Note: This is a very simple presentation. It is basically just a posting to share the work but also to organize it in one place in preparation of the experimental word/image melding edition of our print magazine due out some time in the spring/summer of 2009.
The idea is A melding of words and images with each illustrating some aspect of the other. If it works well each should take on some flavor of the other and create a new idea. The truth is in the mind of the beholder. Read a few see if it works.
I call this poetry, it may be prose some of it is just a string of words. I call it poetry as it is meant to be read aloud. I designed it and edited it that way. The rhythm and rhyme become apparent when the thought of the words mix up with the spirit voice in your lungs, bubble up through your throat and spill out over your lips and tongue to mingle with your particular accent to become your own. Try it you might like it. Read some to your children to your spouse or lover. These words are freeze dried waiting for the taste of you to give them life. Do it.
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MJ#9 Illustrated poetry of Love and Other Afflictions
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For samples of past work click: Mikesjournal #6: Death Valley or Mikesjournal #7: Faces of the Dominican Republic
Illios: Illustrated Poetry of Love and Other Afflictions
by Michael Campbell
Alphabetical index : Click Here
Most recent poem Waiting for My Muse in the Chelsea Hotel- December 21, 2009
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Chronological Listing of the poems and the influential photographs
The big flashes startled you
So as a child might
You slipped under my arm
Then melted
Against my skin.
We were one
My love.
The Mask
Battered and bruised
Unlike me
This face, this mask
I use to fend
against the blows.
Hit me again
and again and again.
Is that the best you can do?
Night Street Car 4072
Night street car comes
Number forty seventy-two
Iron wheels squealing round the loop
I search for faces to find you
There are none
Night street car comes
Discharging steam and stale memories
My heart sinks
Night street car moves on
Empty as this cold January night.
February 2004 - Carnival Vegano
Tropical Flower #4
Orange and yellow
To rival the sun
Worlds in dew drops
Memories of lions and tigers
Passing by to kiss your sweet perfume
Their colors in exchange for your scent.
Roller Coaster
This ride with you
Safe but unsafe
Heart pounding blood rushing
Thrill of a crush
You a happy rush of laughter
Me both hands up in surrender
And false bravado.
Thirty-two degrees of separation
Have come between us.
I used to see my face in yours
Now I see only ice.
Smoke on the Mountain British Columbia
Smoke on the Mountain
Before you see it you smell it
Smoke on the mountain British Columbia.
Several smoke stacks
Painting in layers,
Layers of clouds,
The chewed up, burnt up, rafts
Of snow covered logs.
The Danger of Falling in Love #1 (Missing You)
He said
My love, I thought of you all day.
I could not get you out of my mind
The thought of you
The need to be with you
Burned terrible desire
It
hurt me so bad.She said
My love, I am sorry
M
issing me made you feel that way.I did not think of you at all today,
My heart was busy doing mindless things
The day passed for me on silver wings.
He said
My love, I am glad.
Beach Towel
Still moist from the touch of your skin
Caresses my face
Warms my body
I breathe deeply
Drunk with the idea
Of being wrapped in pieces of your DNA.
Sleeping Baby
Sweet dreams my love.
You are me and I am you
Mystery reveals itself.
Born of love,
Lives in love,
May we be
Innocent forever.
Sweet Child of Mine
I love you so
Such hope and happiness
I have for you
My heart is bursting with it
Yet
Back turned to the sun you worry.
The sands of this place
Have drifted between us.
I reach into this heart to find the love I hold for you
But hands come out empty
I discover I am naked and alone.
21st Century Artifact; Tin Can Crown with Gold Inlay
Twenty First Century Artifact
Tin can crown with gold inlay
Such was their power
They paved their streets
W
ith this stuff.
Rainbow Windows
Red Orange Yellow Green Blue Indigo Violet
Real old yeller goes bad in vacation.
They line up correctly.
A symphony; these colors combine then separate
Then combine again,
Invisible music of waves.
To see without seeing we live in shades of gray.
Coral Rose
In the afterglow of love
Your scent on my fingers still
My lips tender with the soft touch
Of yours
I am a perfect rose
Made for only you.
Not touching the ground I float
My way home
As a melody might I caress
The air a new song.
You are as a yellow rose
Layers of sweetness unfolding.
I wish to rush headlong into you,
Press my face against you,
Close my eyes and drink deeply
The essence of you.
