The Other Side of East Street

On the other side of East street, the world changes. The streetlights are further apart, and eventually there are none. There are fewer buildings, and more trees. Soon there are no buildings at all. The undergrowth changes and the plants smell different. It’s a subtle change at first, but soon there’s no mistaking it. They no longer smell green, earthy, astringent, but spicy, slightly musky, oriental and mysterious, like a drug to the senses that both beckons and repels. And there is sound. At first it seems like the barely-there music of the wind in the leaves, but slowly it changes, rounds out into a subtle, chiming tune, and you realise that no normal forest could ever sound like that.

For now it is a forest. But strangely, you hadn’t noticed. You have walked right out of civilisation without even observing it, and that is more disturbing than anything else. You feel as if your own mind, your own senses, have played you traitor. And who, or what, else can you possibly trust in such a place? Nothing is more disorienting than being unable to trust yourself, especially when your self is what you have relied on all your life. You know longer know where you are.

At this point you have two choices. The most probable is that you will retreat, retracing your steps back to East street and beyond. This is called staying on the safe side. But maybe you are a little braver, or a little more desperate, or else there is nothing left for you to return to. So you keep going, further into this forest-becoming-jungle, and part of you is terrified, and part of you is excited (because without difference there can be no change), and part of you wonders whether this place is called Eden or Despair.

So you wander on, sometimes straight ahead; sometimes to one side or the other. There are constant changes in the landscape, but you cannot always explain or identify them. Instead you feel them. But by this stage you cannot turn back, even if you wished, for you no longer know the way. There are times when you long for the life you used to have, on the sunny side of the street; that is when you realise that this changed world has changed you as well. You are wilder, you are stronger, and you are weaker as well. Daily you grow weaker and weaker. You have never felt more alive, and you know that you are dying. Nothing here sustains the life that you had. It is only when you feel you can go no further, when you are literally crawling because you can no longer walk, that you come to the break in the trees.

In front of you is bare ground, rocky outcrops with a little grass between the stones, sloping upwards to a hill. At the top of the hill is a tree, so high that your eyes cannot follow it all the way up. It is the place of the Bleeding Man. He is there, waiting for you, calling you by name. You look at Him, and you cannot look away. You are dizzy with death, and as you look, you can no longer tell the difference between Him and yourself. You die. You are finally alive.

Purple

Just to answer the question, how does my favourite colour make me feel?

Here into mystery, without finality
Dim rich uncertainty, where I find rest.
Not in false confidence, arrogant impudence
Trusting truth’s immanence, waiting is best.

Fast through the dark’ning storm, keeping cold courage warm
‘Gainst the devouring swarm, here I shall stand;
Not knowing everything, under the shelt’ring wing
Where even sorrows sing, held by His hand.

Beauty is promise rare, silencing old despair,
His touch is everywhere, taking death’s sting.
For all eternity, freed from iniquity
In my entirety loved by my king.

Morning light

And every atom dances in the light
And every leaf is beautiful and whole
And every naked branch is waiting grace
And all breathes wonder in the morning’s dole.

Was yesterday so dull, so grey, so drear?
Today is benison enough for me,
Enough to know that freshness ever springs,
Enough to marvel at transparency.

Enough to know that light beyond all worlds
Shall one day shine, transfiguring all things
And while I wait, beneath this world’s cold rain,
My heart, with wild anticipation, sings.

Sunset on a bleak day

Because today grew grey and cold, and then became transfigured ..

God, send such glory at the end of days!

So long bleak greyness, cold and unfulfilled
Lurched with unloveliness across our skies
And damped the spirit as it dulled the day.

So much I longed to find a brighter way!

Here, winter’s nadir breathed its misery
Season of shortened days and leafless tree
Night seemed to settle on the daytime skies

Then, at the dearth of dusk, a bright surprise!

Light, pink and golden, glorious and rare,
Shone underneath the clouds, transformed the air!
Beauty for ashes, joy when hope was dead,

May this be true for greater things instead!

May this poor life, so battered small and cold,
Not find the darkness deepen, growing old,
To stumble to such beauty, worth all praise

God, send such glory at the end of days!

Poem for Michael Jackson

No, I was never a fan (probably because I'm the wrong age group)but, as an icon of a broken world, he touched us all with his sad distorted life ..

Through the ice and bitter fire
Strangling heat of sad desire
Lay your heart upon the wire.

Yours the music that could soar
Snagged by the internal war:
While the vultures heaved and tore.

Torture self to seek relief
All unmade by misbelief.
Joy was stolen – who’s the thief?

All that knife and drug could do
Broken being to renew
Could not give love back to you.

Beauty with corruption dwells
Mirrored through a thousand hells
Thirsting deep for poisoned wells.

Only mercy, sharp and bright
Washes black and makes it white
Names the wrong and claims the right.

Now the pilgrimage is o’er,
Truth beyond the furthest door
Sifts the burdens that you bore.

You were tragedy writ strong
Truthlessness builds wrong on wrong
Bitter discord breaks the song.

worship!

The Moon Speaks

This is my response to the latest Random Acts of Poetry at High Callings Blog
http://highcallingblogs.com/blog/rap-coming-home-to-voice/2255/
It's an exercise in taking on another voice, so I am speaking as the Moon.

THE MOON SPEAKS

Moved by the rhythms of my bondage
I twist my face away
Lest you see my frozen tears
Forbidden in waterless wilderness.

Can I sulk across the sky?

The stars do not speak to me
In alien cold glory,
For I lie too close to earth:
The glorious seductress
In dazzling shades of life.

First I look, then turn away.

Yet while I dance my great ambivalence,
There is one from whom my face can never turn,
Glory bright and constant
Whose wonder holds me fast;
Beauty that enthrals me through the singing years.

This I must worship,
Offering my humble rock to light.

They tell me that I shine.