I’m grateful for purpose, and the search for it.

It’s hard to face the world without an aim.
It’s a lot like watching others play the game
As the reserve on the sidelines of the court;
Like you dropped the baton and lost the plot;
The injured ordered to the bench, off the field;
And, helpless for the moment, you must yield
To the harsh and holy hands of fate or god
Or just payment for the ill-thought path you trod.
It feels like standing here with empty hands
When you are used to fighting, taking stands.
It feels like nothing ever did make sense;
The empty weight of meaning feels immense.
It feels like seeing things for what they are
Far too late; now the vision leaves a scar
and little else.

So we seek…

And the seekers become scribes and glimpse the strings
That pull our hearts and souls in place, and run rings
Around our ribs; the things that make us tick and talk
And hope and pine and yearn in vain or faith, or walk
The earth to find or make our meaning from the space
That yawns between the gift of purposeful grace
And the despair of an indifferent god or godless world.
The scribes will write and chart the ways as they unfurl,
In scattered black and burnished embers on the ground
For the stumbling and the lost, in darkness, to be found,
And light the way.

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Picture attribution: Photo, Loving Earth,  Some rights reserved by Loving Earth. Copyright belongs to the creator. Use of this picture in no way indicates an affiliation with the creator of the image, nor does it indicate that the creator shares the views reflected by the text.

I’m grateful for the ability to express myself (3/3).

I will lose myself in this world.
In this culturally free-wheeling
Dealing, needling, bustling
Insane international realm.
I will lose myself in you.
Just for a second.
Like Pandora and Ophelia
Rolled up and wrapped
In a baby-blue rag
That universal tragic
Pagan girl of the world.
In this place, all walk on knife-edges.
Alors! I shall pick my favourite
Escape, my favourite excuse
To cling to a slipping dream.
Bravery/recklessness…
Or… perhaps… hope/delusion?
Or simple illusion.
But this world is cloudy, silver crystal
The hard, brittle pinnacle of human arrogance.
I shall pick my favourite hazard then,
In a castle of shadows and stories and dim light.

I pick you.

I’m grateful for the ability to express myself (2/3).

There is no God; we are all alone,
Abandoned in this wretched place;
All our efforts illusions; our graces
Simply contrived, desperate clinging
To colonial civility, an earthly domination,
Abomination,
In a crumbling, failing, burning human empire
A suicidal force slamming up against
The natural order, paper umbrella in hand
Cocktail glass in the other
We seek the superficial because the alternative is
Madness.

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I’m grateful for the ability to express myself (1/3).

For quite a long period of time, I was feeling things I just couldn’t put into words; couldn’t vocalise, couldn’t write. There was this sense of just not being able to write from my heart, because my heart had put up a nuclear plant worthy wall of cement around it and sat there, shaking its head obstinately, giving everyone the silent treatment. And I just didn’t want to. Nothing flowed. Years went by like this until my heart finally decided it had had its rest and solitude, and now it wanted to talk about it. This is what it said.

There is no path back to innocence;
You ride this road to hell or glory
Or, most dire, the shades in between.
You cannot undo, unsay, unfeel…
And worst, worst of all, you can
Never unsee what has been seen.
It plays like a film in your head,
Worn-thin from the need of the addict
Like that hit of an addiction,
The rich, dark lure of an obsession
Then a natural death.
Everything burns itself out
Like a jingle. The sort you want to kill.

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Picture Attribution: Some rights reserved by *_Abhi_*

I’m grateful for a cool wind on a hot day.

I love the monsoon breeze that smells of the sea.
Jumble of sunscreen, sailboats, barbecue, trees;
Sense of laughter, wooden jetty, water-bound flight;
Running bursts of sensations, like strobe light.
Close your eyes.
It is my North(east) Wind, arms wrapping ’round me,
Trailing little wet kisses of delight, familiarity,
Whispers. I hear Kevlar sails crisply crunching,
Taste saltwater, glimpse wave and sunlight dancing.
Hold on tight.
Echo of a reckless, mindless joy, a tug, deep longing.
To adventure! Into the blackness, mysterious, exciting.
I could jump in a boat, cast off, get lost, be free and then,
I could swim the moonlit sea-path to the stars.

Picture licence:  Some rights reserved by Robert Thomson