So
easy to forget aboutThe thorns
And a fresh glistening drop of blood
On my heart.
Star light,
Star Bright
First star I see tonight
I wish I may
I wish I might
Have this wish
I wish tonight.
(No I did not write this poem - click on the photo to get the back story.)
Shadow People on the Boat
Are we there yet captain?
Asked the stick man to the
Styx man who motioned to the whip man.
Not yet my child...
Try forty more and ask again
If you please.
The whip came down with
Thunderous applause,
Are we there yet captain?
Shadow People on the Water
Blue on blue
We pass without footprints
Our memory a trail of foam
From here to the horizon
Then gone.
Dead Fish
You leapt into the rain thinking it was prey
Landed on the patio
Granite scales of the beast.
Each leap into the watery air
Every struggle
Took you farther from your home.
So it was you died
Misadventure.
A fish out of water.
My tears cannot revive you now.
My laugh follows your laugh
My pain follows your pain
Your fear is my fear too.
Forever connected are we.
We follow each other
Like the man in the moon
Follows us home.
I stand before you and pause,
A secret bow to that moment of fear.
Oh lover mine
I remember you were hard
Now you surrender so easily.
Oh lover mine I remember you and your friends
How you betrayed me shamelessly,
Books knocked to floor
Shoulder smashed blue like my blue door,
Echoed down the hallways laughter.
Crashing into lockers laughter.
Laughter mixing with the song of happy voices
In classes filled with strangers
While I stood alone comforted by bitter tears.
But here today Blue Door
With the slightest pull you open to invite me in.
All is forgiven?
No lover mine I am not yours
I am a stranger still before your Blue Door.
Misty Highway
Cannot see in front
Cannot see behind
This here and now unclear as well.
I grip the wheel
Worried about the way
Focused on the lights ahead
Driving like the car ahead
Hoping he knows the road ahead.
He drives like an idiot
Just like me.
White Flowers Falling From Tree
White Flowers Falling From Tree
A wondrous sight this snow in June
With perfume falling blooms caress my soul.
This heavy heart is lightened and I sing.
Intoxicated by the rush of spring.
The Danger of falling in Love #3 (Breaking Up)
We both ran
Carelessly into our feelings
Words like accidents
Smashing our indifferences
So we fled the scene
On the street again I was
Free yet with a weight of darkness
where this heart used to be.
I returned for my heart and
Found you crying
Still in love with me.
We put back the pieces
Now I am no longer light
Parts are missing
I feel it
This weight of darkness
I carry still.
July 2006
The secret life of bees
They are not like us you know
You cannot trust them
What are they doing?
Messing with the flowers
Insects plotting insurrections.
White flowers with red eyes in the rain
Are secret installations for the insect race
Communication devices.
Ten foot insectoids
With their reptilian friends
Once ruled this earth
They are waiting, taking no chances
Sending secret messages
Tapping out a Morse code for the underworld
One day they will rule again.
Brown-Eyed Susan
You have a hundred names
None of them are true.
Brown-Eyed Susan
I wait for you.
Can we cross the sea?
Five years on
Brown-Eyed Susan
You wait for me.
August 2006
My Mama said when she was five
She used flower petals
To make her finger nails.
She stuck them carefully with gum
After the flavor was gone
I wonder what she was thinking.
uilding
I lived in a glass building,
No stones allowed.
I threw them anyway.
The clouds came in,
The rains came in,
The people came in,
And took me away.
Now I live in a cement room,
No glass allowed.
I dream about the sun
And sparkling shards
Trouble these waking hours.
Thunder has merged with lighting
Wind hits the car like a living thing
It trembles
The sky opens up
I am blind.
Driving by the instruments
I slow down to the speed limit
My hands tight on the wheel
We hydroplane on into the night.
We are half alive and half living the dream
Of flying.
It was with tears we were born not laughter
There will be tears when we die.
Should it be different in midlife my love?
Joys and sorrows
Tears surround them all.
We are made with tears
Let me kiss those tears of yours
I wish to melt into your salty sea of love.
May 2007 (here Kodak plant being demolished)
Kodak my love what have they done
I went to see my love today
Brought her smiles and fresh rolls of memories.
But my love was gone
Broken and done
Murdered by a sudden onslaught
Of Zeros and Ones.
My smiles and rolls of memories
Now fade like dreams
After the magic light has gone
And only harsh sun remains.
