Author: Cadence Poetica
poem: language as an old lover
I miss writing like I’d miss an old lover
Dumped, by the side of the road
I miss language like a country abandoned
But still longed for,
Though the bridges have burned.
Our paths cross, tentative, and awkward:
“How’ve you been… Oh? That’s nice…”
Just a fraction of what is there to be said
The easiest way to exist –
Between the shouts,
And the silence.
I don’t know what you want me to say –
That I gave up,
Because I wasn’t enough for you?
That the beauty of all you could be
Shone a cold light on all of my failings?
You think it’s easier to walk away?
When all that you are is all I ever wanted?
You think I don’t hate myself every day
For not being strong enough
To see it through, to submit to the fire
And come out a diamond?
Remember the party
Where everyone showed up unannounced,
So beautiful in feathers and furs
And there’s me in old jeans,
My hair unbrushed,
Just happy to see you happy.
And how your friends laughed
When I poured them wine
With names I couldn’t pronounce.
The brie tasted like ash in my mouth
As I stood quaking in the middle of the crowd
To recite The Jabberwock.
And you sitting there, toothed a smile
Tinged with sadness because you knew
That was all I could ever offer
And you wanted me to be more
So that we could be more together…
You knew,
And I knew that you knew.
So I packed my words in a velvet-lined trunk,
Put the key in my top drawer with all my other secret things.
I packed language away in a silver box;
I set you free to be all that you could be
In someone else’s arms
On someone else’s lips.
I smile and pretend that it’s all okay,
That I don’t miss you every day
That we were just too different and it’s better
That we keep to our proper stations.
But oh how I miss the exhilaration of a properly turned phrase
The vernacular coitus of prose and rhythm
I come to your shows and watch you owning the stage
And I can feel every line as it lifts off the page and for a second
I remember with burning jealousy
What it feels like to be Icarus,
Soaring above the crowd.
Sometimes I think we could try again,
Sometimes I buy blank notebooks and fresh pens
Thinking it will lure you back into my world.
But the notebooks sit blank,
The dream-thoughts fade in the morning
The stories get lost in the commute and the bustle.
When I am old, I know
You’ll come to my bedside
You’ll take my hand – a roadmap
Of wrinkles upon wrinkles
Yet you will still be young, shining,
Perfect and new.
And I –
I will be unable to hate you,
I will clasp you to my bosom and beg
For just one more story
Of “Once Upon A Time”.
poem: a daily prayer
– My spin on an old classic ;)
Oh Divine Creator
Whose spirit fills the universe
Beautiful and sacred is your name
As it is written above
So shall it be below
Provide for us and sustain us
And forgive us
When we stray from the path of goodness
So that we may learn to show mercy
To those who have wronged us
Give us wisdom
To avoid those who would do harm
And the strength to fight our darker natures
For your domain of purity and light
Which was, is and always will be
World without end –
Amen
poem: gold/dust
A gold ring with a single diamond
Sits on a shelf collecting dust
And I’m trying not to let this affect my trust issues, but to me
Love
Is not something to be taken lightly –
Love
Is something to be treasured, nourished, protected –
Love
Is sometimes enough.
And maybe it wouldn’t have gone so hard on me
If I hadn’t sunk myself so deeply into this,
If I’d learned to recognize the warning signs
And walked away in time
Before my life was you, and you –
You were somebody else.
But you see –
I’ve always been most comfortable
In the company of my own making
It’s not that I’m antisocial – people fascinate me
But I find being around them draining,
Maintaining this smile isn’t as easy
As you might think
Sitting around waiting for gaps in the
Conversation, so I could speak,
And the white noise of my past relationships
Has always drowned out my identity
And swallowed my aloneness.
And then I found – You.
Someone I never got tired of being around
Someone who just got me
With you, I could be quiet.
With you, I could be the truest version of myself.
Until one day, I noticed – you stopped getting me
You didn’t really see me
So I learned to shout.
