Tantric Surfers of the Skies [poem]
bro
ken
peo
ple
everywhere
(broken = dead)
I see their look
I fall apart
Don’t know which is more in pieces
broken people or my heart
shattered by
the desperation
of their souls
the resignation
in their eyes
the thousand hearting whys
they never say —
I see it all
and even if they hide it well
I see it still
then tremble weep
and call out to my angel friends
to lend these souls their clothes
until their hearts unfroze
but drudgery goes on
as
bro
ken
peo
ple
everywhere
behind their walls
and comfortable
chainmail palls
avoid repair
Up in Smoke [poem]
All we have on which to base our ego view of who we are
is memories, thoughts and notions from the past.
The present doesn’t figure in our minds in terms of
shaping our identity. For every moment lived up
to the full is secretly a false-self-slaughtering iconoclast!
This is no joke.
Scenes of Conscience [sonnet]
Her life swept through the air across the room
like glassy sand grains on a windswept beach
burying me up to my neck in gloom —
though salty tears were still within my reach.
The wheelchair by her side spoke to me most.
A single gloved hand dangled lifelessly.
Her hair was short — her face white as a ghost.
She stared up at the ceiling wonderingly.
I noticed then her sore and blistered hand
(the one which wasn’t hidden in a glove).
Such scenes as this our consciences demand;
a silent prayer I fired to realms above:
Forgive me if from time to time I whine:
so many folks have far worse lives than mine.
.
.
© Alan Morrison, 2014
Uncle Alan’s Valentine’s Day Advice
Many will have opted out of acknowledging Valentine’s Day tomorrow. Viewing it as cheesy, corny, schmaltzy and merely sentimental (rather than truly romantic), they will choose to ignore it, claiming it’s a huge money-making racket. All those things are true…BUT… I can absolutely guarantee that if you produce a surprise gift for your spouse, partner, lover, wannabe lover or wishtheywere lover — even if they are the most hardened anti-Valentine’s Day activist in the universe — they will still be over the moon and melt at your offering. Trust me on this. And if they then feel bad that they didn’t get you a present, tell them that a passionate kiss will be just right! You don’t need to call it a Valentine’s Day present. Disguise it if you wish. You could even save it till the Moon is Full at 00.54 Central European Time on Saturday, just after midnight, only missing Valentine’s Day by less than an hour (or it’s full at midnight if you’re in a GMT zone). Avoid using tacky wrapping paper or giving custom V-Day atrocities. Give something tasteful and simple. Tell them you got a serious case of Cupiditis and couldn’t resist because you really do love them and you believed it would make them happy and you couldn’t miss out on seeing their eyes light up and their hearts quicken. Tell them you wanted to give them joy — that it pleased you to do so. Then they will know even more how much you love them, for that is absolutely what love delights in. Make it a simple gift. (A Porsche would be inappropriate in this instance 🙂 ). Just make sure you tell him or her that it is from your heart to theirs. That is the magic phrase. Then you are creating a direct line — a silver cord between you and him or her. Those silver cords are vital in this fragile world and in the midst of so many fragile relationships. The more silver cords there are, the more beauty we infuse into it. I have seen couples (and I’ve been there myself) who have made a pact to ignore the V-Day and then felt very smug, as if they had participated in a political act of great significance. But, inwardly, deep down inside, each wished the other had given them something anyway. They secretly longed for it. Truly. Trust me. Even if you don’t believe a word of what I say, try it as an experiment. You will be blown away by the result. I look forward to any feedback. With much love, from my heart to yours. ❤
Homeless Mothers [poem]
She said she’d lost her home.
“I lost my home”, she said
so matteroffactly self-effacely
not a trace of horror or of irony
(though fire in me was kindled
by those cold one-bullet words).
I swear my eyes have never
been so moist as when
I watched those letters falling
from her crest onto my screen.
I nearly died of shame that
motherhood could spill out
on the street without a covering.
What kind of world is this
where nurture-souls can find
themselves unhomed?
Then, sensing my distress
she said that it’s just life
and… yes… she’s right…
for life has cruelty watermarked
across its page like tigers’ teeth
sunk in a bambi’s throat;
a bite wrought by a spider
with no antidote;
a trawler’s crew washed overboard
with all hands lost at sea;
an eighty-something lady raped
— the victim of brutality;
a woman stalked and hounded
by some twisted little creep
till desperately from some deserted
clifftop she did screamly leap.
