Posts Tagged ‘Life’s Sunshine and Rain’

The Garden of Your Face

I saw death in a mans face. But maybe I was only recognising my own death. If there had been more life in me, would I not have seen life in the same face?

Or are growth and decay but two parts of some other thing that is neither living nor rotting, but both? Are they the bits that show of something I have not glimpsed? Or maybe a thought is a glimpse, a preparatory type of knowing. A thought might be the first grasping of an outline too subtle for us yet to see in its complexity and wholeness.

And yet, a few uncertainties – the tentative emotions felt in sensing what is not yet seen of the mystery I am – leave something with me. For I have wondered at your face, pondered on the common lines. I have looked at your fingers and all the parts of you I have seen and felt.

But more than these, it is your features that concern me. For I have seen the ill line of your nose when you were sleeping – or the sweet eagerness of the mouth when you walked to me. Also I have seen the lines of bitterness and uncertainty, as clear as cunning or laughter in other faces.

Yet none of your faces, or the faces of others are what I thought they were. For I can only ever see in them what I have seen in myself. A child cannot know despair upon the parent face until it has felt despair upon its own.

So if I have not seen flowers, have not seen buses, or high trees, or known something of myself, these I will not see in you. My foot may crush the flower’s unknown perfume. Buses can roll upon me to hurt. The leafy trees can fall, or myself go by unseen.

But even though I have only glimpsed flowers, felt the rough barked trees in darkness, ridden on buses as a child, seen myself veiled in dreams, yet do I know that inasmuch as I can glimpse flowers, in as much do I see them in the secret garden of a common face.

Seasons

There are Sun seasons,
Seasons of the heart,
Seasons of hope and despair.
Sometimes winter comes
In the spring of youth.
Even children can be
Blighted by despair.
The roots of hope
Are slashed.
The subtle feelings
Of connections severed.
You stand alone,
Or so it seems.
The garden of childhood
Burnt and dry.
The flowers
That were there to pick,
Shriveled,
Stems cut
To bleed and die —
Or poisoned
By some foreign agent.
Unless —
A caring watcher
Stays the flow,
Brings water,
Laves the poison
And sees value
In a life that
Was not wanted.
And I
Do not know
The way to bring
Back the sense
Of being part of things,
Of having links,
And meaning.
I only know
It is a season,
And can pass.

And things come
That tear
The heart and mind.
Perhaps a child
Is torn
From off the family tree.
Such loss that
Bleeds from you
The sap of life
And will.
Or you lose
Your Man or Woman.
And what is life
Without them?
Without the quiet
Moments of gaze,
The touch of hands
And sleeping company
In the night hours.
All gone.
Swept away
Into the past.
One day
The turning point
Around which revolved
Love present.
Love past.
Today — misery.
And yet,
The gain,
The loss,
Seen from the vantage
Of countless years,
Are seasons.

And when the years pass,
Carrying you into Autumn
And age is upon you
Like a cloak,
Turning your body threadbare,
Even if the spirit
Still shines its light,
Then is the time
To remember
How season follows season.
Winter finally fades
To spring.
Spring passes too.
And so the seasons
Of your life roll on,
As surely as the planets
Round the sun.
And this whole life,
With all its
Shades and sunshine,
Rains and dry,
Is also but a season,
And will roll on.

Level

All level,
Like foot turned sand
Washed over by the sea.
Or ploughed earth,
Grown filled with grasses.
Level as my feelings
Renewed with love;
As the winter frost on a still night.

At a level,
Where the footpath below
Has lost its contours
And rough places.
At a level,
Where memories come back blessed.

Nothing contradicts,
Not for a while.
No past regrets disturb,
Or future fears turmoil.
Only benediction from oneself,
For what disturbs has been released.

Hush.
Pause a while in rest,
While you are at a level.

My Christmas

I dreamt that I was walking through the pathways of my life, passing by the years standing like trees along the track. Backwards I searched through valleys, and sometimes upon a height I saw my way stretched out, the long forgotten pattern of my life across the land. And I looked for the seed of me, to see why I had grown such as I had. Why love or fear or think such as I do.

And yes, there in the pattern of my strength’s footsteps I found the crevasses, the fallen trunks across my way, even the delights which drew me on or changed my onward questing of the years. Yes, I found too the seed of me left in my mother’s shy eager strength by my fathers longing for her love. I saw in the seed the faces of who my mother loved in secret, and who my father drew with him into her arms. Yet that was not my Christmas, for in the very centre of the seed, in the midst of their longing and secret loves and fears stood Life.

Suddenly my way fled beyond the trees, further yet than their roots, higher than their growing tips or dead branches; deeper than time I went into the dream of my Christmas. And I stood with tears before love – love in the very kernel of my seed, which had at my conception laid bare the treasures in the sperm and ovum of my start; led their tiny selves to risk their death and burst asunder in flagrant giving to become me. Love which led my mother to grow beyond herself in my nativity, and my father to care beyond his personal need to raise me; the love which readies every parent hearing it to die for their young.

And I was Christmas, the birth of love into the world and the tragedy and beauty of human life. I was eternal love frightened of dying, life itself uncertain; God doubting God’s existence. And if I am the miraculous anxious about my value, struggling to pay bills, and at odds with myself, such is the wonder of me, such were my tears before love – before myself.

