Monday, 24 July 2023

Jim's Subway 24: About Last night...

What day was it?
  It didn't matter because Jim couldn't remember anything, in fact he had actually forgotten his name.
  He was sitting down in the corner of some street, somewhere in Fenwick, with an empty bottle of gin between his legs.  He had gotten there...Somehow?
  It gave him headache to try even thinking about anything, so he just resigned the past to the fates, and decided to focus on the present, and how he was going to haggle another drink out of his mater Tipsy...
  Maybe he could beat him in another game of cards...
  Now that was an idea!
  Splendid!  Straight to business then!
  As Jim waddled back to the pub a huge brute of a man stepped up from behind and looked like he was going to grab him!
  Of course Jim ran for his life.  As he ran this bruiser gave chase:
  'Get back here!' he cried.  'I want a word with you!'
  Jim's heart was in his mouth...
  But he was determined not to give up.  He ran and he ran.
  And then he tripped and he fell.
  Eventually he was cornered, and knowing he had been defeated Jim bowed and hid his head in his hands.  
  It was time for him to take his medicine...
  The massive brute man stopped, and then started panting, obviously exhausted.  When he got his breath back he started to speak again.
  'That was a great time we had last night!' he said.
  Jim asked the man what he was talking about.
  'What do you mean?' said Jim.  'What do you mean we had a good time?  Have you confused me with someone else possibly?'
  'No way!' the brute yelled.  'I would never be able to confuse you with anybody else, Jim Boy!  That's what you told me to call you, wasn't it?  Our boy Jim!'
  Jim wondered whether or not he was suffering from another bad dream - so he knocked his head against a nearby wall to see if it would wake him up.
  It did not, alas for him...
  'You are the best mate I have ever had,' the brute continued.  'I have never had such a laugh not with anyone else ever before!  Man!  Whoosh!  When you smashed that shop window and jumped through and stole all those chocolate bars!  My stomach hurt from all the laughing I did!'
  'Right slow down!' Jim replied.  He needed to take a breath and have time to think.  '...I can't remember much of what happened last night...  I know I had a drink... or two.  Maybe if you remind me of your name it might kick my memory back into action?'
  'My name is Beverly Price but most people call me Butch,' the brute replied.  'To be honest I prefer Butch.  My mum called me Beverly because she thought I was a girl at first, till I grew all big and huge like I am right now.  So just call me Butch, if you please!'
  Butch.  Yes.  Jim still couldn't remember who the man was.
  In fact, he couldn't remember anything after finding out that his best friend Jo was dead.
  How much had he actually drank?
  Jim dreaded to think about it!  
  He must have gotten so horrible wasted that he blacked out - and in that happy lost moment of his life met Butch and gotten up to all sorts of nonsense!
  It wouldn't of been the first time something like that had happened...
  'Okay Butch now listen,' said Jim.  'I have got a headache - it feels like the Yellowstone National Park has just erupted super nova inside my skull right now, so you are going to have to bear with me.  I really don't remember much about what happened last night.  Sorry about that old chap.'
  'You mean you can't remember anything?  No way!  That's awful!  I was so excited!  Especially after you started talking about how you stole a secret recipe for a drink so wonderful that the world would literally die for it!  You told me we were going to brew it, sell it, and male our fortune!'
  Jim had said all of that?
  He gulped.
  Jim had REALLY messed up o this time, and that was no mean feat for a man whose life has been nothing but a disaster piece from the day he was born!  Right from the moment when a sloppy nurse got him mixed up with another baby and Jim ended up spending the next fifteen years of his life with the wrong parents, until they found out the truth and he was kicked out onto the streets.
  Butch started clicking his knuckles menacingly:
  'Don't tell me you were lying about all that recipe stuff?  I was rather looking forward to making a fortune...'
  'O no, Butch!  I wasn't lying to you.  It's all quite true.  Forgive me Butch, it's just I don't feel that well, maybe if I had another drink it might, you now, perk me up a bit.  You know the old saying, hair of the dog, and all that?'
  Butch suggested they should both head down town and buy a pint.
  Jim explained that the didn't have any money, and demonstrated this by pulling out his pockets.  
  Butch said it didn't matter, that he had a few notes in his pocket, he had been paid the other day from work, and that he was more than happy to buy his new entrepreneurial friend a drink!
  Jim couldn't remember ever meeting, let alone talking to someone like Butch, ever.  in fact since his arrival in Fenwick he had never seen such a man ever before!  But when the mighty gorilla offered to buy Jim a drink, Jim smelt a potential mug, and thought it would be a good idea to keep the man around for a while...
  After all, having such a beast of man in his company would help deter potential enemies from interfering with his amazing plan to drink and rot the rest of his life away.
  Back at the Short Tailed Fox alehouse, which was Jim's home in those days, Jim drained a stout with a shot of whiskey, and sadly placing his empty glass down on the table he still found that he couldn't remember anything that had happened the night before, so he decided to go along with things.
  In other words he was going to lie and pretend that he and Butch were best friends!
  The truth was too dangerous a thing to stand by when one was living in the streets of Fenwick...
  'So what's it all about, Butch?' 
  'I want us to talk ab out this exciting new recipe of yours,' Butch replied.  'You said it is the best thing ever!  The best drink you ever tasted, that's what you said!  I can't wait to try it myself!  I can hardly sleep I am so excited by the thought of it!  It's so nice to be friends with someone who has a talent!'
  Butch was a man perhaps in his late twenties?  Yet he talked like a child.
  The man could squash him like a pancake with his left hand alone, Jim knew this, but Jim also felt that this was a man he could wrap around his finger if he was careful and utilised the right words.  
  So a plan started formulating in his brain...
  'Yes this is the recipe,' said Jim, pulling the crumpled note out of his pocket.  'Like I said it's the best drink ever!  Utterly marvellous stuff!  Amber nectar for real.  With a sip or two it sends you right up there with them clouds, yes!  It's that perfect!'
  Butch started clapping his hands together like a giddy child.  'We must make some!'
  'All in good time Butch,' Jim responded.  'We are going to need the right equipment first!'
  'I can help out there.  I don't mind robbing a shop or two if I have to.  I have done it before whenever I needed something I couldn't afford.  My gaff runs the dock and pays me beer money for unloading scrap off the boats, but I find myself running out of paper by the end of the month so I just beak into Ted's old shop if I fancy a chocolate bar, or ruff up a fella if I am shot of change.'
  'You have never been reported to the police for any of this?'
  'They wouldn't dare do that to me,' Butch responded.  'I threaten to kill them and burn their homes down.  They believe me as well!'
  'I can imagine that they do,' Jim returned.
  'It's great doing business in the alleys around the docks,' Butch continued.  'I like a fight, yah know.  If my pockets ever run empty I just go out and ruff a few lads up, there's always somebody about, some whipper snapper running his mouth.  I rearrange the formation of his teeth, give him a nice pretty old smile, and in exchange he'll hand me his paper.  There's often a bit of blood on the notes, but the barman here in the old Short Tailed Fox doesn't seem to mind that.  And if he does mention it I just stare at him and he backs off.'
  'You sound like a fine man,' Jim replied.  'So you don't mind stealing things?'
  'I am happy to do it,' the giant responded.
  'Marvellous!  Okay.  So this is the plan.  If we are going to brew this fine new drink of mine, this utterly heavenly beverage - the drink of the gods!  We are going to need the right apparatus.  I know where to get it from!  But first I need to get rid of the owner.  I see your look now, Butch, but beating him up isn't enough.  I need to get rid of him indefinitely!  I think I know how to do this.  Once he is gone, I need you to break into his room and lift all of his gear.  Can you do that, Butch?'
  Butch responded readily with a salute.
  What fine little soldier he was indeed, thought Jim.
  Jim smiled, and chuckled inside, and then he said, 'I want to shake your hand, Butch, but I am scared you will break all my fingers so I won't!  But I think the two of us are going to shake up sleepy old Fenwick Town quite nicely.  O yes!  We are going to take over the streets!  I can see it now!  Good times lie ahead for us and for this city!'
  'I am with you to the end in all things,' Butch replied eagerly.  'O wait!  I have just found another note in my pocket?  Fancy a second shot of whiskey, fella?'
  Jim told the man that he would appreciate another whiskey very much!

  "I think you and I are going to get on very well indeed, Butch...!"  (Jim circa XX33AD)

***

(Remember!  All spelling errors and grammatical mistakes are intentional - the author 😆)

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Friday, 21 July 2023

Haunted Hotel

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Tuesday, 11 July 2023

Jim's Subway 23: He's not our friend...

Jim carried out his plan to the full and to the end.
  After dumping the canister down by the subway he stood and waited for the next train out of Fenwick...
  And then he remembered that he had forgot about an old friend...
  He had to find Jo and warn him about Ivan's ridiculously insane and stupid plan to poison the whole city.
  Jim had no idea where Jo was, but the man was surprisingly easy to find in the end, lying down near the end of a back alley, looking rough, bedraggled, and half dead.  Jim lifted him up, but Jo was only barely able to speak!
  He was withdrawing from the G-Juice...
  He might not even have long left to live!
  When Jim held the dilapidated barely functioning carcass he felt a deep feeling of shame.
  He had forgot about his old friend.  He had left him to rot.  And Jim knew that it was his fault the man was in that horrible state.  If the man did die, and it really looked that Jo was going that way, then it was all on Jim.  Jim would have blood on his hands!  
  'Don't die Jo,' he said.  'We are going to get out of this place.'
  'But I like it here,' Jo replied weakly.
  'You can't possibly mean that?' Jim replied.
  'I've never had such a great time anywhere else than here,' Jo continued.  'All that drinking and messing around.  It's brilliant!  And you know what?  That Ivan character is a fine man!  I might even go as far as to say that I actually love him.  He introduced me to the beautiful G-Juice that has improved my life so much, and it he is just so caring and generous.  We were lucky to find him, Jim.  He has been the making of us!'  
  When Jim heard him say this he shook Jo and then slapped the man around the face.  'I will hit again even harder if you speak such nonsense anymore,' said Jim, threateningly.  'Damn it, Jo!  You are even more stupid than I am, and that is an accomplishment because I am a pretty stupid guy at this point in time.'
  Jo didn't understand what he was talking about.
  Jim explained:
  'Ivan is not our friend.  He doesn't like anybody.  In fact he he is right now planning to poison this entire city.  So you see, he is actually very dangerous, and we can't afford to be around him anymore.'
  Jo listened to Jim but he still wasn't having any of it.  
  'You don't know what you are talking about,' said Jo.  'Ivan is a fine man.  And you know what else?  When you left us the other night to go on your crazy drunken rampage across the whole city, Ivan took me in, and he looked after me.  When I started to get the shakes he supplied me with as much drink as I needed.  He was so kind to me.  I remember him saying to me: "I need you to keep going, just keep going a little longer."  He was so generous and thoughtful he even injected the G-Juice into my veins.  That's what kind of a gentle man he is.  I will never betray him!'
  'Damn it Jo!  your brain must be turning into a marshmallow,' Jim replied.  'He wasn't helping you.  He was giving you an overdose!  You need help, medical help.  I need to get you out of Fenwick and to a hospital right away!'
  'No!  Take me to Ivan!  He is a scientist!  He knows what he is doing - he will help me.'
  Jim just could not talk any sense into Jo.   The man had clearly lost his mind.
  Ivan had done something to him...
  'Alright Jo if you want to go then go,' said Jim.  'But I am not hanging around here.  I am leaving on the next train.  It's up to you what you do next but I advise you to take heed even of just a little of what I have to say.  You've been a good mate, Jo and we've had a laugh and had fun having a drink but you really need to get out of Fenwick.  You can't stay here.  This Ivan fella, he's not nice.  He is a complete nutter, and is absolutely not your friend.'
  Jim let Jo go.  
  Jo started to waddle away around the corner, but then he suddenly stopped, and turning about he came back, and then he slipped a note into Jim's pocket.  'I have been a better friend to you,' he said, and after that he finally left.
  
