Chasing Sunshine

Everyone is in the relentless pursuit
Of shaping and telling their story.

You get to sit on the sidelines
And watch as these stories unfold,
Cheering them on,
Watching with wonder
In your dreamless eyes,
As they traipse through life,
Writing their stories
With gold yarn on rich red satin.

You are rooted in your spot
On the sidelines,
Refusing to get up and join in the run
To the finish line of grand stories.

You are far too tired
And winded from walking
To the halfway mark;
You would rather sit there,
On the sidelines,
And watch through dreamless eyes,
The dream catchers go about
Weaving their stories,
Into the fabric of life.

You tiptoe through your life,
Because it shares boundaries
With many others,
And you don’t want to infringe,
Upon what’s not yours by right.

You certainly don’t want
To make too much noise,
Or create an aura from matchless glory –
None of those things that rouse
Sleeping neighbours,
Much to their annoyance,
And subsequently, your peril.

No you don’t do any of this –
You choose instead,
To live your life quietly.

You take off your shoes
At the threshold,
And you tiptoe
On the wooden floor,
You dim your lights,
There is never any music.

And sometimes you wonder,
Just for a moment,
If you are still alive.

Nothing was stolen,
Nothing misplaced,
Within the house itself;
If it weren’t for the flower pots
Lying upturned in the garden,
And the fresh imprints
Of too big boots,
The lady of the house
Wouldn’t feel shaken,
But as it stands, she does.

“Nothing was stolen”,
“Nothing misplaced”,
They whisper under their breath
While talking to each other,
Or louder still, when offering her
Their sage reassurances.

She lies awake at night,
Not knowing who it was,
Nor even if they’d stepped in,
Through the open window,
And watched her as she slept.

Nothing was stolen,
Nothing misplaced,
On the face of it –
The dark circles under her eyes,
And the jitter in her being,
As she gathers herself,
To continue existing,
Speak louder than the footprints
Left in her garden –
They carry the burden
Of the footsteps that mayn’t
Have left behind
The imprint of a crime.

Scrooge and Grinch
Those two beings,
So utterly alike,
In their dislike
For all things Christmas,
And yet so different too.

Scrooge and Grinch
Those two beings,
Indeed, the patron saints,
For those that are
Christmas-averse at heart.

Scrooge and Grinch
Those two beings,
Who lend a voice,
To everyone who has ever
Felt out of sorts,
On a festive day,
And just wanted to stay,
Curled up in bed,
Or on a couch,
Lost in the web
Of shorts or their thoughts,
Striving to simply be.

We don’t talk about the things
That hurt us in ways we didn’t know exist.

We wonder whether we really hurt,
Or if it is just a vague discomfort;
Maybe one of those feelings
Akin to the itch one cannot scratch.

We talk about the happy things,
And we applaud them who share
The happy happenings in their lives;
We send our hearts, starry eyes and upturned thumbs,
For happily glowing, beautiful countenances.

But when someone so much as frowns,
We coax them into assuming a pretence
That all is spotlessly clean and well,
Because God, humans and every other being,
Love them endlessly, so they must stop moping.

So, we don’t talk about things
That hurt so much that we don’t even know it hurts.

I

If I grew wings and flew away
Into the darkness that stole the day
And hid its light in its belly,
Would the daisies weep,
Or the merry trout in the stream,
Or even the manky feline
I’d taken under my wings
Thence deprived of its twice daily meals?

II

Perhaps they would not,
And that’s a somber thought,
Right up there amongst all the others –

For there’s something to be said
About wishes that are dead,
Because they are so impossible.

They are perchance,
The soulful ballad,
Of desolate hearts
That haven’t known rest.

There’s a hope hanging down
By a fragile thread, off a moonbeam
Sending a faint but steady stream
Of soft, radiant light,
Into the darkest corner in this quiet town;
But the girl sat there, on a lonesome bench
Takes no notice of the light or the stench
From the open, overflowing drain
That carries more than just yesterdays rain.
She is lost somewhere, in a web of her thoughts,
Or perchance it is the void of those
That she finds herself sucked into;
Wherever it is that her mind’s flitted off,
She hasn’t gone there herself.
Instead she has chosen this godforsaken spot
To sit awhile, and ignore hope,
It has come too late, after the boat has sailed,
And for all she cares, it can go to rot.

If they could just keep quiet,
All would be well with our world;
It would rain sunshine,
And the fields would host unicorns.

There would be no crying foul,
No vague stories of bogeymen
Nor horrific ones of weapons –
Nothing really to be afraid of.

We would walk into our homes
That would look spotlessly clean,
And waiting for us there,
Would be a pot of warm broth,
Made of chicken and leek.

And if it tasted even slightly off,
Of course we’d teach them
Their right lesson!
And they would learn it,
Stifled sobs, unshed tears and all.

If they could just keep quiet,
We would have our say,
Just like in the old times,
Every time of every day,
And we would make merry
While we were at it.

If they would just keep quiet,
Our world would be restored
To a peaceful and happy space,
Where everyone knew their place –
By rank, colour and gender –
And nobody would complain!

Ah to have that idyllic world again.

Alone
A state of being
You didn’t choose
Yet adapted to
Perchance gracefully.

Thousands around you
Hundreds you know
A dozen you could call
Close, or really so
And yet you remain
At your core
Alone.

The world has a way
Of moving, of being,
That is at odds
With who you are,
And what has been,
The rude reality
Of your existence;
And so you choose,
Out of wisdom perchance,
Or maybe sheer desperation,
The state of being
Alone.

The dirty rag is wrung
Squeezed really hard
To let every drop of moisture out
And yet it holds on
Obstinately so
Inviting yet another round
Of merciless wringing.

And then it’s slapped
On to the dirt laden surface
That demands to be cleaned
Taking in more of the filth
That has already seeped in
To the essence of its being.

The surface lies clean
While the rag is tossed
Without a thought
Into the murky water.

The rag has always known
Its place under the sun –
The one time it was pristine
Was when it was spotlessly new
Ever since, it has been its bane
To mop up filth
And keep things clean
For filth belongs
Only in certain places
And the rag knows
It’s one of them.