Tag Archives: sleep

Flight – low and sure

Flight – low and sure
The heeled torment
My weakness only shorn about me
Like the regal beacon.
Relishing the flaws, the
Chance to render potent,
I’ve always found the worship in the temples of perfection.
My frailties regale me,
They are both my vanity and insecurity
But they can sometimes sprout endearing in the mind of all things beautiful.
Sometimes I’ll be misinterpreted
As stronger than I am –
A thought discouraged though I fear it’s opposite worse, more.
The day alleviates the nighttime’s sleeplessness
But offers up temptations to my soul.

 

© TheHairyTeacher2017

Nighttime has brought

Nighttime has brought the rain
And I move away from One and two
Into the arms of another.
The chill breeze early evening replaced
The sun long gone, huddling into the west
Leaving darkness to greet the rain that’s coming down.
Street lights in their endeavour find sheen resplendent luxury
A luxury that weary minds ignore.
I leave one and two and pass through judgement to my charge
The other lady in my life already sleeping.

 

© TheHairyTeacher2016

Paramnesia

Paramnesia
In the days of glorious sunshine that was my youth growing up in Ireland, I was often struck by the ease at which the good things in life came to me. Rather than explore the litany of successes which have made up my life, I would prefer to remark on one thing.
If memory can be made to seem ideal in face of the grimmer facts, can it not also be made to seem horrid where in fact it may have just been average: a balance sufficient to call it life, even living, yet perhaps not enough to ever have it glorified? On a connected note, what of this glorification? Does it find roots in solace for a life badly dealt or does it flourish in the fertile ground of abundant successes? Does anybody question the top dog when a story seems far fetched, and how often does the meeker individual find themselves under scrutiny for even the merest indication that they have, actually, done something interesting?
And so I digress.
Success, yes success. Now what’s that all about?
I remember…but do I really? I thought I did but suddenly the lines begin to blur between my inclusion and my delusion concerning the way things used to be.
Am I being hyperbolaic? Not sure, cos I haven’t looked at the dictionary yet.
Good night and remember, if you can’t remember, remember anyway. We are humans. We have imaginations. Armed with such tools, a person’s whole life can be entertaining.
” I could be bound in a nutshell…”

 

© TheHairyTeacher2016

The Silver Curlew

The silver curlew alone and wondering
Perched to thinking
Dreams across an expanse of water
Beyond the dawn
Beyond the dreamer.
In the haste to strike repose
In the shuffling prelight
The songbirds echo faraway in the mind
Hidden in the memory
Sometimes delighting
Sometimes eroding hope.
In the shallow almost emptiness
The glean of struggle reflects
Till rolling ripples rain distortion.
Giving new interpretation
Giving wing to recent silence.

 

© TheHairyTeacher2016

You are your own audience

You are your own audience

The night lies broken, breathless, shattered
From the remnants of a state
The heart in horror trembles,
The sheer impossibility cleverly delined by reason
Has itself inclined in dubious hope.
A rendered artefact or some more aged dogma…
A light, in truth, the death knell of depravity.
Shored up beyond the scurrilous entreprise,
The matching and the making,
The pairing of all hideous will,
the depth as once quite necessary:
Fed fine the aquatic entity
In toil and broil and unity swims out towards the breach of things,
The borders given form,
Both perceptible as thought and touch.
What flowers, builds new barriers,
Pushed out beyond the pale.
Nighttime fondles creeping,
And the shadows emanate.
Soft sounds as city hum infuses,
The mind at odds with immortality,
Finds roads reached out of time by fog and swirl and everything.
The essence of a tired being,
The night in duplication fathoms nourishment from blood soaked stones,
The drops of soul, the seed denied.
Roots sans purchase revel in a weary word
Shake skyward a silly song.
A song of freedom, a song of hope,
Just as nightingales and larks united.
A kiss, a gentle tug, a pleading,
The face of dawn beyond the sight emerging
Shades the black to blue to navy grey.
And yet from where the traveller finally rests there’s nothing but night’s silhouette

Earthy Pathways

In the early morning the exodus begins.

The waves of earthworms from their homes evicted.

Falling prey to birds and rubber tyres.

Their fate sealed by the earth in which they live.

Betrayed, at least upended, they have no Noah to their cause.

They move en masse but separately,

towards a new beginning.

But it’s progress, not their own,

which has pushed them to this point.

As their habitat’s eroded their risks become significant.

On a soaked air morn from earth’s saturation

little creatures flee, to breathe,

but may never sleep again.

©TheHairyTeacher2014

Keela’s Dawn

 

Somehow Othello-an I gently breeze the dawn exclaiming that if indeed it were now to die then most happy I would be.

I grasp this notion as I hold dear my child, close to mé in a punch-drunk embrace.

Her proclamations of an hour before have subsided.

The carpet demon subdued, lured now into my arms,

She finally succumbs to dreams, only thought of by adults, realised plainly in the minds of young children.

