Wingless

15/04/201415/04/2014 / deuxiemepeau / Leave a comment

I am me but sad,

So recently and gloriously happy,

Now still me- but sad.

I am me- but have loved,

Made love and gave it,

I still do, but now angry.

I have screamed to deaf ears,

No one listens- deaf ears.

I have dreams but not wings,

If i did I would know where to fly,

This is not my dream-

Here and sad,

Here and angry,

Here, where no one listens,

Here, alone while others are flying

Off.

Yesterday, I had wings,

Once upon a time

I knew who I was,

Here, in this present-

Who knows?

Travelling

14/04/201414/04/2014 / deuxiemepeau / 6 Comments

I am sitting in a cafe

In a city now called home,

I’ve travelled many roads to get here-

And most all of them alone.

There’s been multitudes of languages

And a million changing faces,

Solitudes of silences

And unforgettable embraces.

I am eternally the estranger

In a land of other locals,

Externally the optimist

As my now grey hair reduces.

I’ve found all the answers

To questions never wondered,

But have yet to find the answers

To the questions that I’ve pondered.

I am happy more than tearful,

Alone more so than lonely

And happy that my insanity

Has never toppled my stability.

I consume myself with worry,

Awake myself with doubt,

But take comfort when the laughter

Drowns all darkness out.

I am sitting in a cafe

In a city that’s now home,

But as every car passes by

I wonder where next I’ll roam…

In Absence

11/04/201411/04/2014 / deuxiemepeau / Leave a comment

In your absence

It’s not that there’s less

Laughter to life,

There’s not less love

Or even less light,

Not all comfort is lost

Or all joking discarded,

Not all happiness hushed

Or all joy deserted.

It’s not that I’m saying

The sun won’t rise,

That darkness descends

And sorrow arrives,

I won’t pretend

That all color has faded-

That we have been robbed,

Ransacked and raided.

But your laughter’s now missing

And your goodness extinguished-

Your connection to me now

Has been truly relinquished,

I’ll remember you always

As the gentlest host,

Not the tallest of men

But of heart- you had most.

It’s so long since I’ve seen you

But I’ll never forget

The kindness you showed me

That will long outlive death,

You were funny and folly,

Caring and kind,

A gent of distinction,

And wickedly refined.

The Judgment of the Shadows

10/04/201411/04/2014 / deuxiemepeau / Leave a comment

Did we smile at each other,

At least, at all,

Before the bond broke

That day, that morning,

After the dawn rose

In all its innocence,

Imperceptive

Of how it would part us,

Ignorant of the virtue you’d lost

And the sadness it would cost.

And did you feel the judgment of the shadows?

Did I know you at all,

That day, at least, back then,

In the thin thread of time

That we borrowed briefly,

In that deceiving dawn

That polluted the promise

Of the morning’s light

As so-called Elders

Counted constantly

The limited hold we had

Over each other,

Over the past, on the pain-

You- bleeding fresh in convent bed,

And I; still too ignorant to the wounds of this world

And the life we could have had.

And did you notice how they judged in the shadows?

I wonder, if in your crying-

And I’m sure that you cried-

Did your tears caress my face,

In all that wasteful

Wailing and wrenching,

Baby was born

And little girl grown,

Did the pain erupt

And submerge us-

Did the situation swallow us in,

Stirring the sorrows of a too-soon mother

In the birth of a so-called sin.

And did we hear those judging in the shadows?

Did you ache afterwards-

Alone, without me,

After the morning crippled all connection,

Did you ache all alone-

In that room without me

After your sacrifice that saved me,

Do you understand the gift that you gave me-

Your body that housed me,

Month after month,

Amid the swelling and stares,

The Jeering and sneers.

While all the world judged you from the shadows.

Did it change you, at all,

That day, that time

In that place

Of penance and prayers,

In that sacrificial suffering,

In that final goodbye,

In that giving up,

In that letting go-

In the loss that followed too quickly

From our very first hello.