The Danger of Falling in Love #5 - Jealousy
Jealousy
In a darkened room
On a bed covered with with coats
At a party of drunken strangers
I found you kissing a friend.
I remember how your naked left breast
Glowed in the moonlight
While you covered yourself
In shame.
I burned in the glow
Of that breast.
Thirty years on it haunts me still.
You said it was the drink
That made you do it
You said it was for old times.
You said you were just throwing an old dog
A bone.
I wanted to kill
I wanted to shout
Jealous rage struck me
Shot me, silenced me in a moment
I walked away as a coward might
I walked away dead
Yet walking still
With questions as from whence this jealousy came
Was it because I lost you that night?
Or was it because you did not invite me to your party?
Boy With a Dime
There was this dream
Of going to Mars
Of going to the Moon
Of going to tomorrow
Not because it was easy
Because it was hard
But with just a dime
It took more than a dream
More than an equity mortgage
And dollars to donuts men in suits
It took vision and innocence. Innocence lost when they
raised the price ofTen cent candy
To two fifty-nine.
(How it may appear in the magazine MJ #9 The Poetry Edition - Coming Soon)
River of my youth
My love you have not aged well
You taught me to swim
We had bold adventures
Pirate dreams,
Jungle swings,
Told me secret stories
Soothed my insect bites
In your medicinal mud.
River of my youth
A prisoner now
After the flood
When in a fit youthful exuberance
Drunk with the excess of some tropical rain storm
You washed away seventeen
Houses.
So they encased you in concrete
Sentenced you to a slow sad death
Scared the children away.
No more secret stories now
Your medicinal mud a festering sore.
Underwater
Breathless I speak
No sounds appear only intentions
Walls bend in on me
Lights and siren
Muffled in the rain
Should warn me to run
But the ether has enveloped me
I cannot run only swim
I cannot swim. I seem to be drifting
It is the rain
This constant rain
And now the cold this is not nature
Mouth drawn upward
Hooked it seems
Drawing me towards the bright
I am a broken fish living in an underwater city
What can I show you for tears?
If wishes were dreams my son
What dreams are there for you?
To walk with your brother
Hand in hand on the moon?
To sing a new song,
A tune so simple, pure and strong
A muse to make the world weep
Then fall in love forever?
To lead the brave and the free?
This can be done.
If wishes were dreams my son
I wish for you a son
Asleep in your arms
Safe in your home
No greater love I have found.
The Danger of Falling In Love #8 (Separation)
My heart in tatters
Its blood, my spirit
Now stain the heavens.
The essence of me
Flew up to the sky to follow you
My tears sank into the earth
Followed your river songs
Towards the sea and gone.
I am dry now
A shell trapped in some strange spider’s web
With lines of communication
That cannot touch the sky.
January 2008 Mikesjournal magazine - Volume #5
Volume #5 contained a lot of poetry. It was written as a long tone poem exploring issues of memory, birth and death. here are a few samples. We donated the proceeds to the Canadian Alzheimer's Society. The first edition is now out of print however reprints are available from the store. Proceeds from sales still go to benefit the Alzheimer's Society of Canada.
From Mikesjournal Magazine #5 pages 5 - 6 Ghost Train
I ride a ghost train
Time ticking along these lonesome rails
My past a memory
My future uncertain
Here and now
A cacophony
Of sight and sound.
From Mikesjournal Magazine #5 pages 15 - 16 Rebirth
In my dream I was reborn
From blood and dust I came
To the light of new
I was drawn
From Mikesjournal Magazine #5 Pages 13 -14 Butterfly Dream
In my dream I was a butterfly
Above a field of rainbow light
It was there I fell in love with a flower
In my dream I became a flower
But ashamed I was for beauty not beheld my form
This cold chrysalis longing to dance with the wind yet shivering in the cold
I hungered for the flower so in my dream I ate the flower
Then the wind took me
Cast me away
Condemned to be a butterfly again
A flower only in my dream.
Mikesjournal Magazine Volume #5 pages 21 & 22 - Awakening
In my dream a fear awoke me
But dreaming still was I
And in a dream where I was lost
before me so many
Lonesome rails
All paths to heaven
But which was mine?
They looked alike
I could not choose
Frozen with indecision
I lost my way.
Mikesjournal Magazine Volume #5 pages 25 & 26 - Red
I learned to sing
I sang of flowers and fire
Of love and fair ladies
I sang the colors
Like red
Perfect and pure
I sang so beautifully
The angels wept for me and gave me life.