Thirty minutes later Jim was looking out of the window of a carriage, sat somewhat wonky on his seat in order to avoid agitating his poisoned and expanded right kidney.  Sigh!  That poor old organ did a fine job filtering the alcohol but only at the cost of an aching back!  O yes!  Sitting down could be a chore in itself when one was as bad a drunk as Jim!
  Jim could feel the shakes setting in again - his fingers were quivering away once more.  
  Jim was looking out of the window waiting to see Fenwick go goodbye into the distance.  He had a plan.  Drive as far away form the city as possible, get into hospital, get some treatment for his shakes, and then get madly drunk on whiskey until all memory of Fenwick was burned out of his brain.
  It seemed like a good plan to Jim.  He couldn't wait to put it into action.
  Come on train move!  MOVE!
  DAMN!  Why wasn't the train moving?
  Just then a passenger sat next to Jim.
  It was his old frenemy DC Peddler!
  O no!
  What did that twaddling oaf want now?
  Beside Mr Gustav, Peddler was indeed the last person Jim ever wanted to see again.
  'Are you leaving Fenwick too?' he asked the meddling detective.
  'No one is leaving Fenwick today,' he replied.  'I bet that makes you very unhappy, Jim.  More than unhappy, I imagine.  But we have had to shut the city down.  No vehicle is entering or leaving Fenwick today, or foreseeable future.  The train tunnel as been blockaded as well.  You see, we have a murderer on the loose in the city.  O yes.  There has been another death, Jim, and you are at the top of my list of suspects.'
  'Why?  I have been in a train all day.  And look at my hands?  They are shaking like crazy!  I couldn't kill not even myself in such a state as this!'
  'Guilty conscience eh Jim?' DC Peddler returned.
  'Where do you get all this hatred for me from, Peddler?'
  'This was a peaceful city under my watch.  Never a crime.  Then you arrive and then suddenly have two murder cases on my hands.  Interesting, he? Now you can see where I make the connection.'
  'Not really.'
  'Don't act the fool, Jim.  I don't have to be Sherlock Holmes to connect the dots.  Now I am going to need you to leave the train and follow me.  I am going to need you to take a look at the body.  Now unless you want me to arrest you on the spot I suggest you get up and move!'

Jim worst fears were soon to be confirmed - his nightmares had been snatched from the back of his mind and fully forged into reality before his eyes.
  For the dead man that lay sprawling in the street in front of them was indeed Jo!
  His old friend Jo!
  The man had finally succumbed.
  Jim presumed it was of an overdose...
  But DC Peddler told him that the man died of asphyxiation.  
  'Your poor companion was smothered to death,' said DC Peddler.  'Someone cornered him in at the end of the street over there, and by observing those tracks on the floor he was then dragged to the bottom of this alley here, where his assailant proceeded to chock the life out of the man, and presumably ran away leaving the body right here for a member of the public to discover in their horror.  I think the person who committed the deed went on the run and proceeded to make any attempt to leave the city.  I think he went straight to the train station to get a lift as far away form the crime scene as possible.  And then i find you, sitting in the train, Jim.  Like I said, I don't need to be a master detective with an IQ of 300 and a photographic memory to connect the dots.  My 50 IQ is enough to help me see you for what you are, Jim:  A filthy murderer and a dog.  And a coward to boot, as here I found you trying to run away.  Are you going to continue to deny your crimes?'
  'I didn't do this,' Jim replied.  'I am not capable of murder.  Again take note of my quivering hands.  Look how they are shaking right now.  You know what that means?  It means that I am a drunk, nothing more.'
  'Maybe you were drunk when you killed your friend?'
  'No!' Jim retorted.  'I won't let you pin this madness on me, Peddler.  You can do whatever you want, close the train station, put the city under a curfew, but you will not arrest me not without the weight of any solid evidence!  Prove to me that I killed this man right here and I will let you arrest me.  I will go willingly into my prisoncell.  But until then I will walk free and there is nothing you can do to stop me!'
  'You are a real piece of work you know that, Jim?' DC Peddler returned.  'You might have slipped through my fingers this time.  But there is always NEXT time.  You are going nowhere, Jim.  You are never going to leave this city.  And with time permitting I will find what I need and once I do I will reel you in.  O yes!  Just watch this space, you young whippersnapper.  You are a beast, that's what you are Jim, a beast that requires chaining.  But I am the man who is going to forge the chains that will eventually, in good time, bring you down.  There is a cell in my prison with your name on it, Jim.  It's getting cold every hour.  I think it's about time I warmed it up!'
  'Threaten me all you want Peddler, but on this day I am still a free man!  So I am leaving right now to go to the pub to have a drink,' Jim replied.  'You can continue to carry out your investigations but I did not kill this man!  And I will say it again I did not kill this man!  Now I will say good day and go away, you irritating little man!  I don't want to see you again for a long time!'

Back home at the Short Tailed Fox bar, Jim was propped up on a chair and in deep thought.  He didn't have any money with him but he was eventually able to win a drink out of Tipsy Neat by beating the old sot in a card game.  
  As Jim sat and drank he felt something crunching in his trouser pocket so he put his hand in to see what it was.  It was Jo's note.  Jim remembered about it, finally!
  So Jim took it out and started to read it.
  He read it fully and freely.
  At first Jim thought it was some kind of shopping list...
  Then he realised that it was a list of ingredients that he was looking at.
  And then it finally shook him!
  He was holding Ivan Gustav's secret formula for producing G-Juice!


  God bless you Jo wherever you are!





(Remember!  All spelling errors and grammatical mistakes are intentional - the author 😆)

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Wednesday, 28 June 2023

'The Golden Are Here No More'

[Note from author:  This is work in progress - I will continue to edit this poem in future]

'The Golden Are Here No More'


The stars in the ships are flown...
they row no more and the songs are gone;
our feet are on the grass,
now just me and you and the sun
so let's run - 
and dance in the light as one.

The jewels in thy coat led us here,
in your light we did steer,
and on the shores if we did stumble, 
or ever we forgot to remain humble,
it was your hand that picked us up.

And we saw the glass crystallised in the fields so vast,
with each sunrise the deeper our wonder grew.
We could never have imagined that we would have been the last,
to see the clouds, draw over you.

Steer closer old memory...

I remember you, 
when you first saw the view.
the gold of it was in your eyes!
In your eyes was the amber hue - 
glowing atween the skies of blue,
I will always remember the joy of it in your eyes.

the joy your face wore, 
was the one thing I lived for,
the music you played in the morn,
made me realise why I was born,
you brought life to the fields.
your fancies and your whims,
the light in your limbs,
I cannot believe we were once so young
and joined as one
but now there is no sound in the fields.

And so your eyes are gone
and in them also the light in the fields which once shone.
The golden view has lost its fields of hay,
melted by those who have lost their way...

There is no one left to see me,
And nobody left to hear me,
But I can still remember the old view,
As I sing these words for you:

Crystallised in water on the arms of the yews,
grown from the dews where the golden meadows fare...    
I remember you reflected in the crystallised dews,
in my memory of the golden meadows fair.

Here I stand - The last one to care...
But I will always remember you,
Watching the sun go down,
standing in the golden meadows fair.

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Saturday, 24 June 2023

Jim's Subway 22: It's up to you now Jim...

Sometimes you have to be strong, even when you are weak...
  It is the only way...
  I don't know what I am going to say...  But I am definitely going to do something...
  I have to, for my sanity if nothing else...
  I cannot work with or for a murderer...
  DC Peddler needs the slightest excuse to arrest me, and I won't give it to him by collaborating with a homicidal maniac!
  
