Author: wakingthebaby

Burning Man

 

Bring me your woes

Your hates your

Regrets your dreams

Your memories your

Loves your confessions

Your regrets your

Loss your anger

Your weakness and

Broken soul

And in the desert

I will burn for you

 

And in cleansing fire

Join the songs

Rid of all desire

Join the harmony

Join the flames

Rise into the sky.

©JohnDaniels

 

Enduring

 

If you should unnatural sleep until the spring,

What of dreams and starry things

And

What of courage and Robin bright,

If you should sleep all winter’s night?

Or

Perhaps, you should incessant weep instead,

What of prayers and daily bread

And

What of love and holding on,

If you should weep all winter gone?

But

Now that earth is capped hard in frosty grip,

What of Snowdrops

Who will upward thrust and dancing trip

And

What of Lambs and warm longing sun?

If this be forgot, this winter long?

Now

Be assured, all will, as always, still go on.

 

6 January 1999  ©JohnDaniels

 

 

Stars

What tears are these

From out this perfect mist

Standing full and clear?

 

Dreams, part remembered

Or loss perhaps, unrequite

Or guilt, forever steely tight?

No!

They belong

to another night.

And these?

These are from the very

morning of creation!

 

©JohnDaniels

All ‘Art’ is a three stage conversation, but specifically for Poetry

First there are two private conversations. One between the poet or writer and the page as the process unfolds with ideas and words and drafting and refining.

And then with the reader as the words deliver the poet’s creation raising images, memories and emotions from the reader’s experience merging with the dimensions and insights contained, but not constrained by the poem..

Lastly are the external conversations as the poem is sometimes read aloud and talked about.

Being aware of these three conversations I often write leaving spaces within my choices for the reader’s part of the conversation.

Occasional conversations with those who have read a poem of mine reveal something new, different that I had not either intended or discovered myself and that is a joy, for the poem is therefore given a newness, a life beyond my purview.

Writing is usually a private affair and requires focus and concentration, a form of mindfulness and as such is particularly therapeutic particularly if the primary audience is oneself.

The seeding of a poem can be almost anything and often it is as much a voyage of discovery as the words are laid out. Often the poem is organic, growing in unexpected ways.

There is plenty of material on line and elsewhere on poetic forms and a good deal has an academic background or becomes niche. I find these constraints are not for me though I do write a type of Haiku.

My poetry journey started late and by accident and has ebbed and flowed ever since. I wrote some simple childhood memories in a column fashion and I realised they had something of a poem about them.

We had poetry at school and to be honest, it was dire and didn’t connect. Poems like Wordsworth’s Christabel and The Rime of the Ancient Mariner by Coleridge.

Rote learning was something I never mastered.

I believe everyone has the capacity to not just enjoy poetry in some form or other but given the circumstances, to enjoy writing.

©JohnDaniels

Thinking about ‘madness’; in this context it is about anger and distress written over many years mostly a response to someone else’s turmoil.

Chrysalis

As I emerge

The brethren sweep

Behind the shadows

Preparing soft metal

Dust piles for spinning

And spin they will

Without restraint

When I escape

 

Shadows close

The race is on down

Ignoring déjà vu

I have a head start

©JohnDaniels

A reaction to a weird drama on TV so long ago I have no idea what it was called, but do remember the final scene which this recreates in mood.

 

Vision

There is a door

somewhere

in my head

I saw once

closed tight

©JohnDaniels

After talking about what lurks in the mind.

 

Fragments

silent is the morning

where they lay

holding back

the sounding walls

 

did you say

the view is black?

 

found the fragments

like unforgiving choice

alone on some spiral track

 

to the left or

to the right?

you can not tell

the way to move

to the front

or to the rear

is all the same

the stuff of

recurrent fear

 

this space

rough and smooth

strewn with tears

is not yours

 

yours is stillness

beneath the stars

among hands

that raise but

do not hold

 

©JohnDaniels

This you will have to think through for yourself, no clues given.

 

The following carries a warning as it may cause distress or even triggers.

Brink

What do they know

They have no idea

Fucking Bastards

 

I will show them

Then they will

Realise

The Fucking

Lot of them

They will see

 

They will blame

Me

As usual

Well it is my

Fault

The lies

The deceit

And the loathing

The whole fucking

Mess

Is mine

 

They know nothing

They can’t do anything

I will do it myself

Just let them try

Don’t tell me what

To do

 

You just bring me

Down

Cos I’m worth

Less

 

I will wait for the night shadows

To infiltrate the sweet darkness

Through the shutters and

Curl inside my mind

Consuming

The tauntings

Every ounce

Is taken

Gone

I am

void.

©JohnDaniels

I did think hard about whether to include this one. This concerns the sibling of a friend and I tried to work through a potential thought process. I have no idea if this is close to the reality, but it is my way of dealing with the story.

 

Stop

Black descent is held at bay

By stillness unmoving

Focused stillness

 

In dwelling thought

Rotation finally settles

Chair like

Curtain like

Secure like madness

And melted time

Flips and slides

Unseeing.

©JohnDaniels

That time you can’t sleep or get things done because your mind won’t let you.

 

You and me

No skin scars for me

Whip wheals of redness

Nor electrode burns

 

No need

 

I have the withering seed

Voiced deep in love

And fear that grows

Secretly

©JohnDaniels

This one is personal, but will resonate with many.

 

 

A Whisper Away (In Memoriam)

Did you first hear it

curled and stripped

was amnesia brought

on by your debut?

He was only a whisper away.

Did you recognise

the cooing voice on

those nascent ears

was the tune new?

He was only a whisper away.

Did you share small

talk of growing pain

and was it enough

to carry you through?

He was only a whisper away.

Did you have secrets

too awesome for others

and were they better

for the telling?

He was only a whisper away.

Do you still listen

listen and mouth

the words for him

who is only a whisper away?

©JohnDaniels

I knew the daughter who put the phrase ‘Only a whisper away’ in an ‘In Memoriam’ insertion in the local paper on the anniversary of her father’s death. She had a troubled time and I used the words to explore this relationship, this conversation.

Becoming Invisible

 

No one noticed at first

Sloughing off, his mind

Except his wife, of course

Who had to cope as best she may

As so slowly he slipped away.

Just when he left is hard to tell

As something about his shell

Seemed it might just retain

A hint of who he once had been

But by the end, it was gone unseen.

 

They had cared for others, he a man of God

And raised a family and flock together

Overseas to serve, one place cold

The other hot, until their, quite overdue

Time for a  rural retirement quietude.

Short changed it was and soon confused

He took to wandering to find a church

Where he could do his pastoral duty

Then wander and wonder why he’d been

So bars on windows came on the scene.

 

Then drugs to ease the burden, slightly

Except by now lack of inhibition nightly

A magazine he would use to smite his wife

It wasn’t the worst thing for her to bear

‘Where is the man I love, that I now fear?’

Side effects gave a sweet tooth and theft

Of cakes when he escaped was in order

From an understanding baker down the road

Occasional respite given in a psycho ward

Among the outcasts vulnerable he’d board.

 

Lord alone knows how she coped, but she did.

She took it all, frail though she became

And hardly ever known to complain

Except to pray that his mind was now with God

And please not long for the rest under the sod.

Sadly In the end his kidneys failed and almost

Gladly all that remained was laid in the ground

By family and those who remembered him well.

She missed him, but could not resolve

The mystery of when he really went.

 

©JohnDaniels

A true story of a very gentle man and his lovely wife, both long since gone now, but not forgotten.