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mannley collins Feb 2017
The body that I am incarnated in was born in the middle of the very rainy summer of 1939.
My vehicle for life.
All seeing-all smelling --all tasting--all touching--all speaking--all hearing --all sensing --perambulating -singing-dancing-cooking--drinking --painting--******* etc etc vehicle.
Born a few months before the Second World War,with all its nonsensical religiously patriotic and democratically oligarchic and liberally fascistic evil nonsense, started.
Makes me a Rider of the Storm eh?.
Eat yer heart out Jim Morrison!.
Slid out of my mothers womb in the upper room of a brand new house.
Situated on a new street somewhere on a new development on the edge of a 3000 years old walled city in 'gods' own country'--that's what they called it.
Yorkshire!.
First smell I remember,clearly,was rain soaked Lilac and Earth mixed together.
Their scent coming hrough the open bedroom window.
AAAAH rain soaked Lilac.
Second smell was Tobacco from downstairs where my father was anxiously chain smoking.
Then came my first taste.
He,my father,dipped the tip of his little finger into his glass of celebratory Whiskey and poked it into my mouth as I lay there,wrapped in swaddling clothes.
Irresponsibility!!.
Second taste was her warm rich creamy breast milk.
And so my days and nights started.
They told me the name that I was to answer to--as if it was the whole of me.
They told me my beliefs and attitudes and desires and limitations and skills etc etc.
They told me that what I have come to know was my conditioned identity was the real me---but it isn't!..
The lied to me --in innocent ignorance.
My sister taught me to read and write by the time I was 3 years old.
I grew up knowing,deep down, that I was something else.
Not the 'Something Else' that Ornette Coleman played,on his magnificent disc,either.
War raged elsewhere throughout my childhood--mainly across the seas far away.
I watched flight after flight of four engine bombers roar overhead every day ,on their way to drop bombs on children I would never meet.
There was a busy air base 2 miles away from the house I was born in.
Once an injured bomber,coming back from a raid,crashed in flames on two houses at the top of the street I lived in.
I found war to be a hellish and frightening experience.
And along the way I discovered that I couldnt explain to 'myself' who I was, exactly,either.
That my parenters gift of identity was misleading.
I asked 'myself' who or rather what was I?.
By the time I was 3 years I was a ******* from 'Osteomylitis'--or so they told me.
I couldn't walk with massive  left hip joint pain I suffered.
I spent the years from 3 to 6 in a traction bed in a couple of hospitals.
Gobbling down Cod liver oil and Malt for the vitamins--and it worked!!!.
At 6 I learned to walk--YES!!!.
All that pain was left behind.
Thank you Gautama.
My life was suffering but as you supposedly said.
Suffering can be overcome.
And I overcame it.
And I ran and jumped across streams and climbed trees and walked for miles and miles and danced the dance of life.
I foraged for blackberries and wild mushrooms and crabapples and horseradish roots and rosehips and other fruits of nature.
I fell in love with the song of the Yellowbeak--Blackbird to you.
Became enraptured by the smell of wild Roses in the hedgerows.
And I sang and sang and sang and danced and danced and danced.
And all the while I just knew that I wasn't the body that I was incarnated in.
Even though my parenters kept on insisting that I was that body.
And I knew that I wasn't who they had told me I was either.
I knew that I wasn't the conditioned identity of the body that they insisted I was..
At 9 years I passed an exam and won a free scholarship place at a fee paying 'public' school.
My education started in earnest.
Lain and French andAlgebra and Geometry and  expectations of University.
I fell in love for my very first time at around 12 years old.
Raymond was his name.
He taught me how bisexual I was.
I swallowed litres of his body fluids.
Oh how I loved him.
Then after 2 ecstatic years he rejected me because I was a different class to him.
AAAAARGH!.
Then around 14 years the monthly seizures started.
A regular dark descent into unconsciousness.
I experienced the small death of Julius Ceasar and Leonardo Da Vinci.
Back to waking consciousness after an hours out of the body trip into the Astral realms.
Waking with total total amnesia.
With no mind or conditioned identity but both came back within one hour of waking and took over again.
Along with a helluva headache.
But I woke as me--who or whatever that was.
I wasn't who they said I was.
I was me!.
Whatever that was.
Where did I come from?
My purpose in life became to find out what I was and what the source of my existence was.
Teenage life as a rock n roller started beckoned and I embraced party life.
I won cups of silver for dancing very energetically to Bill Haley and Chuck Berry.
I discovered the other half of my bisexuality.
I found girls.
Oh girls how I love you.
and love you and love you.
I started to play trombone at 18 years.
Then trumpet and drums then into my life walked MISS SAXOPHONE and I melted!!!!.
Alto alto wobbly lines of sound poured out from the bell of my alto sax.
I was 23 and toying with buddhism and social alcoholism and playing saxophone jazz(probably badly).
26 and I got married for the first time.
I was playing Free Jazz rather amateurishly by now.
In 1967 I moved to London--became a longhaired hippy--started my own band called BrainBloodVolume--took many doses(literally 1000s) of pure LSD and Mescaline and Psyllocybin and DMT--embraced diet reform--became ordained as a buddhist monk in 1966--played with Jimi Hendrix and John Lennon and the pink Floyd--went to live in the Balearic Islands--Mallorca,Ibiza,Formentera--started to do oil paintings--had a Master Class in Concert Flute playing from Roland Kirk in the dressing room at Ronnie Scotts Jazz Club in London.Became addicted to Macrobiotic Food and Spring Water and puffing Waccy Baccy(always through a Water Pipe..