Jim slowly made his way back to the The Ritz.
  He would have liked to have stopped for a drink, to stiffen the old nerve ends, but he didn't have any money and didn't feel like begging, so once he was through the door he walked right up to the lab.
  Ivan was inside.  
  He was standing inspecting a silver canister.  
  This was something new.  It must have been placed there earlier that day while Jim was away.
  The canister stood almost about the height of a man.
  Looked about the right size to put a man inside...
  Jim was scarred.
  What was Ivan planning?
  Why was the thing in the lab at all.
  He had a feeling Ivan was about to explain everything, so he didn't say anything.  He just closed the door and stood in the middle of the room and waited for the other man to talk.
  It as all he could do.
  Ivan didn't look at Jim:
  'This container is full of G-Juice,' he said.  
  'Well that is a lot of G-Juice,' Jim replied.  'I could do with a drink now you mention it.'
  'No drinking for you,' Ivan replied, coldly.  'The contents of this barrel were not prepared for the pleasures of your gullet, Mr Jim.  No.  I am going to poison the city.  And I want you to help me do it.'
  It took several good long seconds for Jim to process what the other man had just said.  
  And even after those long seconds had disappeared he still didn't understand the meaning behind the words, poison and city.
  What was the madman getting at?  Did he have serious intentions on poisoning the city?
  No...  It couldn't be?  No one would be insane enough to try something so horrible?
  Not even ivan was capable of something so dreadful!
  'That is exactly my plan,' Ivan responded like he had just read Jim's mind.  'We are going to pour this barrel into the canal - the canal connects to the water infiltration system that is in turn connected to every pipe in the city, it is one of those design flaws the architects of Fenwick overlooked when they were building the place.  Flaw that it is it will aid my plans, for on the morrow when the folks of Fenwick turn on their taps every soul in the city will become hopelessly drunk.  So we are going to poison the canal...  Did I say we?  Sorry.  I meant you - yes indeed - because you are going to do the deed.  In lieu of services.'
  'Please.  Being a drunk renders one's memory somewhat wobbly,' Jim replied, 'But,' he continued, 'what services am I paying for exactly?'
  'I killed your worst enemy,' Ivan returned.  'I removed him from your life indefinitely.  The Jon is gone.  How nice for you.  And now you are going to pay me back.'
  'Why can't we do it together?'
  'I can't risk getting caught.'
  'Nice!' Jim responded.  'So you are fine with me going to prison, hey?  How very kind of you!  To think the other day I was finally starting to get somewhere with DC Peddler, and now you are intent on spoiling our new happy relationship.  Your a piece of work for sure, Ivan.'
  'I don't care, ivan responded.  'I just need you to do the deed.'
  JIm heard this and shook his head in disbelief.  He couldn't believe the madness of the situation he was stuck in.  He calmed, swallowed, took and breath and said, 'Has this been your plan all along?  It has, hasn't it?  You have been planning this for a long time.  I can see it in your eyes.  Damn you!  Jo and I were guinea pigs weren't we?  It makes sense, sort of.  You were running and experiment.  You wanted to try see what the effects of G-Juice in unwitting fools and Jo and I fit the bill just fine!  And once you knew that your drink worked you reeled us in.  Once we had become hopelessly addicted we became your playthings.  All in preparation for this.'
  Ivan didn't deny anything.  Actually Ivan admitted that Jim had successfully worked out his entire plan!
  'There is another reason why you are going to want to poison the canal,' Ivan continued.  'You are poisoned.  Your body is currently in the process of withdrawing.  In two days, maybe less than that, you will experience a massive seizure that will most definitely be very uncomfortable, and will very like kill you.  But don't worry yourself, Jim.  I have a very special bottle hiding somewhere.  It's a special reserve, probably the best G-Juice you will likely ever taste.  It's yours after you have completed the task I have given you.  Once the job is done the bottle will be yours.  Until then, you are living on borrowed time.  So I suggest less chat and more work.  What say you, Jim?'
  'Why? are you doing this?'
  'Because I have the power to do it,' Ivan replied.
  Jim couldn't believe it...
  The man had no motive, no goal...  He was just being a piece of scum for the mere sake of it!
  Unbelievable!
  'You are a proven homicidal maniac, and I am scared of you Ivan.  If that was your intent, to terrify me, then congratulations you have won this round!  But even though I am scared, I am not stupid!  I won't do this.  If the withdrawal symptoms kill me then so be it.  Yes, you heard it here from my own mouth - I would rather die than poison an entire city.  So threaten me all you like but I won't have any part in this madness.'
  'Listen to you!  Speaking like some kind of priest.  You are a fool and I curse you!  Seriously.  Let me ask you this: what do you actually owe this city?  How many friends have you made since your arrival?  None.  But plenty of enemies.  DC Peddler wants you locked up for life.  And he will get his way given time.'
  'then I won't give him time,' Jim responded.  'Look, Ivan, I am not interested.  When I came to Fenwick all I wanted to do was escape my job and get drunk.  That's always been the plan for me.  I just want to get drunk.  Ecoterrorism has never been one of my life aspirations.  I might come across as a bit crazy, but I do have a conscience, and if I was responsible for poisoning hundreds of innocent people I know I would not be able to live with myself.  So you can count me out of your schemes, Ivan.  I am done with this.  All I have ever wanted was to enjoy myself and this is not enjoyment right now.  That is why I am leaving.  I am going back home...'
  'You will never leave Fenwick whole,' Ivan replied.  'I will find a way of setting you up.  I will give DC Peddler the keys to your cell!'
  'You have got nothing on me, Ivan!  You threats are as worthless as a stunted wombat.  Now get out of my way.'
  Ivan was not going to let Jim go without a fight:
  'When you got drunk last night you broke into a house and attacked the owner,' he pressed.  'You don't remember, you were that wasted.  But the camera that recorded you remembers.  O yes!  It's got the whole scene painted fully in its memory.  I will hand the camera over to DC Peddler, and then it will be. over for you!  Burglry and assault will fetch you ten years in Fenwick.  Fancy spending ten years rotting in a cell.  Do you have any idea what life is like in prison?  A small man like you won't last nine days.  Once the prison boys figure you out they will serve you up on a platter.  Do you fancy being served on a platter?  I will hand this fate to you freely if you deny me!'  
  Jim had to admit Ivan had him over a barrel, if the story of the video footages was indeed true, and Ivan could have easily been making it all up but he didn't want to take the risk.
  'Fine.  I will do it.  I will take the silver barrel and start right away.'
  'I knew you would see sense,' Ivan returned.  'Turn it on its side and it will roll quite well.'
  Jim was shaking his head as he started to roll the damn silver barrel down the steps of the hotel.
  As Jim headed out onto the streets Ivan called him:
  'The lid at the top will screw off!  Then just pour away!  Return when the deed is done and I will fetch your reward for you!'
  Jim was still shaking his head as he rolled the barrel across the street.
  Then he turned around and made his way for the subway...
  Before he had finally agreed to do the job Jim already had a plan cooking!
  It was rolling around in his head right then as he rolled the casket of doom along the gloom of the proceeding street:
  I will dump the damn thing by the station and make a run for it...
  Jim thought it was a good plan.  
  Actually it was the only thing he could do!
  Soon this nightmare will be over and I will be home again, safe and sound!  I will be stretching on my sofa with a glass of a real drink - whiskey, something like that!  How fine that will be!
  I just hope Ivan isn't following me...


(Remember!  All spelling errors and grammatical mistakes are intentional - the author 😆)

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Friday, 9 June 2023

Jim's Subway 21: The last Toddy for the evening


That man is a wretch.  And he is scum...
  This is what Jim was thinking as he walked away from the street where Ivan had just collard him.
  Jim was still a little shaken by the unpleasant encounter.
  He thought he needed a stiff drink to steady his nerves, but he figured he was too angry to drink.
  That's right  You heard it heard first.  Jim was too busy being angry at Ivan that he coukldn't even find the energy to drink!
  What a revelation indeed.
  Eventually the voice in his mind started to rage something along the lines of this:
  I don't hate Ivan as much as I ever hated Jon, not by a long stretch, I am glad that man is dead, but I would rather share a drink with DC Peddler than that weird stuffy white-coat wearing maniac.  Who does he think he is, going around like his Boris Karloff playing the mad scientist role in some dusty antiquated horror movie.  He's a caricature!  He lives in fantasyland!  He was a curiosity before, but now I find myself not liking him very much.  Grabbing me in the streets and throwing threats in my face!  I am not his slave nor will I ever be!  Damn the man!  But I have to be careful of him...  We know what he is now...   We know what he is really capable of.  These are dark times indeed.
  And then he thought:
  What have I done?  What have I gotten myself into?  
  And all for the love of the taste and the feel of the G-Juice.  Nothing like the feel of the G-Juice living in ones veins!
  Is it worth it?
  O Yes it is!
  Jim thought.
  Just at that moment Toddy stepped up out of the shadows of the Subway.  'I thought I would pop in to say goodbye,' he said.
  'How nice of you,' Jim replied.  'Goodbye it is then.  It was nice meeting you, once.  O, and thank you for saving my life back then...  Without that whiskey I surely would have had a seizure and died.'
  'Yes indeed,' said Toddy. 'Now listen up, I have a word or three for you.  Rod's a fine man, he might be a useful companion to you in the future.  He's also rich.  It's very important to have rich friends here in Fenwick, for better or worse - you will find that out one day.  And if you have to drink G-Juice, which I know you will, again, and again, and again, do it slow - take it in, inch by inch.  Appreciate it, saviour it - don't get drunk on it, not at least in the first five minutes.  Give yourself a chance to get drunk.  You will find things go better for you if you take these cautious measures.'
  'Thank you for the advice,' said Jim.  'Yes I remember Rod.  I will pay him a visit sometime.'
  'Good man,' Toddy replied.  'You won't regret it.  So is there anything else you would like to talk about?'
  'Not really.  O I guess I don't mind sharing with you how much I really hate Ivan.  Yes, I really hate that man.  He killed Jon.  DC Peddler thinks I am the murderer, but I need to convince him otherwise.'
  'That's going to be hard,' said Toddy.  'Peddler is not an easy man to convince about anything.  I mean his own mother couldn't convince him that he could tie up his own shoes and he pays people to do it for him this day.  Now listen up.  Peddler is not a nice guy, I know, but Ivan is worse, and definitely far more dangerous.  Take my advice, I know Fenwick and its folk, and you should keep Peddler on your side.  You do hat by keeping him sweet.'
  'And how do I do that?'
  'Dig around for dirt on Ivan.  I bet with enough effort you can grab a fistful of the stuff!  And when you have a good amount of that super filthy dirt in your hand spread it all over Mr Peddlers face.  Spread it fast and furious, let him take it in, let him smell it, stuff it right up his ugly nostrils so that he cannot ever avoid the smell!  When the smell is finally bad enough our man will take action, and reel your other man in.  And that will be the end of it.'
  Jim thought about it for a few seconds, but then a huge lump of doubt knocked on his head like an acorn falling from a tree.  'NO Ivan will mean no G-Juice...  And we can't have that.'
  And as if he had heard his voice Toddy pipped up in answer:
  'Then steal the recipe,' he said.  
  He spoke quite casually about it.
  Jim didn't know how to respond so he just stood there where he was and looked and confused and useless.  (Yes, he was all those things right then).
  'Don't look so dumb, Jim,' Toddy continued.  'You are indeed a fool as most people are, but I know inside my gut that you are not a COMPLETE fool.  There is some energy in you, I can feel it, I can also see it in your actions.  I mean you have survived as a complete stranger in Fenwick this long, you have got to have something about you to pull that off.'
  'So stand up and be proud of yourself, Jim.  'The city of Fenwick is yours for the taking!  You can grab it, and milk it for all it is worth.  You can wake it up, shake it about and shake every penny out of it.  But you have to want to do it!  And I think you do, Jim.  That's why you took the train here.  You wanted to escape your dead end job and find your fortune.  And here you are.  And your fortune is there but you need to fight just a little bit to get it.  And G-Juice is the key.  You like it.  Other people will like it also.  You can sell it to them, Jim.  Wake up, idiot, and be that thing you know you can be in your mind.'
  'But... I can't steal... '
  'Yes you can,' Toddy pressed on.  'Are you a nice person Jim?  Is anyone out there in the streets of Fenwick really a nice person?  I think we both know the answer to that one, eh?  So wake up, lad, and do your business like everyone else.  Yes?  Do you hear me?  Good!  Now before I slink back forever into the swamps of the Subway remember, it's you vs everyone else - forever!  Do what must be done...'
  Jim listened to these in stone silence, and when he decided it was time to reply he turned round and found that Toddy was gone.  
  Gone forever!
  But Jim knew now what he had to do...
  VERY WELL -
  Said the voice in his head:
  I SHALL LEARN TO STEAL...

  (Remember!  All spelling errors and grammatical mistakes are intentional - the author 😆)

Previous part here
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Also take a look at:
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Play Give 'em Hell
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Witches Brew a short text based adventure game!
Also take a look at:
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My Books









  



 

Monday, 29 May 2023

Words of Life (THIS IS AN ONGOING WORK)







Here then...
NOTE:  I sometimes write several variations of my poems.  I will reference this in the writings ahead.  Thank you, Sean Wadley.

A soul is more than just thoughts and language.

IN and out of Anxiety - OR - Just flow with it - OR - Neither?

All that history... all that energy... left alone and lost...
Yet the idea of it is reflected in our hopes - and in our hope our will is derived, and the shapes of old can live again -

Round and around, like the rocks, like the stars, like the earth, like the moon, like time.


I think the future of the world and all its things in a thousand years later will be the same as now, and also very different.

There it is between Earth, bone and wood - the lines of the artist; the etching of the great struggle to be heard and seen in a world lost in the vapours of time...

There are thoughts silent and strange, and words unspoken, in the dark where the light shines: Think between the lines and live as a sunbeam shining on the depths of space.

Through it, past it, over it, and BEYOND. For there will always be something beyond what we know - a horizon we have never seen before.

And often and stop to think of that thing that broods between the empty spaces of thought...

Think of your mind being like a river and when your mind gets all polluted with bad stuff flush it out; let it fall over the side of the high rocks - fall into oblivion, and be cleansed in the clear crystals that spray across the fields of the fresh green grass.

For there is a thing, between the sun and the moon, that we like to see and sing, and call it starlight, where dreams are born and hope kindled anew...

1. The view felt familiar. I felt I should know the place upon which I look. But do I really know it? Maybe I have been here before, a like a ghost in a dream. This is where I shall take my first steps.

2. I got my first foot off the step and placed it onto the grassy shore. Was this my home? Maybe once. But home could be anywhere - I decided from then onwards to build my house in my heart.

3. The door vanishes out of sight. You did what you said you were going to do. Finally you are sailing, whole, over the warping features of the map. The road has began!

4. You close one door after the other. Then finally the path leads to the gate. Here you stop to think. "Is this really the way I should go..." Only one way to know - so you open the lock and enter!

5. The gate closes behind you. Have no fear! There is no going back. Ahead the road runs - into the thicket, into the dark. There is a strange force up in the trees, you hear it whisper in the leaves... This is your road now.

