Constrict Me Serpent
Burns the light above
Does on petty eyes of mine.
From high up as if to guide light
To my fingertips and my knuckles.
Such advice deemed little
To a boy so confused,
he forgot how to write.
Melancholy, some shout,
Others pensive,
More merely stranded youth.
Yet they do not know my thoughts,
When I lie awake without understanding,
Of where my heart nor mind lie.
Whether to be happy or sad or both or none.
How can I answer?
And so I do not.
Grateful, anxious it seems
In times like these,
With heart racing yet pulse slowed,
by the time it reaches my fingertips.
In limbo I rest
A peaceful place once learnt it’s to stay.
With thoughts of past and future as one
Coiled around my spire of mind.
Bending and twisting it until
I no longer can recognise.
But I do not care,
I do not busy myself
In pursuit of mending her straight.
Rather, I gaze up into the light,
So as to switch it off.
Clarity
I think often about the time when I was 12,
Sitting on a swing.
But I didn’t want to move,
Didn’t want my feet to go above my head,
Or feel the wind.
Waiting maybe for a breeze to pick me up,
Or for the sun to go back down.
So I could go to bed.
I think often about when I was 16,
And would walk alone
Around the lake and
Through the grass.
Music playing to hold thoughts at bay,
Until they boiled over
So I’d stop.
And rest on my bench.
Always the same.
Now I have a different thought,
Of her in solitude.
Seemingly no background nor noise
Nor world beyond that door.
Merely breaths taken and let go,
Her arm tightly wrapped across
Chest of mine.
Mine clung tightly to waist,
As if rolling hills I must climb,
So I hold on.
Perhaps fear of letting go or,
What should come if I fall back down?
Or maybe I like that hill I cling on,
And maybe I’ll stop for a while
And have a picnic,
To admire the view
And watch the sun set.
On the Valley
Alone it seems
I may be.
Spoken not for days,
Thoughts bounce plenty.
Yet solace I find in the hum
Of memories replayed.
And ideas discovered.
Atop this mountain of mine.
Below, calves graze and feed,
Smog billows from the chimney,
Coal, I smell.
The sun glimpses one last time at me,
As she nestles behind the steppe.
This valley, my valley.
Valley for my thoughts to subside
And linger held within.
Not to boil over,
Or follow me home.
I look to the temple,
On cliff beside.
Thoughts of gods, life, of her
Flow through my juvenile head.
Spins the Tibetan words
Wisdom gives me for troubles
Thousands of miles away.
What must I do,
What must I see?
And sometimes I wonder
If Buddha and Jesus talked,
Would they speak of me?