Mikesjournal Magazine Volume #5 pages 27 & 28 - Friendship
A good friend will never end
Miss Madison said when we were ten
The rules of friend
The rules of spelling did not bend
A broken glass you cannot mend
Not so with a friend
When you are ten.
February 2008 - Mikesjournal #6 Poems from Death Valley
Pages 11 and 12
Strange Water
Looks cool
Is hot
Looks wet but not
For drinking
Cow Creek salt pools
Reflecting fresh mountain ice
Close yet miles away
Beyond the reach of crawling.
Strange water
Does not quench this thirst
Nor cool these blistered feet
It burns.
Pages 41 and 42
Footprints
With footprints
We marked these dunes
Up and down we marched
like monstrous soldier ants
Names, carved initials, tracks and tracings
Into the willing earth,
As master painters might
We marked these paths
So clear our trails that others might follow
Forever it seemed.
Soon everywhere we looked
We saw footprints.
Soon everywhere we stood we saw power
Our marks eternal.
And in the morning
The wind kissed the dunes
Our footprints gone as though
We had never been.
Pages 19 and 20
This face is an old one
Cracked desert clay
with flowers
And love beyond measure.
Pages 15 and 16
Lost highway comes
And we are naked
Salt and sweat
As this earth is
Salt and sweat
Strange journey, endless and instant
Infinite yet not yet started
I look and see salt and sweat
I am naked with the sound of this body
Loud labored breathing
An ancient steam engine
Fueled on fear and habits
It struggles along this lost highway
And wonders if we are there yet.
March 2008
In Shanghai
In Shanghai
In a market stall
I heard the caged bird sing
A yellow bird with feathers trimmed in blue
I knew she sang for me
With words my heart could feel as true
She sang…
Kind sir for twenty Yuan
You can set me free.
For twenty Yuan I brought her home
But silence was her song for me
The tiny bird with feathers trimmed in blue
Watched from cage the sky and tree
No song no chirp
She shivered afraid of me.
So from window ledge
I opened cage and away from me she flew
Towards the city it seemed
Towards the market and her home.
In the market stall the morning next
I recognized a song so strong and pure
A melody to break my heart.
My yellow bird with feathers trimmed in blue
Caged again with song...
Kind sir please
For twenty Yuan
You can set me free.
May 2008 The World On a Blade of Grass
The world on a blade of grass
Collapses into the infinite
With my best lens
I see a world awaiting
Closer I look then within the world I see
A boy on a blade of grass
Contemplating a dew drop
In the sun
The Quality of Line
The quality of line between us
Is not a straight one
We follow the great circle route
The shortest distance between two points on a sphere
Two points on a sphere is what we are
To get together we must take the long way around.
Dark Flower
I curse this romantic love
This joy and sorrow of knowing you.
I am filled with tears
What good is this?
Our time together is too short
Away from you the pain too much to tell.
Without you my days are gray and meaningless
My only thought how much I miss you
Your love has eclipsed the sun
We are dark flowers now
This occult love a cursed thing.
Mikesjournal #7 Faces of the Dominican Republic
Dominicana
Taina, Africana Y Blanca
Lovely mixture full of fun and grace,
School girl bubbling like a mountain spring
Strong woman you run beside me, a river
You brush against me I blush
I fall in pretending I know how to swim
Your happy laughter takes my breath away
I could drown asi forever
Blind David laughed when I asked if I could take his picture
Go ahead he said
While turning his head
And holding for me his very best profile
All the while laughing at the concept.
Go ahead he said
While caressing his chin
And the
twenty-five pesos
I slipped into his hand.
We Came to America Seeking Healing
We
came to America seeking healing
The diagnosis a shattered life line
The diagnosis a broken heart line
Prognosis not good
Born at the wrong time
Born at the wrong place
We came to America seeking comfort
We found the place in ruins
The doctors on rum
The nurses on merengue
he orderlies using medicine to sweeten their café.
We grew wild seeking freedom
But soon melted into your island charm
Willing victims of a few million stars
An India-ink sky and love beyond measure
The life line was not shattered
The heart line was not broken
They led us here our lives a tropical morning.
Happy Birthday Marisol
Happy 29th
Or was that thirty?