6. You have no regrets. You clean your heart of such things. The shadow that follows is yours alone. You control it. It moves with you! Now follow the road!

7. You don't know where the road is leading. But it is the only path to take right now. Each step is a challenge. But you take it. You can't stay behind hiding in your dreams.

8. The sky clears. You feel the difference. The shadow is behind you now. You realise there was nothing there - except creatures of doubt weaved by your own mind. There is another gate ahead. Time to unlock it.

9. The gate is sealed, with chains of steel. Fastened locks, we all abhor. How do we get past the door? As long as you have hands, and the will to crawl, to climb - you will find a way over. And so you do.

10. You didn't think you could pass the gate, and yet there you are on the other side with your head held high. You understand this is only the beginning, but a voice inside of you speaks: You are on the right track!

11. Ah! The twists and turns there are so many. There were different paths, of course, but you chose the one. It was your heart that spoke to you. And with a few more steps you reach the clearing. This is what you were looking for!

12a. The bird continued: "...And yet the song was there from the moment we were born, shining in the twinkle of the eye - for we have eyes that twinkle like stars."

12. On a branch in a nearby tree the bird said to thee: "Where have we been? When did the first song begin? When did the first star shine?"

13. You say to the bird: "You charm with your twitter while sat on my arm, but sing no more. I am strong enough." So you walk as the moon walks, to the happiness of the sky.

14. You see something on the high ground... It is a verdant tower formed out of a great struggle with leaf, vine and root. You feel there is something waiting for you there. So you ascend!

15. You see those steps. They go up and up. You see this and take inspiration. Up and up. This is how you must do it! So you take the first step - then the second after that you've done it.

16. You are standing on the top of the tower. It felt like the most epic adventure of your life - though you know in your heart it has only just started. Now take a breath, poise your aching limbs, and enter the chamber.

17. In the chamber you find two adjacent doors. They could lead anywhere. You close your eyes and step forth - you move like the waves move - it is the only thing to do.

18. Two doors... left and right. Neither is wrong. No time to sit and think. The Chamber is growing dark! Time for you to leave. The door you have chosen closes behind you, and now the steps lead down into a valley...

19. Out in the fields it does not feel safe. You walk in the wide empty. There is no longer a path to follow. You have only your initiative. But had you even a cauldron of wit how would one utilise it in an open desert? Then you find the orb…

20. It has many colours and it has none. It knows it all and yet it knows nothing. Finally the orb speaks: “Do you seek peace or anger?” You answer: “BOTH”. For in such a blend strength is born.

What times be these? Strange times indeed. Look for the hand that reaches, and the sun that bleaches, a land in need of cover from the sky. Let there be clouds, let them settle the air as the sea claims a beach.

Honey is made from the toil of 5000 bees. Sweetness is born from bitterness. Nothing wonderful is created without hard work.


21. That light of no colour disappeared behind my eyes. As my lids opened again there was the slender flame of the candle. I put down my pen - it had taken it's last stroke for that day. Time for it and me to sleep.

There are worse things in life than losing a pen. It is to not have a pen at all!

22. The hand and the eye speak as one, over the lines of time, in a world that changes in a single whisper, and with one word, can turn into a thousand possible things.

23. Before you can think time has been and gone - and yet it is always there, because it is as unsubstantial as a moonbeam.

Blessed flower born between sun and moon, your beautiful colour is in the stars, and the stars reflect your light.


24: You try to make sense of it. 'So do I,' said the moon in the sky, and with a sigh the old stone spoke: 'See it, know it, live by it and be it.' Content, you turn your mind to a bed of flowers and let your thoughts enjoy some rest.

I can hear the sound of a river bubbling away over the old rocks. I keep the sound of it in my mind as I walk about. It is a sound that makes the mind clearer, makes the world seem a little less grey.

Hope is like the morning mist one minute there, gone the next. With your mind you form the mist into a house - then stand on the roof of that house and cry: I will not fall! I will stand! Then watch the clouds roll away...

There is as much beauty in a muddy puddle of water as you will find in a sylvan glen. In the algae, in the rot, in the mud of a footprint - see for yourself: colonies of life that flow with the beat of our feet, all there because of you and I.

Your minds is a boat. Sail across the ocean behind your eyes. It is there because of you.

25. Get up and be it! The only way to beat it is to see it and know it. Then be your minds eye and with wings of silver hope fly so in victory you may sigh... ...Relief! The day is yours...


26. Hard work and wine, quite divine! The golden vine is thine - may the sunlight shine and we shall enshrine, the sky with thoughts unheard of...


I shall not resign my pen and I while there are words left to play! To work then...

...or...

I shall not resign my pen not while there are still words left to play! To work then...

27. There was a strange light in them, and a strange light in us. You could not see it, the glow, the thing that shimmered, nay - but you could feel it in the heart and in the soul...

Waste time... ...Or... Don't waste time? My question: What is time? I don't prescribe to either so I say: "Goodbye time!"

28. The true sight is from within. Not until I danced in the fields of the mind did I understand how long I had been asleep. My eyes had been truly opened!

Opened from within - now I see more clearly and it is a glorious thing!


28. The true sight is from within. Not until I danced in the fields of the mind did I understand how long I had been asleep. My eyes had been truly opened!

There is as much beauty in a muddy puddle of water as you will find in a sylvan glen. In the algae, in the rot, in the mud of a footprint - see for yourself: colonies of life that flow with the beat of our feet, all there because of you and I.

29. I want to say I understood the nature of the song... All I can say is that I saw it in my mind. It had no sound, but yet it danced everywhere. And it flowed without me...

30. And there it was for a few minutes, a message that only the inner mind could read: the invisible words held the meaning of everything. But you look away instead. It was better not to know...

31. I didn't have the strength to face it... "That's fine," it responded. "Nobody does. Fear and strength are allies. They dance hand in hand. Embrace them together." The way forward was open - we cleared the brink like water over rocks.


32. Beautiful is the hand that works with the mind.

Or

Beautiful is the hand that works with the mind - when the mind works with the flow and the movement of the light.


33.  You look at it.  It does not look at you, instead it speaks saying:  'We live in a world that is formed into and out of many layers - and in between the gaps, hidden between the lines of the the veil, the eyes of various nations are watching.'

For there is in all things that bow and flicker, where the sun does linger (and bows its thoughts,) the heaviness and weight of the human heart, and the flight of sparrows that do spring from it, anon into dreams, where the flight of souls dreams.

34. Many times did the fool think twice, but they lived thrice the time the rash man who took the leap in one go. Sometimes it's a good thing to know when to pull back, and then the fool becomes a wise man.

35. In solitude we might forge the dream of dreamers.

36.  I walked away thinking:  This has to be it!  I have found the way.  There is nothing else.  And then the sun in the sky spoke up, and speaking through leaves of the trees in a breeze: a sight and sound for secret things...  World awaken and drink it in - But I saw it first!

37.  In that second, when the moment is most glorious, a dream might burst into a flower of birds of infinite colour and sound.  When you finally forget that dream in sleep, have no care, for the memory of it will still fly in the sky, in the ether, where minds unite like clouds and like water.  

or this...

37.  (Re-written) In that second, when the moment is most glorious, a dream might burst into a flower of birds of infinite colour.  When you finally forget that dream show no care, for the memory of it will still fly in the ether, where minds unite like clouds.

38.  There it flies... a thought, a thing, with wings, flying high in the sky of the mind.  When it carries its wings out of your eyes, you know to yourself that you have done something amazing.  

39.  It is not only sensible to fear fear,
       It is natural.

40.  Beautiful is the hand that works with the mind.
  
41.  Do it
       Face it
       Go juice it
       Max it up

42.  Humans = Liars who act falsely out of a compulsory desire for love or to be loved.

43.  Beauty, or the idea of such a thing, changes like the surface of the sea.  The gorgeous pearls formed in its foam must sink back into the darkness of the depths from which they came.

44.  Here then is the flow, the thought. I wander, as we all wander, between the motion of things. I see the wheels turn and afterwords think better of the silence. The sun and the moon share the sky, and so shall my eye, from a star that beats far away.

45.  Beauty is born out of darkness, and in beauty darkness sleeps.

46.  And there are born the dreams of those who are not yet alive, kindling in the dews, the light and the blossoms, waiting for the first breath to take them up and then with them dance.  Here then is the thread, the paint, the ink, the letters from what life will weave, in time, their story will be ready for the writing.

47.  Dreams unborn and words unsaid lit up on the edges of the tree leaves that morning.  In the shadows words unwritten still slept, waiting for the spark, for the winds to change, for the sun to swing.  With patience they know they will finally have their song.

48.  Wandering, climbing the steps of the tree, a memory came back to me, of a leaf that spoke with glee:  "Come with me!  Come with me!"  And we sailed for a night or two on the air - free as can be.   Come with me, come with me, to the yew tree.  To heaven.  Be with me.

49.  I see the sky, the clouds.  They change and they stay the same.  They sit upon the world, a crown of vapour and pearls, roving fair and free.  They live below as well, in the water where they shine most, and in between them the mountains grow.  All around the grass is green and in the mud flows all things that have ever been, lives lived and still yet not seen.  They crown each other, life and light, and in the water their reflections dream.

50.  We talk of great minds, but only of those we have seen.  But what about those who have ever been?  Men and women, Women and men as great as those written in books; casualties of time.  Let us remember them, the forgotten names - the souls not written in the pages, the voices unheard, the books unread.  The minds that have vanished.  Let's toast the glorious Unknown, and their words that could have changed things.  For the Better.

51.  In the lights of the city the miserable faces turn bright - and in their smiles their sadness is hidden.  The game of make-believe plays in their eyes...  and when they talk their throats are as hollow as an abandoned subway.  Their lights are empty, and the brightness around them is dark.  And yet in the sky there is still a dream, a memory in the dew drops yet to seem, of a time when a soft foot danced in the fields of spring, and when a vibrant voice used to sing, I was glad to have a life.
  And yet I live unwillingly.
  Remind me of the air I used to breath - the sun I used to feel, the memories that flew as birds in my head.  Let me dream again.  
  Turn the lights off so that I can open my eyes again.  Then I will see everything I have missed.  Then free, I will be the human I was always meant to be.

52.  An empty glass is an empty mind, and in the empty mind there is nothing to see, like the glass where we started.  So fill it up.  Let it flow to the hilt.  Look at the colour.  Feel the bubbles that swim like desperate fools to the rim, and in the foam forming, the juice that makes the hand swing - the light that the mind lives in.

53.  In the light of the garden it fell upon me, a sight so happy to see, a thing so rare to memory:  
Lucky, am I, in the eye of time.  And so around it danced, the clock in the sky, and in its many petals that turn we catch a glance and sigh - maybe a hope in a sunbeam, that we can be, all the colours below the sun.

54.  I enjoyed the shadows, I enjoyed the time, but in the morning light I knew it was thine... this memory of it, in the water - the liquids that shake the sky. 


55.  You can't ask.  You must work with the music, the wind, the waters.  You must dance with the dance, you must grow and fall with the leaves.  Then you will know.

56.  There is no love.  There is just you.

57.  In the face of it there is a dream, that fades as slow as a sunbeam.  I wonder what it has seen, the gleam in the dewdrops, what airs its graced? what happy tears its drawn... in the dawn?  With the waters of time our faces shine, here, in this quiet silven home of mine.  There really is no better place.

58.  There's nothing quite like opening a window onto a memory of a land both fair and far...

59.  Your eyes are everywhere.  My eyes are your eyes.  Thy seed is in everything, in the tears of your skin, and within the colours you hide in.  In your essence my memories be, they carry the seed of things to be, and in thy gentle iridescence I hope to dream, in reverence of all that has ever been.  My years are for thee.

