Sailing in a dhow at sunset after snorkeling off Mafia island, Tanzania.
'
SPILLAGE
The tree’s don’t sleep at night
they photosynthesize , by moonlight.
Leaves drink in the cool wise light
And give off dreams of softly fading starlight

Whispers of secrets , monthly unfurl
A single blossom falls at new moon
Hurtling to the ground, awake before noon
Ever noticed? The very word has the circle
Curled up in the centre , twice to make sure we remember , two full cups , not one.

Geko’s slip off old skins
And the croaking frog adds to the din
As thunder rolls in
Triggering the dogs bark
Guardian of the stark naked couple
Asleep in their parallel worlds
Together under the umbrella of ambient lighting
Not the natural kind either
But a shameless copy of pure sunlight
That emenates when their bodies collide
On the material plane.

Astral visions lead the way to headquarters
The address? Fax? Phone number?
I’m afraid you’ll have to dial again ,
Unless you’ve meditated on the vibration of emancipation
Then you would already know, you are already there
Doors are open , for those who care to try
No lock on this baby ,
Ain’t no safe to play safe
We bask in our humble glory
Under the shores on undulating tides
Rhythmic pulsations
no where to hide
The emanations come from within,
Without , a shadow of a doubt

There is a war coming , infact we’ve already been fighting for decades
Just like the change of winds, nature knows her stuff
Tip the seeds too soon and you’ll end up with a field full of fluff
But just in time and a harvest with enough to reduce every super market shelf to dust
Even though they already stock that kinda stuff
Clean up on Aisle 4, Aisle 3 , Aisle 2 , Aisle 1
Return the purchase , we’ve discovered the ****
In the cake
And we found the frog in the salad,
At least their habitat is intact
Or did you think I was still talking about the shops?

Ok , I’ll change tact
Change of pace.
No , no I will not join the Human Race
Running to where? Why all the running?
From what? To where? From whom , to whom it seems like we run straight to our tombs, without a second glance at perhaps the chance that legs can walk…
Wanna know where I’d rather be?

I want to be on a motorbike heading 70 miles an hour down empty roads
An island paradise , holding the hips of my dearest
To arrive at another home ,
where our friends relax to the forlorne strums of the blues
Tripping on love we depart ,
not without slightly heavy hearts
Peace , friends we’ll see you anon.

Pull into the golden arches , I tell myself ‘I can’t kiss those lips now they’ve touched that burger’
then I remember you’ve been working all day
before you came out to play , I wasn’t up for a dance I was too entranced in my own madness
But. Always the **** , walk up those stairs for me, softly you moan.
I agree in a semi tone. Secrets are meant to be shared,
we quietly told each other of love in the parking lot at 4 am. The pain in your eyes still wakes me up in the middle of thunderstorms.

Awoken to sorrows from the motherland, monsters creep to the door,
peep in the keyhole.
Oh,
I forget,
your door is activated by credit card numbers that spiral from lips of z-list celebrities.
So we’ll waste away the morning in each other arms,
you watch me as I dress. No underwear no less. Put on your bra properly, suddenly you get kinda frosty.
Not far from where we sat to have a Japanese lunch , pretty close to where I walked to meet you for tea , where you held my feet and handed me a phone I left in your brothers car.
Well that’s where we have breakfast coffee and papaya whilst tourists ogle at the dog guard.
Deaf to our calls , luxuriously taking his time. He didn’t find the secret beach either.
Although the sea was good for a float, and to hear the space journey’s musical manifestation
at every crash of every wave, the magnetic pull playing her crooked beat as she bypasses our feet.
Then, there are two nights with two Amsterdam gals , one smoked lucky strikes and had scars across her wrists , the other photographed trees for a living.
Both blonde , both fair , both with their own flair.

Expect the unexpected , beach raves full of people I don’t really want to be with , so we get tequila shots instead
and stand outside a shop selling knock off clothes when the bar needs to shut.

She took a break to the bathroom , we finally let out the kisses we’d been holding in all night,  
until she got back.