Just like that
With lies like that
Innocent daughter
At first we believe everything
And one day we learn
To believe nothing
Yet the truth remains
"Dominicana" was written for you
Written in blood
Ah there I go again....
Not in blood perhaps
But a with really nice pen and exclusive paper as well.
Last Leaf of Summer
Rusty red in the fast fading light
Comes to rest against
The Blue.
Last Leaf of Summer
So tired
Unaware this rest is not a rest
It is the end of the journey.
Discipline One to Three (for Mai Song)
To speak without words
To see without looking
The weight of nothing
Grows difficult to be
In waking dream burdened by joyful melody
This song shared with none.
The Danger of Falling in Love #12 (Mortality)
The Danger of Falling in Love No. 12
It is not that we grow old and beauty's frail fleeting form
Shall leave us,
The beauty of your love has no ending.
It is love, immortal love in this unworthy aging shell,
Love's endless radiance and now a desire to live.
A desire to live to see two hundred.
More than that,
Two hundred is nothing compared to love.
Love's sad gift; mortality.
Before love I was immortal
In love I realize I am not.
P.T.S.D.
Pray the silent dead
Disarm these troubled dreams
That disquiet
This waking life.
May peace come
And none may hear
The noise, the shake, the breaking hearts of babes.
The blood will not go.
It comes again and again
In sudden shards of shock and surprise,
In unexpected moments I quake.
Pray the silent dead
Embrace me in forgiveness
Give me rest.
They are like stars
Like angels too
The souls
Rising up to heaven.
Strange Cat
Comfortable kitties
Attracted to any face in a window
Make their homes where the light shines best.
Comfortable kitties go when
Windows darken.
My strange cat
Has one home
They come to her home
Bring her flowers and
Promises of luck with affection
But strange cat
She stays.
Boy on a Hand
I was lifted by your love,
At first dazzled now frightened by the heights.
The world without you turned cold,
Desolate.
I pray you remain always gentle
With my soul.
When all this memory
Is blurred and forgotten,
I will remember you.
Loving Parents
Do not shout
Hit and clout
Smack and shove
Take and take
Refuse to give
Refuse to live in love.
Loving parents
Do not scream with rage
The right their name for God
While children shake with fear.
Loving parents love.
Child Soldiers
After the men were gone
They began recruiting children
For the war.
To get volunteers was easy.
All was needed were uniforms
And promises of free jumps from the plane.
Generalissimo said
If he knew it was that easy
They would have started with kids
In the first place.
The Walls are Weeping - November in Mumbai
The Walls are Weeping - November in Mumbai
The walls are bleeding
What have we done?
The walls are weeping
Where have they gone?
Hate noise broken promises
Kill the infidel
Destroy my brother
The walls are bleeding
Weeping and the moan of Mother
Where is my son?
Kill the Mother
Where is my Mother?
Kill the son.
Make God happy
Insanity rains
Follow the commandment
Kill everyone
Madness reigns
Infant cries
Kill the child.
What have we done?
The walls are weeping
The tears are blood.
Tear down the walls
Destroy everything
God commands this
What have we done?
A Tree in Winter (Winter Tree)
Called out to me
It's spirit song
Rasp-like and a weep of blood.
Family tree
Encircled and enfolded
Male and female at first embracing
To ward against the winter cold
Then melded into one to become many.
Patience you said
Is the best remedy
For every trouble
This fortune cookie philosophy
Is a bloody knife
Over my heart.
No admittance you said
Positively no admittance
Yet you have
Applications in the office.
You could let me in
Yet make me wait
Patience is not the best remedy
For every trouble
It is a bloody knife
Over my heart.
In ordinary Moments
Combing your hair
Washing your hands
Singing to me
A melody so pure
Eating so wonderfully
Drunk with the taste
Like a refugee child upon an overturned
UN food truck by the shore
Food coming in like ocean waves
You a splash in it
Such haste, such concentration
Such joy this taste of you
I love you best
A motion blur of the noisy reckless child.
Abandoned unnoticed in these ordinary moments
In this way I love you best.
Without You (From the Chinese)
There is no land without the sky
There is no family without the land
There is no you without the family
There is no me without you.
Sky and land are we.
Blue Reeds
A quiet song
A delicate song
Heard only by my heart and spirit
Lead me to a grove
Where blue reeds moved in rhythm
To a sway and sensual dance.
They touched, they separated
And then they touched again.
The sway and sensual dance
Of blue reeds in the grove.
