
Exposed but unafraid
A wilderness, still but free

Finally, when we have nothing
We will find soul
We will find our voice
A gift of courage back at the beginning

Seize

Clutch
With your hands
Or fingers hungry
With restlessness

Grab
With your stares
Out from this world
Into the palm of your hands

Clamour
On the churning wheels
An indefinite struggle
To fill the void

Reach
So desperately
Yet quietly, obviously
For what you can't touch

Hold
On stubborn hope
A misled martyr
A scapegoat for ego

Feel
Slowly ever further
Surely ever doubtful
Living the modern myth

Carry
All you cannot hold
Cannot let go of
With hands we do not have

Cast
Judging glimpses
The best you can afford
To check on reality, and our space

Pull
All that you want
In hope and in vain
So full, yet still so hungry

Push
All that you dislike
Every grain, every speck
And maybe perfect will be found

Drop
How we have fallen
Living world, dying people
And we don't know which way is up

Looking, Just Looking

Have you looked at someone
Longer than you thought
Longer than you should

Wondered between breaths
About who they were
About how they felt

Considered how everything
Could change if you shared their day
Coule be over if they spent the night

Flinched at the thought
Of getting to know them
Of getting to know yourself (again)

Struggled to stop the rush
Not just about clumsy lust
Not yet about a fickle love

Guiltily, greedily fantasised
About how they moved
About how they might kiss

Have you looked at someone
Longer than you thought
Lonver than you should

Only to think about yourself
About what you want
About what you deserved

About what you didn't deserve
About why you didn't
About why you should stop

And in the end find yourself hateful
Of this ride you've got on
Of this stranger you couldn't ignore

So entrapped by the mysteries
That spun deeper with each blink
That happened even if you were guarded

Have you looked at someone
To find them looking back
To find you looking away

Wishing that you didn't
Wishing that they didn't
Knowing that you'd do it again

Lines

Lines - thin or thick
Shapes and their shades
Subtle or bold
Shatter our inheritance
The past and its truths
A hand-me-down, received
Understood but not simply
Passed on, just because

We make what we take
Our own, truly our own
When and only when
We own what we receive

And we give what we make
To another set of hands
Shapes, lines and shades
That will strum these strings

To a tune they like
That we have one day love
Or at least understand
That we are all just lines