(To be extended - flowers in my garden)

60.  Whiskey and wine swiftly sabotages the mind - it will bring the gate down on your ideas.  Beer or Cider doesn't do that - such liquid merely pricks the mind - sticks the clouds of doubt with just enough of a hot enough jab that it will allow a few lightning bolts out when needed.  It's the warm flow of water and time that melts the dreaded wall, and ushers up the flow of the well, locked away by our fears.  Fear is a curtain, not a bolt of steel, and beer is fire to the cloth, it burns up the veil and lets the sunshine flow through.  Every drink that you have is a different kind of morning.  And the moon can be just as bright, when the damn is finally broken!

61.  He seeks us even when we are not awake - the tool of dreams.  And what fools we must seem, when we hide from him, the trickster slipster who sneaks in the night, what a fright, the hunched troll man, don't let him bite!

62.  You must hit it with the same vigour your enemies would hit you, you must strike it with the same strength the sky has to hold you down, mould it with the stride of time.  And when the battle is done, be proud of what you have done,  it will have been a symphony in stone.

(The following stanza describes a beautiful lake)
63.  The light of thee reverberates within me.  My dreams become clear in thy crystal face, and in the ghostly wisps that veil the sun - the dream and I are drawn as one.  

64.  Take my hand and we shall paint every window of the eye, the picture in thy eye, every window in the eye.  

65.  It sits upon the world, a crown of vapour and pearls, roving fair and far.        (Description of the sun)

66.  On your sweet soft heather I rest my soul, and in your still waters I dream, as I wait for the first sunbeam.  Through my dreams the hay grows, and in the petals of the flowers the new light glows.

This here is the sleep of the dreamer.             (A description of morning over the fields).

67.  The mist haunts the wall, it clings to its history, and in its dews the memory of those who built it lingers, and sometimes in the cold air you hear their whispers, as they sing the song of time.  (Mist on Hadrian's Wall).

68.  It cradles its vast heart warmly in its proud green limbs! (A description of the sun shining through a tree)

69. A blanket of foam and pearls unfolds to greet the shimmering daytime king, whose light beats in our hearts, and in time itself. (Description of the seashore).

70. All my days I have searched for this. It has haunted my footsteps, slept behind my searching eye, and yet I knew it was somewhere beyond the sky. I see signs of you shimmering between the life of things, something once sung about in old hymns. What joy I see between the lines of dreams! (description of daybreak).

71.  They were without words, and within worlds they walked, for words were never going to be enough, nor language, nor sound, nothing to assign the colour in thy gleam, and in thy jewels no smile can match, no song can I attach,  for there are no words in your world.  Where worlds and dreams are drawn as one, in the gleams of thy twinkling dews, there are no words for such news flown from moons and stars, no such thing, when I see the light in you.  No words no worlds just you.  

72. Wandering where there is nowhere to walk, where walking is no place for a foot, for feet have no place in such a garden. But if dreams could walk they would indeed, and if dreams could they would light the faces there and wander as embers wonder, between places, where no foot can walk.

OR...

Feet have no place in such a garden. But in dreams we can go indeed, wander as embers wander, between the places where the sun does not fall - there we can stay and be the light.

73. Lo! See for yourself! Justice certified there in the quietness; chains of tender wistfulness locked in the billows that dream: the regimes of the painter's mind, the logic of the engineer, that steer, the follies of the thing we most wish for. It's there in the face of it all.

OR...

Justice rules in the quietness! It commands chains of tender wistfulness locked in the frosty billows under the sky. Behold the regimes of the creators mind, the engineer that steers, the follies of the thing we most wish for: It's there in the face of it all.

74. In it is the thing, and from the thing grows the thing, and in its young light is the mirth from which we sing, the comings and goings of many a Spring, and in multitude bring, the iridescence of an entrancing king. Behold me!

75. Twin twin, I speak to my twin. Though we grow as one, we live as far apart as stars, but like stars, we shine, and in between, we seem, like the fair faces who peek, as so many who seek, to entwine forever in abundance in thy arms. In thy arms, nay our arms, we sleep, in thy arms we seep. And grow. Dream of us!

76. Our eyes are the veil through which the starlight shines - through our eyes the light sees all things.

77.  No words to write, no words to speak, for all words we have tween time and sun, all the things we have to say, are at work there in thy skin.  You have the power to breathe wonder in every scene, and in silence the whole world you seem to be, to me.  So I say unto thee:  no words for you, it's true, no words will do... and so I bid thee adieu.

or

No words to speak, for all words we have tween time and sun are at work in thy skin.  You have the power to breathe wonder in every scene, and in silence the whole world you seem to be, to me.  So I say unto thee: no words for you, no words will do, and so I bid thee adieu.

78. I follow your dance.  I know not from where you fall, or if you came from anything at all, through the changing sky.  All I know is the chase, thine beauty as you grace with light the nature of my wiles,  as you rhyme in time with the flow of my steps.  So it is forever we sail together, tween dawn and dusk, to join again when the skies adjust.  And when the clouds be away, we shall say - this day forever I trust, in you, this day, whenever, with you again dance we must.  

or

I know not from where you fall, or if you came from anything at all, through the changing sky.  All I know is the chase, thine beauty as you grace with light the nature of my wiles. In you I trust, this day, with you again dance we must...

79.  I am your eyes, see with me: drawn together in time we will always be.  Watch how with every leap I take the smile of many a soul will wake, and then reflect, age over, in the shapes of my light that I will shine on you.  

I move with the air, I sway with the trees, and through my arms you will breathe.  Though departed thee be, you'll live with me and with me you shall grow, and to my many sins show, the strength in me.  In strength we are one, and with this forever we will be done - a memory living in the breeze.

80.  The world looks at itself in ALL directions...

81.  The eye of the world is one with the world.  Its radiant waves are playful, and they make mischief through the veil - and there the illusion begins - and time ends just as the clock is about to start to tick!  So let us enjoy the heart of it, before we are drawn back behind the veil.  Let your heart sail, to whatever flight of fancy you avail...your soul beats with the heart of it.

BE FREE

82.  I knew you before I was born. Your name was etched in my heart.  When I first opened my eyes your face was there, I saw you right from the start, in the colours behind my eyes, where dreams burn brighter than the sunrise.  So it is no surprise that I heard your name whispered as well on the breeze, the birds sang it with ease, as we became these, figments, if you please, of a story told long before.

83.  The salt and sinew of the Earth, the flesh of the world, secretes Spring water - naturally. So it is with words, in the mind. I say again, as the bird sings, as the wind blows in the heather: "It's just the words, flowing up like a spring."

84. My light is in the water, in the water I go: walking by a puddle, a pond, the sea, a stream: No sun. No moon - above me. In darkness I go, with no reflection to show. Just me and the shadow. My shadow and me. We walk along so lonely. I felt no one saw me. Then I fell, and the water splashed on my face. I felt so much disgrace... And then a light lit up and a hand was held out in plea - and a voice spoke: "listen to me: Stand up!" it said. They waved their hand and then I could see: a light far beyond me... I saw it: A country beautiful and fair, just beyond the stair, where the light shone down from. The voice said: "Look and be, as the light, and we shall alight, as one in the sight, in a world that will always be, a happy memory." I took their hand and away were we, in a land that was like a reverie. Light, like happiness, were we. For eternity.

85.  I wish I knew what it was to be, a thing like you, that is the light in every eye, the colour in every scene.  I wonder what it is like, to be like you, to live one with the air, to be a home to nations unseen - the life of all that as ever been.  There are reflections in your tears, I see the dream of life in them, and my eyes are there, with your eyes, let us join and enjoy the years, so that I can be a thing like you, as we walk the stairs to heaven.

86.  Who would think one could find so much happiness in a face, just a face... one face... in this face was my life, my dreams, my sunshine.  In the voice that spoke from it I felt I had a second chance...  Maybe I could live again.  You.  My sunshine.  Your smile leaves a scar.  You were my star, my hope.  But now you are gone behind the clouds, and I must take the slope, the stairs that go down, forever down, and walk and stumble again on the rocky fields of the lost folk.  Forever lost in the shade, no happiness to be made.  I know now, after many wearing days, there was never a thing, in this empty space, nothing, except your face.   

87.  I followed the trail today, through the gates and then onwards and away - to what place none can say.  But in the echo of my footsteps a story has begun - and with it a new memory has spun: 'What a day, hey, to be away?  Such a day I say, so let's not delay!'

88.  You are like the cool refreshing rain at the end of Spring, cooling the deserts that I walk in: I seek you in the fields where the fair waters fare, and the upper meadows where the king's flowers are: there the gentle faces with their radiant collars stand in place, happy in a line upon the fields they grace, far over the fair waters beneath the chosen star, in the upper meadows where the king's flowers are.  

[OR shorter version of the Upper Meadows Poem but works just as well:]

I see you in the fields where the waters fare, and in the upper meadows where the king's flowers fill the air.
I see you far over the waters beneath the chosen star, and again in the upper meadows where the king's flowers are...

89.    I remember you: you were growing in the fields before I was born, you were a memory that arrived with the first dawn.  When I first took in the air you were there.
  Your song was the first thing I heard - it was the life of me.  
  When I first opened my eyes, I was not surprised, to see you everywhere beneath the sunrise.
  In the light and in the waters, I heard your song, and in its music, I knew where I belonged: it was the life of me.  

90.  Quiet is your face, the face that sleeps and wakes with the dance in the hills.  I am as drawn to you, as you are drawn to me, your light burns in the heart of me, it's the only thing that separates us...but not for long!   I am drawn as you are drawn, by the sky by the water, and when the day is told, and we've grown old, we will live again in laughter.         We will live again, drawn as one, in the dawn when all is done - we'll live as one.


91.  My thoughts flow with you, as you go.  You hold inside you every tear that I have to spare.  You are indeed everything I could ever need beneath the air.  From you my dreams grow.  And inside your every move the sun will stow, a vision of the stars.  In your face the sun will grace the cosmos of every single space; it will be there in your arms.  And before I wilt away, I know I will have this to say - "I shone forever in thy shards."  Forever I give thy regards...  

I owe you as much. [This is a story about a flower thanking a river for its reflection.]

92.  My dreams move in strange ways - like water, they move as they will, and like the will of space, they will move with what pace they deem fair.  Between us grow the lines of some fleeting flight of fancy that once bore the main moment in its time.  Yet it will fade and die, as the clouds fly.  But the memory of you will live forever in the waters on my skin - and in time eventually therein, grow again in the lines that divide stars - as I go on forever living in thy cause.

93.  Thou thoughts and thy thoughts are as lost as autumn leaves, if you please, lest we take up in the breeze of the one thought, the only thought, and rejoin with the seas.

94.  I wake up with the sound of your scorn,
And I see you reborn every morn,
as the oceans roar between your arms.
The wisps drench your gorgeous scars,
you are almost as old as the stars.
You stand triumphant,
as your mighty frame soars into view,
nothing in nature stands so strong as you.
I hear your voice sing in the air,
and in every water droplet you are there.
I will myself be with the waters, in time, 
and together we will build a tower, sublime.
And then we will be reborn every morn,
together.

95.  Soon it will be time for me to sail away from the seas of time, to a place with skies that know not the wiles of man.

