whirling

he wishes for feelings of ecstasy
and the sigh of morbid bones
in the morning

today he jogs like a piston
down the road
into the sun
into the wind
that chuckles between
the folds in his face

sweat stick to his spine
like the crease of a fresh book
and he hurtles on through
the crinkle of leaves
beneath his shoes

he saw two girls
stranded stressed straddled
on a scooter the driver gazed
at the speedometer as if peering
through the portal of a sinking ship
the one at the back
with a precisely stamped uniform
looked around with a scared expression

he wishes for feelings of anxiety
a tight electric snap
the firing-on of neurons
collecting handbags of fear
in the gaps in your head

watching plain sketched events
ripple and collide at dusk
changes your old self
that lay behind the dusty books
and dreamt only of the trickle of words

 

PhilosopherPoet

song

your hair
dapple pressed on the
desk
spills on me

every lover loves the Song
-your tender finger could
be wrong
you remember the words

your clipped lips,
suck puffing out a
grey breath
a nod, a wink

your eyes, like a cat
the mouth fondles the
cigarette
tickled tip

your lamplight lingerie
falls stark awkward
over curled commas

i found the song
your voice tinsel
in the air

forgot the lyrics

Rooted

What I find interesting about human nature is the way we break things up. We label, categorize, number, annotate almost unconsciously. To give you an idea of what I mean I will use the simple school playground as an example.

Take any group of kids, and pick them at random (just make sure they’re all the same age, or peers, if you will). Tell those kids to go to school for two months and very soon you will have the divisions you see in any playground. The Prissies, the Sluts, the Jocks, the Geeks, the Academics, the Rappers, the Goths, and the Fat Kid who always steals your lunch. No one tells us to isolate and make these classifications. We simply do it to justify our own self image and to feel ‘rooted’.

 

If you were to look at our ties with other evolutionary species (i.e. cows, mice, apes), we’re only separated by a few chromosomes. In other words we’re barely out of the jungle, so we feel safest in herds, just like any other mamal. Surviving on your own, means you’ll soon get tired and eventually slaughtered by some creature with bigger claws. So as people, we look for similarities and cling to them. Sometimes we’ll even put race aside simply to have peace of mind.

I guess that’s the more pessimistic view on people. We’re not only drawn to similarities due to desperation, the flipside is connectedness or being. Children on the playground will make friends, form close relationships, because commonality gives us a greater sense of being. Don’t forget that the so-called alpha male, is not always a problem. Humans have a natural desire to compete against each other purely to grow wiser and/or more skilled. Comparing and competing may become exhausting if it’s done on an extreme scale, but healthy competition means our sense of being is elevated.

Think of the alpha male this way… If the alpha male never existed, since the beginning of our evolution, do you think the human race would still exist. If we purely fought for our OWN territory and never considered gathering warriors together; is it even logical to ask if we’d still be around? Allow me return to our playground experiment in the meantime.

Prissies, sluts, jocks, geeks, academics, rappers, goths, fat kids. From the list of cliches you’ll notice that one thing is evident (when it comes to categorizing ourselves), every label is there as a result of it’s OWN group of labels. Factors such as IQ, EQ, clothing, physique, music, and hobbies give birth to the cliches the kids turn into. These labels aren’t chosen, but brought about by their desire to ‘be’.

NOTE: I say ‘be’, because being has as many (or even more) facets as a single personality may have.

The child’s desire/yearning/will to ‘be’:

- loved

- nurtured

- challenged

- wounded

- observed by a master of their craft

- accepted

- forgiven

- understood

- heard

- touched (physically or emotionally)

- broken

- lost

I spoke about pain in a few of the words above. I once told my father that “Love isn’t blind, it just doesn’t wear the right glasses”. To expand on that I think we sometimes go through life trying on different pairs of glasses until we find ones that are right for us. If the first few pairs aren’t the right fit, we will experience and have to face our pain through those lenses. Maybe our eyes will change after a year or two and we’ll trundle along in search of a more adequate pair. In time we’ll come to find comfortable ones with a better fit. A pair that goes far enough around the ears, and is clear enough to watch your lovers hair skip over her nose. Then, perhaps, it’s time to put down your book and drift off into a dream.

 

PhilosopherPoet

A message from my sister…

(NOTE: The following story was told by my half sister, I’ve simply interpreted what she said – via my step mother – the scribe.)

*The Crystal of Love*

By Trinity Ballam-Smith

Chapter 1

One day there was a jungle girl named Ellie. She lived in an island named Hawaii. She was sooo happy there. One day (while trying to find some grapes) she spotted an elephant. She didn’t know that she could speak to animals. But when the elephan tried talking to her…Ellie listened.

They were very confused because they didn’t know they were sisters. They went to the elephant Cloud Princess and she said,

“Do you know that you two are actually sisters?” and she was amazed that the elephant princess had old her story.

She replied, “”Did you know, a long time ago King Rothbart turned me into an elephant because he was so angry. I didn’t let Rothbart go, so he strangled me and he took all my powers away. I only have one power left, and Rothbart doesn’t like me any more. he put me into a dungeon, but luckily I broke through.”