Who said we couldn’t control ourselves? Although to be fair, I could feel you reaching for me wayyy back.

Why should we be selfish? Why shouldn’t we? I still went home with you that night, there really was no two ways about it.
I had *** with you, slightly drunken ***, that was by no means gentle, by no means candle lit , by no means rose petals laid out on the bed, infact , if my memory holds true, there were no flowers apart from the ones on my dress.
I’d say you were lucky , but then I cried at home.
So much pent up emotion in that one act.
Enough to propel us in into another night and untold eons beyond, I’m skipping ahead now,
Where we drank red wine on the shoreline , I used the staff bathroom and noticed all the things that could be improved – seemed like work was wearing off on me.
Still, the best part was yet to come, yeah the *** was fun but nothing compared to the games we played. Dress up and salsa ,
mysterious temples
natures tickles leading to giggles at the foolish endevours of two ***** humans., smoke a spliff , enough to unwind the mind to a new point of time. A flash of something I’ve never seen before, nor have yet to be graced with again.
I guess that was divine. Well, wouldn’t you say….
It was about time.

So , am I still talking about the shops?
Or who wore what with kate moss?
No disrespect
she’s adept at her art but i don’t wanna read about boring old farts
Lets hear about the underground collective of conscious minds who are rewinding the clock , who won’t stop ,
warriors.

Well quite frankly

How long have we sat , year after year to be told the same **** and bull story.. my ears, my ears! MY EARS!!! They yearn for the sweet serenade of the truth

behind the crumbling arcade of rigged lottery tickets and games of black jack where the house always wins.
Fortunately we’ve been coming since we were five , we know the cards without seeing the faces, we hold all the jacks and aces, we’ve got time on our side

So…that’s why they are running , finding places to hide.

We’d only be stealing from the house to give to the houseless…
With the tools the house gifted to us…doesn’t it seem ironic?

I laughed until I cried the day I discovered the universe had a sense of humor. A dark , ironic , sarcastic tone that involves  a major chord. Maybe a G or a D.

There's that point when you look back
and all you see is the reflection.
I remember when those cliffs flew by in the rear view
where the red dust kicked up on brand new shoes.
Those coastal waters
crystal blue
the evergreens before me....
Those winding roads that changed me once before
changed me again.
The docks were closed off, as was him.
All those promises...
All the innocence, dead.
Because we are older
we grew farther
he grew bigger
and I was leaving.
Saying goodbye.
When before I was already grieving
I knew it was fleeting.
Those moments covered in snow
footprints covered
no one would ever know.
The path in the sand would blow away
the love in his heart would fade .
One day when I'd love myself I found my way.
One day ill forget that love
there is nothing left to say.
Young love under covers
started off with lies and mistakes.
I was a loose canon
my flaws were larger than life.
My innocence and ignorance
gave me no right,
to be the way I was
but our youthful folly and love
is an alluring drug.
Captivates the soul
but soon drains from your veins.
Then your left alone in the cold... broken and old.
Forgive and forget.
Ill walk away one more time...
with tears in my eyes,
as there is anger on your face.
I've doubt you've found inner peace
I cant hate you.
I just pray for your soul...

Dragonfly   o   Dragonfly  
framed against a lazy summer sky,
you'll hover and ponder out yonder,
like an acrobat you fly.

You'll dance and dart, hover and peer,
Touching, stalking, feathered walking.
On pond shadows dark and near,
onto sunbeams  sparkling clear.

Casting imaged reflections,
on a mirrored surface of life's crystal pond.
Where ever-diminishing dainty rippled circles,
disappear onto a distant misty shore beyond.

You'll ponder and peep,
through dark secrets your pond might keep,  
captured images of animals & bees,
scented flowers & soft young trees.

About political boundary bursts,
and agonizing desert thirsts.
While strife-torn agony song is being sung,
at the scorching heat of the searing Sun.

Witnessing a climate change,
Industrial, Oil, Air & Waste pollution.
With no workable cleanup program in site,
to warrant a solution.

