Balm

like a black, thin dress slowly floating down
so envelops darkness the palm tree;
success, like a lying caress
melts and frees the soul
of images of distasteful homes;
more than places or statues,
the universe is inherited by the
caprice of fleeting hopes,
streams with trees that gently roll;
hidden underneath it all,
treasure from before the fall,
a flute from which sounds the call to awe;
peace extends like a handshake
that, in memory, none can break;
I did once wish you tarried so,
that you could stay, remain
and let our hearts burn,
lest everything you had told us
just became this hazy dream;
lest the paintbrush of physical laws
would diffuse and dissolve all
that we had built in vain, for good;
I did wish I could be a child again
and erase all my past mistakes,
the baggage of time that is not really mine
and instead mine all that is forgot;
I remember now -- way out of the city
you baptised someone in a stream
and however much that group and their silly views
we are now at comfort to reprobate, yet they
still appear like an innocent dream
compared to all the highly regarded filth
spewed out by online news streams;
I remember again -- a flower, the only
friend in a garden made foreign by hands
busy rewriting the story of robbed lands
a city, with a tall gothic church standing witness
to a long overdue visit after more then twenty years;
or at the edge of England, walking among
Victorian houses that looked like they had piled up
while reaching for the peace of the crowning hills;
we've walked far since then,
and maybe it's just that,
jumping from age to age,
I have to admit I've aged;
if I'd be at pains to retrace
our steps and our missteps,
let me ask for strength
to find the old anew
and embrace the new of worth 
as if they were an old friend

Hongaars Piet

Now the story
Has its proper end — not
A man with graying hair runs past
Towards what?

I ask myself;

Into death’s arms perhaps

A more honest opponent

Than all these supposed 

Brothers in arms

All of them liars on payroll

So if it’s true that

Power corrupts

Then it is best

If I'm as far away from it

As East is from West

Before it erupts

What little good I have

I’d like to keep

But poor Kipling hadn’t heard

That there is a country

Tall and proud

Where it is to no gain

Of either, but

The twain do meet

—

Provincial and ordinary

We do swim

In the muck of our making

No bootstrap will work here

The mercy we all need

To save us from our pettiness

Is not from a president

It is not from the pat on the back

From some mandarin of the East

Or official of the West

No places high or low can show

What you should already have

Burnt into your heart

And etched onto your lips:

“Oh, that my ways were steadfast

    in obeying your decrees!”

Run 2

Your condition -- it wasn't a condition at all.

Just a descriptor -- like how fast or how tall.

Didn't make you less special -- but more.

And unique in how you coped with it all.

That's all.

Fibres

Tis the honest emptiness of the night

What there is of us can be torn apart

Like curd in whey, cut softly with a knife

Cords of beef meat and chorus of delight

In the ring during bolero's bull fight

It's fine, a fine cut, but we'll be alright

On your face intextured shines a bright light

All craters great and small flash then take flight

Your eyes -- or their ayes -- they have it, alright

Run

I hardly thought of you these past few years.

But now that your cord has been broken, I’m upset.

I’d like to know how it happened, but I should not.

In what way would that make anything better?

If I was pure in heart, I would feel empathy for you and your family.

What makes me upset is the charity we’re meant to donate to.

You were special in my eyes.

Now this disease seems to explain most of what I knew about you.

Tap, tap, tap, you run upstairs.

Then you burst in half-naked, into our shared living room

Using only a towel to cover you.

“Shit!” you exclaim. You have somewhere to be rushing to.

When you screamed in delight at a mathematical proof,

It wasn’t you being you, it was your disease.

The way in which you ran out of the world,

Mysterious to me, and so it should remain,

Was probably a product of your illness too.

And so, when a prime minister sanctimoniously 

Refuses to give the name of a mass murderer

So as not to give him some supposed satisfaction

Beyond his self-chosen grave

I will refuse to name this illness,

This murderer of my image of you.

But enough has been said.

Tell me, will you run between the stars now?

Will you orienteer in space?

I hope the Universe can’t contain you

If it could not keep you in its place.

Age and all

The mental breakdown
Dementia breaks down
Each Life,Like,Vic,Tim

At stroke of Midnight
Cat purrs he let Jim
Stroke for midnight gym

Those who can, survive
Those who can't, serve chills
News that cancer kills

In the end: return we must
Each takes turns to turn to dust
But he minds the lives we live

Or at least I hope there is
One who made us, one to give
Our lives back to, rest in peace.

Self conscious bias

I am -- lost for words
I can -- only give
Worlds, images old

My eyes, they are closed
A game, as it flows
Across my mind's reel

The spine of a hill;
A start -- now it snows,
Covering the trail;

Fresh footsteps they bear
The way before fog:
Follow, round the bend.

Step, step, and descend;
Snow turns more mushy:
Slush, slush, it's a dream

I step into stream
Of subconsciousness;
I unravel.

In

Travels
Through my mind
I can but find

The search and research
Of that which can't be
Like a proof, deduced

Or even reduced.
Ink on my forehead
Unwitting witness

If all is witless
How fine and reckless
This series of dreams.