Audio Version | Backing music: Kyndir by Gabríel Ólafs
Long ago I threw my heart Into the ocean Then decades later Found it floating Among the stars Woke To find beauty And devastation Sleeping side by side In a bed of white roses Cried Til the tears dissolved Every fibre of wood In the ring fences Containing my joy Watched Someone destroy The only soul They ever really Cared to love Hoped For a place Where hate Could dance All night With love Til it surrendered Its form And became the sun Played Piano songs Atop mountains Til creatures whose Voices had never been heard Wandered out of forests And valleys Singing Found My sadness Sitting quietly Bathed in sunlight Forever knowing It will never be alone
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Audio version | Backing music: Sea of Love by Austin Farwell
There’s a column inside of us So still and calm You can hear a single drop fall On the surface of the ocean So quiet and peaceful That cicadas lower their hum In thoughtful reverence A place where you can hear the sky think And feel the earth turn Somewhere that torment goes To bathe for a million years And return as a bird of paradise A space where fireflies sing Of long lost lovers And times when light was not a thing Where trees sway in the breeze And time is a timeless quality Not a construct of scarcity All our columns are connected Invisibly by a web of breath Like a sea of wind chimes Playing a silent symphony to the stars You can hear them playing Only when you stop trying to listen Feel them Only when you stop trying to feel Last night, mine visited As a black swan that swam Beside me Beneath the golden moonlight Of a nascent night sky Then woke me In the early morning As its soft notes Played an ancient tune That gently strummed my ribs Like the strings of an angel’s harp It said.... “I am the space That caught your fall The pit you thought was your prison I made your tunnel of light Back to a life that wanted you I am the other You never had To hold you The love You never thought You deserved The heart That kept on beating When it should have gone flat I am the emptiness The stillness The dreaming That kept you here The trees that let you breathe I am the quiet moonlight that strokes Your face each night without you ever knowing The life that eternally calls your name With every sunrise roll call Because the universe meant you to be here I am love And you are me." Audio Version | Song Credit: The Earth Prelude by Ludovico Einaudi
I was thirteen When she first Let me touch her Years of torment The dark veil Came knocking early On this hearts door Something about scales Of deserving About babies Who weren’t born equal Incessant whispers Sewing invisible tapestries Of guilt and shame Into the nucleus Of every cell Year upon year It Corrodes the heart Displacing everything And everyone into A head so fucked up And desolate No creature would Ever wish to live there Reduced to a macabre circus Of circuits and patterns This body Moves about landscapes Here but not here There but not there Yet some small pocket Of it Still Longs for Still craves for The divine Like a seedling Buried deep in the soil This ravaged Bodily architecture Is searching for the light It comes by the side Of the M15 In the belly Of a fluorescently lit Medic van Everything And everyone Completely quiet Caught for a tiny moment In their infinitude Heart holding it all She reaches out And strokes my hand A tunnel A light So bright and soft It could cut a path home For every star in every galaxy The absence of wrong or right No need for good or bad Just pure Everything A vessel filling and filling And filling with the thing It was always missing But never knew Until it is time to come back To find a way to live here To find a space free from pain In the land of Being alive Audio Version | music credit: I Love You by Riopy
The day that Time was strangled Bark unfurled itself From ancient trees And the moon Turned black Breath caught In barbed wire Lost to the lungs That birthed it In a few words Child becomes adult Heart squeezed Into a conscious Kind of oblivion Soft young body Now rigid and old Hands white knuckling Their way, away From home Or was it ever really? Look through windows At faces of other children In homes of other families But always…Remember to Forget Then let the elements Become your eternal guardian As birds fly backwards In fifty-two shades of purple sky As nothing becomes everything As dreams and reality Switch places And all the colours Sing their long goodbyes. Fingernail moon
Floating high on Charcoal sky Illuminating Life’s fragility D'you ever Imagine What it’s like To live down here? The sound Of a thousand Treecreepers Is waking up A long, hot Aching Spring night Someone is Duelling with The shadows Of himself In a dark And forgotten Alley While someone else Takes out the trash For the He’s-lost-count How many time A child Tries to sleep On a rough Street curb While a mother Tries to Work out How she’ll feed Everyone A farmer Tries to make Peace with the End of rain While a sister Hasn’t heard From a brother In she-doesn’t-know How long A tree That gave shade To a hundred people Is being uprooted From its home While a baby just Opened its lungs For the very first time Someone Got kissed Again While a seedling Pushed its Head above the soil A wave Crashed hard Upon the land Again While an egg Cracked open And let something Living out From its inside It’s complicated Living down here On the ground Sometimes Noisy, messy Beautiful, dirty Tactile, heavy Heartfelt, confusing And so I wonder What you see From up there Through the glow Of your thin And perpetual light Death stirs thickly