Maybe there there be dragons too! ensnaring the barest of innoncence,

giving creedance to the horrors of nighttime and loneliness:

maybe beyond all the notion of things soft and fluffy, the furious truth is a scaly opponent.

The early líght shafts in through the window, sheening the room to create my reflection.

I note the brighter side of mé, I see a vision of this moment.

In truth I can now say, that I have sung my child here back to sleep

and in so doing have fulfilled a dream I had never even thought of;

perhaps this is the essence of fatherhood.

©TheHairyTeacher2014

 

Mind the step

Mind the step

Down the steps running in off Trinity Street, Cambridge, lies The Vaults Bar and Restaurant. I was a little unnerved to begin with. Whereas cellar bars are a norm in Budapest, in England, much like Ireland, I imagine such places to revolve around pain, torture, or pehaps even deviant sexual pleasure. Being with Tara meant I wasn’t up for that sort of exploration.
As it offered a chef’s special, 2 courses for a tenner, I was game, and with Tara weighing in my arms I had grown disinterested in prowling for a better place.
A bar to the left, restaurant to the right, at the bottom of the stairs, I chose the former being as there were cosy chairs for my sleepy beauty.
Though she fought heroically in resisting fatigue it is only because she is sleeping now that I’m managing this.
Right. Starters were varied and I chose a potted crayfish with toasted bread. I say toasted bread rather than toast because the bread itself is worth a mention to the good. The crayfish, however, set in a ramikan much like a goose liver paté, fat congealed on top – the disappointment came in the heavy handed approach towards the pickle mixed in. This struck me as a dish made by someone who delighted in the idea of fish while not wholly liking the taste. A whiskey-coke drinker comes to mind.
The main was a goat cheese salad with strips of red peppers, sun-dried tomato, rocket salad and that curious brown sauce which is not quite YR nor chocolate but could pass for both at a distance. It won back points for both simplicity and taste. Goat cheese and sun-dried tommy-toes…the job!
Served on tap was a cider I didn’t try and a bitter, Eagle, which I did.
The service was professional, experienced, and within the realm of friendliness which, considering my initial douts/fears about the establishment down the steps, is a positive.
In summary, in the way of bar-restaurant tradition which has come to signify the turn of the new millenium, it slots in unobtrusively, but perhaps would never stand out, not in my own imagination at any rate*.
Whether or which, Tara is still out for the count and I’m considering another pint while feeling the pressure of a full bladder. But unlike the beer, Martin isn’t bitter!

©TheHairyTeacher2013

*http://www.thevaults.biz/

The Magic

Madness personified
Sleepy?

 

Not the first time I met her

Framed in a doorway, smiling,

New to me – yet familiar.

Not even in the grand gestures of friends

Defined by drink, bravado and fear.

Not the smiles which

Surrounded me before I knew how –

To smile, to laugh, to communicate.

The magic I incline towards

As only parents know

Is that lull

Between the resistance and the sleep,

That moment when the

Thrashing ceases, the

Mumbling sporadic, ebbs

And flows;

“Dada” “Mama”

Continues

But you have had a

Half dream

Awakened by a snort

To realise she’s nearly there:

She’s nearly, and finally,

Dropped off!

What collection

A view with some room
As dreams go by

 

What collection

on a tram going… anywhere.

There’s always beauty to absorb

And forgive me this

But I don’t rely on the soft

Murmurings of children,

Their whispering delights,

The sheer ecstasy in their laughter:

Its peel, its shrill,

Its peak, its crescendo.

I mean not this!

What collection,

Collective beauty

Striking in their multitude,

Amazing to behold.

And I do not mean

The Christmas lights,

The street stalls,

Vendors and all;

I do not imply

That the passers-by,

Each with his tale;

That’s not for me.

The cars full,

Or just one,

Going some other places.

The workmen starting, finishing,

The orange light flashing

as it darts by,

and I by it do fly.

I do not mean this either.

For this is not my beauty now.

Above, beyond the streetside buildings

The glowing castle on the hill,

It stands above its dominion grand,

A pleasure to behold.

The literature around its streets

The tourists amassing

In Its wake;

The history,

The lineage deep – but

This is not here what I mean.

The river gently rolling by

between two banks

both day and night.

It is not blue, not anymore,

for darkness and the

time have fallen.

Yet secretly

in sleepers’ dreams

it moves

between two cities

still; a waltzing,

gliding majesty:

but this still is

not the one beauty.

High Culture, low,

theatre or pub

where voices eloquent erupt

and wisdom

often hid in slur

still not the beauty to

which I refer.

All beauty, every single thing

transformed by smiles

and my thinking –

Finally it diminishes with this,

My basic urge, my flailing thrust.

I am a man quite positive

and sitting on this tram tonight

I think of all

That art has found

but my fond lust

is still around.

 

 

 

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