The title is coined from the Amish faith, the elders let teenagers run lose and wild for year.
At the end of the twelve months they can decide to rejoin the community having experienced
the world or forever leave.
The work moves from the "corner sessions" a world of dark revelation and breakdown to the unrequited "Sea of Longing" via "Three Phases of the Moon" returning to the "Sea of Longing" for a final climactic storm.
The poems follow a theme of personal disconnection and near misses before final "release" into a brave new world.
Weather
Report
The sea of longing is the storm and calm of breathless days,
It’s time spent waiting for the air to move,
The frustration of a sagging sail.
It’s the impotent hurt of disappointment, of feeling spurned,
The fading embers of a fire,
Or the cooling of desire.
The sea of longing is a pounding heart, waiting to receive,
Yet tasting the bitter spray of crashing waves.
It’s feeling lonely as a seagull’s cry.
Subtle as the wing beats of butterflies
It’s a hollow sound, like a kettle drum,
Played against a clear blue tympani of sky.
It’s swimming hard upstream, desperate to spawn,
Driven by the urge of needs that can’t be denied,
It’s the emptiness of a sigh.
The sea of longing is a symphony of loss,
The sound of tears shed on a thousand lonely nights.
It’s a desert waiting for the rain.
The distance of a picture, memories of your smile,
It’s light refracting through stain glass windows,
A piano’s minor keys.
The sea of longing is time spent on bended knees,
Praying for release but finding God on mute.
It’s not like other seas.
It’s unrequited love.
It’s all of the above.
Iconography
Rejection feels like a bleak midwinter.
I nest in my austere, corner gulag
Turning an emotional rosary bead…..
The floor tilts towards the antipodes
And everything slides off
Like an egg from a well greased frying pan.
Out of the sensuous fat and into the fire
Falling with a glancing blow against God
It all seemed like a good idea at the time.
Now for my punishment
The sweet iconography of intimate loss
Mixed with the disappointment
Of pointless and unrequited desire.
We’ve come to the end of a slow dance
The falling ashes of an immolated duet.
So I sit here, waiting for release.
Rejection feels like a bleak midwinter.
I nest in my austere, corner gulag
Turning an emotional rosary bead…..
Knowing it was only me that danced.
Teeth
I often dream of my teeth, falling out like enamelled rain
Leaving me all gums and impotent, like an old amphibian.
Shocking everyone, reeling in a meal with my sticky tongue
I hop off after dinner, to occupy a muddy pond somewhere.
Age often robs us of our teeth despite sparkling,
fluoridated water
“It was the gums dear boy, your teeth were fine but you receded”.
If I was wealthy, perhaps they could screw a new set into my
jaw
So I could eat properly, arresting reverse evolution?
I remember Grandpa, old and toothless like a wrinkly baby,
Sat in his dirty geriatric pond, waiting to be cleaned.
He thought I was Dad, who was diligently feeding him banana.
I fear ending up like Grandpa perched ,confused, on a soiled
lily pad.
In Vigil
A ghost lies in a
bed, skull hollowed, like an empty egg
Sheets pulled
featureless and taut, frame a childlike face.
The bowl once
filled with life, eaten, leaves a void,
Eyes filled with
shadows, fading embers of a soul.
Trying to ease the
journey, gently holding hands,
A loving vigil,
through the veil of life to death.
Autumn’s sun
outside, a glowing invitation,
Warm shafts of
light that point to worlds beyond…..
Yellow skin like
parchment, lines, the story of a life,
Arms thin and fine,
reeds bent by winds of time.
Once strong,
towards the edge, we’ll be as meekly led
As we try to stem
the tide, lapping at our feet.
Lion
Dearest friend, lion once strong
Now the last hand brings you low
The mortal body fails your heart
For a season we shall be apart
Me on the Earth down here below
You where the light of life can’t dim
There I pray you’ll rest in peace
Beyond the bitter pills increase
With happy paradox of passing years
My feet will cross this vale of tears
Forgive my weak and clinging soul
That cannot bear to see you go…..
Today is a day of longing
In a week of longing
In a year of longing
Sailing on the sea of longing.
There‘s no land in sight
No other ships in sight.
None pass me in long nights
Spent on the sea of longing.
Tigress
I saw a tigress in my dream
Representing female power
Sexuality with a hint of aggression.
She was a seductress
Hiding under stripped fur
When I stroked her she purred.
Coming to the surface
She was a repressed feeling
An erotic fantasy coiled to strike
And we knew
As she opened like a flower
That she could eat me at any moment.
We also knew
The secret of the jungle.
That it was a feast we both wanted.
Reflections
Looking at the moon is to experience longing.
I yearn to lasso the silver disk, tie it to a stick
And wander around basking in its glow.
Iv'e seen its reflection in many different faces
Seen its light shining in many different eyes
Thought I could hear it in many different voices.
My climax of longing is hearing the moon in your voice.
It cuts though my heart with the speed of sound.
Waves of you traverse the ethereal space between us.
It reminds me of all the times I fished for your favour
Only to find it elusive, like a reflection in a puddle.
Every time I tried to connect, you dissolved at my touch.
I've tried many times to walk away but you coalesce again
Stubbornly flooding me with your intangible smile.
I ask myself, how many more times will I return?
How many more times will I try to lasso the moon?
Libidinous
Lectern
Sorry friend but you cannot return to Eden ,
no matter how hard you try
You may well touch the source of life itself, many times,
inside and out
But when you come to your senses you will still be in the
desert place.
Better to take yourself off somewhere quiet and have a rest
from it all.
No one can enter the womb and be born again, this has long
been known
Since Biblical times indeed, so why keep trying?
Besides, the more
you want something, the more
compromised you become.
Have you noticed the uncaring fare inordinately well?
Venus inevitably rewards those who hold her lightly.
Fortune favours the indifferent.
It may rain on the just and unjust alike, but a woman is not
like the weather.
Consider this a lesson friend, from one who knows.
I Neutrino
Falling through the earth
Streaming through your eyes
Hollow and disembodied.
I pass right through you
A massless ghost particle
You do not interact with me at all.
Framed
Catching a falling thought, I put it in my pocket
Looked again and saw a perfect image of you.
The years passed, gazing at that picture often
I fell in love with your smile a thousand times.
The memory didn’t change and you never aged
Life’s sweetest moment, so
beautifully framedRumpspringa
Things happened, slow motion, before me
I’d been watching my life on a screen
Now I fantasised running free
Across an Elysian field of dreams.
I’d pulled until those reins had snapped
Fought to stretch my aching wings
And with the cry of a long caged bird
My heart soared, swift like, above the world.
Bonds that had held me back were cut
Scales were falling from my eyes.
After long dark years my time has come
Flying straight as an arrow towards the sun.
Mark Harris has asserted his
right under
Section 77 of the Copyright,
Designs and Patents Act 1988
To be identified as the author
of this work.
No comments:
Post a Comment