96.  I remember the dream of thee.  The dream of thee is still warm in the heart of me.  And the heart of me beats with the thought of thee, within the memory of thy life.  Within the the waves of thy art.  I feel the warmth of thee still, in the sides of thee, where the warm silk flowed and the things of life strode.  Yet live forever do they, in the wonder of thy hay, thy sun, thy grass, forever let it last, in the dreams drawn in the lines of thee, in the valleys where thou light lasts, unsurpassed.  

97.  There is a song in every drop of thee...I weep like thou lids that lift in the morning, dappled in grey tears, as thou sing before the dawn... locked forever in thoughts untethered, breathing in the air unfettered.  Time sits meaningless in thy grasp - so let the fools rasp, like all things unmeasured.

98.  And out there strode a vision of thee, lost in the clear sight of thee.  But it is to thy memory that I fold, in thy ribbons that mould, the beauteous face of thee.

99.  So on we go - us?  Nay.  See us now.  In us the world looks back.  O aye!  The world sees itself in all directions.  And so in us you see it all.  And so it will be with us all, as we look:  Gosh how long it took!  But here we are!  I see your eyes and in your eyes I see my eyes, but between us, there is just time and us.  And between us just time.

OR

In us the world looks back.  The world sees itself in all directions.  Gosh how long it took!  But here we are!  I see your eyes and in your eyes I see my eyes, but between us, there is just time and us.  And between us just time.

100.  There is no song to play, to let us say, how happy we are to stay, in the rhymes of you, in the arms of you, as you end where I start.  So I bow to your art.  Weave your ways to my heart.  I am in service to thee.

101.  Look at it. The lavender flow! O yes! See how it goes - joining with the lights out there... It calms all in its wake, as it goes. What a scene it will make, for when you awake: blissful full of joy!

102.  No hands can shape thee, nay, no mind can conceive of thee; no dream can perceive thee, thou that flickers between the lines, thou that shines, betwixt stars and all else that defines, the idea that is you.  Born out of nothing, indeed thou art everything - for from you flew, the dream we all wished we knew, that in you, we dance, and we dance.  In you we will always have the chance, to be like the song.

103.  There was never a world that you were not in, such a thing cannot have been.  You were there when the day first broke, and there still before I awoke.  We live in you as the world breathes, just like the sunshine gleams, again and a thousand times again, in the dews on thy face.

104.  I cannot think while your hot head sits there.  I cannot move an inch of my mind while your vastness hovers above me.  I shake in your wake, and I pray for a break.  It will come in time, so till then I will sip my wine, whilst walking the line, between your eye and my chair.  Once I have escaped your glare, I will return to my lair.  And by an open window and the moon, I will sit in my room, and write about you, and again about the glory of you, all fine, in a world that is mine.  




105.  Impossible.   Impossible.  
There you have it - everything that needs to be said - from the start of the story to the end:
Impossible.  Impossible.

The world looks at you in all directions:  It sees it, the moment - and in the moment it sees me, and you.  And in you there is the mirror of me - just like in thee, where the thing will try to die, and yet will always rise ever high.

And after a draught of thy air it sighs - o in agony it sighs:

Impossible.  Impossible





106.  TIME.

TIME is like a leopard.

It hides in the bushes.  It watches.  It waits.  And then when you are not looking it strikes, and by then it is too late - because it will have you by the jugular...

TIME is like a hunter - it strikes when you least expect...




107.  This is it! The moment - gone and yet forever: all things move in it, go with it, flow with it. It dances as we sleep - and it lives when we forget. You can't escape it, because you are part of it - ALL THE WAY.


108.  My hopes are always in thee, as they have always been a part of thee.  This much I know: that you know the heart of me, and the way of me, and we will sail this way as long as there is time.  And when there is no time, that will be fine, for we were there before such a thing, and so on we shall go, sailing, never failing, to find a reason to start.

109.  I have always walked and wondered, what it was I saw in the light of it, in the gloom behind the wall, where the old house stood.  I felt there were eyes there, watching but not watching me, but watching, what game shall we play? Maybe, we shall be, a confederacy, united against the dark.  So play thy games, thy eyes that hark - you have found a player in me.  

No response, eh?

I walk into the quiet and leave in silence...

110.  In death we live.  In death we are stronger.  In death you have no power, to devour, the light in me.  We sleep as the winds breathe and bend the waves of grass, and in the glass of light that rolls between the thunder, you'll see our limbs and wonder, what was the thought in thee?

There is a sea, as crimson as the fire that burns thee, and consumes the tree that grows from thee.  And from its dead and hateful branches the sight of thee fades, as the fire grows to make thee ashes.
  In the red of our flow, a seed will grow, and in it a dream is sealed, and it will bestow:
  Life to thine enemies.

111.  The memory of you lives in me, in all of me, and in all of you, in all of us, in all of thee.  Deliver me...

112.  It rages this side and that side.  But not so when my eyes focus on the divide, where you reside.  Peace there is in you... 
PEACE.
It resides in the heather, it breathes with the weather, in the wind and the rain your form does change a thousand endless ways - in the waves of your pleasure, as you calm the world altogether.

113.  I think of you, when I should not do.  There I am.  Up to it, in the neck of the brick of it.  But there I am.  But despite my loath, I can see us both, living tween the net of it.  My face and your face, met on the line of it.  And after, when we knew there was no line, we decided to submit, and agree that we were it, and nothing else.  So let's go and flit, and then admit, what fools we be, and then spit in the eye of time.  

114.  The joy of thee is in thee.  

115.  In the light of it we are, and in it is everything.  

116.  I wish I could see thee - as thou once was.  I wish I could see thee, as you are in your mind.  But you are what you are, and that is what you will always be.  You are the spark in my heart.  And on the face of it, on the glass, you are the thing that will forever last, and that is what you will forever be.  

117.  The dance in you is unique.  It is the thing we all seek...  But you are not quite as unique as you might believe.  Your colours I have seen before... many are in awe, but I am not sure...  Has thou not danced before?  In the sky below the heavens I see thee likewise shine in the stars and more - I see thee in the light of thee, and through thee I am me, and with thee I am more, as are all, who see thee.

118.  The dance in thy heart is the greatest dance, so let it go, flow, row - let it be the thing that drives thee.  Let it be the thing that is in thee, that is you.  Fly wherever your heart may desire to roam!

119.  We are the same, you and me: thou of air, and I of water.  There's not betwixt we, you and me, for we be born of song and laughter!  And thereafter, born again on the waves, and on the sunny ways.  We will laugh again hereafter, every morn, you and me.   So let's go and be, with the waves that row, beyond the times that sow, and live ever after.   You and me, what Great laughter!  (Poem about a reflection on water).

129.  Some things have words.  Some things you can only think about.  Then there are things that have nothing.  

130.  An ostentatious display, indeed! Nature unhindered and fully living sings within and without the thing thy eyes now set upon... So see it now and drink it in, and live like the colours you see. Dance as they dance under the sun, and as they dance presently in your mind. Dance!

131.  I don't see it, though I wish I did.  The dream that has never been but yet always been, alive on thy face.  Always it is there:  As alive in thee, as it is in me.  I see you look down, while thy shimmering mirror looks up.  How can there be anything else?  O yes!  I know you will agree.  There is nothing except you and me.

And that is how it should always be.

132.  When I am sad something is gone I will close my eyes and and think of it, and there it will be again in the depths of my mind as vibrant as the summer sky.  

133.  There isn't a chance, I could be like you, not even if I tried to dream it.  When I close my eyes you are there, with or without me - you are one with the air.  You are the thing that is in it, that grows with it.  I can name you, but I can never be you.  I cannot even dream like you - I can only hope to see you, and one day pray to be with you, and fly tween your dappled glory like the heather, and like the breeze.  You and I forever.

134.  I wonder.  Let me think.  The pain is gone.  When I close my eyes I see the sun cross the land.  My thoughts will paint it, let them serve thee as my eye for thee:

Such a scene unseen, in the land before the giants came, where the willows swing and sing, by the river fair, are thou there? in a land of silven green, where the threnody flows, where have thou been - it sings?  I hear thee whisper tween the young leaves, and over the other things unseen, what are thou thinking?  As thy grow in deepening blooms?  Is it a dream or a hope - both are as empty as a sunbeam.  But in thy gleam, I hope to be, as bright as a whisper in the seams of thy life.  Let me grow and flow like a flower.  And in thy light you shall devour, all shadows in me.  So that I may grow fairly, in they halls of the merry.

Let it be - you and me.  For all eternity.

135.  I see here a thing that is naught else but colour living.  Whether I sleep or not, you grow brighter in my dreams, may you please, never leave my dreams.

136.  I walked in dreams by the way of the wood, the whistling wood - there it stood.  I walk with thee in dreams as if I were awake, and in your image make, a scene seen in only the silven green.

They wondered the way of the wood, along the path tween the oak and the chestnut tree, to see me - going bravely despite their fears, where the streams flowed, and where the wispy tree growed, through a place where the goblins lurked, maybe...

Their eyes!  Them eyes!  I shall not fear those eyes...
  I know you won't let me fear those eyes.

Beware the oaken folk, the spriggan, the quiet before the dark and the song of the wraith.

Have faith in thy limbs, and my hymns, and dream below the beams that gleam by my leaves, on your face, and light the places your feet might trace.  

You seek this.

Peace.

Speak and you will find:

I know no sadness.  For here there is no happiness, and no unhappiness.  Just you and me, and all that will ever be.  And All I will ever need is thee.

Below the limbs of the tree, where you can dance with me.  Whenever you are there, such a dance it will be.

137.  Whether it be sun or rain, it will always remain - the idea that is you. And even in the depths of night, or in the wildest storm, you'll still swim as graceful as a minnow, as I dream by my window, thinking of the idea of you.


138.  You will always live in the many mirrors that look at one another, always and forever, as they grow on thy skin.  

139.  Razor thoughts taken in thy stride: such is the speed you race towards me!  I see nought but your harshness.  Yet in your wake there is still a blissfulness, and if an eye was to take a closer look into the depths of thee, we would see a fair place to be.  Something more gentle than a mild breeze, something more tender than the lamb that skips, something more merciful than love.  May our lines be drawn as one, like it is between the sea and the sun.  O!  What a place to be, with thee, for all eternity!  

140.  Nothing can be seen to be so glorious than nature embroiled in art.  So relaxed an artist!  It need only be itself!

(a) Nothing can be seen to be so glorious than nature embroiled in art.  So relaxed an artist is it!  It need only be itself!

141.  So you say there's nothing new under the sun?  That still will not stop me from having fun!  

142.  There was nothing at the start.  And when I moved a little, it was still so quiet.  But a song chirped up out of a sudden - a threnody out of time:  it rolled and rhymed, from within the silven heart of you.  I dance and you dance and we dance.  It's all wonderful!  And still it will never be as great as the light in the heart of you.

I dance and you dance and we dance - but it will never be as great as the light in the heart of you.  

I dance and you dance and we dance - mayhap one day we will glow, and grow, and together be as great as the light that is in the heart of you.  

143.  The night?  What is this folly you speak of?  What things of nature dare work in the  night, save impious things and mickle fools?

144.  I know it's hard.  Look up and not down.  Strength is in the hour when you say: "This is me!  This is it!"  After that it will be time for you to fly your flag and claim victory.

145.  I cry for tears I have never seen - where are thy tears - lost in the years?  I see it flow from thee - I see it in thy eye.  The sadness in you is beautiful.  The tragedy in you sings in the steps that you take, making no mistake, your duty is to beauty, and we see it in thy wake.  

146.  I dreamed and then I never dreamed.  And then came the sight of thee.  I wanted to cry, but in thee those tears are thy soul, and so I shall cry some more.  Cry and Cry.  So that thy shall meet the heavens, and cry no more.  