Do you feel me still,

At all, after all, On holidays and birthdays,

When babies cry and mothers run

Do you wonder that happened

To your little baby son?

Do you remember us today

Right now, as we were

So long since our separation,

So deep in separate lives,

In ignorant oblivion

And an opposite direction

Since the hands of this world pulled us apart,

Since the judgment of the world forced us apart

Nothing, Beyond the Sea…

09/04/201409/04/2014 / deuxiemepeau / Leave a comment

‘Nothing can be done,’

She said

Almost smiling,

Her clothes and skin

A lighter shade

Of hospital white,

‘Nothing can be done-‘

She said, ‘Head up,

Eyes forward,

Grin and bare it.’

Nothing more to do,

Nothing else to see,

Not a single reason to cry-

No ocean flood will bring them back

For strong currents have stolen them,

No tide will ever return them-

Not now, not at all,

Not just for you

While forsaking the rest-

The ones who’ve gone before

Since time began

And life found its end.

Nothing could be done,

He knew

With an intake of breath,

Sweaty palms, blurred vision

And a bag of belongings in his hands

And then it’s empty-

The contents on the table top-

Motionless and mournful,

Detached and dislocated

From its owners,

The hands ticking ever onwards

On the watch-

Time still moves on,

Even now,

Even without them

Breathing through this world,

And yet the tides still return to the shore

After deserting it,

And then desert again

And then return

And all the while

Time stops for no one,

Takes no pause,

Bows not it’s head.

We are as the waves-

One chance to rise and crest

Before that single fall

Into eternity-

Once chance

To reach the highest height.

Nothing now to do

But sit and wait

For the calls and prayers,

For the nodding heads

And compassionate stares,

For the toasts

To the end of the road,

For the handshakes and hugs and tears,

For the long lost beggars

Wanting something from wills,

The placing you in the ground

Amid the shivers and chills.

Nothing left but nothing now-

A barren emptiness,

A sudden silence,

A sea without water or waves,

An aching that you can’t quite place,

A sinking sensation

That sucks on, seeps in

And seeks you to surrender

And suddenly all light is painful

All color is faded,

All laughter riles you

Like nails on a chalk board

And the nothingness settles in

And leaves you

Longing for nothing

But more meaningless

Days of nothing-

Naked,

Numb

And nostalgic

For the days gone by,

The lives now lived

And the faces now fading,

Already,

Overnight,

Losing their clarity

Their scent-

Surrendering to the passing seconds

And their touch

Never more to be felt-

Carried off those unreachable sunsets

That sink beyond the sea…

The Blissful Wake

08/04/201408/04/2014 / deuxiemepeau / Leave a comment

Before my eyes open,

My body senses you and slowly

Accepts the breaking light

In the shelter of your arms,

Beneath the scent of our lust

Still lingering in the room

From the night before,

I begin to stir

And your body wakens to mine-

Aroused as our legs find ways

To entangle and entwine

Like branches bending together,

Toes running along calf,

Tickling down tiny hairs-

Touching, tempting and teasing.

My eyes open to find you

Next to me,

To let my lips find yours

And allow you be my first sensation,

The first taste of the day,

The first yearning-

Opened and explored.

This is how the light finds me, now,

Today, tomorrow, for evermore,

This is what it’s now like

To lay in the light

Instead of solitary in the shadows,

This is how it is-

Nestled deep within you,

Cosy all around you,

At a loss as to whose hand is whose,

Whose kiss came first,

This is the all clear

Present and future,

This is how the days

Will furthermore begin-

This is the reoccurring dawn

I have dreamed of in sleep-

This is what we make

Of the blissful wake.

The Poetic Point

07/04/201404/11/2015 / deuxiemepeau / Leave a comment

Writing, with ink and pen

And open mind, thoughts

From the heartland of the questioning consciousness-

Muddled and moving, mixing

Musical thought with meaningful metaphors,

Subtly seeking the rhythm and rhyme

And fighting with form and formality,

Counting consonants and trying not to simulate,

Sawing sentences in centers

To shock, shake and stimulate.

