Posts Tagged ‘The Many Faces of Love’

Night Thoughts

Age brings me memories in the quiet evenings.
I am sitting alone in the house
And my thoughts lead me to sadness,
Letting me see beauty and tragedy in everything.
Memories of love come, bringing back so many things we did.
Feelings as tender as the evening quiet move in me,
Leaving me wistful, living moments with you again.
But are these anything other than fading memories?
I want to believe the love we shared lasts,
Even beyond your going.
Twilight shadows make me wonder.
I hear the song of the bird in the dusk.
It enters me through the empty space of your parting,
Like an open door you went through.

Are you no more?
Just emptiness beyond the door?
What does that leave me with?
What construe of it, or thoughts weave around it?
Tragedy and loneliness? Decay?
Shall I consider bones to be what I loved?
But I am still yearning.
The love still felt for you –
What am I to do with that?
I am calling to you like the bird
Crying your name to the evening.
Till the night comes bringing quietness
I think of you.
I am ready to walk through the door
Though I do not know what is beyond,
In the dark of the night…
In the dark of the night.

Tony Crisp

Moonglow

Candles of the moon she gave me,

Smouldering gently not ignite,

Glowing slowly through their substance,

Never dazzlingly bright.

Burning into fragrant matter,

Leaving but a perfumed void,

Never lighting up our features,

So to have our dreams destroyed.

Staying warmth to linger longer,

Not to flame like flash disperse,

Leaving us to mingle and

In each other’s self immerse.

Glow tips in a crinkly wrapper,

I to pull them one by one,

Then to light them and remember,

We are back where we begun.

Tony Crisp

Midnight Sun

We walked along the river bank,
Alone despite the crowd,
Then chose our ship and sailed away,
Where our happy hearts allowed.
We would have dug the Panama,
But that had already been done,
So we went and bred blue polar bears,
In the land of the midnight sun.

Then hot little hands,
And fast little hearts,
Held close as could possibly be,
We escaped the eye of the FBI,
And frolicked in the sea.
We’d left our ship,
And our polar bears,
Some distance down the street,
And now we were mermaids swimming along,
It’s less tiring on the feet.

But you can’t build a house in Ocean depths,
Especially up a tree.
And she’d not be wed
In an ocean bed,
So that’s what it had to be.
I built her the house
In a giant tree,
And we filled it full of ourselves,
And we swung through the leaves of the giant trees,
And us the size of elves.

With hot little hands,
And fast little hearts,
We clung to each other’s side,
Only to find the evening had flown,
And our fantasy had died.
No longer the ship,
Or the mermaid’s lip,
So soft against my own.
But she and I
And the station nigh,
And us no longer alone.

The station crowd
Had not allowed,
Even one glimpse of the sea.
And the glory died,
When she left my side,
And said goodbye to me.

Written for Sylvia.

Tony Crisp

Love Past and Love to Come

In my dark room I thought of all the women in the world,
And just as silent as the dark She lies there beside me.

I let my heart into the vast delight
Of all that women’s beauty now could bring me,
And just as vast as all delight,
She opened eyes to chide me.

I longed for all the pleasures that my heart and loin are strong for,
And She, still silent, yet told me with her eyes,
Of all that women long for.
My body turned, and lips touched lip
As cloud touched cloud.
And as lips smoothly into lips did slide,
I kissed all women I had ever dreamed of.
And all that in me until that moment slept,
Then rose up, trembling, and cried aloud.

She had become all women in the world,
And I became all men who seek them.
Convulsive moments passed
As hand arose to seek a breast to fill it.
Still were we, yet movement filled us,
When light as Love’s first touch,
Fingers on nipple dwelt,
In order then to thrill it.

What symphony of pleasures then arose,
What music of a thousand joys and longings,
As gently I drew from out this living harp,
A melody of all human heights and woes.
Then deep to deep cried out and shouted loud,
The sea within me threw me wave on wave,
And all the fires and torrents in me burst,
And to that woman’s being myself gave.

Tony Crisp

Night

In the night when I awoke,
And those close bodies in this house slept,
I heard a whispered sound,
Perhaps like rain,
When in its gentle fall,
Undriven by wind
It touches the window.

I stood within the silent house
Listening to that
Murmur in the night,
Wondering.
Then soft against my face
The touch of wings.
A moth fluttering,
Alive with me in
This quiet dark.

All else sleeps
Except my memories
Of other fleeting
Times when,
Gently touching
Fingers to your lips
Reaching through blackness
To find you.

Tony Crisp

In Every Moment

Being here all the time,
Here knowing everything,
In every moment;
Yet most of the time not knowing,
Not feeling, not living it all.

When I was born I lost a world
In which I had lived an eternity.
Can you imagine that?
Imagine losing so much?
Feel what it’s like, to have everything
You knew taken away?

