Poems and Thoughts

Where does my heart find rest?

2017-02-28T06:43:00.002-08:00

Where does my heart find rest?

27 February 2017
12:31

My aching heart echoes with emptiness
My broken body motionless
My flesh feeling and sensing
Longing to be touched

The loneliness gnaws at my inside like an aching tooth
Like waves against the shore
It crashes into my conscious mind
It subsidies only to return

I long to end the loneliness to be with someone
I can't do it
I can't expect anyone to share this life
To be a part of this endless struggle

So I know that I am trapped
I am caught in a loop
A repeating cycle
Longing and hoping but fading and failing

Hope, like a lifebuoy
It floats out reach
It shimmers with expectation
But fades away and drifts out of reach.

What's become of me?

2013-12-28T07:27:00.000-08:00

What's become of me?

Choices ,choices few are the options
Even these can be crushed by a "helpful" carer
So it is with choices ,they become "subject to"
So I sit and wonder,what's become of me.

People tell me, I have independence
i have free choices
let me tell you this is a lie
it's a lie to benefit them
somehow my "independence" gives relief

oh how I wish it were so
to just think decide and then do
this is not how it works.
almost every choice becomes task
even scratching an itch

What have I become ?
I am quieter,obviously less active
spontaneity ? can't do that
quick visit to the pub? forget it

I am a space occupier,
I hesitate to say waster but
that's how it feels

We all need friends

2013-04-17T03:05:00.000-07:00

We all need friends

My sadness surprises me. I listen to a story on the radio, my thoughts wander. I remember independence, waking up early and seeing the morning unfold while the coffee warms my hands and I have my thoughts to myself. Perhaps my sadness is the loss of freedom of 360 degrees of choice.

Now, I wait for my hair to be brushed while I rinse with the mouthwash. Mornings are the beginning of a cycle made up of being pushed, pulled and adjusted. Choice is limited and independence is only a word others use.

I have become someone I don't recognize. I am disinterested in doing anything. I am so sad inside. I'm without hope and motivation is just a disciplined action. I clutch desperately to any opportunity for comfort or extra mobility. Decay, disrepair and disarray overwhelm me, gloom and failure become my friends.

Becalmed

2012-05-19T12:58:00.002-07:00

So why do I bother to write a blog?
Does it reward me? Do I profit?
Why do I struggle with an inadequate body typing letter by letter?
It's a waste of time. It takes the life out of me, it drains me.
So why bother?

I returned home yesterday. After a month of being in hospital;
every day rushing between therapy sessions and test appointments.
A day without appointments, just silence.
In the quiet thoughts drift aimlessly, becalmed on a deep ocean of feeling.
So I write to stop the mutiny arising from the idle activity of meandering aimlessly.

Speaking to myself makes poor company.
Looking at a screen "flipping" virtual cards...
Kings, Queens, Jacks and impatience.
I have checked my email an facebook, but with mixed emotions, nothing new.
I am not lonely, just alone in my sea of feeling.

I write because for a moment in time; the aching, the aimless drifting, stops.
Just for a moment I feel substantial.
The hollow echoes become distinct.
My soul surfs on the breath of purpose.
Spent, the gust ends....

This Place

2012-04-08T14:01:00.000-07:00

This Place

Like an outstretched hand, beckoning with promises of the past

The memories call to me, fleeting glimpses of faded times.
I long to be there. When I walked, ran, sang for joy

I see the curly blonde hair on my daughters round face as she bounces and hops

The grass tickling my ear while we play on the long grass

Yes yesterday you seducer. You cannot be what you promise

Your promises are spent currency

Memories are not places, memories are not promises

I will stay in my sadness. My reality is a place

This place is where I am

Death

2012-01-08T14:40:00.000-08:00

I saw death.

In nights still

It came to me and

So I saw

A dullness.

Without courage for

black or white.

Pigment poor

Devoid of shape

And touch

Crumbling cowardly into dust.

Nothing left.

Like a mermaid

To ancient mariners

Death calls us

Resist its’ rest

Tho’ it sweetly calls

And beguiles

It mentions not

That to a word

Is a lie

An empty promise

The sense

only absurd.

Pictures and Words: a Father ‘s Lament

2011-12-18T03:56:00.000-08:00

In the dark of early morning I lie awake

My mind is restless

My body twisted and uncomfortable

I try to sleep

Images of memories my pictorial past

My children

Faces and postures, incidents and occasions

Flip like a slideshow

The memories begin to fade, followed by words

Desperate words

Reaching out into my mind and beyond

The words long to be spoken

Oh my children my words are for you!

Waning for you is my role

The words carry the thoughts and experiences

Capsules of living

I will write the words and hope they are spoken

Even if whispered

I will hope that they are spoken

To you

Dark heart

2011-12-04T07:40:00.000-08:00

I have a darkness in my heart.
In my quiet moments, a shadow.
Where am I ?
I am fading, my strength, like ice cream in summer leaks away.
Comfort and hope are repelled from me.
I procrastinate, I shrink from duty, failure follows me.
Gloom in my heart and despair in my mind.
Oh God please help me.