Keeping, with honest integrity,

To the truth of the matter-

Uncompromised, unsweetened and unsaturated

In saccharine sentimentality,

Seeking instead what gets left behind

In the somber shade of the shadows,

Sorting the substance from the unsuitable,

The serious from the subterfuge,

And learning to lift lies from the legend.

Trying, with shaking hand,

To be true to myself-

To worry not about the funny, the foe or the awkward,

The downright stupidly silly,

Hoping, over time,

To vary not the voice from my voice,

To temper not the thoughts with temptations

From others with pretentious persuasions,

To be unafraid, unassuming

And always attune to the flow of the line.

Attaining the Stars

26/03/201426/03/2014 / deuxiemepeau / Leave a comment

Parted from the inhuman heights of the heavens,

We dwell deep, deep down

In what we’ve shaped

Into the final spoils

Of Planet Earth,

Lost amid our own

All-consuming desire

To rise up and stand out.

We are funny creatures

Of spiraling arms

And spindly legs,

Equally drawn and repelled

By each other’s tastes and tones,

Gifted with two eyes

To view the world around us

And yet remain often oblivious

To all and everything

Other than ourselves,

Though ever curious

To understand each other,

Oft’ times care for each other,

And, more often, control each other

As we wander about on two feet

And ten tiny nubbins named toes

With spine up stretched

As if trying to reach for the stars

Though all the time busy

Trying to make stars of ourselves-

Forever wanting to shine

As we bask in the warmth of the sun

And be remembered

As we fall drowsy under the spell

Of the moon.

Fickle fellows we are

Who fall frequently fool

To fortune,

Forever following the flock,

Fast footed on the flow

Of fashion and idols of falsity,

Fiercely arrogant

And fearlessly fumbling forward

Through consumer moments,

Appetizing advertising and diets of the day-

Were we not once modeled

Upon a glorious god-

An unparalleled picture of perfection

That somehow slipped, over time, to rejection.

Ambitious creatures are we-

Carnivorously craving more from the pot

And constantly climbing this ladder,

That ladder- every ladder.

No longer willing to settle

For only land and sea,

We molded man-made wings of metal

And matched the birds in flight

Low over land and water, at first,

And then coveting the clouds

And soaring past those stars

We tried so hard as kids

To reach out and touch.

Yet here we are, today,

Ascending higher than ever,

Reaching for those inhuman heights,

Us, with our spiraling arms

And spindly legs,

Eyes to understand

And ears to comprehend,

Capable of so much glory

With our courage and convictions

And opposable thumbs-

We had the hope

To hold the whole universe

In our hungry hands

With those fumbling fingers

And gnarly nails.

We will continue

To rise onwards and upwards

Charting skies lanes and skyways,

Naming those long, burnt-out,

Fading stars

After ourselves-

As if deserving-

But, while we wage war

On our own individuality-

On those very tastes and tones

That both attract and distract us,

Then the heavens will remain,

Always and forever,

The untapped attainment of human desire.

The Beauty Within

16/03/201416/03/2014 / deuxiemepeau / Leave a comment

Put your hand

In mine,

To pull me

Not apart,

But to please me,

Pleasure me and perfect me

Into a useful unity-

A balanced blend

Of better beings

Than before-

Less bestial, base

And bitter

Than the twisted tribes

Who’ve crossed my path

In darker days of late

With their loins

Full of lust and longing…

Let this smile

Sink through skin,

Seep under substance

And build in us

The ability

To laugh

Through the long hours

And bask in the benefits

Of the beauty

We’ve made within…

Fading

25/02/201425/02/2014 / deuxiemepeau / 1 Comment

In this empty room

Sits your lonely soul,

In this silent night,

In this lonely night.

Whilst lovers are loving

And people are laughing,

But not around you,

But not beside you,

But not for you.

Through the shadows dancing

And the breezes blowing

Creep lonely chills

And darkness flowing.

In this empty space,

In this endless night,

While people are laughing

And lovers are loving-

You sit alone,

Like your room-

Alone.

Like the night-