A child's tantrum

Harley Brown

I broke an arm this morning
Trying to fix my inner house
And inner limbs all suffered too
As I was breaking in and out.

I painted my face all black
After failing to do a smokey cat eye
For the thousand time.
Stood there in the storm's eye
Instead.

I smudged my lips with lifeblood of the feelings
running wild inside,
Like trains
Crossing my veins
On tracks of steel
Heavy to feel.

It blew my mind away
In seconds
And crossed me like a rage.
Numbing me down to nothingness.
On which I could my lips to press
As if the bitterness to taste.

I heard you, oh sweet child of mine,
Inside you echoed loud and far;
Roaring unflinchingly at me,
I shuddered while you thought me blind.

Then louder still you played your drum
And hitting home,
I heard again
the painful echoes from afar;
And seeing now with inner eyes,
I know my hurt is personal.

And then got up, the storm,
To leave
Leaving my inner wells
In turmoil,
From containers overflowing.
Having nothing left to do,
I stood up to leave myself.
Then transformed in
food for worms,
hid amongst the autumn leaves
waiting for the birds.

My lack

I went out to smell the roses
And came back with their
fragrance on my lips.
Came back somewhere inside,
This time brazenly so.

It is harder to come back
When you haven't gone away.
I went today not far from home
While trying home to come
And thought I'd linger here a while
Both places near and far.

You came to mind.
And you. And you.
I pressed your image to my
cheek
And thought of love just like
I did before.
This time
Enamored with myself don't
want to me no more.
You are my lack and all the
things I do not own myself,
So do I really love you as you are?

A sadist conversation

'Come again,
Be kind,
Be rude,
Be angry
Or be bored,
But be there.

Come naked,
Come blind
Or at least blindfolded.
Do come with all your senses
Untouched;
It might help our conversation along.'

I say.

'Don't be suspicious,
Nothing is hiding under the heavy curtains of my mind
And If I 'm thoughtful
Do not place your blue assumptions on my table.
If you do, I will not be considering them.'

You say.

'I might come down as selfish,
But I need...do I need to hurt you?
I simply won't
Allow destructive silence of the wistful kind
To fill my glass half full.'

'You are absurd
I feel you are absurd,
erratically and brazenly
stoning my concrete wall.
Give up your hope
You won't be coming in.
And that is how I feel.'

'But that is not a feeling,
I am enraged.
There, a feeling.
Please let me come on top
Of all of this
So I can be the better one,
The better of the two.

Hold on, hold out,
Be patient and be kind,
I need to feel my soul...
It's chilly there and cold.'

In this artwork Kingstown Harbour
Can be seen in the background.
So your boat is safe.
Just pull it closer to our shore
Once more.

Safe shore of all our limitations;
Why would you want to risk so much?
Shaking the boat was dangerous
To pull from under us
Much of the common ground
We stand.

Integrity, you tell me,
Has got the better of you.
Go on, you be integrous,
Have not an expectation
That I will follow suit.
For my one has me ridiculed.
I'm holding tight
To sadism
For now.

A woman's point of view

I told you every pain I have
And yet I felt no better,
For every pain you heard has
hurt
And then you hurt me back
tenfold.

I looked for comfort in your arms
Yet all I felt was arms of steel
and I don't mean strong;
Free flowing through your veins
was not
Warm loving that I craved.

Infused with love were not
And empty your embraces were
instead.

My lips that yearned for kisses
Uttered a thousand hurtful words
To season our meeting
Of the minds
with spiteful fiery passion
Of the unpleasant kind.

For if our lonely hearts across
from one another
Were to sit,
And if they were to meet,
Oh but then for me to write of all
such things
Would there be little or no need.

Help coming our way

Sometimes help coming our way
Is not meant to be supportive
But to cut through all the layers
Of personas and game-players,
Like a lover's heavy truth
Reaching home inside of you,
Making ocean's ripples smooth
To better reflect the sky
And a human's inner eye.

Sometimes that help
Comes disguised,
As a Satan or a Christ,
As a shadow or a dove
Or a blunder made on purpose.

Sometimes help
Comes as a weed
In rich soil planted deep.
Tread around it
with great care
As it makes you more aware.

The longer path

 

For me I heard

The longer path

might heal the wounds

No shortcut ever could.

I breathe and break

But this time not my spirit.

And inch by inch approach—

I breach the walls

To hold a torch

And bring some light

Inside,

To clear the inner plight.

I break the walls

To try and get outside

A soul too scared to speak

Too scared to walk

for it might trip

Over the giant leap

It took.

Expanding the narrow

 And the minute I stood still,

I heard voices from within,

In the silence they start talking

No words though, but only echoes.

The same minute I stood still

I saw paintings from within

In the silence they take shape

Depicting decluttered landscape.

A minute more and I could smell

The ripened coffee beans

Of a plantation far away

Of soil warm as well as brown

Transformed, and roasted, liquefied

And poured into my ancient cuppa,

coffee induced, the gutsy sparkle.

Now I’m right here in my body

Cosy and warm

Rooted and heavy

Living my life

Within my home

Within.

