A single bead I give to you.
Hang it round your neck and keep it safe.
It may be the last remembrance
You have of me.
I go forth into my mind
on a journey of discovery.
None have gone this way before.
They cannot,
for I have the only key
to open the door
into the walled city.
If I lose my way upon the path,
the chances are, I lose my mind.
It is my mind,
my sense,
my reason,
my hope,
my life,
my love,
my self that I am seeking.
I know not what it looks like.
I may not recognise it when I see it.
But the necessity to seek
Is paramount in me.
I have to go
so keep that single bead
around your neck,
for I may have to grasp
at that small reality
to guide me back from my travels,
and seeing it,
I will know
I am on the right path out.
Just a simple touch...
Hearing your voice today,
Has lifted me again
and taken the pain away.
Just a simple touch...
A kind, forgiving word
Has soothed my soul
My prayers are answered.
Just a simple touch
To let me know you're there
Does my heart good
To know that you still care.
Just a simple touch
Quiets the skys again.
Just a simple touch...
Thanks to you, my friend.
It's your touch
That makes me who I am...
Missing your warmth
Makes me start again.
You are the light that guides me
Your touch is like the sun...
When I calmly think of you
My battle, I have won.
There was a time when loneliness
Gripped me by the soul...
Knowing your heart, the love that's there
No longer am I cold.
Used to be, my thoughts were sad, I
felt so sorry and all alone...
But, when you were there for me
My love and life had surely grown.
Now I go about my days
Driven by my love for you...
Accomplishments are all around
Joy experience, my day is through.
Tomorrow, now, I see your light
No longer am I blue,
For you have closed the wound of love...
Thinking...now, of only you.
When I close my eyes, I see your face
When I take a breath, I feel you breathing
When I quietly listen, I hear your song
When I touch my chest, I feel you beating.
When I cry out loud, I feel your pain
When I cry inside, I call your name
When I loose sight, I dream of you
When I awake, I feel the same.
When I see the sun, you are the heat
When I see the moon, you are the peace
When I follow a star, I follow you
When I see the light, my love cannot cease.
When you touch, I am whole again
When you sing, I sing your song
When you kiss, I purse my lips
And when you dream, I tag along.
So, when you hear my voice tonight
And feel the love I hold for you
Believe your heart, your song of love
For when I come, our cries are through.
When you read this...know I love you!
We knew from early on our ways were unlike those
Of friends who lived on farms or in the town,
who went to school:
"The outer creation is as dust upon my feet,"
Said William Blake, who seemed to walk
There with us in New England’s mountains green,
Who saw a light divine in human form:
I saw it in
Dust motes which spun
In the stairwell as on slow afternoons
I deciphered the King James Bible,
Moby Dick, Freud, and science fiction,
Searching for clues to the adults' notions;
Even when everyone had cabin fever and
Outrage rattled my mother’s paintings
(David and Bathsheba looked somewhat astonished)
As angry words shot across the slanted floor
And rolled away into the corners like marbles,
When the heavy scent of typewriter ribbons,
Carbon paper, and the crucial moment
Filled the room: my father's missives--
A lawsuit, a letter being prepared,
An article, a play, a poem;
I watched, I listened to imperative clacking
Until he taught me how to type,
To use the lure and net of words,
To make the typewriter's power my power;
Even in that year when after winter
We returned to deep snow still unmelted,
Climbed the endless frozen mountain,
Toes numb, cheeks ringing with cold,
Found the house boarded, dark, mouse-musty;
When we huddled, frightened, in scratchy blankets
Till a fire was forced through the wood stove and
Some rooms were finally warm again;
That light, born with frog eggs hatched in the pantry,
Grew through realms of summer swimming,
Fruited in sensuous fire of autumn; and
Went with us when we left again
Like migrating birds,
Carefully tying boxes,
Selecting toys, complaining,
Eager to travel yet hating to leave home,
We packed into the black '39 Chevy
And stuffed the tiny plywood trailer
With children and friends, cats and dogs
And cages of bright-colored parakeets.
We lived in Blake’s bright vision when
We saw Spanish moss in the Carolinas,
Heard chanting marshes and calling trains,
When we ate spaghetti cooked in sea water
As we camped along the highway to Florida
Moving one jump ahead of the law
To stay out of public school's
Dark Satanic mills
Like William Blake, and like him
Sometimes we saw angels,
Or, looking in through the car window,
God, in our own image.
That joyous light,
those human features
Blaze in my mind’s concentric circle
Where, by the grace of crazy parents
I still can see with fourfold vision Infinite
for William Blake McClelland born July 14, 1995
"Take the easier path," you hear the critics say.