And then I thought – it’s because
I was SHOUTING
So I learned to -whisper-
I learned to exist
In the hairline fractures
Of our turbulent silence.
I promised to love, cherish and respect
Until death do us part
And my vow
Was the glue that held us together
My vow
Kept me taking you back and forgiving you time and again
For these shitty awful situations you put me in
My vow
Was the glue that held ME together.
Then it ended,
Not with a whimper but a bang
And it was me who pulled the trigger
It was me who stood there
with the smoking gun in my hand
I tried to take it back
and tell you I didn’t mean it
but we both knew that I did –
And the words wouldn’t leave my mouth…
They wouldn’t leave my mouth.
poem: musings under the bodhi tree
I want to write poems that make you go wow…
Pop open your mouths and feel like the world as you know it
has been turned inside out,
And oh how I wish I were ballsy enough –
To spit rhymes on street corners and strut my lyrical stuff
Without censoring myself or holding a grudge
against the sins of the past.
I want to change the picture, flip the scene,
make you think about things
in ways you never dreamt possible –
I want to create a dialogue, an invitation to come and be
Co-conspirators
In a closed loop circuit of ingenuity.
And just as I have thrown myself at the feet
Of prophets like Rumi and Hafiz,
Had my soul spoonfed by Dickinson,
And plunged headlong like a lemming
into the sweet abyss of Hemingway –
I long to possess and impart such wisdom
That people would line up for miles
just to lay their naked, quivering,
thirsty souls in my outstretched hands
Saying – Feed me!
Fill me! Teach me!
Show me -more-…
And then I’ll say – No.
I cannot, because the vision is yours.
You are the key to your own destiny.
The knowledge has always been in you.
You ARE enough for your soul.
And then we’ll walk as equals in paradise,
sharing enlightenment, sharing life;
And I’ll lead you to the cafe where
Buddha and Ghandi sit contemplating their coffees
Where Jesus waits (and occasionally flips) tables
And Freud and Jung are locked in an eternal game of strip-scrabble.
A place where I am you and you are me
And my words are yours and your words resonant in me
And when we finally understand that WE
are the music makers and the dreamers of the dreams –
Then…
Then we can change the world.
Neil Hilborn: The First Time I Saw Her
blog: finding happy
There is a world of difference between “Being with you makes me happy” and “You make me happy”. One is a state of mind, the other is a state of heart. And always, always will I choose the second option.
Because to be happy in a relationship is to be comfortable inside a position, a place, a state of being… it is the familiarity of the circumstances that make you content. Circumstances that can be replicated in another time and another place, with another human. Familiarity that sometimes lulls you in with its repetitious charms and masks the ‘not-quite-right’.
But to be with someone who makes you genuinely, deliriously happy just by being who they are… Someone whose strength of love and character carries you despite all the noise life may toss your way… Someone so trustworthy that you throw caution to the wind and launch into the unknown without any fear or second-guessing… there is no substitute for that.
To find a comfortable place to rest is at best refreshing for a time. To find the one person who gives you such enormous wings you need the whole world just to unfurl them –
That, simply put, is ecstasy for the soul.
poem: a song for the broken
– TW: Depression, Su*cidal Ideation
I am tired of the roller-coaster
Tired of not being able to walk away
I’m tired of self-perpetuating cycles
Tired of this feeling of certainty
That I am stuck here in this place
Until it kills me.
It is not my job to save anyone
When I can’t even save myself
From myself.
I want so much to be seen as worthy of love…
But excuses run dry –
And then there is only the silence.
That speaks more loudly and clearly
Than any excuses ever could.
I diminish until there’s nothing left… I become
The shadow of potential…
As a nihilist I know that nothing matters,
But as an optimist I long for moments –
Moments that sparkle and shine amongst the nothingness.
Also… I am drunk.
But life is better pondered in an inebriated state.
