Cake

I baked a cake for if you come,

but if you don't I won't be sad,

As long as you are truly glad,

Your happiness engenders mine,

As long as you're good,

Then I feel fine.




A mother's love runs long and deep,

It doesn't always show.

She tries to let you live your life,

And he tries to let you go.

She tries to let you go

much sooner than you'd know,

you know,


that's the way she works,

this love that's not on show.

Bagatelle

They're playing bagatelle, it's a made up game about making up stories;

Who are the characters ? She says.
You make one up and I'll make one up, he says.
A man with a gun, says she.
Okay, I choose a person who's come in disguise as a tree, says he.
No way ! says she - choose something like another man with another gun.
Why ? he asks.
Because it's war, she replies.
I choose a person who's wearing a tree costume, he says.
Why ? she questions.
Ingenuity, he says.
Ingenuity won't win your character this game, she says. My character's got a gun.
Ah but there's also this character with the ability to resemble a tree.
Bullets will rip through and obliterate tree costumes she says.
Is that the kind of world you're going to make up ? he asks.

There is no point in making up a world,
she says
when there's already a real world.
There's the world and there's the truth about the world.
You mean there's the truth and there's the made-up version of it.
No, the world exists and stories are made up.
And whoever makes up the story makes up the world.

Try to welcome people into the home of your story, that is, give your characters the same benefit of the doubt you'd welcome when it comes to yourself.


A slightly adapted conversation from Autumn by Ali Smith

I am well

thank you

I am well

I am well

though some time ago I was not well

but I have got better.

One expects to get better until

until one feels the grip of Death.

You can, of course, untangle you from His taloned grasp,

you can slip, so sylph-like if you are slippery like that

and shiver away from His icy clasp,

His unwelcoming embrace, but

you have this feeling

this growing feeling like a sunset, that,

one day, he will come with a warm cloak instead,

and wrap its warm and welcoming softness around your whole being

and then,

only then,

will you sink

deep and low

into the depths

of

His

cosy nest.

More Ghosts

They stare at you sometimes don't they and you, you stare back, but blankly, not understanding. Or

maybe, not feeling the need to understand, yes, that's more like it, but perhaps holding your gazes

just slightly too long for polite conversationalist situations.

Then you're asked if you know their name and you say, no, I didn't ask ( thinking that actually would

have been impolite, it wasn't that kind of situation and what is anyway )

but

but then

but then you start thinking about that somewhere,

somewhere out in the seas of your

it's not memory

is it ?



All the thoughts, the sublimated feelings that come from your physical experience here,

here

here in this world

this life

they're not memory

are they ?

Ghosts of Autumn

One day, if you're lucky,

you may, as I am now,

approach Autumn in your Autumnal years

and feel its full blown beauty as

if for its first time.

And, feeling like part of

some long novel; a protagonist of

some kind,  though,

not

not the only one.

And glad not to be because

All the mists who appear like ghosts

you know are not forgotten, lost or lonely,

They are remembered and live amongst us,

Walking gently, kindly to remind us.

Breakfast in the Rain

He's a face in the wilderness,

She's a beautiful tree,

He's been painted by genius,

She was captured with love;

One painting,

One photograph,

Hanging in different rooms,

Connected by an untold story.

But there's more;

Go a bit further down the corridor,

you'll find the photographic portrait gallery.

Faces upon faces, rows of people,

Some look familiar,

All look so the longer we look at them.







Cut to a hotel restaurant.


The rain is pouring down the old bay windows,

Framed by the Wisteria's pendulous lavender racemes,

The table set for two,

The curved walnut backs of the Queen Anne chairs

polished, their golden yellow cushions plump,

their legs low and spread wide to accommodate your crossed ankles.

You can see yourself now,

Sitting, watching the rain, waiting.

You take your cup and sip,

The tea is delicate,

It's fragrance lost in your dreaming,

As you watch the rain falling.

Love is

We must all think about it because it's so much a part of us.

I think we either seek it or avoid it, possibly oscillating between the two states throughout our life.

We sometimes wonder if it's real, even when we think we feel it.

We can worry it's going to dissolve into thin air even when we are sure we feel it.

It can be as if we feel unqualified, undeserving, distrustful of this thing itself,

As if love is the whimsy,

A floating, filigree, flimsy flittering, vacillant sceptic.

We project all our doubts and objections upon it.

You make us weak ! we wail. I hate you ! Go away and hide yourself under this cloak of cynicism.


But I know it now.

That is, I know it for myself,

Which is, after all, the only way we can know things.

It is the sum of all my life,

It's contained in a well that I can draw from.

The well replenishes itself, however much I draw;

And I can elaborate and extemporise on this image and metaphor,

But I know the understanding at its core is true,

And the mistake can only arise from my inability to communicate it

to you.

Time

Time is the Master, 

Love is the Mistress.

With Time we have our ultimate love/hate relationship.

Time carves us out and weathers us like the wind works on sandstone;

Time is Head Architect,

But subject to the laws of the Universe,

And beyond.

Time understands nothing.



Coiled within Time's double helix,

We look up and down and through,

But the ever-changing view keeps going in  and out

of focus.

The lens of our deficient eye,

The clunky machinations of our clumsy brains,

Despite their esp of other dimensions,

Stuck as they are,

Can only " see " in one.