How I feel

2011-08-14T13:09:00.000-07:00

Oh Lord why do I feel so worthless
I have emotions
I feel impotent
Life is going on and I am stuck

Time is moving and I am left
I am useless
My thoughts are like twisted weeds
Choking life giving thoughts, die

Hope is a memory
a fading dream
When will it end?
Oh please don't end

So much life to live.

The dark

2011-01-08T03:59:00.000-08:00

The dark waits
lurking just out of sight
beckoning
Silent promises of rest

How tempting to give in
To stop fighting
Let go of the baton
forever to sleep

Like Lilliputian threads
Each precious person holds me
Each thread a lifeline against the dark
Each thread a blessed hope

constructive thoughts

2010-07-27T07:29:00.000-07:00

To write about everything in ones life is an arduous task. This is especially true when your expression is through only a single method and single location. I use a computer in an office which is adapted for my use. I do also have a laptop but setup and comfort often limit the spontaneous capturing of thoughtful inspiration. I have noticed that my desire to document events has waned and I am become silent in my cocoon. This is largely a consequence. A consequence of fatigue and discomfort. Also a desperate sense that I am "running out of time" so I should not waste time with flowery prose. The reality is less dramatic and a more believable, I just waste my time doing non-constructive searches and fruitless activities.

If you are amongst the many regular readers of my blog or an e-mail correspondent than I humbly apologise for letting you down. I won't promise to do better, just to do my best at being better.

In my next post I will put some pictures of recent events.

one day to be free

2010-07-19T08:27:00.000-07:00

I try to ignore the pain.
I distract myself
There's so much beauty in the world
There's beauty in people
nature draws me outside
I look through the window
a new pain appears
the longing for freedom
to stand to leave the wheelchair
to walk barefoot
to lie down in the shade

one day
one day without the pain
one day without the fight to sit
one day to be free

Smile convincingly

2009-05-17T10:44:00.000-07:00

Smile convincingly, never let them see.
A slither of hope, so slim, slips into history.
"Friends"can't be, the strain a mystery.

Hope splutters as it clings to itself.
Why do you do it? What do you gain?
When will salvation come from all the pain.

I could give up.
They wouldn't know.
Thinking perhaps some virus had laid me low.

Until the flame is squashed .
And the future goes dim.
Until this day I will trust Him.

The torture and the pleasure

2009-05-03T03:16:00.000-07:00

The torture and the pleasure of our physical bodies. You can "feel" needs and fulfilling satisfaction. Hunger is a state of need but there is even greater when you eventually tuck in to a desired meal. We are made so that reward follows desire so that pleasure follows hunger.

I don't know how to deal with these needs. I have a physical intimacy need an enormous, confusing whirlwind of desire. I don't desire a physical relief without some emotional intimacy.

So I live with this duality. Like the wave particle duality in quantum physics I sit in a superposition of states. Hope is a slim strand, but I clutch it anyway.

musings

2008-11-01T05:02:00.000-07:00

I found myself writing the following words to a friend:

"I am lonely Mandy. In a way that I I haven't been before. It is as if the candle flame has flickered and died. I sit in the inky blackness and feel a cold doubt creeping in to me."

I suddenly realised that I am at a hiatus. Some slight but important changes in me are developing and I need move into a different phase.

What can it be?

Cruel Hope

2008-10-04T05:24:00.000-07:00

Surrounded by ghosts and past visions
I claw at the hope of sunlight above
Never moving, always striving
Like a fly in syrup I scratch at glue
Sinking and desperate
Hoping

Masochistic thoughts return
The spark extinguished by reality
Stuck again
The relentless circle
The circuitous repeat
Cruel hope

Seeing you but never touching
Virtual, tangible but empty
This is my struggle
Passion rises with hope
Acid reality
Vanished dreams

Frozen in love

2008-09-20T01:45:00.000-07:00

The loneliness of paralysis is like the pain of death. You live and exist but you can't reach out to others and they can't reach you. Spontaneous touch and non-verbal intimacy are impossible. Interactions become distant and the casual closeness of friends is replaced with a stiff upright but shallow "hello and goodbye".

How I long to open my heart and thoughts to another. Someone I trust and love even to whom I know I can give my will to and extend myself for; to help them be the best they can be. I realise that it is highly unlikely for any such possibility. I hope but I don’t ever lose sight of the unfinished work in my own life. So everyday I make the effort to discover who I am. To cut and mould the hopeless man I am into someone with the strength to continue.