Darling one where have you gone?
My husband, lover, brother, son.
Across the seas for glory bound?
To fight, find honor, fortune found?
A letter arrived special post today
In it they mentioned your name
So I called to you in my spirit voice:
Darling one, where have you gone?
Your spirit voice answered shhhhhh
A long sigh and swish in the trees,
A breeze, a light nudge on my shoulders
The wisp of a touch, the hint of smoke in the leaves
And trail dust curling up to redden my eyes
Is how your spirit voice answered me.
Danger of Falling in Love #7 - Unrequited Love
Why do I love thee
Not because you love me
Because if you love me
It does not show.
I sent you love letters
So many love letters
None came back postage due
None came back
I crushed a postman
I created a shortage of stamps
With so many love letters
And none came back
Not one word returned.
March 2009
Brown Eyed Susan
You have a hundred names
None of them are true.
Brown-Eyed Susan
I wait for you.
Can we cross the sea?
Five years on
Brown-Eyed Susan
You wait for me.
I came to shore
seeking intimacy
I discovered sand and sea.
In the sky
A single star.
I studied the star and wondered
If across the sea,
Someone might be
Seeing that same star just like me.
Searching for intimacy just like me.
I sang a quiet song,
A bittersweet melody
With words like
“Are you lonely too?”
Then echoed in the waves
A bass and percussion to my song
Which joined a chorus of breeze and seabirds somewhere
In a voice as one I knew:
“Not lonely I sing for you
Across this sea I sing for you
This space between the me and you an instant
The twinkling of a star
I see the light and there you are”
I returned to bed and slept
Not alone
With you once again in dreams
We met the first time like this
My people brought me to your village
By boat
I was burning with fever
The river was black
Your hut yellow and gold
With smoke and cinders
The mat I lay upon
Gray and red
You fed me bitter tea
You worked on my wounds
Your hands were soft
It felt good to be there
I remember your tears on my body
I tried to thank you
I tried to ask why the tears
But I was spirit then and gone.
April 2009
With a brick it began
There was no plan.
It started with a brick,
A brick and a slap
Of sarcasm
For glue.
Then another brick
And another.
First one from me
Then one from you.
For good measure,
We did the windows too.
Me on my side,
You working for you.
When the windows were done we put in bars
Pretty soon we were through
We created a wall
Where once we were two.
May 2009
Today at 59 (I saved the world)
Today I am fifty-nine
For the first time fifty-nine
Today I bought a bunch
Of flowers
To the florist: Expensive flowers please,
A birthday bouquet for a boy
So she chose wood and thorns and shades of blue.
Today I took myself out for lunch
Wood oven pizza
Thin crust, well done like me
A small salad and good wine.
Today I wrote a poem so sad and strong
it made me cry
Immune to my words thought I
but this one
So powerful it could melt the world
In tears.
To save the world I tried to shred the thing
The shredder overheat and jammed
Oily parts flowed like blood, like tears, like,
I pulled on the poem
The shredder would not let go
I want it back I screamed to the machine
Give me back my poem those words are mine
To release the words could
melt the world in tears
But the shredder groaned
it cried
the words
Tore at its big rusty heart
Made it live then die in a flash of smoke
Razor blades and a confetti of words.
So I took the words
I threw them to the wind
The clouds came
The rains came
The words poured down the street and flowed away
In a wail of weeping and wind.
In the sewers alligators
shed real tears
the words flowed to sea
mixed with the salt and were gone.
At fifty-nine I saved the world.
June
2009
Love or madness
I passed the point
Of knowing
You are within me
A second heart beating in tandem
or demon spirit feeding on my soul
I don’t know.
Surrendering in your arms
Time has no meaning
We are light, we are air
Morning comes
You go.
Faces in the street remind me of you
Remind me all
Stranger’s faces remind me of you
Stranger’s faces the voodoo pins,
I am the doll
Without you time
Is some kind of eternity
Clocks stop
Minutes, seconds in a quantum field of emptiness
A weight I carry
Love or madness
I passed the point of knowing.
There are times when it comes down to this
The freedom of sunlit mornings
Warm with gold and ribbons of amber and orange
A bird outside my window
Singing love songs
Cool air fresh with the scent of pine
Your body beside mine
Warm and comfortable
A gentle reminder; your kiss
We have no better place to be.
