January Thoughts

January 14th 2010.

You are my friend,
You will not bend
Your ear to bother
With the lazy words
Of those who do not
Give a damn
For truth or decency.
A friend is not just for Christmas,
Or to dangle on the arm
He is not an ornament
Upon our festive tree.
He is true, he is loyal,
She is faithful, she is steady.
Friendship is its own reward,
It makes us what we cannot hope
To achieve upon our own.
It draws us out, it steels our back.

CHRIST ON THE CROSS
Its not the bleeding man falling with the tortured cross,
Its not the heavy burden that weighs down upon the world
But far more the rising after falling, the quiet acceptance
That we can only rise when we have fallen,
We can only soar from down below.
To fall and rise to rise and fall,
Better to lose than not to try at all.
How perfect his life, how good in every way
On the contrary, how boring, I say.
Evil is not the condition of fallen man,
Overcoming evil is the only way we can,
Show who we really are and find our soul,
Impress ourselves and show that we can be
Much greater than we might if our postal code
Was East of Eden or West of Disneyland.
Arise my human spirit from the grot and booze
Of indifference and mediocrity.
Show me, that I can be, the person that the child in me,
Once wished, sometimes forgot but now rewon.

ALL ALONE
Into the world we come, wondering
We shuffle out, wandering
On the road we travel and meet,
Men and women, Gods and devils,
But our journey is longer and our path is steeper,
And so we arrive at the end as at the start
Alone – and we alone can take the next and final step,
Into nothing, or maybe everything
But certainly untrodden paths.
And so it always was and always will be
The lonely march into infinity.
Do we embrace or abhor
The cold clinging kiss of death
Seeing it as the definite end
Or just the sleep of the Ego
When we rejoin the Milky Way
And become another distant star
Absent but not always forgotten.
Will our works live beyond us
And does it even matter
To have built the White House
To have given the Gettysburg Address
And do I still have a dream?
Forgive me Father
For I do not know what I do
Nor does anyone I know
Except the faithful and the saved
Who worry me, do they not trouble you?
Such pat words to such messy issues
Such lovely and black and white vignettes
That strain to frame a world
That breathes and bleeds
Before our very eyes.
We struggle to make sense
And declare one hue the winner
In the mad prism of unruly reality
That wont obey our command
To fit neatly in our photo album
Between the aisles of lovely books.
How insubordinate and downright rude
To ignore our rules and pretty thoughts.
Neat and tidy with a bow
Shall our thoughts be tied and tamed.
Off they run and roam
While closing stable doors seems the right end
Even though the foals gallop in the meadows.
Even as I wrestle to keep them still
Under my arm, they will peek
And sneak and be themselves,
Whatever that might mean.

OF BOYS AND GIRLS
She was not beside me when we played the school games
On low January evenings in the wind and rain.
Not for her the muddy rugby fields where boys became men
And where we forged loyalty in the furnace of the fight.
She stood at the local shop with bright lipstick
Shimmering black tights and studied insouciance.
Would she or could she know what it was to rely
On companions who would fight and bleed for you?
What seemed to start with lust and love
Works into scented chapel aisles and babygrows
And on we travel fighting and forgiving
Growing and shrinking along the twisted path
Of fate that is sometimes chosen
Sometimes endured.
The ordinary flux and flow
The compassion and indifference
The hopes and fears
And failings and triumphs
The common conquests
And the silent and unspoken
Oversights that leaves the Good Samaritan
Supported and ignored along the milky way
Of our eternal journey when sunlight
Pierces the mist and picks out
The shiny cathedral spires of our loves and hopes
And childish aspirations