Smoke slithers along the embers,
fire dances and undulating
lines are feminine, rhythmic, slow,
soft and sinuous, mesmerising…
Slow time feels sticky, like syrup.
Category: Poetry
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On the Nature of Poetry
Trying to describe the indescribable
is a mug’s game.
There are no stories
beyond the power of words,
for stories are words.
As we try to get at the magic of experience,
the enchantment that can transcend facts
and transmute reality,
…it turns into a story
born of words
and limited by them.
It rhymes and writhes,
but artifice of language
only hints
at possibility
of something deeper;
it makes your reader work,
inventing meaning,
while losing your experience forever
and making you redundant…
What a pity!
Poor poet –
forever betrayed by your tools
turning experience into stories,
visceral into abstract,
dreams into – what? -
Some thoughts on self-improvement
Dedicated, with gratitude, to Yana Kane, who inspired this poem
You set off on a difficult journey –
the journey of self-improvement.
You read books and attend lectures.
You meditate and practice.
You work on your self,
but it stubbornly refuses to improve.
It remains self-same,
immutable safe-same,
for if it changed –
how would you feel yourself?
With no you and no self –
tricky!
… but you do,
of course you do,
moment by moment,
experience by experience,
creation by creation,
with or without a journey,
you fashion your self
out of current patterns
and imagine that it was
and that it will be.
You cannot improve
on something that never existed,
but you can always change a story
you just made up. -
For Yana
Have a sip of home brew.
Tell me all about you:
what you feel and what you think,
would you like another drink?
Give a cheer, shed a tear
– we survived another year.
Tell me of your loves and hates,
what is past and what awaits.
Dream in light of winter moon
shining into this cocoon.
We can hide from wind and storm
here – cosy, snug and warm. -
Time
Time flows through me like water through a sponge.
It oozes away, leaving a murky sediment
of half-forgotten feelings
and half-imagined events.
And endless waiting.
Sometimes it seems that I have been waiting ever since I was born.
Waiting
for something to happen
and for everything to change.
How?
If I knew, the wait would be over. -
Through The Trees
I was so happy that evening,
but it passed by and left nothing.
In the mornings
I cannot remember my dreams. -
Night Light
Tell me a kind fairy tale:
I will listen with open-mouthed absorbtion;
I will look at you with shining eyes;
I will laugh and cry in all the right places –
I will be the best listener in the world.
Tell me a kind fairy tale, please!