Tempting, now, as you upon the path proceeding
for the road you chose to tread's a stone-filled way.
Many times you stop to savor a bouquet,
wild-flowers midst the stones, have found a
seeding, then on alone, keep plodding every day.
As the miles pass by, you strengthen day-by-day
your feet grow harder now, no longer bleeding
on this road of choice you travel, a stone-filled
way.
You sense the end cannot be far away
your goal at last, for rest your heart-soul pleading,
still the path alone, you follow every day.
Your limbs grow weary now, your hair grows gray,
yet no regrets, no bitterness, no hope receding
You chose the road to travel, the stone-filled way,
Alone you proudly walked it every day.
Throwing out memories,
and causing paranoia.
I wish life were that simple,
but somehow that's a paradox.
Through time I got to know you,
each seeking to fill the emptiness.
But when we began our journey,
We left no room for each other.
I've said good-bye a thousand times,
both to the past and the present.
Trying to find the other side,
but you're still out of reach.
You haven't sorted through your mess yet,
and I'm tired of going through the garbage.
I'm going for a walk now,
Catch me if you can.
Dark and dingy
Second floor walkup
Brownstone, headstone
Count the echoing cemetery steps
14, 15, 16, top
Kitchenette, bedroomette
Hole in the plaster behind the sink
Out peeks a head
All whiskers
And red B-B eyes
"Hello Lester..."
A scratch at the door
Someone stands in the hallway
"Come in...", a pause, shuffling
"...please, sit down"
A shadow flows in
Taking the only seat in the house
And I realise
I'm alone
My Melanie
My rose petal love
Your soft, silky skin
Would make Aphrodite jealous
Your sweet, bubbling laughter
Would make songbirds
Abandon their music
Your emerald eyes
Flash and sparkle
Pull me into you
I am in chains
I cannot look away
I look at you
And I see myself
A mirror image
Of my soul
If love has a colour
It's red
Heart, blood
Rose, warmth
This is the feeling you give to me
My Melanie
My rose petal love
fallen free
from strange shivers
that tumbled into thoughts
and became BOLD with BRILLIANCE. . .
a fantasy:
woven in a delicate cycle of minds
two different thoughts submerged
drenched
creating the utmost confusion
here is now stripped----
no longer a part of its former mask:
a different portrayal
of the same story
(but at the same time,
it was a dream
that risked too much,
that concluded too little
when one became two)
now, there has always been defined
though it may have existed without my knowing,
and here i find a scene that sits and waits so
- - - p e a c e f u l l y - - -
as it prepares to become my home, with its crisp air
and opportunities
and a friendship
beyond
all
that
can
ever
exist
here is the situation
from thought one to thought two
where years become weeks
and days become few
where miles become inches
where pictures become you
here is my view
from thought one
to thought two
if you could fly away so far
and never come back,
would you?
would you drink the air of a higher place
would you watch from way up to down there and wonder
what makes people walk instead of fly?
maybe we could be birds together
an easy way to escape
magically metamorphosize
into feathers that flap
and a beak that rests so strongly
in between small watchful eyes
we could flap our wings and fly
two little birds that soar in a big way
in a big world
with little visions
and hearts that touch the sky
maybe unfamiliarity is our gift
we fell in love with words
our words fell in love with each other
so who goes there?
maybe people just don't have the time
too busy getting plastic surgery and flaunting money
too busy dancing in Miami Beach's meat market clubs
Diamante was once a fish market
and I wouldn't lie because you're listening
now all they have is raw meat
could I ask for your hand?
I'll never forget you're name
I'd give you love for free
who, me?
I'm nobody
don't ask
you don't know me
but I love you
And, dressed their ideas
of what concept
they wanted to fulfill.
Try to catch
this illusion
for one moment
longer than intended.
The introspection
of the image
to the soul
will challenge you,
to the existence
of the length
in its proceedings.
And, as always
revelation
of our mortality
brings to mind
other questions.
In the metamorphosis
of a butterfly
why do we relate
so well to the alteration?
Is not age
the voice
of change?
And, is not transition
a command
to harness
this cerulean sleep?
Evanescent of course!
And before you know it your reborn again.
Yin and yang yearn for it
and vacant eyes look
forward
to a flicker that it is good for now.
The illumination from mind to the center
to the continual beating to become
more.
I wear the colors
of an autumn hue
warm bunsen burner signals
inside out.
And, burnish
them brightly on
velvet steel of a passion
growing like a shield.
