Gold leaves, wisdom's currency
Meditation quickens their drift
Scattered fierce and flung far burnished
Bright in streams and dreams
We toss them in sacral fire
Their ashes incense carrying
Our hopes, yield to deeds
As we commit our element
Fire; peering in a soul embarks
On a quest to find its passion
An art adorned by lightning sparks
That make of peace an earth an oath
Hearts as kin in inviolate pact
To cry for love and so I it's love I cried
In fathoms like an ocean pure and wide
That from unchained heart liberal bleed
All hope for all souls to be freed
The innate tongue of the loving tribe
Whose intuitive passion I strive to scribe
Beneath the fulsome crescent moon
A pearl encroached by rubber treads
Yet still her wisdom
Like leaf gold,
Eternal, bold,
Truth can't be clocked and sold
But through time to sages yield
For the planes of magic they have tilled.

i called up my momma
but she wouldn't answer
gettin' old but still feel like a child

i went to my doctor
but he just turned ninety
writes scripts with a wink and a smile

dialed the phone to my lawyer
she sent it to voicemail
debts piling up in my file

texted friends far and near
honesty is too sincere
alone i will walk this mile

eyes
don't wanna see
mediocrity

drivin' through the tunnels,
hold your breath but don't fall asleep

high eyes
wanna be free
like virginity

drivin' through the tunnels,
hold your breath but don't fall asleep

i can't be liable
for all of your pleas
the'll inseminate some
just like a bee
those falling crumbs
swept meticulously
in the long run
please incriminate me

i'm your foot off the brake
the gear's now in neutral
you can turn a deaf ear
although it will be futile
pry your hands off the wheel
while you try to escape
don't take your last breath
foreseen cannot forsake...

People remember me, but I do not remember them
I do not remember the things I said or did
But they do
Some look at me with questioning eyes and I wonder if they know
I want to ask and apologize for what damage I caused
I feel terrible for what I cannot remember
It took me three weeks to remember an old friend
I didn’t even remember Rachel, who was very hurt
When they mention what I did,
I feel frozen
I cannot move
I cannot speak
I fear saying the wrong thing
All I want to do is apologize
I want to be forgiven

A boy in my class
He looks at me then looks away
He knows who I was
But I do not know him

It kills me how they know who I was
Yet I cannot even remember myself
But, when I do remember, it comes like a flood
I remember parts of who I was and I feel like vomiting
I was vile and bitter at the world, though rightfully so
I was sick, so very sick
For it was not me who walked the halls of Providence
But a zombie
A stranger that I refuse to name
I want to bury it deep and forget
And for awhile I did
But they will not let me forget

I am not the same person I was three years ago
I am kind
I am beautiful
I have changed, but they do not know
They remember my past and are conflicted
But I will show them
I will put their minds at ease

Be gentle with me, I beg
My skin burns with adoration
Your touch feeds these flames
Pause and breathe
Lungs of hopeful dreaming
I feel safest in the dark
Where I can see
And you get lost in shadows
Fingers search for souls
I am on fire, do you not see
You are cold like ice

I always knew there was something strange
About that farmer’s stile,
For no-one ever climbed over it
And I’d watched it for a while.
The field beyond it was out of sight
Behind a hawthorn hedge,
I didn’t know till I tried to go
It was perched along the edge.

The edge of history, edge of time,
It may have been the gate,
That hell was hidden behind in that
It saved us from our fate,
I threw a stray dog over it first
To see what would transpire,
It came back ravening, racked with thirst
And it set the hedge on fire.

I wasn’t going to risk my health
Nor even my sanity,
But somebody else would have to go
For my curiosity.
I passed young Ann in the marketplace
And I thought she’d be no loss,
I talked her into crossing the stile,
She did, at Pentecost.

Now Ann had been unattractive when
I sent her over the stile,
I didn’t hear from her straight away
But hung around for a while,
Then out from behind the hawthorn hedge
She suddenly poked her head,
A ravishing beauty Ann was now
When I’d thought she might be dead.

‘Could that be possibly you?’ I said
When I saw her pouting lips,
Her stylish sash and fluttering lash
And her painted fingertips,
I hadn’t noticed her dimples when
I’d looked at her before,
But now she was drop dead gorgeous,
And the word was, ‘I adore.’

I tried to get her over the stile
But she said to me, ‘No fear,
For everything is so beautiful
I think I’ll be staying here.’
And then if I really wanted her
I would have to cross myself,
She said there was gold and rubies there
Amid signs of untold wealth.

I conquered my inner demons and
I took the step at a run,
Leapt over the farmer’s stile to Ann,
There in the midday sun,
But all I found was a battleground
Littered with heads and hands,
The ******* of seven centuries
And a pile of old tin cans.

While Ann was dressed in a peasant gown
And had lost her pouting lips,
Her stylish sash that had turned to ash
And her coarsened fingertips,
‘What did you really expect,’ she said
As she pinned me to the ground,
‘Now you’ll be mine, though it seems unkind,
As long as the earth turns round.’

I’ve tried to escape for seven years
But I cannot find the stile,
The one that I jumped up over once
In response to her woman’s wiles.
I really thought I had played the girl
When she wasn’t much to see,
But she found me in the marketplace
And she ended playing me…

David Lewis Paget