Our planet's resources stretched,
to its limits by human misery & industry untold.
Life's habitats are disappearing,
the beginning of Earth end is nearing.

It is inevitable that soon, to soon,
after million a year, on life's crystal ponds so clear.
You'll too succumb to man's industrious endevours,
and for eternity disappear.
Andreas Strauss.16 June 2007

The rain beat the pavement as the man ran to a nearby bus shelter holding a newspaper over his ragged hair. The rain hitting the glass was nearly deafening, but there was comfort in the sound. A public transit bus comes and goes, recognizing the bleak figure immediately. This was, after all, his commonplace - the closest thing he had to a home in the past two years.
"Get a job", people would say, as if it were ever really that easy.
He had been diagnosed with depression after his wife’s passing nearly four years ago and suffered alone as he mourned and pushed through what most people see as a normal life. On the outside, it was unapparent how miserable he had become, unable to share the world with another as he had now for so many years. He came to his cubical on time each day, he worked until the late afternoon had came and went, and he left without a word. He was the unnoticed face in a crowd.
All at once, he lost his drive to live his life. He stopped showing up to work, he did not pay his bills, he didn’t answer the door or the phone. The clear print reading “EVICTION NOTICE” had meant nothing to him. He took only the essential things with him as he left behind an empty house behind. The last thing he put into his bag was a copy of the Odyssey, worn now after so many years of attentive reading.
The tattered copy sat open on his crossed legs, the moment passing by. The walls of the shelter sheild him from the wind and welcome him into their embrace. the adequecy of lighting was questionable as the sun descends and the world loses its colour. A streetlamp flickers to life and casts an ominous glow onto the street beneath it. He continues to read about the long journey of a man trying to find his way home, not unlike himself. What’s happening on the page is disconnected from thepart of the world that he is trapped on; he watches his secret world become a vivid painting beneath his hands and turns the page.
"Hello," said a man waiting for another bus to take him to a far off place.
He didn’t respond.
"I take it you like the book, judging by the condition…" The man tried again to grasp his attention. His dark figure loomed on the other side of the glass.
"I do", he said.
"What’s your name, son?"
He paused, turning to fully look at the man. “Its Tristan,” he said, contemplating the man as he stepped into the light. The man shuffled into the shelther gingerly, leaving behind the loud clack of his cane. His clothes chaffed against the skin on his legs, and he carried his fedora in his hand. He creased his face in pain as he sat beside Tristen.
"My name is Connor Wright", he breathed heavily, struggling to continue. "I have a spare copy of that book myself, laying around at home. No use to myself. Would you want to have it? I can bring it to you the same time next week"
"How do you know I will return it?"
"Perhaps I don’t want it back"
The silence stretched. “I would like that very much, sir” replied Tristan.
A dark blue bus pulled up to the stop without warning and stirred the stillness in the air. The headlights shone in their eyes and caught the edge of the mans thick-framed glasses. “I will see you next week then”
Each week came and passed as Mr. Wright began to bring Tristan books frequently, exchanging each new book for the last. “Why do you treat me with such kindness when I have nothing to give?” Tristan would ask him each week, never recieving an answer.
A year passed by in the presence of the silent agreement. Mr. Wright would often bring Tristan a warm container filled with soup, or a sandwhich left over from lunch to accompany his reading for the night.
On a cold night in april, Tristan waited at the bus stop for the greying man. He spotted him across the street as he waved to him. Tristan, flashing his increasingly more common smile, returned his vivid wave in the direction of Mr. Wright.
"Hello Tristan", he began as always with a bright smile. His distinct aroma filled the hollow bus shelter - a mix of burnt wood, but also new paper and musk, and apparent paradox. After a brief conversation, Tristan took the book out of Mr. Wright’s frail hands.
The bus arrived shortly thereafter and Mr. Wright borded the exhausted vehical, taking his time going up the short stoop of stairs.
This book was rather unlike the other books that Mr. Wright had given him in the past months. His books had usually been full of journeys abundant with creatures, or filled to the brim with a quaint scenery, embodying an allegory in a far off place. The book he held in his hands was called “Darkness Visible”. It was a self-help book for those in the winter of their lives, much as Tristan was, though he hated to admit it.
He opened the page of the book and the spine cracked as the smell of fresh ink and paper filled his senses. This book was new.
He read with curiousity at first, which later turned to deep interest, and later still, turned into inspiration. The following week, Tristan returned this book to Mr. Wright as he told him that he would not be returning to the bus stop with any more new books. “I wish to see you again in the future”, he said, handing Tristan a slip of paper with his name and phone number on it.
Many years passed by and the two men kept regular contact, discussing the endevours of Tristan and his success in his new life.
"Doctor Spense, you have a visitor" his secretary informed him in her usual airy tone.
"Send them in, please"
A man with strong lines creased into his face turned the door handle and entered his office at Kingston University. Commonalities were exchanged and the man fought back a solemn look as he took a seat across from Tristan. The armchair engulphed him.
"Doctor Spense, I’m sorry to inform you that Mr. Connor Wright passed away this morning as he succumed to his long fight against cancer", he spoke as though he had said these words in practise. "I am here because you were included in his will and we need to speak about legalities".
Mr. Wright had left him his entire collection of books, including that first copy of the Odyssey that Tristan had cherised so many years earlier when he had had nothing else. As he opened the familliar book, an envelope fell to the ground.
He stooped to the ground to pick up the white sheet and put it in the pile of other loose pages when he saw in handwriting, “To Dr. Tristan Spense”.
He read the words and tears filled his eyes, prickling at the corners and pooling in the clear canvas of skin before his jaw.

