When you live long enough,
To revisit every bit of misery
That you ever swallowed down
Bit back and internalised,
Whether through constant silent self-recrimination,
Or simply moving on more quickly than is healthy,
For both soul and self to acknowledge damage done,
All those festering sores, of could have
Would have, should have beens well up
In the throat, choking torrents of years jerked child-like
Tantrums of salty rain dried on cheeks lined with years,
Laughter leaving deeper grooves than pain ever did
On the surface, but pain and suffering is only truly felt
On the inside, where we hide with our own skeletons,
Jacked up in our private nightmares, blaring landscape
Flying by at hellish pace, quickening as the taste of death
Flings the dry spittle of yester-years forgotten pain across
Your face, once again just a loose end,
Flapping ragged in the breeze, tied to the pole
Of our own self-denial, too arrogantly self-assured,
Too inwardly borne to realise how outwardly blind we really are,
This life nothing more than a stark mirror
Of our own selfish desire, to repeat the thro’s of the past,
Like some sadly lost caged beast,
Depressed animal all alone staring out of the barren internal landscape,
Not knowing what truly surrounds us
Is the eden we all feel thrown out from
And each other being the Adam and Eve of our own first birth,
To return back round inside, to our own private fallacies,
And in seeing them recognise each other
For what we really are
Fellow human beings
Floating, through the vast emptiness of vacuous space,
Precariously perched on the outer edge of a massive living rock,
Carbon and the thin film of atmosphere our only hope to continue,
Feuding and picking, fighting and blaming, pushing and shoving
For another little piece of
What? a rock floating through space.
The same cycle ends where it always begins,
Sadness to preacher’s words,
No more real than anything else verbal
In this world, if we do not at least thank our fellow human
For smiling as they help us through another day
What is the purpose of this sad charade?

I stand still, walking slowly
Through indifferent crowds,
Echoes of cares and stresses
Bounce through the empty gauze
Between my ears, decisions made
Or only dreamed, remember ‘right thought’
So what is real, or is that also grasping,
Another sad attachment to the world of misery
Of distraction dressed up as fate,
Tastes of old and young inter mingle
To make us what we are today,
This path walked down, padded earth
No space to think sideways out of happiness
Into the bright blue skies of comforting sad
I miss the one I cannot see now,
And tear the pain from my own inside
But instead release it safely guarded
Secret loss, aired outside
There is a method somewhere lately,
A statelihood I cannot reach,
But stir and swing on loss’s rainbow,
Pierced right through by love’s bright colours,
One range happy in life’s miraculous birth
Of newness even when loved ones leave us
But what to do when choosing paths now,
Which way to go, nowhere to hide,
All that’s left with me is anger’s impotent sadness,
Tinged with the guilt of a small lost boy,
And the sweetest memories of angels gone
But not forgotten.