My Christmas was the beginning of time; the beginning seers call the Creator and scientists name the Big Bang. But my heart sang its own story in which the Explosion and the Creator were One; where the Explosion had life, and the One was my parent. For I, in the way of dreams, was that ONE, which had died out of loneliness to become many – to be you and me and the stars. For one can never be other than single – and that great explosion rippling into our multiplicity was its willing death that we might be.

That was the dream of my Christmas.

The Long Journey

The journey was long
With unremembered days
Of travelling the unforgiving landscape.
Journeying alone, it seemed,
For I had met none walking this same path.
It was not hard, nor was it easy.
And now the evening was upon me,
Calling me to rest.

And there, in that moist and wooded dell,
I put my burden down,
And brought a fire to life for warmth.
I ate what food I had,
Then with the warmth and comfort,
The fancy in me wandered free.
Buried needs and pains cavorted in the flames.
Bitter cups were emptied and refilled,
Until the ancient passion took me once again.

There in the night, with furtive moves,
I took from out my pack the thing of dread.
Unwound the wretched rags
With falling tears.
Out from me, into the darkness,
Came the call for that dark god.
Again, again, I shouted to the night.
The name we know so well,
With anguish loud I called.

Against a tree,
I stood the fearsome thing,
And knelt before it, passion wracked.
Hopeful and afraid,
Pleading there,
For that dark god to favour me.
I called, as you have called,
To that, which with a glance or word,
Could raise or crush,
Could give life or destroy.

I knew the magic as of old.
It’s in us all,
That forbidden rite to raise the dead,
To call back into life the thing we lost,
And make it speak to us again.

So, on my knees before that lifeless form,
I called his name to bring him from the dead.
“Father! Father! Hear me now,” I cried.
And with his ghastly face,
He looked upon me mute.
And I, with never-ending hope,
Appealed once more.
“Dear Father — oh dear God —
Please say you love me.
For pity’s sake dispel these years of pain.”

So cried I in the dark.
So wept my tears
In silent night, without response,
Until, passion in me spent,
I wrapped that bundle in its rags,
And in the dawn walked on.

With You

I am standing with you
By this graveside.
I cannot take away
The pain and loss you feel,
But I can be with you
And share that crushing load.
I am here and weep also.
Take my hand,
Stranger though
I may be,
For I am standing with you
So you do not mourn alone.

Neat Answers

Have you seen the new store,
Down at the mall?
It’s simply called Neat Answers.
It’s got a great display,
Can’t take your eyes away.
Everything you need is there
To deal with life today.
It’s like a Chinese restaurant,
All numbered neat and clean,
All the equipment ready,
To get you through the day.

There’s something there for everyone.
It’s definitely for you!
They’ve got all the neat answers,
That help to pull you through.
Neat answer No 1,
Bestseller on the list,
Is called —
‘I Think I’ll Have a Drink!’
It comes with glass and bottle,
And is cheaper than you think.

Neat answer No 2,
Almost sells as well.
‘Come Read the Bible,
Escape the Flames of Hell’,
Is what they call it,
An easy one to sell.
There’s one called
Make Love to Your Neighbour.
One wrapped in black,
Called, ‘Pull The Plug.’
Or, ‘Join The Moonies’
Seemed like fun,
Better than,
‘Take Up Jogging Son.’

I’m not quite sure,
Which one I would choose.
Not, ‘Wank off Every Day.’
Nor even the popular,
‘Stand Up and Have Your Say.’
But there is one that intrigues me.
It’s very small you see.
It’s wrapped in shiny cellophane,
And simply says,
‘ It’s Me!

Tony Crisp

Puzzling

I was alone from an early age.
Strange what made me realise it.
I was in the car with the radio on,
And listening to one of the soaps.
Jenny’s dad was seriously ill,
Perhaps dying.
She was so upset.
Sort of drugged.
Only just coping.
And I thought how
Strange it is that people
Are so upset by death.

Jenny was saying how her dad
Had taken her to football;
And sat and talked,
Even laughed with her.
I have no memories like that.
When my dad died
I felt it deeply,
But it wasn’t anything
To weep about
Or be upset by.
It was just
A meeting with death –
Sort of face to face.
Same with my mum.

Then I realised
How I had been alone
All those years.
There were adults
In the house with me,
Called Mum and Dad.
But those were just names.
We lived in the house together,
But I was alone,
As far as being there with love.
And it feels okay now,
Though it has been bad.
So it seems to me
As if most other people
Live in a different world,
With their feelings
And connections
With others I mean.

It seems to give them a lot of pain.
So my world feels pretty good.
It was rough to start with,
But I learned to let go
Of things and people,
And don’t feel as if
They are part of my
Own self being ripped away.
It is strange hearing Jenny’s
Misery though –
Sort of puzzling.

God – I Ask

Love that does not grasp.

Power that does not bend others to my will.

Wisdom that lets others look upon your face.

Tony Crisp

Round Four

This is round four,
And the bastard has hit me hard.
I’m groggy on my feet
And he is still coming at me.
The crowd is wild.
Is it blood they want to see?
Do they want to see me on my knees
Just like they would love to do
To that big prick at work
Who constantly goads them?
Maybe, but the bell has rung
And I have time to look at their faces.
Yes, some want revenge.
Big time they want it.
But there is another story
In some of the eyes.
I can feel it.
They are right here inside me,
Taking each punch,
Feeling each blow
As it bores into my face.
It is everything
And everybody
That has hit them;
And they want to know
How I stand up again
When all that shit
Hits me in the guts.

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