"The greatest disease in the West today is not TB or leprosy; it is being unwanted, unloved, and uncared for. We can cure physical diseases with medicine, but the only cure for loneliness, despair, and hopelessness is love. There are many in the world who are dying for a piece of bread but there are many more dying for a little love. The poverty in the West is a different kind of poverty…" - Mother Teresa
I treated you kindly holding the knowledge that you would have nothing to give in return because I saw something I once saw within myself during the darker days of my time. I helped you because I knew your soul would rot and perish in a sickly way should you go unnoticed. I helped you because I hate faith in you and knew you had the kind of illness that could be taken away with the love of a friend. I hope that I have been able to give you the medicide loneliness, desparity and hopelessness and that your cabinets are stocked full. Remember where you have come from, and remember that it is always darkest before dawn.
Your friend always,
Connor Wright

Forgotten souls
Lost before it was over
Sat on a meadow's hill
Taught by time.

Heads and hearts are seldom there
Taken aback by a surface
Free from shackles
Nighttime gives us that impression.

Honest in endevours
Genuine in heart.
How tuesday became thursday.
Was meant from the start.

Forcing efforts into front heroes.
Fears are not quenched.
Demeaning, aggravates.
Tears pristine.

"I'll leave you all the weapons for that",
Pat smiled and perched the two too-tall cinnamon buns
down beside me on the windowsill,
as promised fully armed with knife, fork and serviette

I entered the fray and caught the eye of the postman
as he fought with his cart along the too narrow,
not-quite-cobbled path, slick with rain,
and then he nodded and gave way
to the guy in the slow sports wheelchair

while the young mum on low reserves
wrestled with her twin girls
up past the town hall and gallery,
perhaps with the promise of grandma's cookies

- all this while Jill's coffee brewed patiently alongside the buns
as she and Deb re-ran long laughter of past adventures
and plotted paths to future endevours.

Welcome to the pharmacy, for poetry.

Curled up into a ball in the corner of the room,
Surrounded with nothing but bleak walls and the echoes of my breathe,
Staring out from behind the bars as I ignore the flickering light,
Hoping that a moment would come I could finally taste the freedom.

I couldn't remember how I got in this prison,
But the counts of my failed escapes are scarred on my body,
Every whisper is my shout, every tears are my untold wishes,
And every tick of the clock madness is feasting my mind.

Every move I make synchronizes with the sound of my chain,
Reminding me that my steps are counted as the walls around me,
Reaching out the bars, struggling to pass through them,
Yet all my endevours always go in vain.