Hearing my breath

Breathing itself all the way down

to my bones,

all the way down,

to my pelvis

So that, revived, to spread myself

and stretch my inner limbs,

Expand in all the once unaired crannies

of whatever I am made of.

Go on, my heart

Sometimes little or no reason
Do I need igniting fires
And unleashing them on you
And You
And really any stranger
Whose karma crosses paths
with mine
In need of burning.

And it's the pain of thinking
Way too much
Of aging and of dying
And all the things Absurd
And frightening alone.
A subject much too vast
Which too much space is taking
Inhabiting my heart.

My poor heart.
This tenant of my body
And house to all my feelings
Has not a single Thought.
It lives. And lives. And soars
And then One day
Exists no more.
It beats no longer in my
body
But in the vastness of the
sky
Celestially preoccupied.

No more it beats
Or is contained,
constricted, soft or tender
Or hardened by my slow
unfolding burdens
of the past.

It makes you think, you know.
But now I'd rather feel,
Not missing any beat.
Go on, my heart.
You steal the show.

A laughter such as this

A laughter such as this,
Such as the one I hear and see
to look in that direction,
Would steal a smile off any other face,
Mine included.
A laughter such as this
Is inherent to the human nature,
Inherent to my nature!
Oh! I so crave a laughter such as this!
Much like an indication
Of the blissful happiness of a
carefree spirit.
It lies dormant,
Yet in its potentiality
I can manifest it at any time.
I only need create the space,
So that a laughter such as this
Does not pass me by once more.
Oh, it did for way too long!

Locked up

I wonder what you feel
When you avoid the present
To live in some
unbeknownst future.
I wonder how it feels
To avoid what you would feel like
otherwise,
What you would feel in the Now.

Is it anxiety? Or fear? Love?
Vulnerability?
Where have they all gone
To make room for your
fantasy of the future,
In which hidden corner of your
worried mind
Have you hidden such great treasure?

We make friends with our enemies,
Or so we secretly wish,
For we look up to them.
Or so we think.
And we keep our unwanted feelings locked away,
while developing no real predisposition towards
them.
Ay, how lonely might they feel!
Perhaps if we understood the loneliness
We would be more prone
to befriend ourselves...

Belonging to the past

Flashbacks hurt my soul once more,
Surprisingly so, once more.
Never thought I would come back
To something as cruel as that,
Never thought I would review it
No surveillance, never knew it.
Why, it hurts so much right now
Many years down the line,
Why, it hurts my soul to know
That humane was never there
On these cruel people's minds.
It was never on their minds
How they could dehumanise
Another human trying
To become much more
Another human crying,
To be left alone.

A human, yes, who maybe had lost her plot
But had found an inner light
Which never had shined so bright.

And yes, I was distracted,
Unhinged, demented, crazed
But brutal was
to hold me down
with chains
made out
of human hands,
who seized me and constrained me
Even when a human was talking back to them
In words...

Sacred are words,
But tainted were the fleshy chains,
Tainted and dark
And of the Underworld.
Which sought constraints
Of my body
But oh, my soul was being hurt instead,
Broken, already feeling lost,
Bleeding, already having bled.

A broken spirit was I then,
And one would have to wonder,
Did I ever fully come back
Patched up,
Or still am walking limping,
Still trying to escape a force
invisibly impinging
on my core?
A force which belongs to the past,
But that lives on,
In my heart?

A shock of awareness

I found myself pondering over and over and over my coffee,
quietly then inwardly,
Black from all its bitter taste,
And excited by aberrant words written on the surface of
that hard coffee table
on which I was resting my elbows,
Elbows tired from holding my head in
such a bored posture.
Where am I going?
Most cliched,
But let me ask you
Have you ever felt that way?
Yes you have,
And You and I as everyone else in here
Has at some stage or another, in their busy narrow lives
Asked that very question, really,
And released it to the skies
Praying for an urgent answer.
Did you shiver, let me ask you
Did you try to make it stop?
Or did wisdom shocked you deeper
Knowingly showing its truth.
Did you lie down with the soil,
Digging for the fertile seed
planted there in your psyche...
That creative womb which speaking,
bears the children of the world,
Urging them to go in there,
To that very root of all
And deliver lavishly,
the shock of much awareness.

That makes for things sharp in sight
So that you don't yet again
blind yourself most daringly
by the dazzling light of gifts,
of this major Untapped source,
running deep into the stream
of a mind creating riches,
River of creative impulses.

Nourishing the soul,
We feed it wholesome food,
cleansing it of all our inner poisons...
Polluting fumes such as concocted reasons
as to why we don't contribute
to the world that goes in seasons
just like us.
Coupled with this,
disparaging inner talk
uttered out loud to the hearing apparatus of our illogic urges,
Suffocating the imaginative methods
By dampening down the flame
the flame, the flame,
It is that flame that keeps them cooking!

