.
A speck on the horizon grows,
dark grey, foreboding and cruel,
stunting the sun's warm rays,
eclipsing the sky's perfect jewel.

Roiling clouds gather their skirts,
spewing across the azure blue,
spreading threads of droplet rain,
morphing the light into different hue.

Static is just the anticipation,
the excitement before the wonder,
the throb as high overhead
peels a belly roll of thunder.


© Pagan Paul (17/03/20)

.
You stand alone in a crowd,
fully clad and yet naked,
open to the scrutiny of others,
a target for acceptable prejudice.
Do you look like them?
Do you act like them?
Do you think like them?
Does your conformity make you like them?
The group, the herd.
Is their outer vanity enough
for you not to care what they think?
The truth is that vanity
is not tangible.

The outward manifestation of thought,
thought that nibbles at the edges of reason,
invading and undermining confidence,
an acceptable target for prejudice.
Do they like me?
Am I of their kind?
What are they thinking?
Does my confusion make me like them?
Part of the crowd.
Is my inner vanity sufficient
for me to not care what they think?
The truth is that vanity
is transitory.


© Pagan Paul (29/02/20)

.
Last night
she said I was cold.
Unreachable.
Surrounded in a halo of frost.
It burnt her fingers
as she dared to touch,
but there was little there.
Just … frost-bite,
and the sense
that she was alone in the room.
In body I was there,
but the Boat of Millions of Years
was sailing through my eyes
to the intended destination,
my lost mind.
She called to me
but I was to far to hear.
Down her soft cheeks
the tears did stream,
as she screamed my name
over and over.
She screamed until
the screams turned to sobs,
as the slow realisation
that I no longer knew her,
knew me, knew anything,
hit her like a wave of grief,
freezing her emotions dead.
Last night
she said I was cold.
And I was cold
because I knew that it was
our Last Night.

© Pagan Paul (16/02/20)

.
She appears in the dawn mists of Autumn,
in yellows and gold, in reds and in browns,
painting shades and hues, Nature's decorum,
blushing the trees in her fine harvest gowns.

Dispensing her bounty for all to reap,
walking so confident through woodland scenes,
she prepares the trees for their Winter sleep
with distant thought of leaves and shoots new green.

Come Spring she wears riotous colour dress
in purple and mauve, a spectrum of blues,
showing reds and yellows, pinks to impress,
attracting the eyes to see as they choose.

In summer she arrives in hazy days
basking in new warmth, eager to be shown,
naked to the Sun, exposed to its rays,
Nature's beautiful daughter now full grown.


© Pagan Paul (09/02/20)

.
The goods trains roll on by,
passing my window at night
and I wonder, wonder,
where are you going to?
May I come?
May I lay back slowly
and let you take me somewhere?
Anywhere.
Anywhere but now.
For here I lay
counting the rhythmic pulses
of iron wheels on iron rails.
As goods trains roll on by.

I need to feel in my bones
these rhythmic pulses
like temperate rain on tin roofs
soothing the beat of a heart.
I want to go and to expand,
to flow through the world
at an even metronomic pace,
to find a place of balance.

And my inner eye like a clipper
sails into the void of dreams,
yet, somehow, more real to me
as I watch myself explore.
Teasing out the dark corners,
bringing light to their inherent terrors
and exposing myself to fears.
But who's fears?

Individual pieces or the whole puzzle?
Pieces missing, the puzzle incomplete.
Its hidden away in my mind
disjointedly interlocking around holes.

I wrote about my sanctuary.
A special garden in a special forest,
providing me with safety
for when the holes become to large.
To this retreat I speed
when the sensory input overloads,
blows a fuse or severs a link
to the circuit of attachment
and fractures the edges of the puzzle,
scattering the composite pieces.
The further dislocation of logic
as I sit in my sanctuary and weep.

And through tears I can see
light flooding in to me,
the blush of morning sky
as goods trains roll on by.


© Pagan Paul (30/01/20)