147.  There is no life outside of thee.  Maybe inside of me?  Your song is my step, my feet fall on your words, and your words are my stepping stones.

148.  I turn to sleep I miss it - when I am awake I wish I saw it.  But somewhere behind it all, behind the wall, there flows a thing that light and dreams dance in.  And when I open my eyes, we will all be as one in the thing that is: the sight of you, and the life in you...   May we all one day live in it!

149.  I am happy to know, that you will grow, in full flow, into something beyond imagination.  I am happy to know that the colours in thee, will live in me and you, in this frame, that will remain, something for us to live through.  

What a picture we will see born through us.  What a thing it will grow into.  And with you, we will adjust, for we must, and flower into something new.

150.  Thy tears are seeds from which beautiful things grow - may the dews in thee flow, and forever go, into the soul of yea and us.  Let it grow in all of us.

Like it grows in you...

151.  In the lines of thee there is a shadow.  You face it.  We face it.  But out of it and into it there is a glorious glow!  Out of which thy colours flow - and grow to be, something I would love to be, a thing sowed by the sun.

152.  And then it came.  Your eyes.  How I wish I could be your eyes - for a second, for a dewdrop of time, forever in the crystal, reliving that dance of thine.  

Let thy glass be mine, in thy divine, light O my!  I shall in thee, resign.  

153.  Something in you is endless, and that is what I love.  I know that your joy will go on and on, if time is froze or if it is fast, there is never a moment forgotten in thy glory.  And even if I am lost I know I am not the last to say, in you, infinity, please display, in thy glory cast please play: Forever is today.

For in you will forever play, the song of joy, forever far and far away.

154.  You look so sad, and yet so happy, down in the valley, where the waves are one.  In your waves that join with the sun, as one.  In thy light there is such a thing as delight, to be held in thy sight.  A boat alight with both happy and sad a tale makes ready to take sail - may it read well when the young are born again.  

155.  No artist can boast better than nature.  Look at those shapes, that colour:  It moves even when it is still.  There is calm in the midst's of its fury - and beauty is born out of its rage!  NOTHING can compare to the forces that brought this scene to light.

156.  I have seen in my thoughts a life better than dreams, and in my dreams I have seen thoughts better than life.

157.  In you there is something no one else has, and yet it is within everything that I see.  You are the thing we all hope to be, and the thing we will one day be - when life is in its spring...  

We are there, if maybe unaware, but it will be a wonderful thing when comes the time to declare, I am everything that I can see!

158.  The mystery is in it, around it, before it, behind it, all around it - within and without - from far away and up front; there is nothing betwixt the moment within and without the eye - yet forever in the mind and beyond that evermore - a memory of you will linger in the heavens, and something else as well that we have yet to see.  So we wait for thee on the shore, we wait for thee in awe, for the chance to be like thee, and be free, forevermore.

159.  I can see it - I can see it - I can see it so, even though there might be nothing to show, I know it is there and it will always grow...

Even when there was nothing there!

I know it will still grow, and grow, deep within the heart of thee.  So let it go, so that it might one day show, in the eyes of those that are free, so that to some degree, they will agree, that your eyes hold the keys to it, and all that will ever be.

So set us free!



160.  I thought we were done, that I had seen it all, till I saw you again in the meadows:

Growing in the Fall and flying with the shadows.

I thought it was done, with nothing else to declare, till I heard the sound of thee dancing in the air:

Flying in the hall and lost in prayer...

I thought we were over, that I had seen the last of you,

Sleeping in the morning dew...

Just above the shallows, flying with the sparrows...  You live as bright as an arrow flying like a star:

There in the meadows where you always are...

In the meadows we will always be, in the meadows you and me, and we will look up at the skies so far:

Beneath the waters, and beneath the shining star...

Where we always are, watching forever beneath the shining star.  


161.  The words are with thee and in thee.  They will move along with thee, like they have always been part of thee.  Growing forever as one, with or without the sun.

162.  The woody trees swaying in the breeze, o please weather please!  Send more of that lovely breeze, to please those ever so lovely trees.

163.  If things could be different, they would be.  But they are not, because this is how they are meant to be, and will always be, now and forevermore - at least till the time comes when we will not need things anymore, and be once and for all set free... like the air and like the sea.

164.  Dancers in the air...   When I look away I see you, when I walk I find you, when I sleep you are still there, without a care, Dancers in the air.     I was never aware of you, how graceful and how so fair, your ability to snare, my deepest feelings.  I am happy to know you, finally.  For there is nothing to compare to you, it is true, for you are something quite rare, you o' so fair, thou most beautiful Dancers in the air...

165.  The warbler in the reeds:

Life is like the warbler in the reeds.  It's in the reeds, hiding low - you don't see it until it has taken flight, then it is on wings and has flown far far away, seen no more.  The clouds remain.  The water by the reeds is still there, but the warbler and its wings beat no more under the light of the sun.  

It might as well never have been there at all - for the clouds, the reeds and the water care not for its passing.

Youth is like a fine fruit that rots in a heartbeat.  It's gone before you know it.  Very few extract the whole goodness out of that fruit, most miss even the rot of it.  And as new wings fly in with new things to bring, all you will have is the memory of your reflection mirrored in waters that flowed long ago.

166.  I like to think of thee, playing in the meadows,
I like to sing to thee, when you frolic in the leaves,
O please don't leave!
I need thou merry song!
O I have waited for so long!
Even still I shall wait,
ever on,
Even when you are gone,
When your memory echoes,
In the light of the eaves,
of those so o so many trees...
Even though it grieves, with me on my knees,
I  know it will not be long!
When you come back with your song,
Among the leaves where you belong.

167.  Look at it!  All of life is there, up and down, side to side, reverberating in the waters...  The story is an echo...  But life is in the colours of the light.  

168.  If a song could be weaved in every wave of light between sun and sky it would dye all living souls with the colour of space.  And once after sowed with every diamond that has ever graced the coat of time, what a story to chase!  Something that nothing could replace...  So let my song be thine, and through thy design, find peace within thy flowering embrace.  

169.     You remind me of the stars and how many of them there are, and how in every beat they flicker, and in them a piece of you lingers in my soul - you shape the folds of the world before my eyes - you command my heart when the sun lives and when it sets.  I dream of you when the moon roles over - and the thought of you lives in the skies - when the day is clear - I think of you when the smell of the flowers lives in the air.  When the light goes to dark, and goes to light as well I feel your warmth in the winter.  And when you go away my life will linger, everyday linger, in a field where the memory of you shines in every single birth of grass that lies.

  Forever.

  I will walk with you in the fields.


170.  What are thoughts but random strangers, coming and going, leaving the mind to float like a boat without a sail in a sea without a shore.

171.  For there is a thing, between the sun and the moon, that we like to see and sing, and call it starlight, where dreams are born and hope kindles anew...

172.  Here lies the dream, the dream the dreamer dreams, and where the sun beams have been. Sleep. We will awake when the beams return with our dreams.

173.  I awake in dreams and sleep in time.

174.  The light flows above and below... Such a joyous thing requires a mirror like this! With its help the celebration will be doubly glorious!

175.  The energy of Spring is brooding deep within, ready to catapult itself out of and over every single thing.  Be ready - colour is mustering for a dance!

176.  Thy whispers are received as colours in my mind. They return to the world as light.
That light... my dreams... my dreams that light, become your whispers again and then that thing out of which all colours alight.

You are right. You are my dream. You are the thing that lights my mind. And such a thing as thee that has ever been, will always be, may thou never leave my sight!

 
177.  Most young people take that fibre of talent they have within and weave around them a cloak of delusion...

178.  Gold and cold, yet between you both lies the life of me and all the colours that my eyes can see...  Yes!  It is that time again.  

179.  Within you I am all you can see - without you I am everything.  Live inside of us and you will shimmer forever,  and in time you will be set free.  

You can be anything, as long as you are willing to agree, that out there there is nothing, nothing quite as good as you and me.  

Sail with me...

It is time to be free.

180.  Within or Without - YOU are all that we could ever hope to be.

181.  Curse time for it only goes one way!

182.  How I wish life was like a pool of water and I could swim around in it in any direction - then I could pick which reflection to live in, into which sparkle and glimmer I could dive and hold my breath.  If life was like water, then life would be one happy stream.

183.  The last thing on your mind when you are young is getting old.

184.  A true poet writes from sorrow.  Their quill - their pen, dabs not into a pot of ink but into the blood of the heart.

185.  There are times I see it, and times that I don't.  But I know it, and that is all that matters.

186.  What is this, say you?  Say You?
  I will give you my strength said I.
  I will give you my colour said you.
  I will give you my flower said I.  So you and I can bloom.
  I am of the colour few knew, said you.  I am of the colour unseen, but I know what has been.
  But I am with you, said I, and with you we shall be all that has ever been seen.
  You, and no one else - so nothing in between.
  o yes.
  With you, with you, said I.
  I am with you and forever, you and me and I.
  With you, with you, forever, just you and I.

187.  You draw over me like a dream I have always wanted - I knew of thee in songs of old long before my story started.  The warmth of thee and the sight of thee is the kindest thing I have ever known, you are for me the light of spring, the finest thing that the light of life has ever shown.

I pray that we may never be departed...

188.   If there is ever a place to be it is here, in thy goblet of desire, by green and grit, and by life and the full of it.  Make me with you.

189.  I loved you before I knew you.  In thy limbs be my life.  In thy life be my dreams, and in thy dreams be my life, and thy limbs be the thing that I have ever lived for.  

190.  When art breathes you weave, what a thing to conceive: for in thy arms are mirrors of time, you are indeed sublime.

Through your glass the world is small, and great, and everywhere.  In you an image is born out of air!

I must say how fine you wear, those strings between the grass...

How grateful I am to you, and all the things in thy glass.  

All that I ask, is that you return again - my happy vision in the glass...

191.  Just in that moment:  You see everything.  In that moment.  Stored up in colour and sound, and it goes around, and forever around, something that can never be found.  And yet there it is in everything!  I am proud to hold thy hand and breathe thy breath, as we walk upon one another's skin - so let's hold together everything therein.  As one.  For that is what we are.  What a dance you and I share, but it took me sometime to be aware, the hidden secret that had slipped out of reach of us.  And so it is thus: the sun would have no shape or colour, or anything else other, were it not for our eyes, and the surprise that we share, like the colours that flowers bear:  It's a dream and that is all that it has ever been, painted by our soul, always in our control, as we roll, as infinite as stars, forever, we shall go, together, as formless as the air.  How happy I am to be there, a thought without care!

192.  We danced you and I, with the moon, we danced with the moon you and I.  Your beauty is comparable to that of the nightingale, whose song pierces the heart of the night, whose song creates tears that shine on the face of the moon; and with the moon your shoulders gleam, like a midnight dream, and in thy glassy folds there is all that has ever been, a song, a play, please do not delay!  For in thy display no droplet of sadness is immune.  You can never come back, nay, never too soon!

193.  You will forget what you said and did yesterday, but your final day will be remembered by you forever!

194.  It's a sad business that we share, you and I.  It started when I could walk and even before I could talk.  You always held the reigns over me, left me with few places to be but to cower in a corner, bow my head like a mourner crying tears of nothingness.  What a joke are you to me?  And when I learned to laugh, it made sense for us to agree, that we were but winds upon the seas - a breath of time, a second in a rhyme, a flicker of a star - how right you are, how wrong was I?  So that is why I lie, and then I laugh at me, and thee.  For what are pair are we?  Not a mountain knows the time it took for us to be, and not a hill will care for us when it rejoins with the sea.  And so we will forever be dreams in the air.  