As the faces Of unborn beings Encapsulate My mind So many hands Reaching out For a help That doesn’t exist Clutching Gripping Grasping Gasping The self That wants to save us And the self That knows it can’t Tonight They meet Beneath the light Of a blood red moon They duel And they dance They cry And they fall In sadness And in surrender In the distance Children scream Mothers hope Landscapes burn All around me Babies Humans Love & Fear Death stirs It digs And it strangles While the self Goes into battle Surrounded By moonlit fire Death is all Around me Before me Inside me I cannot beat you But my Hands can fight My heart can love And my head can pray I cannot beat you But I can walk beside All those who Fall in your shadow Walk beside them Never leave them As we enter The future of flames. Fresh
Smelt the day You were born Heavy The day The earth’s suffering Took him away Too many feelings The autopsy said Or a world Which just can’t Hold that much pain? Your tiny heart It beats so fast Almost as fast as his did In those dreadful final hours I hear your hearts Beat together Waking us up To the breath Of every child Feel, little one Don’t be scared He felt like you too Yet nowhere Was brave enough To receive it I know this world Will break your heart But a messy, collective love Will piece it back together I can hear Your future crying Will help you Grow gardens From the tears Can feel your Future body tensing To the realisation Of what is happening Am ready to Rock you in my arms Stay, little one We can make something You want to live in and for Raw but fresh Tragic yet beautiful Heartbreaking yet Lovingly interwoven A world brave enough to Hold everything you feel. Remember the fire
Inside your heart? Flames and flesh Can’t co exist Smoke should Never meet chest Today’s so still It cuts silence Through bush Sets motionlessness Through water Freezes minds In harrowed longing For something Simpler and easier Than all This Flocks of black birds Circle endlessly Through residual Tiny pockets Of untouched blue Trying desperately To break open the sky So we can all heave A collective sigh Of relief I know this silence Hear it Ringing in my ears The foretelling Of an impending Heated Hurt I feel this silence And how it stretches From me To you To out beyond forever Oh force of heat and heart D’you know how much I fear you? Yet how ready I am to meet you With all of my love And all of my rage? I hear the future Whispering Howling Sobbing Hoping Sometimes it’s screaming Sometimes it’s standing right beside me Sometimes it is me And my hot and heavy heart. Let me help you
Embrace the ocean’s Age-old longing To wash away Your sadness Let its waves Metabolise This deep And infinite Sorrow I’ve seen what Pain does When left to live Inside a human How it Sculpts the fibres Shifts the chambers And alters the rhythm Of a beating heart How it Rewires the neural pathways And reshapes the highways That help the body To feel whole How it Takes your spirit hostage And suffocates your soul Roar, cry, jump, shout Paint, write, dance, fly Hand your pain To the earth now She can take it Understands it More intimately Than you think Give this suffering The freedom Its creators Never let you have Give this shame The words That terrible silence Told you Could never be spoken See that dove Flying high above A delicate crescent moon Watch this star Shooting through the night Breaking up the heavy darkness Touch that leaf Sailing peacefully Upon treacherous waters Feel that sun Asking us to slow down And sit with it In silence Let yourself Be touched By Life’s many gentle longings To help you heal. D’you know those days
Where peace holds you For no good reason? Where, for just a tiny sliver of time The world’s suffering Can’t find you No matter how hard it tries? And, in its absence, All that’s left is the radiance Of The Small Things The way sun rays Paint daffodil faces Or how a duck lands gracefully On glassy waters Sending soft ripples outwards That touch bellies of other ducks And touch other ripples Created by other creatures In distant other places That the duck will never meet The way fragments Of blossom Light as tissue paper Blow on breeze Catching themselves In the cyan, slate and cobalt Of duck feathers Or on the backs of waterskaters Who, when the world heaves with sorrow, Just keep on dancing I watched as leaves shimmied with anxious excitement today Because Spring whispered “I’m just around the corner, dears” Passed strangers Whose eyes, my eyes Told me they knew Felt thoughts and heartbeats Of people in far off places Felt soothed by the Humdrum of traffic Ring of phone Whistle of kettle Sat with the tiny details of life And felt my soul expand. |
Charlie WoodHuman. Activist. Facilitator. Counsellor. Student of Life. Trying to do my bit to build a better world. Archives
April 2024
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