So hats off to Dylan Thomas,
And give my regards to Sylvia Plath
(alath, alath, poor Sylvia Plath,
she put her head in the oven and turned on the gath)
Tomorrow is a brand new day.
blog: dazed but not confused
I am Gen X, and while I’m sure many things could and have been written about my generation, this is my story.
My generation was one of “damn the man”; of being angry at our baby boomer parents for screwing up the world with their wars, their capitalism and their environmental rape. We took up the hippie mantle and turned it into grunge activism, we bought t-shirts from The Body Shop to raise funds for tigers, we banned CFCs because they put holes in our ozone. We protested our disenfranchisement by embracing alternative lifestyles, alternative music, leftist politics and fringe religion (anyone remember The Craft?).
We were also a generation who experienced huge feelings of ethical powerlessness, it felt like we were the only ones with our eyes open, seeing changes that needed to be be made and not having a loud enough voice to convince those in power to do something about it (except for the Berlin Wall… that shit fell down on our watch, proud to say) Which led to another Gen X phenomenon – burnout turning into apathy, leading to our generational motto – “Life’s short and then you die, f#@k the world, let’s go get high.”
We embraced technology, but were distrustful of moving too fast, seeing it as an extension of the previous generation’s obsession with “bigger better faster more.” (Personally, I’m still keeping an eye out for the birth of Skynet.)
The world now belongs to the Gen Y / millennials and even the Gen Z. In a few short years, the work force will burgeon with kids who weren’t even born yet while I partied with a bottle of Baileys and my tits out on New Years 1999 (I never claimed to be a saint!).
These are people who were birthed into a world of apps and gadgets; the tech my generation developed and used is now either obsolete (RIP DOS) or running in the background, being taken for granted. My friends’ toddlers either own an ipad or at least know how to use one, and I can’t even figure out how Snapchat works.
The passing of time is a funny thing. Most of the musical influences of my formative years have long since disbanded, their cds placed in bargain bins. Kids listen to the music I listened to back in the day and call it “vintage” or “classic”. Movies that defined and impacted me haven’t seen air time in years. Tom Hanks looks really old.
Whenever I realise events that I think happened only yesterday actually happened 15 years ago, I stop to wonder if the things I do today are going to stick with me 15 years from now. When I struggle to accept new technology, or embrace things that are uncomfortable for me but have become the norm for my society, I feel old and out of touch. And I wonder if that’s the same way my mother felt when I protested the Bobby socks rock’n’roll she played on the radio for being “lame”. Did she see me roll my eyes at her old movies, or was she reliving the time she saw it in the cinema as if it were only yesterday?
I feel isolated and marginalised more and more. Most of my Gen X friends have moved on to other stages of their lives; spouses, kids, mortgages, careers. They’re not living with their heads in the past and wishing for the good old days. Meanwhile, I’m over here mourning the loss of my youth. And this nostalgia suits my melancholic nature, but it also holds me back and makes me sad and ineffective in so many ways. I’m tired of trying to play catch up. I’m tired of trying to recreate my best experiences. It’s both emotionally exhausting and unattainable.
I need to learn to let go of what was and what could have been, and focus on what the present has to offer. I want to engage in life more, and stay open to growth and new experiences. Time moves on, and that’s not always a bad thing. Some things stay the same, but a lot of stuff changes. We just have to try to pass our experiences and our knowledge on as best we can, and not be too quick to close off any chapters in our own story.
Write a sequel! The universe is always expanding to include new and shiny things!
Vale Gene Wilder
Gene Wilder was and always will be *my* Willy Wonka. RIP Mr. Wilder, and thank you for your lovely contribution to us all. 💜
We are the music-makers,
And we are the dreamers of the dreams;
Wandering by lonely sea breakers,
And sitting by desolate streams.
World-losers and world-forsakers
On whom the pale moon gleams,
Yet we are the movers and shakers
Of the world for ever, it seems.