Its been seventy seven years in this incarnation that I have been wandering the face of this big ball in space seeking the answer to the eternal questions of life.

What am I and where do I come from and what is my purpose?.

And here  is the answer--!!.

I am an individual isness formed solely from a small but equal independent and autonomous portion of the isness of the universe.

Each individual isness is an eternal, small but equal, independent, autonomous,nameless, formless,genderless,classless,casteless,non physical and unconditionally  loving portion of the isness of the universe.

The isness of the universe is the whole of the nature of reality and is the sole source of all existence and is eternal,nameless,formless, genderless,beingless and autonomous and unconditionally loving and is not a 'god' or a 'goddess' or any kind of being.

I live in the joyousness of shared unconditionally loving union with the isness of the universe.
David Beresford Oct 2011
As the warm days of summer give way to chill, and shadows grow longer as days shed their hours.
High winds and rain storms scrub the tired landscape down.
Colours are changing from rich green to gold, from yellow to red and orange to brown.

The grain has been gathered, wheat, barley and oats, cut and collected, sifted and sorted and put into store.
Grown by God, and by man with machine and by effort of hand.
Poppies and stalks now mark the spot, of the return for their labour. The wealth of the land.

Birds follow the tractor, rising and falling, swirling and soaring they move like a cloud.
The farmer is out and turning the stubble into the ground.
Rooks and crows, gulls and wood pigeons, starlings and magpies follow him round.

Hay long since mown is now bailed and in barns, or rolled up and bagged, ferments now in high silage towers.
The countryside has yielded reward for all Adam’s toil.
Work done in rhythm with the seasons, sowing, growing, reaping, ploughing and tilling the soil.

Gathering goodness, from garden, and greenhouse, carrots and courgettes, tomatoes in bunches.
Fresher than any you can get in the shops.
Picking the bounty gleaned from the hedgerow. Rosehips and cobnuts, damsons and hops.

Elder and sorrel, mushrooms and puffballs, sour green crab apples, and brambles in tangles.
Sloes that were missed by the late winter frost.
Not all are pleasant and some really can hurt you, pick only those that you know and trust.

Take full advantage of God’s generosity, share it with gladness, with thanks, there is plenty for all.
Sticky syrups and cider, wines, cordial and beer.
Pies, puddings, sorbets and ice creams, jam, jelly, and chutney and enough pickles to last into next year.