So damnable unfairness
oozes out of every pore of life
which makes me wince
and not infrequently it makes me weep.
But when someone as lovely, lively
soft and inly fragile as she is
(I say that even though she often has
an outward toughness act built up
through countless undeserving scars)
becomes a roofless mother
making ends which never meet
I then discover empathetic strands
and want to kick my feet against
the rope which binds us
to the earth and think of roofs
in other ways of infinite more worth
than slate or felt or red and curly tile
or any other style — and so then
in my mind I join her on the sand;
we make a roof of sky and stars
and… Oh look, there is Mars!
and celebrate the loss of
solid-stated canopies and turn
our inner head around
to have an upward face to panoplies
of suns and myriads of galaxies
and in this way we found another view
of seeing home as more than
just a patch of ground
or four-walled place.
Instead home is a state of grace
wherein we find our core
and so much m o r e
and though we still need
shelter from incoming storms
the element which stealthly keeps
all solid homeless people warm
is seeing past intrinsic human norms
— discovering a sacred place —
where we don’t change ourselves
to gauntlet-run in someone else’s race
but (if only!) change the world around us
till its threshold makes us welcome
(says that loudly on the grassy mat!)
in such a way that even rocks
could be our pillows
and our home in any universe
would just be
where we hang our hat.
.
.
© Alan Morrison, 2014
Sonnet for a Wounded Rose
When first I met that frightened little mite
she’d barely look me squarely in the eye.
A suit of armour fit her body tight,
so cupid’s arrows she could nullify.
You see, a microscopic spear was thrown
which caught that rosy flower off her guard.
It pierced the tender spot where love is grown
so confidence and poise were badly scarred.
But yet, in spite of all the damage done
her beauty has increased a thousandfold.
A healing process in her had begun,
transcending any spearful stranglehold.
For often, wounds which seem to us austere
are given to us so we persevere.
.
.
© Alan Morrison, 2014
The Integrity of Destiny
He couldn’t remember the second time it happened. It was when he was a kid — not very long after the episode on the bus with his mother. Some character had come into his vision and it was as if an unseeable multi-dimensional screen had been switched on in his mind. He received impressions, scenes, conversations, sounds, smells, noises, like dribbles trickling down from some infinite network of the sum of human thought and action. Often they would come all at the same time, yet still be individually discernable — rather like those exploded diagrams of engines one sees in car manuals, in which you are shown even the smallest part but also the entire engine itself, thus making it clear how the whole thing fits together. Nathan saw people’s lives like that. “Exploded diagrams of happenstance and synchronicity”, as he called them.
Free-Range Fantasy [sonnet]
I’m wondering if some change in DNA
(the only explanation I can find)
has spawned so many flaky chicks today
by which most roosters now feel undermined.
It’s getting hard to find a stable cluck
in any modern trendy free-range brood.
Plus many don’t make love but only fuck —
off-putting poultry full of attitude.
But yet, I have this little fantasy
(which friends have said is futile and absurd)
that somewhere there’s a clutch (not KFC!)
wherein one finds a true Arcadian bird.
I scratch the earth — not just to find some grains
but chickens without flakes stuffed in their brains.
.
.
© Alan Morrison, 2014
Merge [sonnet]
Cautious smiles flickered on her wounded lips
behind the fire curtain drawn across
her face. There is a wariness which drips
out of her pores. I sense she’s suffered loss.
I know her pain (I think she knows I know);
but neither of us states the way we feel.
Thus, to prevent the fact that hurt may grow,
we hold back and our longings we conceal.
This gentle soul’s been bruised and left to die.
Am I, alone, the only other soul
to see her scar and want to sanctify
its cells and melt her shell and make her whole?
It’s long since I have felt this sacred urge
to take a woman in my arms and merge.
.
.
© Alan Morrison, 2014
The Gift of Despair
“He fumbled again for his notebook. He remembered when it was new, when he had looked at it and said: “One day you will be dog-eared and dimpled, filled with substance and inconsequence, like an obese cadaver on a mortuary slab”. He noticed some words scratched into the back page from an inkless pen:
I am the hypocrite of a thousand petals
The hole of my life is the empty
eyeball grimace of a skull
I am a ragged flower
A hybrid of deadly nightshade
Of foxglove phantasies
Of morning glory
Of unfantastic gloriousness
I dwell in the suburbs of hell
The Naked Troubadour 