The second skin
it becomes
powerfully in
playful jousting.
To know me, to know us.
As a knight stealing the poorest of days
from an uncultivated existence into something greater.
Storming in gently like a moon's delicate whisper
on the changing light.
But boldly
directing itself
on a steed
of conviction and strength.
We meet on the foreground each day
of holding our own together on the mark.
Releasing all the old,
worn drivel from an ignorant past.
What was
right for them
and a blind circumstance
to keep it dumb
is not the same for us, now.
Clear the path for stenciling
in new uncharted emotions.
Chiming away
for making
their gateway on being knighted,
that they are good.
And it works
in a innocent horizon
the romance of jump starting into
friends now and better friends later.
There’s a demon on my shoulder
He isn’t very tall
There’s a demon on my shoulder
I wish he wasn’t there at all
With his talons digging into me
My demon fast is plant
And he whispers sweet atrocities
That I can hear but others can’t
With his tail wound tightly round my neck
His hand cupped to my ear
He giggles quite maliciously
You can’t ignore those things you fear
He is quite amused should I resist
(He knows my will is weak)
And in the end he always wins
I mime just what he speaks
His scales scrape my sickly flesh
He smiles with vulgarity
Drumming claws atop my void skull
With sharp teeth bared suggestively
He suggests I do things most unsound
I flinch, though do it anyway
Firmly clinging to my slumping shoulders
My demon malevolently stays
There’s a demon on my shoulder
I think I must be going mad
And the more that people don’t believe me
The more that he is glad
I once knew a place through rivers of ink.
Silent words flowing round cool churning bends.
Written whispers floating from the river's
Heart find refuge in ageless winds and rest
Along the knarled roots of ancient oaks.
Here geometric structures lend only
To a killing of divine artistry
And disrupt a harmonic symphony
In which the sun and silver moon may end
There relentless plight with neon lights,
And the river's heart is heard to murmur.
Here the poet knows; Here the muse has been.
A twig in fast currents and lazy pools
Records on tree's skin as the poet's friend.
It filled with warmth and then was whole
A place I didn't know was there
Til it was filled with tender care
My biggest dream, my biggest fear
That you've become by far too dear
And I gave way to fantasy
Denying our reality
If the dream should find an end
And I lose more than "just a friend"
A part of me will stay with you
I hope you know my love was true
This I choose knowing the cost
To risk it all, expetcting loss
Just knowing what we have is real
Is worth the future pain we'll feel
If one day we must say goodbye
Continue living in a lie
Waking in still hours of morning
Creature of habit, that am I
Though I do not find you waiting
Be possibly in spirit nigh
Feeling mind and soul embodied
Warmed by tenderness' embrace
How find me now so well encaptured
By one whose never seen my face
She took her life on a Sunday.......What was I doing that day?
The shades were drawn closed in her bedroom,
Though the sun shone brightly behind.
She was shutting out the world for the last time.......Had I called her on the phone that week?
Her letters were written; her dishes were washed.
The fish had been fed and kissed goodbye.
She took one last look and lay down in her bed.......Surely she knew how I loved her...?
Seven amber bottles stood at attention on her nightstand.
A glass of cool water was beginning to drip sweat,
As if anxious and impatient to serve.......Why hadn't I seen the true nature of her despair?
As she swallowed her pills, several at a time,
She felt the sting of tears on her cheek and paused.
She really hadn't expected to cry.......Oh! How she must have been tortured and broken.
A burp escaped her lips but she didn't think to giggle.
As she pulled her blankets to her chest, she sighed.
The thought of her own strength and resolve made her smile.......Dear God, she must have felt so alone in her pain.
She pulled her paperback book out from under the pillow
But, within seconds, lost interest and set it aside.
She had decided to close her eyes and enjoy the ride.......Still, how could she leave me like this --- now broken myself?
As she felt her heart's ache subside and her senses dim,
She allowed her thoughts to travel 300 miles to her family.
She wondered if they would cry at her funeral.......Would she have stayed had I asked her to? Didn't I?
The End for her was like the Beginning and the Middle:
Private. Efficient. On her terms. By force of will.
It was her final moment of triumph.......Has she finally found the peace she longed for?
It was a Sunday.
Wishing wells ...
scattered souls..
hold nothing I used to know.
Places I dream of,
go on in life-
and do not sing about me.
There is coldness in your eyes..
Nothing matters enough to care.
They only reflect empty bottles..
and yet I am captured
and I seem to hear
inside dull aching eternity
every word they say.