Will There Yet Be Love
Will there yet be love
when our skin is the paper
of a sun dried iris
and the beauty we share
exists in mind's eye and memory alone?
July 2009
I will wait to eat although I am hungry
I will not sing although my heart is bursting with song
I will not fly although these wings are strong enough to reach the sky
Chains of fear hold my legs to the ground.
I am a prisoner in a cell maintained by my thoughts alone.
I asked you to release me and you agreed
Then I would not go
There are no guards you pleaded come with me and see
I was frightened of knowing the truth
So I denied your rescue
And you left me alone.
September 2009
Naked (With gratitude to Ricardo Arjona and Wesley Norman)
So this is what it feels like to be naked.
You
know me from my toes to my hair
To how I sleep
To the sound of the struggle
Just breathing makes
Like some ancient steam engine on a difficult incline
Naked
With drool in the night
Mouth open to let the wetness of me
Escape to a pillow
Disgusting.
This is what it feels like to be naked
With pictures of me that amuse you
My neck all wrong and
WTF happened to my face?
Yet you tell me you like them
Love them even
These pictures of me
I am here
Naked with tubes and wires
Blood in bags drip drip dripping down
To painful sores deep inside me
A heart ready to quit
I am naked and you rush to embrace me
Jump start love so strong and pure
I am slammed against the force of it
Eye to eye, I to I
Against pictures of me that amuse you
Pictures of my neck all wrong and
A stranger’s face I see instead of me
Let me learn to love me
As you love me
Lift me to see what you are seeing
That I may deserve your love.
September 22, 2009 In Spring In Yoshino
In Spring in Yoshino
In spring in Yoshino we learned to slow our hearts
To the flow of cherry trees painting mountains
From the bottom to top
Each day a wonder as we
Climbed the hills to see more flowers
At night to effortless sleep
Then awake again to the laughter of children
On their way to school in the morning
The universal language of joy
Children moving in happy dance
Uniforms crisp white, blue,
In Yoshino we drank tea
Beside koi ponds
Marveled at painters strokes, dabs of color
Charcoal and orange the fish
Our hearts at peace like those lazy fish we were
Brushing effortlessly against each other
Our bodies as one
Slowed, relaxed in time
Our lives a precious tea ceremony
While cherry trees painted mountains
We learned to slow our hearts.
October 9, 2009 The Danger of Falling in Love #4 (Desire)
The Danger of Falling in Love #4 (Desire)
The ache of your touch
The sweetness of you
Overpowers my emotions
Like a caramel on a rotten tooth
The heat of you against me
Is a pain as we part
I ache in your absence
I radiate vibrations of you
Like some migraine of love
Exquisite pain of desire
I called your dentist
Looking for a shot
He was out
Howling at the moon.
October 20, 2009 Behind the Veil
Behind the veil
I wonder what you see
Am I seeing you ?
Are you seeing me ?
October 29, 2009 Autistic
There are no words to teach
What you need to know
How to see without looking
To hear the song a heart sings for you
A thousand miles away.
To feel the pain
Your thin knife of silence as you
Look away without wonder
There are no words to teach these things
There are no words.
November 7, 2009 Cherry Leaf
Cherry tree
Now at rest in the sunset
From your blossoms in spring
To your last leaf in fall
You are beautiful.
November 26, 2009
Outpost of Desire
I have this
imaginary friend
Whose sanity went on vacation.
Parked itself at the outpost of my desire.
Just for the weekend
She said.
Just until a few things get sorted out
She said.
Now she nuzzles like a friendly sheep dog
Eager for play.
Knocking over table lamps
Jumping up and knocking me down
Like she means to stay.
Just for the weekend I say
But she whispers
It's a long weekend baby.
Her sanity has taken a ride
To the outpost of my desire
Where the weekends last
One hundred years and counting.
I drink the wine, smash the glass down
Give my sanity a leave of absence
Cut it a fat cheque
With a roadmap sketched on the back
This way to desire.
Written by Ma-Li Calder and Michael Campbell
December 21, 2009
Waiting for My Muse in the Chelsea Hotel
I wait for my muse
In the Chelsea Hotel
With Marc Chagall and Beethoven Fidelis
New York City Winter
Knocks against the window
Rattles the pane
Dylan Thomas’s Fireplace
Is out of service
The winds that took my lover
Move the curtains ghostly
And moan.
My lips grow cold waiting.
Written by Ma-Li Calder and Michael Campbell
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