Making love - conditions attached

I would make love to you

While Beethoven's Emperor

Was playing

Vigorous

Passionate

Or gentle 

With Mozart's Elvira Madigan

Or long

And soulful

With Miles

Kind of Blue

And if you want the

Inveterate thump

Of EDM

Or the music that's 

Happening

Then I can humbly say

Fuck off!

Dukkha or tears of smoke

DUKKHA

Do I cry?

Or hold it in?

Hold it in

That's being myself

I last cried in childhood

And then...

Tears became smoke

They don't come

The glands don't work

They turn into red eyed

Smoke

But tears I feel

Vaguely

Uncomfortably

Not knowing why they're there

Dukkha, suffering the Buddha spoke about

Hit the sweet spot of

My hearts bat

My hearts beat

Yes Dukkha

That which....

No promotion

Non stop socialising

Drinking

Smoking

Aimless chattering

Gassing

Planning

Eating

Stressing

Can remove

That quiet Dukkha

The first noble truth

For others - tears reveal it

For me - just smoke.

Untitled Night

I like a life of hushed notes and electric crackle.

I like buzzing neural circuits and a quiet shimmering blue sea

I hold my life in shaking hands

Not knowing a moment from the next

That is till I put my babies to sleep

And then I'm still

A lake of calm with willow trees reflecting in my soul.

A ripple of love quivers gently through my limbs.

My babies

My daughter

My dog

Petting one and stroking the others soft smooth hair

And then they sleep. Dead to the world. One with folded skin and long ears.

The other with the face of an angel.

And then I stay awake in silence.

Lights off.

My children can't be disturbed.

The light of day is harsh enough.

I lie, in those hushed notes

Reading and reading into the AM.

My kindle glow is warm

The words comforting

I travel then with Hobsbawm the historian

From medieval spain to renaissance Italy. I go further east to the Ottoman turks in their robes and then further to Moscow

Under the dazzle of the Kremlin

And the harsh ruthlesness of the Tsars.

Back west, this bed is a travel chamber

England, industrialising

Smoke billowing from factories

Train tracks being laid

Like criss cross stitches across the heart of the island

Further, further, further

The gigantic endless eternity of the plains

In the American midwest

And then for a while like an eagle

My soul drops down on Vienna

Where music plays

Music, divine music!

On carpets under chandeliers

Mozart, Beethoven, Brahms, Bruckner, Schubert.

Their symphonies buzz in my ears.

Oh world! Oh endless journey

Oh life! Oh eternal variations

Beating a drum roll on the themes of lives long gone

And then

Between pages

Before my finger taps

For the next marvel to hang

Like a portrait in my mind

Between page and page

I glance at my sweethearts

And the neural crackle

Synapses of wonder

Pause

And shut down

And there is quiet

And there is love

And there are my children

And there is my stillness

Until I turn the next page.

JANUS

Two heads

Opposite directions

Permanence in sight

Transience in view

Colours ephemeral

No canvas lies still

Paintings always bleed

In our imagination

They don't hang in galleries

Music changes notes

In flux

In motion

Every sound

Arising

Dying

Passing

Reborn

Arising

Dying

Passing

Reborn

Permanence sought me

I sought permanence

Love sought me

I sought forever

Fairy tales trapped me

I trapped fairy tales

Romance ruined me

Romance saved  me

In love with the world

In books and music

In history and philosophy

In sensuality and compassion

In literature and art

Romance saved me

From:

The parched earth of man and woman

Man and man

Woman and woman

Pricking together like a cactus

In a desert of loneliness

But when two embrace the world

They embrace each other

They sail oceans of poetry

Stare at galaxies of knowledge

Their eyes sparkle

Diamond rings don't

They are jailors 

In prisons of "forever"

In fairy tale webs

Trapped

Trapped in "lives together, lives forever, till death do us part"

And then

We die alone

The irony

That death brings us

Is the truth that philosophy gives us

The truth of paradox

The truth of Janus

What was that he sang?

The man with a "Sting"!

If you love somebody

Set them free.