So pray, do not delay!

195.  A wish and a thought are one with thee, like every dream I wish I could see - and with you be, like the sea, something that is forever free - in thee, the waters, the green, the petals, be my sight.  Please.  With you forever, please be my life.

196.  In winter you are our dream, in the darkness you are our sunbeam, our break of day, our inspiration in the grey.  O please! be in the day the thing we dream to see.  Be our hope in play, our vision for a better way, o please stay, and lead the way - o please, thee lost in a gleam, be in me what you can see, forever in our today.

197.  Here it is then.  My life.  Your life.  One life.  Our life.  Forever One Life.  let us just be the one life - let us be the dream others hope to live by.

198.  Life:  Short and sad, and full of regret, even when we are lying.

199:  My love was a dream, as unsubstantial as a sunbeam - a dance behind my eyes, I am so sad to close my eyes.

200:  I remember you, forever you.  You are me and I am you.  We shall be all that has been - you and me, one forever.

201:  Sleep and I are Great strangers - but what is one to do when there is so much to do?  So many ways of words unwritten, in books unread, pages unturned - no pages - only dreams throughout the ages.  Please, I need no stages, just make my hand forge the pages in thy dreams...  


202:  Where then is the purpose?  Great and Small it is there - it is with you and in you - and you will either sail by it or over it like air in a field of flowers.

203:  Have we not already seen the truth of it in thy eye?  i think

204:  I weep for thee, my sleepless days, my full glass, my mind in the glass of glee, caught up in the flow of thee, before you become thy worst of foes - I weep for thee, old friend you never were, I need thee and I do not need thee, and I shall ever miss thee, my full up glass - gone is the dance my sleep stole from you, and for me the deserts await their due - I must pay my debt with an empty glass.

205:  Where is the truth of the lie we were sold?  Where's the great adventure?  What happened to the times that we were going to remember, the things we were going to look back upon and say : "Hey that was me!  I was glad to be there.  I'd love to do it again!"
  Where is the laughter?
  Where is the treasure chest and the gold inside?
  Don't tell me it was all just a lie?
  If there was a rainbow I would chase it.  THEY told me it was a thing, but THEY never told me how to find it.
  Time proved that pretty words are mere writings on a curtain that mask a stony road and a doorway to a pit - 'you are old enough to face it now, my child...' and then the curtains are drawn back.
  Time to walk the stony road with bare feet, blisters and blood.
  My limbs ache.
  The road is cold as it is quiet.
  Where is the laughter we were promised?
  Where is the gold in the chest? 
  Where are the colours in the rainbow?
  The promise dies in a flower bed, with wilted root and thorn - never a petal - never a sun.
  Where is the light?
  Don't tell me it was all a lie?
  I would have been happier if you had never lied.
  Riddles in the mist...
  That's what memories are.
  And memories they will always be.
  Memories that will never be.  

206:  To sleep when one is awake is to live in a world that is asleep.

207:  What is the meaning to it all?  Look to the trees and the flowers for they have the answer.

208:  Time to take a walk - where should we go - we have two paths - I know...
  Let's take both.
  Two Worlds - young and old.
  Which one do you prefer?
  I personally find there to be something marvellous in both - 
  One world is like a dream - while its neighbour a sunbeam - full of hope and splendour.
  It might be old but it looks as good as new to me.
  I like to walk between the two - they both offer a fine thing - the chance for adventure, and to enter, a place beyond the lines of sleep - I belong in neither, but I will walk in both.
  My feet are happy to fall on both - my thoughts dance like the waters, as I walk by the flowers.
  I rarely see such a thing, majesty that might humble a king, in a land that is always in Spring -
 now I must turn to the call - may the happiness of my walk be felt by all.  
   Goodnight two worlds, may you dream as one.
  And from thee many stories be done.
  
  Stray far from me not...  for if my feet do not walk thee, my mind will always wonder in the waters that wake thy gardens, and again in the dews of thy flowers, where life dreams.

209:  I see it.  Through thee I am awake.  I grow with thee.  I am thee.  For the sight of thee I ache - make no mistake, I live for the sake of thee.  So please forever be, the inspiration that grows inside of me.

210:  Thou art a pool of light in my mind.  Never leave me.  Be the river I swim in.  The sea the sun glows in.  Be me, like you, and we will grow forever.

211:  I wish I could unsee thee, for to see thee is to perish in the sight of thee - for the sight of thee was enough to end the light in me, the sight of thee was too much for me.  But now I live for thee, and wait for thee, in shadows where thy light never shines.  

212:  Make me as you see the world - make the world as it is with you in me.  

213:  So it was a dream, just a dream.  Now time to move on and forget about it.  

I am born TODAY.

214:  The best of anything can be found in the least of Everything...

215:  Counting down the hours - just counting down the hours...
Too scared to live too terrified to die,
It's just me and time,
Time and I, 
Counting down the hours,
Just counting down the hours.

216:  Perfectionism equals the death of the artist.

217:  Past, present, future - All things meet.  

218:  I have walked forever in a desert - only my heartbeat reminds me I am living - and reminds me I am a step away from the gulf...

219:  The Greatest and saddest mistake I ever made was to drink the words of a drinker...

220:  The Birches:  I hear them sing, I see them dance.  What thou art in day, at night thy spell is the same.  You have nothing to gain, except to absorb thine pain, as thy reign in the woods.  Like ghosts are thou twixt the mists of the earth, pale above the waves of the sea.  Beyond the depths of the deep - I see thee, ghosts.  Dance please while I sleep, and with hope I will dream of thee: o silver tree, you who invokes that song that sleeps in the depths of me.  

221: For where is the winters wroth?  Of little concern to spring.  Bring a little dance to the memory of the heather, for it is the succour to kings and princes dreams, my lords abide, in the tide, I beg thee, live for thee - thy fading rose, I appose, thy withering, live like me, and like me, be a thing of the day.  My beauty, where do thy strove?  In the heathers by jove?   Walk with me, as I say in plea, I beg thee.  Be my heather, dear jove, who bestowes the delight in me.  And brings out in me, the light in the spring.

222:    The sun has set on my dreams.

  My dreams were a bread basket burgeoning with flowers, roses, snowdrops, foxglove…

  Lilies of the valley…

  My dreams were made of these and in these memories please, let my heartbeat never drop a beat.

  Please, be not discreet and let thy repeat, my heartbeat in a drop, of the dews thy snow drops drew.    

  From the light thy knew, before I saw you, my foxglove, my heart in the field where the buttercups 

  Kiss and the sun and the moon just miss, the love that lives in you.

  And now my dreams are the bones of some great beast, resting in the sand, the glory of which died    

  A thousand summers ago, O sow low, my dreams be.

  Yet waters beneath the sand I flow, O yes woe be the darkness when it hears my voice, for yes woe   

  I am against thee my choice.  For against the darkness the sun rejoice, in the fields, with the foxglove, let us rejoice - and as the veil flows… 

  …show nothing.


223:
      
  I get it now.
  It's gone.
  It's back.
  It's gone.
  It was never there.
  I know now the truth of it.  
  I was nothing more than a wisp of air, a ripple in the water.  
  What water?
  Any water.
  Sea.  Lake.  Pond.  River.  Stream.
  The tiniest drop in a haze!
  Not even that...
  And like the tiniest drop, the smallest wave, the forgotten hush beneath an ivy bush... a thousand things change their ways in a thousand years and in a second.  
  I am not me.
  I never was.  
  It is gone.
  It is dead.
  It is for the best.
  I do things for nothing.
  Like sand does nothing for the sea.
  Like the grains of sand do nothing for the beach.
  Like the stars do nothing for the skies.
  And the skies do nothing for the universe.
  In a single breath a million go - and their dreams offer nothing to show - for only the thought of the dream lasts - like the thought of the thought in dreams sown before dreams - here is something that no one asked.
  Can anything hope to be so?
  Is there anything more than nothing?
  So I bow my head.
  I write this humbly.
  It is over for me.
  And I am glad about it.
  I write now because I want to.
  I write for nothing other than that.
  It is gone.
  I write this last book because it is my blink in the moment, my ripple in the waves, my sigh in the leaves of the holly bush.

224:  When I start my work I do not see words.  I only hear music.  I see mountains of liquid sound.  And then those sounds become words and that is how my stories are born.  Every poem I have ever penned was written from the liquid waves of a song.

225:  Looking at the waves there is not much to really see - not until you look again, not with your eyes but beyond your eyes - you look at the waves as you instead, just YOU, and soon the dance becomes a thing in which worlds sing.  

226:  Even in the winters, when death was in thy heart,
  Even when it seemed there might be no victors,
  I always knew we would never be apart.
  I always saw the light in thee.
  You always were my favourite thing to see.
  Indeed the very greatest tree.
  Even in the depths of darkness, 
  I always saw the joy in you.  
  Even when in the depths of sadness,
  I always saw the right way in you.
  Even when thy flesh was as green as the grass,
  I always heard you laugh.  
  Even when the world was like shattered glass,
  My deepest sorrows would be torn in half.
  In the mists I always saw the joy in you.
  In you and in only you.
  You were the only thing that made me laugh.
  
227:  The sun be thee the sun be thine, there is no greater joy said I:  I planted the seed so long ago, and I watched you grow under every sun, and beneath every moon I let you know, my love for thee is fine and free...
  And it is for all.
  And in thirty years I see thee, fine young and beautiful faces, smiling, beautiful and fine to see, and in thirty years thence I would see them all again.  Lovely and fine.  Smiling and good.  And we would have wine and apples, and honey.  And there would be songs and everyone was happy.  
  There is no part in time that is happy for me.  All of the seasons and the days are as one to me, and I am happy in all of them.  
  But in the summer I would see the smiling faces, enjoying the tree I grew.  And in that time they would set their places, looking for the shade, and we would eat and drink and sing and much merriment would be made.
  Because of that seed, which I carried in my pocket over the hills.  That seed is my home, I said as I walked the way of the road.  And wherever I carry that seed my home will be.  And then I planted the seed on an old hill by a river, and that is where I hope to stay, with those smiling faces, enjoying the shade that grew because of my seed.

228:  For there is softness in the lights.  The lights.  The light in thy eyes, thy eyes that haunt.  They eyes haunt.  Over the hills and by the hills, thy eyes haunt.  In the light of thy eyes is the sun, the night, and in the darkness still the stars are bright.  For there is a light, in thy eyes, so bright, thy eyes that haunt my sight.

229:  I have suffered in as much as everyone has suffered, in every small way or other.

230:  In thy eyes I see thy thoughts in thy thoughts the shapes of stars take place and in the shapes with great haste appear the light of things and in the light the joy it begins and with the joy a music it also brings which has a voice that sings: forever the dance we dance, forever the dance forever let's dance.

231:  God sleeps in the softest soul and speaks in the wildest mind. For there in the heart of things is the delight of things! Quiet corners hide the brightest things. The wildest things! The silent things. The best of things. In such things wonders bring the brighter tough of things. And in the wildest jumpiest lights a gentle voice sings, the loudest voice brings the gentlest things. O merry praise the bluebells at spring, so sing, at spring or sing! Thy wildest voice o bring! Thy gentle lament of things, the loveliest things thou bring. I sing thee now to soft sleep.

232: The moon sleeps in the eye of the night but dreams with the colours of the day, just as the water dreams and as the light gleams it too dreams in the wonders of the waves.

119999000.  Now I can safely say that I don't know anything that knows me quite so well as my chair.


[Work in progress below]

NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR: SOME POEMS ARE WORK IN PROGRESS.

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