Of course it’s as if you have been
Hollowed out from inside.
But at the same time,
There is an entire new universe to experience.
The losing, the gaining, all at once.

Then there’s what follows the gaining.
My grandmother succoured me.
She lifted me out of my loss,
Out of feeling I was dying.
It was she who gave me the gift of love.
I remember her holding me.
I remember crying in her arms,
Feeling her courage,
Feeling her strength.

She was the resurrection from the darkness
Of what had been taken,
From what I had never had.
Then she died before I was two,
And I lost another world.
I lost my love.
I ached enough to last me sixty years.

Gaining is losing in the instant we gain.
But sometimes we lose before we have gained.
Such loses may be hiding in the darkness of our heart.
Such was the passion I had never spent.
Such was the love I had never given,
Or received.

Then she came.
My woman – and I tried to spend that love on her,
But failed.
My God – the pain,
Trying to climb the cliff face of despair,
Trying to stand up while I was falling down,
Until the words were torn out of my mouth –
‘I am inadequate!’
Inadequate as a man.
Knowing my own inadequacy
I even offered her another man.
And she thought I was trying to hurt her;
That I didn’t want her.

How could I not want my woman?
How could I live with my inadequacy?
Then slowly,
Building the muscle,
Facing the despair,
Turning inside out to become new,
To become me,
And succeeding, in losing again.
For she had gone.

No – she never left me.
But she was gone.
Gone while still next to me in bed, in our home.
Gone when I had surfaced over the cliff
With the gift of myself.
Gained myself and lost her, then lost myself
For more years.
And we were still together!

Better if she were dead.
Then I would have known she was gone.
And that loss ripped me.
It tore pieces out of me.
It burnt, it stabbed, it rotted me inside.
But there was gain.
I learned to meet the dread of my own failure.
I discovered how to exist in the midst of things,
Of pain, of isolation, of my own past.
I learned to stand again.

Only then could I see love, death, birth,
Touching me on all sides.
They dance with me daily, every moment.
The sweetness and torment come each day.
I am loved and I love, to lose love again,
Falling and rising.

Sweet Lord, is this the passion?
To have and lose in the same instant?
To know and feel it every day?
To know that each small event holds every possibility?
Being here all the time,
Here knowing everything,
In every moment!

Tony Crisp

I Had A Dream

Written during years of unemployment.

I had a dream of being
Young in heart and
Hunting for my woman
And with my hands
And effort make a home
And safety.

And in my waking
My heavy heart sees
I have no home,
No place of warmth
To proudly offer.

I had a dream that
I could give myself
Whole and bright
To she – my wife
As she
So gave herself to me.

And in my waking
I am alone,
Or in another’s bed.
I am not whole
Or proud, but wrecked.

I had a dream that
Mountains could
Be climbed and
On a summit we
Could stand
Touching the infinity.

And in my waking
This prison of
Despair is a small
Rock I stumble over
Unable to climb
And out of hope.

I had a dream
In which all
My endeavours
Through the many
Years, led to
A place within
The many hearts
And lives.

And in my waking
No one offers
Me involvement.
No skill I have
Is worthy of a
Wage or recognition.
So what the years?

Tony Crisp

Going

Oh no,
Please don’t go!
Please stay and talk with me.
Look, this is a picture
Of a dog I had.
See, here is a book
I have just read.
If you go I will
Feel things.
Things I don’t understand.
I need you.
Even though being with you
Pulls me along a road of shadows
In a cart of vague dreads.

Tony Crisp

Ghosts of Love

There you were —
Unexpectedly —
Asking me for Love.
You stood at my door
And wanted to come
Into my life.
That was okay.
There were things
I gave you
That you assured me
Were love.
You carried gifts too,
Into my house,
And on each one
You had written Love
In bright colours.
You had even sprinkled
Glittering stars on them.
But when I opened the gifts
They looked to me
Like having been crafted
Out of years of lonely need.
Perhaps that’s what love is
For most of us —
A sort of dependence
On someone else for what we need,
That if unmet
Turns viciously into pain.
But it was the ghosts
Thrusting their faces
In front of yours
If I got near you,
That led me
To feel uncomfortable
In your presence.
They danced around us,
Parading ghostly memories,
Faces of past loves,
Intimations of failure,
Or even the glamorous attractions
Of good times,
Denying the value
Of the present,
Of you.

Tony Crisp

Finding Myself

I found myself wrapped in your love,
As a cloak might wrap me warm,
As hands might hold me close.
And I read your eyes,
Wondering what they might say.
And I touch the soft places of your body
With my fingertips,
Sensing who you are.
Then speaking, you called me –
And I heard the echo too,
In myself, calling you.
Rapt in that cloak,
Touched by your hands,
My body flowed like a stream in its sweetness.
That was my song.

Tony Crisp

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