She, in my Mysterious Ways

 

I tell her that I love her
in all the mysterious ways
this is what I will do on mostly sunny days...
I will tell her she means the world to me, when the truth is that she means more than reality. 
I would tell her that she's a photograph I found on the internet, but I want to to feel that she is still there for me and that hasn't actually happened yet.

She tells me that I should find someone else because she isn't the one for me.
I will laugh at this because it is true and that then realize I don't want to be set free
She mentions meeting my mother and for the first time in a long time, I can safely say it can no longer happen- Mom's death no longer brings grief, which I have to say is sublime

It is sublime,
It is sublime,

I will tell her that I love her
in all my mysterious ways
She will laugh at me mostly on cloudy days

I will swear that there is no other place
I long to be. She will try to explain that it
is as much true for her as it is the same to me.
We're in my studio on yet another rainy day
I am trying to give her dimensions, whilst
she smiles coyly at me from the shadows of
my LCD display.

She mentions that I should call my brother
as if she understands that we talk now since
we both have lost our mother, I tell her I will call
him tomorrow or the next day, I just want to stay here
with her photograph as I think of words to put on
my first book cover.
She asks me what is it like to have a lover, as if I
had the time, time to find such a tangible insubstantial
relationship then that, too would be sublime

It would be sublime-
It would be sublime.

She is my Muse

 

She is my muse
never met her
always wanted to but never had the never to look
in the dark places, staying in the light wanting- wishing 
that she would magically, mystically appear as if
from my dreams into reality

She is my desire
unfounded in reality
my mannequin dreams like that movie with Kim Cattrall
coming to life at inopertune times to remind me that if
I could just get it right she could remain flesh and blood
and we would find love and happiness.

She is my mystery
the unwritten words
that I plan to write to capture the desire that lights my path
as I stumble forwards through ectasy searching for the rhymes
that haunt me in the pages on my LED Screen

Music changes Everything

Strands of melody, bows on strings

ivory hammers on the piano's staphs 

as female vocals sing.

a single drumstick taps cymbal song

electronic mix merging metaphors

somehow all this and the horns

belong together, a band, a throng

alters my mood

my sadness settles, my heart takes wing

the rain falls, the night calls

music changes everything.

Under Water

Under Water

Swim.

Swimming here I found

her standing there

under water.

air bubbles flowing out

up in chains like pearls

of air racing to surface

invisible annhilations

on the surface.

Reflections

Refractions

a hall of mirrors

under water

a world of its own

devising so deep

down in the abyss

where the monsters

still sleep

under water.

"Are you a mermaid?"

I wanted to asked

but the words

rushed out

the saltwater

in as I found

myself drowning

under water.

She smiled

finger to my

lips.

As if to say

that whatever I am

wont to do

I should try to

speak, talk

sing

our precious

moments are so few

as we live and cry under water.

Mischievous Chagrin

She caresses the pages as she reads

my words I have written, her breaths short and quick

she is already smitten,

her eyes dilate, it must be fate as she looks from

the paper to me, checkmate.

Fingers plunge inside the pages, soft surfaces crease

passion rages,

I will come to the climax in a matter of stages

A chapter here, an introduction there, 

her plot heaves, as her heart thunders to share

our fiction is interwoven into our diction

dialoguing as we embrace

each connotation trace

we kiss each book we touch

blood race, this means so much

my pen on her skin, 

these moments that our eyes lock

mischievousness chagrin.

photo was taken from Twitter. 

Fatigue

Fatigue

It, comes with sleepless desire

punctuated by Stress

It, robs you of life, interest, ideas

stealing your identity

It, monotones exhaustion

amplifies loss 

taking control

leaving you mindless

enslaved

as from page to page

you become its troll.

A couple of really cheerful poems

We don't talk anymore

We don't talk anymore

time unravels

I find myself asking myself

what was the whole idea

of getting married for?

We don't argue without fear

you leave your food untouched

get up and slam the door shut

I sit there wondering if it

was just what I had said

and Am I back on the couch

instead of in our bed?

We don't lie to anyone else

days into nights

we aren't like those other couples

who make love and fight

this was what I bargained for

this isn't what I asked for

Am I even right

to expect forgiveness as

you walk away, out of sight.

We don't talk anymore

I cry at the foot of your front door

only to hear your sobs

on the other side

breaking my heart to the core.

cc MV2 Studios. Stocksnap general license picture.

Duets

Photo by Sacha

The sound that makes her violin sing

is the same that makes 

 my heart beat in time to the pluck

of bowstrings,

on chance, we dance, the ivory keys

bounce

the romance paired, feeling with every

ounce

of music, petals on the evening wind

this is our piece, at least

the mix of love and loss

marking the passage of time

sunsets, moonrise, lest the passions cease

a pause, her lips speak to me as she stands

beside my piano, barefoot on the sands

then we fade aways into the night

a mirage disengaging from sight.

***

the words are mine, Amira Saleh is our music and Sacha the visual inspiration

copyright Michael van Vuuren.

please share with respect to the artists.

Morpheus

Fallen Falling down into sleep

a spatial chaotic persistence

I dream of ravenous sheep.

sheets entangled around my dreams

imagined dragons claw into bed

their breath thick with organic steam

these visions at war inside my head

hear the hew & call, running headlong
through mist-filled wood old & tall
my heart beats strong, I am wont
to belong to the evidence of night
as with each sand-filled creation
I am Morpheus, awake, contrite.

We go to the movies Part I

This is, of course, a capture from one of my favorite movies- Fight Club.
The still is a reference to a clip where the Tyler Durden personality reveals one of the things it's been doing while the Narrator is "asleep."

