--- She whirls to the rhythm of the rain. Her dance, light-footed - A pirouette - in step with the beat The light, gentle splatter of rain - Drops stopped in full flight By the chipped stones makes. As the night light catches The fringe of her costume She is no longer there. What we have is the after glow Of stolen re-memory - Of Peace and of repose And the calming lightness Of the patter of the Rain. ...
Source: What you lose in the breaking, and the leaving, and in the tearing up of things is not the weight of the burden of a flailing we, unravelling as it were, beneath the weight of the angst the uncertainty of ambivalent inquiry weaves in its wake. What you gain is not peace, or freedom, or the sense of soaring free; a relief craved like cold water on a blistering summer day - a breath drawn deep, air gulped a sigh of resignation at the certainty of leaving. ...
For Mag 269 --- Here beneath The glow of your halo, Mother of God, With clasped hands And humble spirit I bow in supplication, Bringing a prayer For redemption, for Absolution from this Weight, this burden Of deferred hope. The crash of thunder, Flash of lightning, Fire and smoke, Echoed across seven hills Is etched in my memory A callus chafed raw By this journey, This unceasing battle Of Self and Spirit Of good ambushed by doubt ...
For Mag 268: --- The dinginess within cannot hide the beauty that lurks here, hidden beneath the patina of age and wanton neglect. Haste hinders the unveiling of poise, of grace carved out of ugly rock, of error transmogrified* by intense, pregnant intent, into a towering edifice of strained sinews and abs chiseled to perfection. This is no drowning Narcissus sinking into a murky river of swirling self indulgence; this is David, bare and broken saved by the master’s hand. ...
With time one learns there are no real endings, only times, and new seasons… --- NaPoWriMo is a wrap for this year, even though I never did get round to completing the Day 14 challenge. Big ups to La Reine and Tolu who challenged and inspired along the way… Bring on 2016!
[ Source] Four stars for the Chelsea boots in brown; five from Wood, for their soft leather and inner cushion, for how easy they fit his wide feet and how they arrive in time for spring and the promise of new beginnings. One star from Miles, for how they fall apart; split at the heel after seven months of use; for how they’ll harm your feet, and fall apart as though sawn in two. ...
In the unknown you clutch vestigial memories of night journeys and of trains and being surprised by grey granite segueing into lush greenery but once you cross the Bridge across the Firth of Forth Hope awakens ‘Cos you’re Home. On train journeys, coming home and the Forth Road Bridge for the prompt for Day 28 at NaPoWriMo, a truly gorgeous sight on a (rare?) sunny November day as I found many years ago…
Pause, On the corner of Kings’ and 23rd North West and smile, let your face crumble like a cookie dipped in spring milk. Tell her the musky scent of her perfume reminds you of spring wafting in on the wind heady, yet subtle, hardly felt. Moan about the weather, of snow pelting down like hail of sunshine shoved into a corner by clouds and then nightfall When you find she’s clutching Chaucer to her chest and McEwan in her bag, read her a line from Komunyakaa: ‘I took seven roads to get here and almost died three times’*. ...
For Mag 267 You and I are sweeping up the shards of something blithely broken, something shattered into a thousand jagged things, by this weight, this unshifting burden of this we, we nearly were. There is leaving, and then this, Leaving, headed west, chasing closure, across the valley, beyond which there is no returning.
[ Source] You feel the fever the morning after the strangers leave, engorged by their suckling of your life sap. The gift they leave is the delirium. Dry skin, heavy head and the shivers; the sense of warped time and a bubble of discomfort They rob the future of the joy of present presence- one dies every minute but for those who escape there is only the burning burden of relief. For World Malaria Day… And the one child every minute stolen from our future by the disease.