Recognition

Let me be a something,
Something that I'm not.
Let me have a little taste
Of what I haven't got.

Make me feel significant,
Or relevant at least.
Watch me try my hardest
And show me that you're pleased.

Put aside the failed attempts
And usher in the new.
Offer recognition
For the things that I can do.

Give me space and time to find
My personality.
Let me be a something,
Let that thing be me.

Eleven

My son, one day you will be a man,
Yet you'll always be my boy.
I shall love and support you however I can,
For you are my pride and joy.

Never let anyone put you down
Nor ever a day go by
That leaves you feeling alone;
Just turn to your mother and I.

I trust you to carry the name we share,
Courage and strength it will bring.
Brave men and wise men have done so before
And you are the future King.

My son, you're the fruit of the family tree,
The crown on the family crest.
Whatever you may wish to be,
For us and yourself, be your best.

On the terrace of the Hôtel Belvedere

Sipping arabica,
sweetened with local cane,
she turns toward the searing sun.

Thoughts,
drifting momentarily
upon an icy shiver of the breeze,
clash like the crests of breaking waves:

this paradise and that other place,
where he still lingers,
where he no doubt curses her

and storms about.
There are no storms about here.

She watches the tide ebb,
knowing it will never never never turn again.

Sunbird

She is my bird of sun,

My day cannot begin before she rises.

All ensuing acts and compromises,

The very precious fabric it comprises,

Have only now begun.

At her point of peak

Her radience delights this panorama.

Her grace distills achievement from raw drama,

She blends her unique recipe of karma 

With elegant mystique.

Through everything that has been,

She's effortlessly ridden on the breeze 

Like a simple dhow upon the rolling seas.

She rests again, high in the mighty trees,

Until a new dawn heralds her reprise

And my sunbird sets the scene.

Let Sleeping Cats Lie

My cat is fast asleep.
It humours me to see him
in a slumber quite so deep.
I wish that I could be him.

Let It Out, Keep It In

I cannot read the angry words of other angry men.
I cannot get inside their heads or empathise their pain.
I don't use their vocabulary,
Recoil from its brutality
And fear the latent anger of the spaces in between.
You would think me sympathetic
To the laments of the poetic
And I am no heartless critic of the places they have been.
I just cannot read the angry words of other angry men.

I could not write a diary of such personal despair
Such depths of self-enquiry and the beasts you find down there.
I could neither brave the darkness
Nor the sweaty light of frankness,
The inner sibling rivalry with my schizophrenic frère.
I would wrap myself in fiction,
Using metaphor and diction,
Cowering in a library on a wonky-legged chair,
But I couldn't write a diary of such personal despair.

The Jogger

Steady breathing.
In.
Out.

An asthmatic wheeze.
Out.
In.

Unexpected gradient.
Power.
Burn.

Rehydration.
Stitch.
Walk.

Change of surface.
Bounce.
Resume.

Determined final extra push.
Warm.
Down.

Endorphins.
Addictive.
High.

Sense of accomplishment.
Tomorrow.
Again.