I'm Charlie. Human. Facilitator. Activist. Therapist. Student of Life.
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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.
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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. Listen…
Can you hear The chilling silence Of the slow Moving pendulum? Swing… Into the horrific scale of loss Swing… Into the tsunami of disbelief Swing… Towards the rising, crippling panic The irresistible invitation To stretch our limits Far beyond breaking point Because the world has Already gone there Swing… Into the crashing collapse Of knowing that I can’t go there That we can’t go there Swing… Into the knowledge That we might not make it But can’t not make it So what do we do? And who shall we be? Swing… Until all you can do Is swing Endlessly swing Let your body be rocked Back and forth Between Hope and despair Feeling and numbness Holding on and letting it all go Swing…. Alone,
Oh… Is this how death feels? Swimming In an eternal sea Of Nothing Heart ripped from chest Nothing to feel Eyes wide shut Nothing to see Reach into the void Of Blackness But there’s no one To reach back Only the empty echo Of something Less hopeful Than despair Falling Forever falling No one to catch you No one who even Knew you fell What’s the genesis Of unlovability? And is there a bridge From that to this? Give me hands To strike the match That burns that bridge Give me rage to Light a fire In my belly So wild and free It takes me Backwards And Forwards And Sideways To somewhere That’s not this Takes me into A Feeling of Something Takes me Away From this Dark & Hollow Alone How do you comprehend
The wounds of lovelessness? A pain that leaves no trace Only shadows that torment To birth belonging One must first Sit with its lack Let the sorrow seep Deep into your heart Let the unspoken years Of lost childhood Talk to you Let them make you cry Reach for a person Who isn’t there And never was Reach right into the void Let the tragedy inside It’s been at the door For oh so long Let it All in Take your time And then When you’re done Look the child That you were In the eyes Peer into your soul And remind yourself That you survived. Do you remember
The way the gentle breeze Shakes autumn leaves From their perennial shrinking Turning them towards The sun for one last Drink of warmth? Or when a stranger Holds your eyes with theirs Letting your souls mix In a pregnant moment Of timelessness? Have you breathed In the work of the trees today? How did it feel? Did you sigh? When was the last time You stared intently At the azure of the ocean, Out beyond the furthest point And imagined how it is to be a gull Or a wave? Will you let the aromatics Of a crushed gum leaf Stir the crevices of your spirit? Have you closed your eyes recently Passed the baton to your ears Filled them with the punctuation of birdcalls The rhythm of footsteps And the strokes of a river lapping gently by? Can you recall how it feels To be held by another? Surrendering yourself Completely To a body whose boundaries Become indiscernible from yours? Or how piano keys And violin strokes Wake up the emotions And memories Lodged deep inside you Setting them swirling Like a willy-willy From your heart here To your heart there, Out among the stars Do you feel fully lived, Do you know you are fully loved By the unknown kindly Forces of the world? Each morning, I wake
In a dozen different times and places Are the fires still burning? When will the flooding end? Am I meant to be somewhere now? And where is Now, anyway? The sound of a million people chanting Reverberates through my ears As I look around at this silent, empty room The heaviness of the millions Who are no longer with us Those who have met sorrow Over, and over, again Weighs down, hard against my chest A simple breath, a complex struggle I step outside, in search of a sound Of a place, that might do justice to this loss To this fragmented, yet interconnected sadness Searching for something, or somewhere That might just be spacious and brave enough To hold it, even for a tiny sacred moment But all I find out here is silence Is normalcy Is the creep of the Busyness That came Before I run my finger along the back of my arm Trying to trace a path, to find a story To explain where we are now And what might come next Part of me needs to make sense Of this liminal time and space In the grooves and textures of myself The parts that I can see with my eyes, and touch with my hands Even though I know this story is a felt one This arm, that just a few years ago Was thin and gaunt, tired and pale Skin blistered and painful Flesh devoid of energy Bones weak and porous Yet still holding on Life reduced to a state of waiting To see what happens next As I move through the world On the surface, I am the same now You are the same, we are the same Yet none of us are surface creatures Not truly, not really I can’t show you how my heart and mind Have so fundamentally changed Over these past few years Can only whisper to you sincerely that they have And listen kindly, as you whisper back: “I know, me too.” I can’t tell you where we are now Nor where we’re heading, Can only hold you, hold us And say: “I am here for it all.” Golden meadows
Sun dripping off ears of grain A dragonfly, passing by Finds herself caught up in its ethereal glow Hovering gently, she rests her weary wings Upon a single grassy castle below Light rain moistens the scene Inviting a rainbow to spread itself Slowly across a patch of sky One by one, each bow sends its colour Off on a journey, to mix up the blue The dragonfly closes her eyes She lets a little breeze Rock her back and forward Lets it tickle her soft slender body Lets the sun play with her iridescence Lets the hum of a thousand cicadas fill her ears Lets the song of a distant meadowlark Ease her out of this reality and into another Lets the raindrops wash away her heartache Down below, ants scurry about their busy work Worms blindly but diligently aerate the earth Up above, a small plane flies high in the sky Knowing nothing of the richness below And here, in the grass castles Af a sun-drenched meadow A dragonfly dreams in peace How can one word
Capture my complexity, And enclose my life? Why do you need To capture And enclose me Anyway? I am trying to fit myself Inside your language Within your boxes But I can’t Find myself In there Can’t find peace when It has to be pinned down I am sorry I don’t mean to elude Or confuse you I am sorry That my soul Doesn’t conform I am sorry I don’t mean To reject you I am sorry That I can’t find Answers Within your walls I wonder If my fluidity Is my freedom Encircling and enclosing Your boxes and your labels So rapidly That they cease To hold any meaning What am I Who am I And why does it need a word? Who made the sky?
Sewed each tiny patch of blue together one by one Then delicately stretched it across our heads, Stretched it across our heads, to keep us warm and cool, Warm and cool, warm and cool Who said that everything below this thin blue ceiling Was now our home Who said this when they knew of its fragility? Who decided on the formation of the clouds? White and soft, armchairs for our eyes Who made them float? Who made them twist themselves into animals one moment Then rain down storms and throw thunderbolts the next? Who worked out how to stand a tree upright And hang leaves off her branches To make flowers look beautiful Who decided what colours to paint their faces Who decided that bees would keep all this alive? Who placed the oceans where they are and not somewhere else? Who made the land sit where it does Who put the people where we are Then give us the capacity to make every surface of the earth feel our presence? Who thought productivity was the best measure of a human’s worth? Then built entire economies and nation states upon this idea? Who thought killing each other Was the best way to resolve our differences? And who thought to make us believe we were all so different anyway? Who gave us minds to dream with and eyes to cry from Who taught us how to love with everything we have inside And who taught us to kill with little afterthought? How did our mouths learn to string together magical notes one day And scream hatred at each other the next Who decided two ears to one mouth was a good ratio? And why was our heart placed so close to our head? Who made it so we had to talk to each other And live with each other, to survive? Why do we find this all so very hard? Who let us feel sadness? And why is beauty so often hiding deep inside of it? Why do some people see heaven in a face Whilst others see nothing? Why are we all here, loving, living, dying, fearing Together under this thin and fragile blue sky? |
Charlie WoodHuman. Activist. Facilitator. Therapist. Student of Life. Trying to do my bit to build a kinder world. Archives
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