With wonderful deathless ditties
We build up the world’s great cities,
And out of a fabulous story
We fashion an empire’s glory:
One man with a dream, at pleasure,
Shall go forth and conquer a crown,
And three with a new song’s measure
Can trample an empire down.
We, in the ages lying
In the buried past of the earth,
Built Nineveh with our sighing
And Babel itself with our mirth.
And o’erthrew them with prophesying
To the old of the new world’s worth –
For each age is a dream that is dying,
Or a new one, coming to birth.
– “Ode”, Arthur O’Shaughnessy
Henry Rollins – All you got is life time
know it sounds cliché, but time is so short. We can’t guarantee how long we’ll be here. And yet we waste time getting our ducks in a row, or doing the things we think we “have” to do.
As I get older, I have less and less tolerance for bullshit, and the more precious my time becomes. I don’t want to waste it in a job I hate, in a relationship that doesn’t work, in a friendship that’s toxic. I want to make dents in my bucket list, not excuses!
And of course, Henry Rollins is bae. :D
blog: viewing paradise
I think about how much imagination and energy i had as a child, how much passion and fire I had as a teen, how much ambition and drive I had when I was in my early 20’s. And I wonder where it all went.
The world used to be this great place for me, like Willie Wonka’s factory; a fantabulous everlasting gobstopper of a place, a 3-course meal in a single piece of chewing gum, a rich river of flowing chocolate. The world for me used to be the kind of place where schnozzberries really do exist. I used to want to do everything and anything I could and I wanted to do it all at once. I used to write poetry, sing, act, read, party, sew, paint, cook great food and throw fabulous soirees. I was witty, I was funny, I had an incredibly full social life.
I wish I knew how to get all of that back. Sure I could go on medication for my depression, and probably should. A little discipline in my life wouldn’t go astray either; I could benefit from a stricter diet and exercise regime – feeling good about how I look is the first step to feeling good about myself, I get that. And it wouldn’t kill me to make a few phone calls, touch base with a few friends, buy a diary and start filling up my spare time with stuff. I could join a few groups, pick up a new hobby, message a few guys on a dating site… There’s lots I can do to improve my life.
But is it going to be enough to fix my apathy? What is the cure for waking up every morning and feeling like you’ve heard and seen and done it all a thousand times before? How do you get back the rainbows in life, when it all just seems like a pile of ash? I don’t want to think that my best years have gone by – I’m not nearly that old! I’ve got plenty of time to hit the reset button and get back out there into the game. And I’m trying, but I’m not sure that my “fake it till you make it” approach is going to work here.
I really hate to be on this much of a downer. I hope there are people out there who read this who get how I feel… But at the same time I wouldn’t wish this feeling on anyone. I guess it’s just that I was barreling full steam ahead on what I thought was the right course of action, when suddenly I hit an unexpected iceberg and now I’ve been derailed. People who have been emotionally shipwrecked know that sometimes its harder to fight, that drowning seems like an easier option at times.
And I don’t think there’s any secret trick to getting over it. I think you just have to accept that life is going to be pretty shitty for a while, and make up your mind to keep slugging it out no matter what. There’s no miracle cure. There’s only good days and bad days; and initially there’s probably going to be a helluva lot of bad days compared to the good ones, but in time they balance out and eventually you reach a point where the situation is reversed.
So do whatcha gotta do to bring back the good days – buy a goose that lays golden eggs, get some lickable wallpaper that comes in schnozzberry flavor, or dress up like an Oompa Loompa and sing funny songs. I dunno… Whatever you do, just keep slogging it out. You gotta have faith in the good days; sometimes that faith is all you have to hold on to. But if you do find any miracle cure, let me know!
“If you want to view paradise
Simply look around and view it
Anything you want to, do it
Wanna change the world?
There’s nothing to it”
From “Pure Imagination”, Willie Wonka and the Chocolate Factory
Cadence Poetica 