As the warm days of summer give way to chill, and shadows grow longer as days shed their hours.
High winds and rain storms scrub the tired landscape down.
Colours are changing from rich green to gold, from yellow to red and orange to brown.
This was written in a hurry as a commissioned item - a poem to be read out at the harvest festival the following week.
Reading it requires pauses, for effect, and to cover the variations in timing.
Much of it was inspired by what I saw while out running along the Hoton ridge on the Notts. Leics. border.
Elizabeth Mayo Nov 2012
your skin is pale silk, my white hart, my Sol heart,
your blood as it thrums is red Eucharist wine,
your hair all the sun's godly glory and gold:
so Gloriana, lonely amora, who'd not call you the one and the only?

you speak of the sweet whispers that the waves could-- could!-- bring,
you, all fragrant with frankincense and rosehips and thyme,
you, avournine, flow to and away with the moon's ebb and sway,
and who'd not shiver and tremble before you, loreley!

you claim castle and crown with your easy warm grace,
you claim thrones of ice then complain of the cold,
and to touch your lips to petals is to touch her face:
but Titania, appassionata nostra,
caprice and impermanence, grace and countenance,
our lady of the lake!
crystal holly Feb 2017
with water color ink
made permanent with a pin
an emerald garden grew
from the surface of her skin
the sight was divine
the branches aligned
& through the cracks
poured sunlight in.
the honeysuckles oozed
the hollyhocks seeped
as chartreuse hummingbirds
dank nectar through their beaks.
by her favorite birthmark
hanging from a tree
was a silver web of silk
gossamer and dazzling.
with each image set,
pressed onto her skin
her flesh turned bright red
like the rosehips near her ribs.
Cotton fields in our mouths
Quenched with a kiss
Rain soaked ground
Or is it the bed
Flower petals opening up
Relishing in the dew
Or was it your stamen
Revitalizing in the rose
Apples in your hands
Unable to bite through
But yielding to your grasp
Hungry we were
A meal set before us
Dates, apples, steak, rosehips
Adam's Ale our drink
Pulled apart and snapped back
Ivy entwined together
Our bodies and souls sated for now
What a garden my muse and I create

#ivy #apples #rose
Laurel Elizabeth Feb 2014
Move over incompetence-
That’s my seat.  

We’ll have tea.  The herbal variety.
And talk about my listless absence
over rosehips and peppermint.

It has been a long road trip
on awkward interstates,
since I have eaten poetry.
It tastes tangy on my tongue-
tahini and tap water,
like salad dressing gone south.  

I went south, since last we spoke.  
I cry still for the colors,
the blues and greens that burned my eyes
and transfigured my palette.
The mountains spoke foreign languages
but blessed me with new ears to hear,
but I did not record their tales.

I sit now trying to catch a shimmer of their dialect
but I am full of empty English.

I repent now,
of my caustic neglect,
to the nymphs of creative order—
and humbly bow myself to the sword of
articulated
chaos.
Marco Jul 2020
I exist between here and the deep blue sea;
here, and the olive tree;
between water and mango.
I sign letters in another's name
to profess my love to you;
like lilac in wind and rain
I endure.

Like rosehips in a summer breeze
swaying in their gentle dance -
bending to the higher force
in devoted trance.

And my love is wild and wicked
as a thicket of thorned roses;
my heart, that hungry, livid thing
twists itself in painful poses
at the mere sight of your face.

What is a soul when split in two,
if not a home to return to?

What is your gentle, tender touch
if not the ultimate reward,
a dream come true, an ache for more -
the yearning for "la petite mort".

I want to touch you like the ocean
crashing against a rocky shore.
I want to taste you like Eve
taking the first bite of sweetness.
I want to see you, hear you sing,
watch you throw yourself into the fire
of the night, the heat surrounding
your naked body, and mine.

I want to hold your legs apart
and flick my tongue against ripe fruit,
a peach-furry, strange delight,
red and eager, biting back,
licking scratching opening, not
in defense, but pleasure.