The ghost of courage remains unseen and unheard,
Eyes on the laughing bars while I'm slowly shrinking,
As every strength fades into oblivion, this place turns into something worse,
For without a single sanity ever survived in a solitary confinement.

I am words left unspoken, unwillingly trapped in this place,
I am ashamed of how will I sound like to their ears,
Will I be accepted? Will I be rejected?
Will I be a curse or a blessing to the world?

I always try to blame others but it's me who trapped myself within these walls,
With no possible escapes I am willing to discover,
Loneliness is hunting me, holding the bow and arrow of despair,
But why? I'm just a voice longing to be heard.

wind raucous in it's endevours tonight
circling the house in a macabre yet joyous song
and dance routine, the tree's applaud
and the small cat curls tighter in on itself

rain falls with intense passion
scrubbing the grime away
and the moon is lost in the clouds
most things tuck themselves up
and wish  for a sunny day

but the old green treefrog
is singing  lovesongs
and his rival too
bass profundo
at just past two
serenading the ladies
as the wind croons along

In the vastness and void
I am just a grain
A particle
The grand opera plays
Through comedy and tragedy
The world applauds
While the speck observes
While the sands of time wash over me
Ignoring me
For I am minute
Solitary
Brief
All my endevours
All my labours
Are fleeting and insignificant
While time resumes
And power waxes and wanes
The glorious bedazzle the stones
The audacious stand, for a short while
Then fade
Just like me
Yet
In my moment
I know
I feel
I love
No grain could have such passion as I
Could ask the questions I dare to ask
Could seek beyond the familiar
To embrace the unthinkable
And taste the unknown
This grain lays upon a hazardous shore
Where tides and fauna hold sway
And the grain does not deride or decide
But acquiesces
With quiet assuredness
This grain does not struggle to be known
Does not beseech the approval of the universe
For in me are all the majesties and mysteries of life
And for me
This tapestry dances
And I rejoice
And I sing
For one brief second
A song
A melody of life
Such as can never be heard from the rock mass
Upon the waves of oblivion, of uncertainty
I flounder
One grain
On the vast shore of existence
Awaiting the builder's loving craft

When I settle in your mind
your breathing on a rapid incline
you sound the alarm, to your defenses
to surrender, a prisoner of your senses

but I am what you dream
streaming thoughts of what you need
fluttering eyelids, mouth agape
fingers glide , slowly to your lap

legs agonizing spread
to your hips, were your fingers lead
that shuddering seems to last forever
the after touches, follow you
though your daily endevours

you can thank me after dinner

Rise,
be not ready
for the horizon,
regretful men
die on.

Stand, and don't
fear future
endevours, sirs.
Revel in rest,
come again,
test the waters.

Again
and again.

It was certainly strange when we found them
No chemistry or reasoning prove its cause
But from first sight every natural inclination vanished
Two species separated by an endless void
Were inextricably connected at their very core
No wars or struggles among them
But a deep subconscious understanding
And a desire to benefit the other
This cosmic bond led us to reach new heights
To come to the very edge of all understanding
But as with all things, when something grows too bold
To confident in its endevours
A force comes in to put it back in its place
And so they came
From where or when unknown
Some say from beyond the very universe we itself
And they dismantled all our acheivments
World after world
Millennia of records and knowledge
Gone in an instant to darkness
The connection between them
Broken, shattered like glass
And the companions hunted to extinction
One by one the stars went out
As the scourge crossed creation
Coming at last to our home
The very place of our birth
A blue green marble on the edge of space
The birth place and resting place of a curious species
Who reached out too far into the darkness
But who were not forgotten
And in long distant futures
Might one day return
With the help on an ancient ally

We act like
We know
But we’ve yet to awake
Everything there is
Is nothing

Let’s start over
Pretend
we’re ******
to situation
You keep the knowledge
From past endevours
But will yourself
To new perspectives

Being right
Is acting right
In acting right
You do right
Objectively

We act like
We know
But we’ve yet to awake
Everything there is
Is nothing