If it is not enough to think our idea,
If it is not enough to give it birth
in our mind and not acceptable
abandoning our baby hungry,
While postponing expressing it
out loud into the outer world,
Then why do we shun innovative ideas
Poured over tea or coffee with our breakfast meal?
Perhaps because they need more brewing,
Even yeast dough needs constant feeding.
It comes in cycles.
Sometimes it's dormant, then
reawakens
And no need, really, to readjust it
to fit the vision
of a scrutinising eye.
But do create and recognise your gifts most soulfully
For you are not alone
And the world needs more of you and coffee
To come alive.
Don't just keep it tucked in cosily
In the corner of your myopic eye,
Who hasn't seen this light,
Whatever this 'it' means to you.
Alchemise your creative rambles,
Transmute your strong toxic postponing,
Come out. Come in.
Dig deep, dive in,
Someone is awaiting here.
Wherever makes us come alive...

Fire in my loins

Someone long ago,
told me my neurons had fallen down into my ovaries.
As a way of offending me.
I wish I had said it then
instead of thinking it now,
I wish I had said he was right.
I think with my loins.
I feel right down into my pelvis.
I move through the world
held by the intelligence of what
my feminine parts
carry since birth.
Expressing what my groin feels,
I make for a better world.
I do not wish to have brains,
I wish instead for fire in my loins.

We are all Refugees

We are all Refugees
Running away from some aspect
or other,
Of ourselves.
Fleeing the hunger of our Soul.
And we keep running in circles,
Running from ourselves,
And running into others
Who are forever the invaders,
Forever trying to steal from us
What we cannot sell to them.

Hard done by others,
Victimised, bullied,
oppressed, ostracised.
We now project onto the Other
-The Refugee. The immigrant-
All that we cannot longer
hold into the light of our
Being.
We now become the victim
and the perpetrator,
Having to fight for ourselves
With ourselves,
The only weapon left
For mass destruction.
For there is fear in ourselves
And fear can quickly turn
into bullets
Which we will endlessly fire
away
Towards the enemy
From the enemy we harbour inside.

'Please look yourself in the mirror
If you are to stone your self.'
Says the millenarian voice
From within the Shadow itself;
This dingy place filled with
all the things we have
delegated it with.
And right There, in the darkness,
Flashes a light ever so bright.

Letter to a disappearing man

To the disappearing man
Who lifted me up from one or two of my many
deaths before
And who was always there in my fall,
To hold me by broadening the Divine space around me,
A space that caught me at the right time and
placed me right back on the pedestal I had created
for myself during self-love euphoria

I say just this,
As you will for sure hear more wisdom in the
pauses between the words...

Be kind to yourself,
Enliven your senses,
Take care of your emotions,
Provide a safe haven for them and your dreams,
Guard your heart but break it open as often as
you do
And wait and act,
Both at the same time.

Feeling like a fiery Whirlpool

The hurt is opening its big mouth
to swallow us
And we go in willingly,
Without a fight.
Although we fight each other.
And the abyss we build in the process
Is getting deeper and wider
For I don't know when to stop.
And you don't know where to begin.

We are stuck in this crucible
And fire gets used to light up
more and more shadows
forgotten deep down in our
Embodied Soul.

We are a whirlpool of feelings.
And we are spinning around
with them
Until we get dizzy and our
head gets fuzzy,
Our stomach churns,
throat constricted with lies.
Lies we tell each other,
They come out unwillingly and yet they are
deliberate, with a life of their own,
Separate from our real sentiments
Clouded by dark textures
And covered in gold.
And I am feeling more and more
like a Fiery whirlpool,
Consumed in the tragic actuality of love.

Apologies

Just wanted to say I'm sorry for breaking into ur account. For what it's worth. 

I don't like the person I have become.

I have never done this before.

And yet with you, I feel so uncertain, so anxious, so unsure.

Of Everything.

I'm not sure it's your fault.

Or only your fault.

It just is.

Not right, nor wrong.

But it's strong.

You always act like you have something to hide.

Now I feel like shit because I did that.

After a few bad google translations,

And a spicy message to Rainbow Flint

 I found nothing I was looking for.

I guess you were innocent after all.

But not in the way you act.

I know you will say your integrity is down the line,

That I have broken your privacy, your boundaries.

And it's true, I have.

I almost want to be done with this relationship,

So that I can avoid the person I've become.

I know you won't forgive me,

Or if you will,

You will never tell me

Or it will never show...

(Believe it or not, this is a desperate call for FEELINGS)

Tell me,

Show me!

Or I just won't be able to forgive myself.

Wake up call

When you understand that
when you suffer,
It is the World suffering
through you,
Then you will understand.
And your grief will then become
a wake up call.
To save yourself, to save me
To save each other
So we can survive as one
in a multitude of universes
All parallel to each other.

Blessing

May true light come your way
Shaped by many rays of joy
To accompany you on your
journey
Of Love.
May love find you safe
In the knowledge that
You are lovable
And content as a result of it.
Now your only duty is to
open a portal
And invite it in
while breathing it upon
many other human beings
Whose paths will intertwine
with yours.

Soul Saver

Forgive me once more
If you can,
For the mess I left behind
In your soul.

Travel back like before
To a moment
Of Peace
Where you and I
Were one with the whole
And none felt the need
to rebel.

What I know, is this one struggle,
To keep you intact
From my rage.
Now how do I stop trying
And be, and digest and
accept,
that conflict once more,
Is changing our soul?