This is one I wrote then constructed online using footage from one of my top ten movies, Strictly Ballroom. I find it encapsulates part of the emotional response I have when watching the movie. I am trying to capture the energy of this moment from the end of the film. 

This is my second poem taken from Dangerous Liaisons, both of them written about a moment of truth in the film where Valmont confesses his love even as he bleeds out the remainder of his life into the snow. This poem is drawn from his actual lines.

The other poem "A Kiss before Dying" link here AKissbeforeDying

This is from Cyrano De Bergerac. I felt it as with each version of the film passed. I myself have been guilty of writing love letters for less prolific friends, never getting to know the love of another-save through vicarious means.

She Whispers

She whispers her apologies as I let her cry

her tears cutting my soul in two

all the regrets, all our fears, 

in the darkness between us

She stares at me, will I be the one to break

my silence, can our love survive such

infidelity?

She whispers to me, I hold her hands in mine

forgiving all and nothing, forgetting every

line save that I can still feel every lie as it 

carves out a hollow in my chest, I would shut

her out but I cannot force myself to regret

that I have loved her always even now as she

tears my life apart, this is the pain of sharing

lives, rooms in the caverns of the heart.

She whispers the final refrain.

picture credit Anna Shakina (self portrait)

Water Beauty Love

(Saundary Baanee Pyaar)

I find her bathing in the waters of life,

her saffron sari floats in the holy waters, the Jazba drifts there between

us. 

She does not see me for I am 

unseeable, I am in the wind, I sweep low

across the expanse to wrap myself

around her like a choli into her embrace. The softness of breast, the rise, the fall of her chest, a faint smile crosses her face…

“Go where you want” whispers the Arjunas to me, lift her arms, as the trees, touch the sky, Intezaar, a blessing

for hope as she floats in the currents,

sun-kissed a blush on her smooth skin

the soft sighs, the water shaping her form, caress the flick of her fingers

the scent of us like iris lingers.

Untitled

It's cold but no rain falls down from the bleak sky
I feel as if my soul hurts on these kind of days
the only remedy is to listen to the slow hesitant notes
played on a plain piano that sits in the parlor of my mind
smelling of rosewood and nostalgic melodies that tickle
at my memory of days that had more sunlight, that
were filled with summer and laughter and iced tea.
If only the rains would come again to drown out the
chills that my own sorrows bring on when I find myself
alone missing people I have never met but still hoping
would be here to haunt me in my small darkened house
so far away from the chaos of modern civilization yet
no more isolated than the crowded rooms fill with
drones texting ghosts in other densely packed spaces.
Their faces emotionless whereas mine is calm save
for the occasional tears that slips away as the words
that I type draw forth a particular pain, a longing to
feel the touch of another's hand on my neck reminding
me that there is still love and compassion in this
long dim day in midwinter. I want take a cup of
English tea, a cube of sugar, as if to kiss the hot water
with sweet reminiscence and sip away this melancholy
that remains at my side as I realize that if only but for
a moment I am now back in my tiny house again.

Lost in Translating a Thought

What I had wanted to say was that I did not hate being alone but that loneliness was nothing that
I had ever wanted to be found in, that my life has been in isolation longing, often secretly, just
to be with someone there to share the long silences in comfortable companionship.
Instead it came out like the cry of the desolation desperation that comes from being too alone for
far too long without the understanding of what the touch of another human being feels like and
all that comes in the multitude of impressions and feelings from the contact of human skin
on another's.
What I had wanted to express was that my needs meant more to me than this compulsion that some people have to sacrifice themselves- their very being in order to not feel alone while they are- in fact, alone even when they are in a crowd of people that on most days they would call friends as if liking
posts and selfies on Facebook would give them the validation that they were any better off than me.
Instead I just came across as judgmental and elitist and cold and aloof from everyone else seeming that I was really wanting to say that I needed no validation and that my own company would carry me through the wasteland that is what most of us call modern life where our collective isolation is a mask for our deep need to reach back to moments in our youth where we thought we belonged with people who understood us.
What I said was that I wanted to stay with you and never leave.
Not that I could not stand alone nor that I did not need you as much as I would love to need anyone
but I lost the thought in the translation of my hand reaching out to touch yours.

Let's just call it Something like Poetry

The darkness of my small room surrounds the bright screen as I search for
words to capture a meaning that I have yet to comprehend and give voice to.
The music tickles at my brain and a memory that is still blurry forms into a
single word and then the silence is broken by the cacophony of feelings,
desires, wants, needs and the losses that fill the space inbetween what I am
going to write and what I want to keep safe and warm inside of my dreams.

I type with the fury of one who has waited so long that the impressions 
I have experienced are but the ghosts along the outer walls of my sanctuary
that wall in what I have left and left without, like the ideas that spawn bad 
seeds to creep like savage vines with razor sharp thorns around my ivory
towers, the illusion remains somewhat intact although this is not how I had
planned to act, the final fallacy, in the hideous little cracks of the rules
I wanted to keep and those I had to flail out in chaos so that my words
would spurn the changes and remain solitary far away from the contact.

It's largely untouchable as the cliches fight like prisoners in the yard
who want to be heard under the uncaring stars that makes up the tragedy
of infamy, I laugh at my word play knowing that the genius is largely
missed as if someone who has henceforth remained unknown just out
of focus, just a little out of reach, strange amongst the strange- now all
at once familiar yet beyond my ability to grasp at its meaning as it shakes
with mirthless wit at my attempts to capture all that it was before the cursor
stops and the words drain away from my emotional effort on the page.