Away with Words

Follow me to dreams
Let us fuse with the night
Dance with the darkness
And design our delight.

You! In the tight pants!
Don’t you know the value of
Imagination?

I am far weaker
Than I shall ever show and
You shall ever know.

For too long I have been a slave
To blind emotion;
A truly malicious master
And so deceitful!

I have learned the danger of dreams;
The folly of plans;
I have been imprisoned by those
Who possess lovers.

I have felt the deathly silence
Of love diminished,
As expression leaks its colour
And loses meaning.

I have entertained notions of
Star-crossed fantasies;
Bathed in esoteric lore
Steeped in the surreal.

I have embraced the recklessness
Of spilled promises,
Fueled by a pulsing urgency
To seize the future.

And yet, though now I relish the
Simplicity of
Reasoned thinking, a part of me
Seeks out the madness.

For without imagination
Dreams cannot be born
And without the gift of feeling
Love would cease to be.

Why must you walk away?
Surrender to the voices in your mind
When mine alone is asking you to stay
Every rhyme and reason falls behind.

How did it come to this?
Our eyes were fixed upon a future bright
But now there is a distance in your kiss
Older wounds are dampening the light.

Where will we go from here?
When touching you is all that I desire
Dream a different sky and paint it clear
Fall asleep beside a dwindling fire.

I miss a girl I do not know
Her beauty left me reeling
I feel a pain I cannot show
I do not like this feeling.

We lay entwined upon the bed
And held each other tightly
We might have been asleep instead
I do not take sleep lightly.

She softly spoke of love and lies
My heart was slowly sinking
To think of sadness in those eyes
Was too much to be thinking.

And so we bid a fast farewell
Such moments aren’t for stealing
I miss a girl I know not well
I do not like this feeling.

Waiting for sunset at Salthill; our favourite spot, hidden away in a quiet cove by the promenade. Clara was quiet, her usual rambling replaced by serenity I did not recognise.
‘Clara’, I whispered.
‘Yeah’
‘Are you alright?’
She beamed a smile.
I pulled her close, claiming to be cold, blaming the breeze.
Not a word.
If it weren’t for the seagulls’ cries and the lapping waves, her silence might have deafened me. But there was something peaceful about it too. I looked at her profile, her gaze fixed upon the horizon. She had never looked so radiant and free of worry. Her mother’s illness had taken its toll, surrounding her youthful eyes with shade.
Not this day.
‘We should go somewhere….somewhere hot’ I said, tentatively, knowing her resistance to leaving her mother’s side.
‘No’, she replied.
‘Just enjoy now’
‘I am, but…’
‘Steven! You are always making plans. Sometimes you…you need to breathe in the moment, the here and now. It’s all we have’.
A feeling raced through me that I can only describe as a cleansing.
‘It’s the sea’, I mused to myself. ‘The waves whisking my worries away’
I smiled.
‘Steven’. She turned to me, with a sudden sadness in her eyes.
‘You have to go’
My resting heart lost a beat, then quickened.
‘Go where?’
‘I love you so much’, she said, with a quiver. Her voice began to falter. Someone had turned her down, and turned up the sea.
‘I love you too…but…what do you mean? Go where?’ I stammered, in a confused panic.
I could no longer hear her voice. I made out two words: ‘Live’ and ‘Love’.
A flash on the horizon seized my attention.
A voice on the waves: ‘Steven’
Louder still: ‘STEVEN’.
Clara gripped my hand and kissed me. I felt her tears on my cheek.
One last word: ‘Go!’
A vast light rose and consumed me.
‘Steven. Oh thank god.’
I recognised my mother’s voice.
‘Steven’. A man’s voice.
‘You were in a serious accident’.
‘What? When?’ I slurred.
‘Three weeks ago. You’ve been in a coma’.
‘But I was just with Clara….Clara!’ I cried.
Silence.
My mother squeezed my hand. ‘I’m so sorry Steven. She didn’t make it.’

I have not yet exhausted the Haiku, but I have become a little obsessed with it, so I’m backing away, slowly, and mixing things up again.

I’m writing some short stories at the moment, so I’ll put one of them up later on today.

I’m very grateful for this community. You inspire me daily.

A restless spirit
Is more true to its nature
Than a peaceful one.

Waste not a moment
For the remains of today
May be all you have.

What sacrifices!
In the name of the unseen
Much blood has been shed.

Refill the fountain
With the wonder of our youth
And not youth itself.