Find the beauty within

2008-08-17T03:52:00.000-07:00

Find the beauty within 27/05/05 (Updated)

Find the beauty within
Words of wisdom
I looked and found
A hurriedly packed cardboard box
Untidily yet Tightly sealed
In black marker the words
Do not open yet – unfulfilled hopes and dreams
I looked further
The dust covered the still jangling nerves
But could not hide the pain
Swept carelessly into the corners of the room
Memories of relationships that have
gone rusty from lack of use
or lie incomplete waiting for a reciprocation
if the beauty exists how would it survive?

I resolve to look deeper
Beyond the dust shrouded memories
A pile of boxes
Though more orderly stacked
The contents clearly marked
Career, family, achievements
As much as I might hope
These may as well be filled with air
Some suitcases lie in the doorway
Poorly, hastily packed, bulging, zips ready to burst
I don’t think it is in there
Evidence of an unplanned journey

But what is this?
On the floor by the fireplace
A glimpse of colour
Green leaves
Purple flower
A timid hope
Struggling to beat the choking dust
The choking strangulation
Fighting
In this deserted place
It will need sunlight to slip across its needy branches
Life giving water
Sustenance not rotting dust
A beauty within
A struggling hope
Can it survive?

B tch

2008-08-04T11:53:00.000-07:00

The rising tide
Slow and unstoppable
The inevitability of the feeling
Choking me
Nauseating gasps for understanding
I breathe carefully
I pace my strength
I hold on till you leave
Frantically trying to make it go
The taste of betrayal
The suffocation of lies
Filling my body
B1tch

Your words
Your lies
Sweetly dropped
Like dripping honey
I want to believe
I ignore the fighting inside
I hang on to insincere
I clutch the falsehoods
Drowning in the tide
Sinking
Hunting for the breath of truth
Hoping for hope
B1tch

Return to emptiness

2008-06-21T03:42:00.000-07:00

Like an empty barrel.
The hollow reverb of a gnawing thought.
Hate your life and fight to breathe.
The echo of the past, of voices unheard.
Dry tears of regret fall to the floor
Splashing the emptiness with echoes
I return to the bitter sweet place
The reminder and the knife
Why return to this place?

Hoping to find what is lost

Searching in the emptiness
Finding only pain.

A strand of hair

2008-05-25T02:51:00.000-07:00

A strand of hair
found on my skin
the secret love reminder
your taste and feel
your smell

Urged by love
your memory
your face and lips
your eyes
drive me

Leprosy

2008-04-25T08:52:00.000-07:00

I can tell you what stinks.
Having little comfort and movement. This stinks.
To always feel you need to adjust your position, in the hope of comfort.
To be unable to move and make a shift to a better alignment.
How do you explain it?
It stinks.

When you face each day with optimism and hope.
To tackle unbearable struggle.
To never share your pain.
Pain shared scares away company.
Don't ever share pain, let your stress out or be in a bad place.
It's like leprosy.
It stinks.

Plastic love

2008-04-20T04:13:00.000-07:00

If you love, do you put boundaries on your love? Do imperfections prevent you from loving someone? If so, to quote a line from "The Mexican" with Brad Pit and Julia Roberts, "If you love someone, when is enough, enough?". Can love exist without acceptance? If acceptance is part of it, just how much do you accept?

If you love without acceptance, your love is empty and without substance. Plastic love will last a few years but will break under strain or stress. Hollywood love will last "till the paint wears off" or the shine fades. Love cannot be like water and evaporate or like steel that can't bend. Love is like soil, it can change shape but stay the same, it can move, it can feed and be fed, it supports life and bears fruit.

I heard this recently, "I love him/her so much I will do anything for him/her."
Is this love?

2008-04-11T05:46:00.000-07:00

GIVING UP

When am I allowed to give up? Is there a point when it's OK? Do I wait till my heart just stops? The relentless attrition, the daily pouring out my strength. The drudgery and the emptiness like a nagging toothache, dull and constant in its pervasive insisting throb. Escape is not an option. Hope? Just too embarrassed to make an appearance.

I have fought the fight for 6 years. Don't I get a day off? People talk to me about taking time off,don't they understand? Time off from what? Being paralysed? Being in pain? Being alone and depressed? No, they mean go somewhere else and be paralysed, in pain and alone. Yippee!

When?

I don't want to. I don't want to. To be me takes too much effort. But to be anything else is not satisfying.

You

2008-01-27T02:52:00.000-08:00

Soft and sensuous, delicious lips, paused in anticipation of the ache of complete desire,
irresistible, unstoppable, tsunami, of passion,
tumbling, uncontrollable need overwhelming your thoughts.
When time switches to forever and tomorrow never comes

This is gone.
No longer to drink the beauty of love
to breathe in the sense of you
your smell and your velvet skin
the cascades of soft hair rising and falling with your passion
with open eyes you see my soul, opened like a flower

My body won't forgive me
My mind confused and dazed
I stumble onward
In hope of a glimpse of you