TELL THE STARS I'M COMING, MAKE THEM LEAVE A SPACE FOR ME...

I know you know, we can fall in love to lose ourselves, or we can fall in love to find ourselves. And what we think we are seeking is not always what we are seeking, and the unexpected always turns up, just in time. And permanence is never lasting.

I am a watt in a bulb that lights up at that time of night when eyes start to strain, and faces appear in walls, the cat lets itself out, and the kettle is empty. It is 3 o clock and the day is not yet up.

I am also afraid. I don’t want to go alone in the sea tonight. I don’t want to be swallowed up by the forest. To stand my ground makes all the chandeliers shake, and the plaster come down off the walls.

I am breaking the spell of a lifetime and I can see no further than the end of my nose, yet my vision stretches out past the sea clouds on the dainty horizon, to a turquoise place of nothing special, only dust and filament and a quiet spectre of brilliance.

I strum electric tunes in time to long forgotten rhythms, and ache to Van Morrison and smile and cry at the man who loved bears, and the bears who ate him.

I will reach you in a gaze, then you are in a haze of cloud again, eaten up by past and future, the present hanging, a diamond in our midst.

This is the realest thing I can mention… the curve of your head on the pillow, your fingers stroking my nose, and a very distant image, blurred, cold seeping in, fading out…of an outline of your figure, on a ridge, by a freezing river, enveloped by the winter’s day.
He wants to die in the cold.

I become an immense wave born of infinite tragedy. And yet, I am travelling out beyond the stories of old, into places yet unborn, crashing through the ether, through a tunnel of light and a blank white crowd, glinting together, teeming. This is anew.

And I am still seeing angels in cocaine powder – they are ageless, divine, they speak the blues, sink death into sunlight, bring terrible beauty home to a hearth that is welcoming and climbing with moss and roses and ivy. The profound illusion of God, a shot at glory, at life, a moment of purity.

And that never came without a price, without the devil’s face in profile. No redemption without a fall, no fall without redemption.

At the same time, the story is reversing at the same speed as it is accelerating, and new pictures creep their way into burdened filing cabinets of hundreds of thousands of tired equations of living and loving.

Years ago, I found a Dharma, it was strong, it blinked with an eyelid that was laughing. And I am once again remembering that eye, and hearing the song, the drum beat that thuds so fierce, the Yogi down from the hills chopping himself to pieces with a damaru, the crystalline ancient wonder, perfect sea of change, a soft earth life, as delicate as the scent of a single flower from across the length of an open garden gate, from across hedges and spring lawns touched with wetness.

I can feel an ending and a beginning, a membrane in space locking me in frozen silence, a reaching out towards you, a pulling away, deep wells of understanding, unfathomable shades of unknowing and losing and we throw it all away but somewhere keep it precious, here, under heart strings and memories and hopefulness and decay… living, breathing, alive this day.

Life turns us over like a car on a speedway, but we are always only one step away from hope, and the words run out... but the writing is never finished

for my friend

The cups are all put away, the tea things set straight and tidy, the film is over, the ending final.

I watch your face, a barrel of tears in the daylight, a configuration of spattering grief, and somewhere I can sense we are near home now, it isn't far away.

You walked with serenity in the garden of bliss, when your toes were blessed with dew and whimsy,your eyes were clear and looking upward. The door was obvious to find, the key turned easily, just the way it should.

But now, your face is bright with pain, fueled by longing. The garden has grown all a tangle, there's no way of knowing where to step.

We talk of the wheel of life, you and I... we talk of turning, turning, turning.

Today, I'm a spring daisy, feeling warm rain after a long hard winter. You are an icicle, threatening to melt, sliding down into streams and puddles. Together we form a current, pulling at the harbour. Together, we fall apart, in our own ways, into life and yearning.

We trade places like fishermen keeping watch through the early dawn. I never meant to stumble upon happiness, I never meant to fall into the river. And you, you are resplendent and glowing, pain shooting you like the greatest gun slinger.

We match, living and dying in our own ways. We track the paths to our hearts through dangerous terrain, all sorts of weather. And home, it isn't far away, it is calling below the shadows of sea birds, beneath the valley of nightfall, through the watch of the ever rising, ever setting moon and sun.