She paused momentarily, and continued.

“Rothbart takes all my powers away, and doesn’t gove me anything. So I moved into the Cloud Kingdom, and I needed to live all by my own.But luckily I had some animals to speak to me.”

Rothbart came every single day to check on the Cloud Princess, but eventually she fought back to get more powers. The world changed and all the trees were dark around her…and there was no pollution in the air. the Cloud Princess and stopped all the pollution.

Ellie (the Cloud Princess) said, “Bye-bye” to the Cloud Elephant, and ran off to find the Crystal of Love. She told them about a wand, and a ring of love, lying in the dark depths of despair. To find the Crystal of Love, Kindness, and Helpfulness you must go there.

“Remember,” she said.

“The Crystal of Love, is the more important than all the kindness in the world!”

Leaving

By Sarah Frost

How sad that it has come to this
my father an old man driving me and his grandson, asleep in the baby seat,
through the Eastern Cape interior to the airport
from where we will return, as if we were swallows and the holiday a winter,
to our warmer home, and he will make the two hour journey back
to my mother and the sea
alone in their big white car, a craven gull.

I whirl the dial of the iPod
with my forefinger, scanning on screen the music he has downloaded.

Songs were always the antidote for our unspoken conflict, pooling like snake venom in the blood, lyrics too –
I remember him, skinny, young, passionate, finding Dylan Thomas’s ‘Fern Hill’/ /reading stanzas, jubilant, from the bath to me in the next room;
‘nothing I cared in the lamb-white days/ that time would take me/ by the shadow of my own hand/ up to the loft where the moon is always rising’.
It is still the only poem I’ve ever memorised.

I ask about the Stones’ ‘little Red Rooster,’
he replies, ‘it reminds me of dancing at raunchy parties’.
Nothing irresistible about you now Dad, smaller, greyer, with every year,
fishing surreptitiously under your seat
for the last turquoise Smarty from the box we just shared,
your hand unsteady as it was when you reached for mine
and held on to it as if it were a rope,
and you the one falling, wrenched away.

We were watching the documentary on Dylan (No Direction Home)
on my laptop. I remember you, visiting, just you, on a summer’s night
cradled with the iPod in the hammock on my verandah,
crooning with Dylan ‘she’s got everything she needs/
she’s an artist/ she don’t look back’.

Your inexplicable and therefore frightening fury
as you told me about our ancestors, and how to write well
I had to honour them too.

My great-grandfather, stern, distant, a stranger, wrote to me
on pale green Croxley paper
his writing frail against the formality of the black-inked lines.

In the troubled departure hall,
you kiss us both goodbye and I turn away irresolute, unforgiving
to walk through the X-ray arch,
your gaze on my shoulders a faint touch for the child you forsook,
the woman you call your daughter,
who, angry, the damage done, carries your dwindling fire into the future.

The man standing at the side of the woman writing
had an indelible tattoo of loss etched onto his face
every needle prick a leaving.

How to Bag a Man

I thought about trying some reverse psychology for a change. I would usually write something about how to make decent girls appreciate geeky guys. The age old question: how do you get girls to like you?

I’m perfectly, and happily heterosexual so this is a guide to women on how to find, and understand men. I’ll start off by saying that generally (99% of the time, and 99% of men) have the emotions of and oak tree. They are pretty non-existent so there is a very easy way to see it.

Men - play a game to eventually get around to talking about it.

Women - talk about it and eventually get around to playing the game.

What this simply means is being practical (“hands on”) and being emotional (“in touch”). Men will for example say what is necessary at work and in a social context. Make them play a sport together once a week and you’ll soon find them opening up and joking together. So if a woman is looking to bag a man, she should look for a game of some kind, doesn’t necessarily mean in a literal sense.

When men talk, socialize, and so on it is based on what game they are in (pub, soccer game, fishing trip, etc). Men will meet up socially because of the game they are playing. Women will engage and there ‘game’ will be based on what led before it.

I’ll cut to the chase with a common example. Isn’t it a bit of a cliché that when it comes to sex, a woman wants to wait and talk it through, but a man wants to follow through? I know that I’m arguing from a shaky foundation since I’m basing my answers on assumptions.

Women may sometimes take their time making a decision, because they are looking out for others. Men want to make it for themselves, although since the rise of Feminism my comments do stand on very shaky ground. I’d just also like to add that the characteristics (or foibles) each gender has is more of a strength. It should be seen as a piece of a larger issue.

This is Officially the end now (I do this before my head starts spinning around in circles!)

PhilosopherPoet

Open up

I can see tubes hurt you

Pain bleach you

a clear sense of who you are marred the stone age contempt

now vanishing from your crippled lips.

I think I like what I see

I like the strong thrumming of your heart

When we lay blanketed in the bone silence

It was the other night

That you said the frost in the morning

Caught your eye,

It dripped, clear tears, that ran over the

The murk and sludge of

Christmas

I like your sense of things that

Trigger behind your eyes catching the unspoken

In a crackling snapshot,

Into the dark dense ringlets,

Of blanket and fog.

