Category: art

Labour

Extract the miracle
from the celebrated

Each story is lifeless
until told – its patterns

Stubborn, are innate –
We all crave renewal

I crave renewal
arms extended
fists unfolded

Believe in will –
the power to breathe life
into inert corners

Does not life support us?
Is not consciousness infinite?
and the divine patient?

Yesterday, I gave up
resigned myself to failure
(It’s a joke I play on myself)

This soul labours to find meaning
and I will breathe life into form
until quitting time finds me cleansed.

(Art my own)

Doctoring

Doctoring broken hearts –
my own legacy a training ground –
like an anesthesiologist

I keep the patient breathing,
asleep – muted by kindness,
unconscious and unable to react.

Why?

Because lulling others is more
effective than operating on self –
faux obligations such a balm

Administer lidocaine to the wounds
Numbness preferable to open-hearted
investigation…

no sutures strong enough
to remedy internal bleeding

(Art my own)

Hiss

Wrapped in reptilian attire, change
climbs aboard my well-intentioned scheme
like a boa constrictor – disarming me

I am more inconvenienced than repulsed –
after all, snake is my power animal,
Or so the seer said…many years ago

Days when I would wear the scaly
comportment of power – invite
transformation- my essence a seeker

But I am trying to settle here –
embrace age and its complications
and yet the serpent persists

Sibilance insisting on co-navigation-
and what will be the outcome, I wonder
if I were to surrender to such a calling?

Change does not heed our fears,
our ego-driven agendas…
It bears its fangs and taunts

I exaggerate the threat, of course-
imagine being consumed or suffocated –
disregard the potential for healing

Have no time for reflection or pause –
the course is already set –
I hold on and feign control

(Art my own)

Slanted Orange

Essence is essence
and flat as I might feel
shadow reveals otherwise;
such is the mystery of life

Orange is my essence –
the promise of sunshine
and creativity, and… I envy
blue its expansiveness

Constrained as I am
by conformity –
this silver-framed
existence a settling

But shadows don’t settle
they stretch and bend
and exclaim rebellion
savagely defending essence.

(Slanted Orange was written in 2022 as a collaborative effort with a local photographer. The efforts of our poetry group are published in a book called the Minimalist Eye. Click here to see the whole collection as well as the photographs that inspired each poem. I’ve used my own art for this post.)

We Are Form Emerging

Creativity partners more with chaos than clarity
It craves colour, light, darkness
movement not supported by 2 dimensions

I delude myself into thinking that words,
cleverly positioned, can decipher the compulsion
fail to understand that soul, unchained, has no words

It is the free-flowing expression of music, dance
It follows the murmuration of birds, and
crawls along the earth, serpent-like

I seek the intimacy of knowing other –
raw and unblemished – but how can this be?
We are form emerging from mystery

That I should find you, Love,
there amid the noise of awakening
then I am more than blessed

Your mind reaches for the definable
while I drowsily bask in sensations
our coming together never akin to wholeness

Yet explosive in its imperfection
Oh, if we could see the artistry
 arising from two souls seeking unity

Comprehend that we are the instrument
the vessel through which creativity speaks
a magnificent tribute to Life’s source.

(Art is a combination of my own effort and AI.)

Sheltered

“If the doors of perception were cleansed every thing would appear to man as it is, Infinite. For man has closed himself up, till he sees all things thro’ narrow chinks of his cavern.” – William Blake

Weathered the would that frames this perception,

once painted with optimism, long worn.


How bright the ideals of youth, now blurred,

colours stripped, raw intention bared –

Life mocks these aged perspectives

old structures fail, light dims with neglect

Still the heart beats solid, hope like putty

sticking to the sills, solidifying half-truths.

How deluded am I, trapped within walls

defined by out of focus panes, separated

From a reality that would behold me

fragmented or whole, and who will ever know

Have not the wherewithal to strip back

old mindsets, repaint the trimmings

Am content to dwell behind screens

of my own making, distorted but secure.

(Image my own)

Teach Me

Teach me reverence;
I am losing ground

Children adulting,
mothering in a void

Teach me acceptance
disability’s waters flood

I am in the margins,
an afterthought…

I concede life changes
release control…

Passion begs an outlet;
I am worn…

And I am open…
Teach me.

(Teach Me first appeared here January 2020. Edited for this edition. Art my own)