How’s a life possibly turned inside out without touching it?
The feel tells us neurons are dying off, sense surfaces growing numb
There’s an exterior of sparrows cared for, plus plaques for fighting for top spot
Lots of them, lots of birds flying away
Dying embers, remember the ignition
The spark that started our living joyfully, dying selflessly
Today, its running really fast, the engine’s powering past the sixth mile mark
Change the stripes on that signpost, make it ‘feet’, fittingly, end-stone-post
truly, the birds are gone now, its just a silent owl howl, a ringing hark back

This morning, I saw my life again, in the mirror with black patched under-eyes
Old, renewed angst, plans slammed to pieces by own hands, lone stands
My failure, I wail, is me, me, yes me in the mirror, no other, infinite bother
Burden
I fall with abandon under its torture, it takes my mind, makes me bear it, do its bidding
Bow, cower, lose my sanity, my grip, even as my phalanges lock ever more tightly
I’m me, I’m fear-formed, fall-prone, done for
Dusk comes, sees me weeping under that neem tree, over meanly meted defeat
I fight to be me, so it means I’m still bound
Burden, oh burden, what burden drags my soul upon, yes, against thorns and thistles
To pierce and tear me apart, to leave me eternally distraught!

Finished, I leave my self for dead
Its the only way to be free from destructive weight
I resign to life, I put down the self centered sack slung across my back
A cross, not my type, but truly radical a cure
The price for freedom mine to take
To be in awe of, enthralled by, taken into, illuminated
Live out
The new burden, the one I now actively fall in love with.

Day after day, I sit on the couch. My favorite place, and start watching. Hour after hour, I flip from channel to channel, I scroll with a smug on my face, I compare lives situations, circumstances, beginnings and endings. Of good people, bad, successful and the not. Creme de la creme, less priviledged ‘so cool! Ugh! Not cool!’, I say. Not realising, obviously I’m the worst. Unwatched, unlaughed at, even unfrowned at. Depend on what I’m given; smiling when smiled at, smiling when frowned at. My world full of plastic smiles. My future a gaping void, created by negligence, widened by overindulgence, and finally established by being a vision watcher- a couch potato. Then when life’s light goes off, my only memories will be fragments, of other people’s achievements. Then! I blame the couch! The economy! Every other thing! ….. Oh no! Can’t be my fault! Holding the candle for others, not lighting mine. When I wake from my terrible slumber, there’s already enough light, for all and sundry. As you percieve, they don’t need me. Such are the proceeds I get from trading my visions For a Couch!

The streets I walk are filled with eyes
There are persons passing me by, people I bypass
There are souls alive I barely ever know, soles that thread snappily, or sluggishly
There are paces to lives, faces to size up, twice as many thumbprints as there are lives lived
But for figures, I could have been more careful
Numbers are a forgetful label, worse than trashing from form to stale stones
Peebles, dull reflection painting grey versions of life into mental existence
So hasty, hectic, flip flap, floppy, rushed,  trivial, near-invisible thread
Worthless, like nothingness, pointless

In thinking, I trace translucence, character traits bouncing off us all
Faith raises the life high, to leave sighs and resigned shrugs behind
Fate raises no consequence, save for no movement, radical apathy
How do we marry these, for it is the gospel of the postmodern, the great desolation
The flowering into desert, vitality so safe, so speculative, so passive, violently inactive
Wed these, weld vigorous franticness into deterministic want of meaning
Out comes plenty talk of love, of inspiration, of human sympathy
Out flows pitiable desperateness of inward cries for more than tortuous sameness
While we still bypass the passer-by
While we address the rest by avoiding their eyes
Their souls
Our souls too

Back we go to what makes us joyful
Not what catches fancy while lights still die out
To rediscover the thing that makes us thick, the who, what and why of living
When I finally stop to say “hi”, to place it a long way before “bye”
When the best I give is more than a glance, a stare, a shallow inquiry
When my eyes fixed on yours is a driving together to bond
My gaze on you is part of a probe into you, to find your concern, to find you
Instead of excusing my neglect of heavenly duty for shyness or tight routine
For we only have a while to love up the imperfect towards perfection
To be disrupter of dark bitter severed state
To help melt stony hearts, giving life in place of wasteful slumber
For none is too difficult a subject to face with Christlike involvement
Whether to relieve, to reform, or to snatch out of the fire.

Love
Its the weirdest thing man never fully knows, very slyly insults
The big wide need of the universe, counterfeited too much to simply see
But I thought we shared in it while we sat under the tree, together
The age blew gusts of ascending feelings, launched us up above gravity
The thing tingling in me with your eyes’ gaze nailed on mine
Our lives so drawn into us, we said we’ll never end, we’ll never age, fade
Heaven must be love infinite, God’s eternity the unimaginable bettering of this thing spectacular
Pictures flew easily in and out, about our circular lock, hands held, to stay
I was so happy

Today, the grasses stand in the sun, slitting its rays to million bits
Taller than me, as I sit and stare into the distance, the riviera of my dreams
I’m longing, just wishing and waiting and wanting, along these lines, blades
Where I am is an afternoon time of jammed lines, gibberish signs, mines
Dead traffic and obstacles, an infinite distance
I’m too far away from you, and its hard to take
I’m so near you, but my sight has failed enough to obscure your figure
I try to fight my way through to you, but with every step, the miles grow longer
With every breath, I sense the end of life is near
Why should I be far away from you, my dearest love?
Pain spasms rip through my heart, my cry roars across the plains, spans
A melancholy wail raises the dust, rides on as winds carry through
You can be found, surely you can, my lost love, my love lost!
My heart is bleeding, dying slowly, scares me to death
come running, I’m fallen, barely breathing now, fast losing hope!

There’s nothing like the thundering of the earth, the shaking underneath feet
Not the grand display I fancied would fit your return, my coming home
But its fine, all’s right, you’re finally here again
Love has not died, the cosmos’s still held together, the authentic has won
I cannot now be ecstatically wild, play high emotion for the unveiling of you
But I smile humbly, give up the chase, the run away, obscuring struggle
Landing into you, happy to forget I’m grown
I’m a child, its great, I’ve found truth
We have clashed, I’ve lost, you’ve won me over.