At night you’re relaxed,

Almost more alive, when your head

Melts into my chest, your whisper pours

through the room like a cat.

I have never forgot you, or your

plain faces. Your mornings then

lifted you lightly, telling you to

pick the plums.

When you are gone and the telephone restlessly

ticks, the newspaper lies buried under

your brushes…

I go to the bed, lie there, with the noise

Inside of me,

The room is full of you, the cemented scents,

And the bed that buried your boredom. I cannot

Hear your crying

Just watch the crumbs.

* * *

I listen to your words left

behind

seeping through

the duvet.

PhilosopherPoet

Can you hold me close?

( This is an excerpt from a Song by David Ballam, my awesome brother.) Just a bit on my brother before you are launched into this amazing piece of art. He’s my twin brother David…me being Jonathan. I think that he’s a really amazing songwriter, and will get even better the older he gets. So I’ll say upfront look out for this guy! I also have a really strong and close relationship with him, so it makes the time that I spend with him even more meaningful to me.
I just wanna say that Dave…I appreciate the great brother you are and will still become, and you must keep up the good things you do…

Can you hold me close?

“I’m a shattered pane, please just drown me in your stain

Is your cross-blood in my veins?

Wrap me up on a Sunday, as fragile good,

Salt me in your tears, as you hang on that wood.”

- David Ballam (aka Ledge)

WARNING! (I would like to say that this is not my picture. This picture was taken from the website DeviantArt.com and done by the artist CanDaN. For more information on this image, go check out the webpage! Otherwise treat just treat it as art!)

Comment on my Brothers Song:
Wow…what poetry! …

If this doesn’t make people impressed, or affect them in some way…then I be greatly surprised :-0

I repeat the same old Mantra I will start to use throughout my Blog…

*May The Muse And Plato Juice Be With You*

PhilosopherPoet

I heard you

It is five o’clock, and I can hear your feet. They are crawling through nonsense, hiding behind the flecks of the morning’s eyelash. The coffee crumbles into the cup. The sugar stings my ears. I still feel your breath on the bed; it lies there massaged into my veins. I watch you, through my eyes’ crescent moons.

 

Your hand falls like a flower. The other stirs the table and skates through its memory. The milk-thin steam finds room in your face, your smile vigilant through the film. I watch you float on the nothing, I watch your hair. I want to fondle the piece on your nose (curled like a finger). You want nothing as the membrane light folds and unfolds. It breathes with your breath and flickers in your eyes.

 

You told me a story once of how you lost you loam brain in the shelves and bodies of books. Now I watch you do the same. You’re lost between blank blocks of light and supple time. There’s something about the emotional silence that holds your head up like a lovers fluid hand. You stroke it, slowly, fingering it in grains. Your hanger shoulders tilt and stir up in the chair, making you stand. You swim like a cat on your feet. Your presence pours through the room.

 

In the shower, you left me your shapes and your shades. The breath of a heavy cloud-kiss holds me. Your hands have smudged the tiles, blurring my windscreen thoughts. You voice gallops giddy in a delicate breath, leaving behind a crisp crinkle.

 

The voice touches, tumbles into towel. It rubs your skin, shading in your eyes and floating figure, between the silver-silk smoke. The towel swims over your breasts, around and into the ceramic curve of your back. It stops. You reach for the door, your hands around the cold clean handle then, you sneeze. A dandelion sneeze makes the clean air now clammy with a creative spray.

 

The door opens, and you walk to my bed where I am still lying. The mottled light tickles me face, hugging me like a child. You pull up next to me. Your figure is fresh, the smell sails through me.

 

You look at me. Your gaze pours into me like wine, followed by a recumbent smile and tender fingers. A soft smile ripples through me. I trace my hand to your lap. My fingers fold your legs into me. We lie there rooted in our thick smell and thrumming tenderness.

 

Your leg draped over me, leaves me to linger. All I hear is your threaded whisper and an ebbing breath.

“I could do this again,” you said.

Close the door

Close the door

 

Come inside and close the window

The thick sun is still asleep.

I’m left to lie on aged sheets, that

I grasp in little mounds like children.

 

Come inside but don’t come too close,

I have a tender place I won’t want you

To touch.

I mask it with the reflections

in the window, watching me.

As strange as birds they hover in the

Sunlight, stirring my clammy head.

 

Come inside and feel the carpet

with your naked foot.

Your pink toes prickle, play,

Let go of the music.

 

I have a tender place to touch,

It feels warm as your hand, soft

As your duvet face. I want you

To hold it like the pillow’s shoulder

You cry on

 

Come inside here, close the door.

Feel my creases, come under my lamplight

I’ll tuck you in close to me, where you

Can lie in the shade of my tender place

Swim in the old ripples of my heart

 

The long light touches

the tips of your lips

you are too supple

to touch.