There is a deeper wave than this

Which you don't understand

There is a deeper wave than this

Tugging at your hand

Insomnia

Insomnia

It's 1am

And you're with me

In the soft hushed notes

Of Rain by pianist

Kenny Barron

He's quiet 

Like our insomniac night

Insomnia

It's 2am

You lie by me

So close

Without prose

Your hair falls over me

The soft orchestra to Norah Jones singing question

Don't Know Why

Insomnia

It's 3am

You're more tender

Than this blurry night

So vulnerable

Paul McCartney songs

Little Willow

Was sung

To you

To me

To us

Insomnia

It's 4am

Dawn's prick hasn't

Touched your Angelic eyes

They're still closed

Looking at me

And Coldplay sings

You're Always In My Head

Insomnia

It's 5am

It's feverish

It's a mile

Of a million sleepless steps

But you slept with me

So my steps treaded gentler

You are the rest 

Between my two notes

Insomnia!

Resting with you

Gazing at you

By my side

Is it insomnia then?

God

Somewhere in the dark recesses

The desolate shores

The still waters

Of my silent heart

I hear a voice

Neither young nor old

In this timeless time

Space less space

Is a core of being

That in its gentle hand

Holds my suffering

As a quiet hand

Gently folds a rain drop in its palm

How futile is it to run away from this voice?

How futile is it to catch the rain?

How futile is it to be deathly silent?

How futile is it not to hear my soul?

In it are vines that gently 

Twine around my sadness

In it are shallows for a wandering bark

To moor for a while

In it is a lamp steady

(Not the sputtering candle that I often am

Flickering, shuddering in the world's breeze)

In all the noise least of all is the noise of quietness

The sound of peace

The gently tolling bell

That brings my heart to its knees

Now I am hushed like a soft carpet

Examining the designs of my life

Undoing threads here

Adding a patch there

Following a pattern

Stepping over a softness

Now I am like a solitary street lamp

Brightening the dark leaves

Glittering diamond like

The drops of rain

Brilliantly suspended on leaves

And branches

Now I am like a sea's hum

A wave's rhythm

A carriage's rhythmic steps

Now I am like a piano

Waiting for a tune

Waiting for a song

Waiting for a silent space

Between those musical notes

In that space is my voice

My friend

My light

My lamp

My soul

Infinitesimally small

Infinitely tender

Patient in suffering

Quiet in endurance

Ever forgiving

Ever germinating

A small seed

Watering its growth

A kernel of tranquility

In it is pure love

Purity itself

Compassion unbounded

By shores that can never limit it

In it is my faith

In it is God

There I find my peace

My rainbow of discontent 

Quietens 

Shimmering colours bleed into one

Coldness like ice

Thaws

And peace trickles

Gently

Anointing me with grace

There is my religion

Not far away at a stone altar

But close by in my heart of hearts

There is my spirit

Dipped in the gentle dye of God

It needs neither comments

Nor commentary

Neither explanation

Or the lack of it

It is prior to explanation

Lying down in a planet of freedom

There lies my God

There lies my Grace

For that is my God

And that God is my peace

Words

WORDS

The mystery of words

Spaces between meanings

Meanings between spaces

The syntax of words

The anatomy of words

The pin point precision of a full stop

Cutting the flow of a thought

Arriving at a conclusion

The punctuation of words

Questions, exclamations

The many pauses and stops

That are celebrated by colons

Semi colons

The unending river of commas

The linguistic root of words

Often beneath the soil 

That nurtures it

Plucked out and thrown into a foreign land

An alien language

It withers or morphs

Adjusts or deludes

An identity on words

Laid naked on the skeleton of race

Nation, language, culture

The flesh and bones

Of relatives, memories, siblings, parents

Tribal totems, hanging on words

Strung in sentences

Encased in a language 

Sent miles over seas

On strained desperate 

Phone lines 

Identities in words 

Solidified from the cooled molten heat

Of centuries of experience

Of a tribe, a people, a place

Calmly answering the questions

Who am I?

Where am I from?

What do I believe?

What am I supposed to do?

The classification of words

Odd blocks of meaning

Uncomfortably placed 

Disjointed and schizophrenic

To fit an A to Z

Of a dictionary

The literacy of words

Smelling of ink and dyes

Parchment and crinkled paper

Worn and used

Sometimes unused

And worn 

Unexplained

And written

The taste of words

Honey on a tongue

When the sounds roll over

In a phonetic dance of pleasure

The smell of words

In pauses between pages

In thoughts between pauses

The memory of words

In bookmarks marking time

From a day when a page is left

To a date when it is reopened

The surgical knife of words

When laid on a slab

Someone is told

To state explicitly

What he means

The passing of words

Like subways in the night

On the dark subterranean tunnel tracks

Of the mind

Never stopping or ceasing

Just changing tracks

And running the same routes again

The end of words

The final stillness when they run dry

And when the fertile goddess of knowledge

Waters the soul

With its own language