I wrote a letter to a cliff
Because I know how it is to be the edge of the earth
It's ingrained in my mind always from experience
How one more step can lead to a fall
How one more step....
I wrote a letter a cliff and sent it via the wind

I sang a song to a mountain
Because I know how it is to rise above the world
A monument standing tall amidst the valleys
How one more step can lead to a peak
How one more step.....
I sang a song to a mountain and played it on the wind

A wrote a poem for the sky
Because I know how it is to feel endless
And then have the clouds encroach in a threatening way
How one more step through thunder and lightning
Just one more step.....
I wrote a poem for the sky on the air that I breath

Just one more step
Can lead to a peak
Can lead to a fall
A step in the rain
Can lead me to home

all the things you surround yourself with sit and gather dust
the landscape of your past
shadows, icons, only that.

a room full of objects
but empty of meaning
the ins and outs of your life as if on display
but in fact, no,
they are hidden away.

the energy that once filled these shells is long gone
without this,
their relevance, their spirits moved on.

sometime ago you acquired that book,
that candle,
that objet d’art
and you thought “look at this”
and you thought “this is me”
and you kept it.
And through it, you kept yourself,
frozen,
and apart.

This murky grey of the everyday, of the ubiquitous pattern and structured time - these are the illusions, the straws to which I clutch and cling like a child at her mother's skirt. Afraid of the unknown, afraid it will hurt. Looking only backward at my old stories and truths, growing shabby with constant use, poor curating, and increasing age; I wear my willful blinders like a self-constructed cage. Wide roads open ahead, ready to explore, and yet I cringe, I cower:  weak, small and unsure.

Small spikes of... awareness, sharp sudden connections to the divine, in the midst of mundanity I am hit with moments of expansion, of elevation and escape. A soaring stretch of the soul, reaching its arms upward, yawn and strain, trying for something, reaching beyond its usual scope as if hoping to catch a half-remembered dream, yes -- chasing the remnants of a fantastic dream --

Is it still within my scope? This rush of potential, this flush of excited possibility, of hope? Am I walking into it, or waking from it? That feeling of joyful freedom - surely that is our natural state, when the mind and its anxieties are forgotten or put to rest. That heady elation that makes me feel larger than life: I will it to be so, for that stretch to stick, to rearrange my shape, the space I take, to alter the way I think, the decisions I make.

It could be, can be reality, can be more real than the press of uncertainties, the weight of worries and restless unease.

1.
One beat at a time,
Sound
Reaching in, pulling your core out
until you are exposed, open,
expanding.
Your chest flowering into eternity with the vibration
Following a stream of being
Mapped out by chords and rests,
pulses, breaths.
The sound navigates you through the waters
Avoiding obstacles
Demolishing barriers and erecting bridges to shores unknown,
so far from home:
Someone else’s epiphany, piped into your lungs and heart.

2.
You’re being pulled out to the event horizon
Stretching towards a black hole
A place of possibilities, not of endings:
Your own boundaries are blurring, erasing.
You, as you float out in space:
You are only your heartbeat, your blood,
life force being pushed forward in time.

3.
The sound
Dissolves your body, shakes apart molecular bonds,
temporality becoming vibration and simple infinity
You are nothing, obliterated
You are everything, integrated
(Perfectly,
Ultimately)
The sound

4.
You find yourself, alive
There in the deep, bass bones of it
And up in the high treble cry of it
And all the substance/flesh/marrow/meat
in between

You step back
(back)
(back)
and then
everything exists in miniature.

You see it all at once, wide lens
Across the horizon
Each person’s little orbit
the scurrying of an ant.
Easy--yes!--to brush aside, pass blithely in your stride.

You hover, above it all, infinitely complex, a universe unto yourself.
Untouchable:  thus, invincible.
Untouchable.

Your head:  it expands, the universe
expands, stretches out--
You open your mouth--
Words fall flatly to earth, wounded birds
Moths that have been handled roughly, hurt
Inside your skull: an unyielding cage.

The world in miniature, there, there
Your hands extend
(empty hands, bursting skull)
but you are on the wrong end of the telescope.

Watch it pass from a car window
Through the glass
Mountains never get closer
Your reflection gazes placidly back
Eyes fathomless, liquid black
Your own eyes,
Cold eyes
reflected back
(back)
*(back)

Oh, how my heart aches and longs for something that it can never attain.
Yet, there is a tiny glimmer of a spark that if beholden to and nurtured.
It would suddenly start aflame and succumb to my deepest and inner desires.
It would be enlightening, enthralling or perhaps, irrevocably damage me wholly for all eternity.

Look past the smokescreen, foray through the challenges of the labyrinth and  descend into the infinite abyss of my arcane mind. If we survive the journey, maybe, just maybe, my armour will disappear. What lies beneath, a monster or a tragic fragility?  Can we just escape, burn bridges and never return?