There are many ways to hold her
Sometimes conventional is off
You see, hands have hurt before
I’m sure they’ll hurt again
She needs a different kind of love

You found this supernatural creature
Life’s defining “cherry on top”
She’s a rare find to be adored
For her both mind and heart must bend
To find a different kind of love

Have you asked what a kiss translates to?
Which words you’ve said have penetrated?
Gestures bring something to the table
Share in the happiness and bad
To find her prescribed dose of love

So many things to learn that are new
So many more ways love is translated
Find her dialect if you’re able
To appreciate, to awe, to add
New ways to different kinds of love

Little feet walking
Endlessly far
Big eyes  wide open
Only seeing the war
Little hands clutching
everything nearby
Little skinny bodies
Numb, just wanting to cry
A child tired  and hungry
With no place to go
No  destiny nor future
Nothing... No home..
Eyes big and wide open
Seeing only the dark
That ..... people
is our
refugee child.

Shell
🐚✨

I’m Coming for you Bob...
To Hull & Back...
to Carver’s Just for the Mushy Peas!

As a little lad, I think on a Sat’day morning, we’d go

to a market somewhere, was it on the docks?

Asked our Brian, he’s smart, he said it were... I thought - he’d know.

...After all the mooching, the tugging, the shushing, the rows
and all me mam’s “where’s he gone nows?”

If I stuck it out long enough wi’out gerrin’ a clout,
we’d sit inside, or sometimes out,

of a blue striped tent - and I’d eat mushy peas.

There might have been chips,
 there could have been fish;
Mam always had fish,

Brian, would have had a pattie... well, he was 12(ish)

Not sure I’d even have known about patties all them years back.
But anyway peas is what sticks in my mind…

and all down the front of me jumper...or sometimes on me mac.

They say - if you haven’t been to Carver’s
 you haven’t been to Hull.

Well Bob... I’m coming back!… And’ll
bet,
when I was digging mushy peas
 with my fork back in Fifty Three,

it were your Grandad, (also Bob) would have been serving me!

Cheers! And, I know it's cheeky - but - Can I have scraps wi'that?

[feb]
2020 was the year of discomfort and change
through a chain of spontaenous events or accidents
i started work as a prisons counsellor, with no experience to my name
in an unfamiliar sea of faces, setting and processes
i encountered foreign species called case concepts and case discussions

[apr]
although i loved what i did,
when the storm came 2 months into work
it felt like a struggle to breathe
alternating between
head over water
and water over head

lifebuoys were thrown at me
but in the cold and darkness
i found it hard to see

at the same time i started learning to climb
loving the challenge to the top
despite my fear of being high up the rocks
the climbs were accompanied by countless falls
and there were times i let my fear conquer it all

[dec]
after a year of discomfort and change
through waves of self-reflection and self-confrontation
climbing into and above myself after much pain
learning to savor the beauty between and within each complication

i'm slowly befriending the species of case concepts and case discussions
and though i know there is more that has yet to happen
and the climbs are still accompanied by countless falls
whether the highs or the lows, i've learned (and am still learning) to love it all

BELL

Sound spreads like a cold splash
trembling with high connections.
The exuberant voice of the bell
shatters the hush of air.

Great clouds seem to echo,
startling dreamers, breaking
the deep tone of somber thoughts.

There is a wondering at sound,
ringing out the morning mist
or the last remains of day.

There is a coloring of time,
bulging outwards like a
courier with urgent news.

Why, bell, do you remind us
of the passing hours when
mind, listening to a long-lost
song, only wishes to travel
backwards.

I'm down on the floor,
beggin' You,
my True Faithful Amen,
because it's up to You.
not ending this with, 'amen' -
it's not done, it doesn't end,
not until I see,
my Amen face to face,
saved from this place.
@author_venjarnold