Walking, I sometimes see
Objects sparkle
Objects calling to me
Yes, I know about desire
Danger danger verywhere
Still, conscious of potential
I stoop, I reach
I take a closer look
There are messages in odd places
Walking, I sometimes take
Slip a stone inside my pocket or
Prop a cap up on a bridge
Over this murky brook
For you to find sometime.
Writer philosophers birth idea volumes
defeat defiance despair existential disparity
Artists brushes soak in toxins
life cycle depiction or candid canvas prediction
Pleased to meet you, reality
Now it’s back to horses and dusty horse riders
Street battles wasting time
Stele entries forgotten or faded
No honoured heros names to add
Inspiration waits for the revival
Sipping tea in the wings
Photo tilts left
in the room of messy flowers
Light splashes shadows
these old silenced walls
Rest your head
for an evening
Lay it down, you wandering traveler
Everything yearned for lives
out of reach but still in sight
Boots on at dawn
Turning page, young seeker
Toss those maps over the ledge
Step one, you are ready
eyes bright with colour
Black and white was just a crack
drawing you in
Your beginning
I am far away now
from everything familiar
It’s after sundown, dark
The air smells of smoke
heavy from bamboo smouldering
Crickets are singing, or katydids
And something else
A woman’s voice rising out of the darkness
Over there near the fields
we rode bicycles past today
She sings
or keens
The melody is in a minor key but
I don’t understand the language
Perhaps it’s a lullaby
I am lying here in this hammock
a young attendant just brought by and hung for me
It’s in that army camouflage pattern
In the courtyard, I saw samples of bombs
grenades and land mines recovered from the landscape here
I am looking at my familiar from a distance
From another angle
This location in the world
I am reading Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale
I read it before, a long time ago
It seemed like brilliant fantasy work then
Science Fiction, a Fantastic Tale
It doesn’t seem like fantasy now, this time
I’ve felt the breath of Possibility.
Have I changed so?
Or has the World changed?
Maybe I have been sleeping
Maybe I’m just waking up.
Pencil Notes 