I exist between here and the deep blue sea;
between here, and the olive tree;
between thigh and hip.
I sign letters in another's name
to profess my love to you;
like a hummingbird at sunrise
I want to drink the morning dew.
PK Wakefield Apr 2013
all wide open big Spring mouth
the slather of your creeping


is clear its

full and

teeth are

white slick sharp

tumbling with
the smell of
sunscreen

                     (a dribble of
                          rosehips
                                           sweetly


                                                            )



        the clamor of a boygirl
        too early
        in the sun
        eyes aching
        rubbing them from crisp
        sleep into ragged waking


              THE!SEA

and miles of it a car
warm too
much a stirring of dust(laughing next to me about suddenly how one time she broke a boy's heart
Maggie Sorbie Aug 2016
What grows in the hedgerows?
Elderflowers and nuts
Mushrooms and wild garlic
Raspberries and blackberrie
Rosehips and nettles
Among many other edible things
That we can pick and gather
Freely since time immemorial
Thank you Planet Earth
blood red rosehips
sway on thorny bushes
petals in the wind
Haiku
inspired by Timothy
Mac Baker Jan 2020
Everybody knows
    the meaning of a rose.
        The bud,
            the bloom
        The wilt,
            it's doom

It's as if flower's grace
    lives only in a vase
But it's only the cut
    that bloom to depart

A rose isn't in bud,
    not petal,
        nor thorn
A rose is a Bush
    from root,
        past stem
Those crimson hues
    atop shapes in green
        are just a product

    A moment in time

The whole is what matters
    Not metaphors in tatters

The severed may droop
                like you've finished the loop
            but all you've done
        is cut stem from root
    and in doing so
Only killed fruit.
Bud, bloom and fruit: the seasons of a life well tended.
Rhiannon Clare Aug 2020
I take Jack to pick blackberries.

I’d spotted them earlier
down the lane and through a stile, brambles hanging heavy overhead

We each carry what we could find in the kitchen
Me a jug, he a plastic box.

The clutches of fruit perch on the hedge
Like children sat on a gate
Rosehips and hawthorn berries peep through leaves, biding their time.  

I say, look at the colours
Green then red and then
Finally,
shiny, glowing,
deepest purple

And how the fattest fall just so into your hand
As if they had been waiting

Soft bubbles bursting with juice
Our fingers turn pink

I like the tartest ones, sharp as a high summer sky.

And Jack only looks and me and smiles, nodding,
his hand finding
The blackberries just beyond my reach .
David R Apr 2021
Kaleidoscope of colour, tone and hue,
Music of universe in clear view,
Metre, tempo, melody and form,
Orchestral dance of earth's perform

Red of blood, carnage and shame,
Lust and fire, vitality and flame,
Crimson lips, love 'n ardour
Rosehips, poppies, alstroemeria

Orange, the dying streaks of sunset,
Colour o' autumn, auburn 'n russet,
Yellow of marigolds and daffodils of spring,
Rays of sunshine, crown of a king

Green, budding vegetables, life in leaf,
Emerging fruit, as nights wax brief,
Secret of sacred, cerulean sky,
Depths of the oceans in baby's eye

Indigo, the aura, 'n shade between us,
Introspective Saturn with yearn o' Venus,
Violet, a vision in sparkling dew,
Tip-toe of angels in morning sky-blue.

Not for us the rust-dust of mars,
Drab rocks o' Mercury or ash o' moon-star,
The greys of the Moon and Jupiter's orange
Are the lots of the bare, the barren 'n boring

For us white light gives peak presentation
Purity dividing in seven parts,
The King's love 'n kiss and covenantation
To human cognition, His heart in our hearts.

Next time you witness cosmic narration,
Give ear 'n thought to divine proclamation,
For not in heaven is His abode
But in the twinkling twilight o' life's trying road
BLT's Merriam-Webster Word of The Day Challenge
#cerulean
Marco Jun 2020
The land of milk and honey
is liquid again -
all rivers flowing, all
summer winds blowing, all
leaves green and fresh

if there is
a price for love, a price for your touch,
I'll gladly pay the Pharaoh,
I'll gladly be the crutch for
all his wise men and oracles,
all his wives and daughters and sons

I'll carry their burdens with joy,
every day, night for night,
spurned on by the promise of
your lips, your thighs,
your honeysuckle skin, your
rose colored hair, your
sun-kissed face, the spots dancing on your nose.

In the land of milk and honey
I found my worship in its rivers,
its seas of gold and pearl,
its lap that's filled with lilacs and rosehips,
and I will kiss you good morning until
the sun doesn't rise and
the stars don't shine and
the moon doesn't watch our prayers at night anymore.
Antony Glaser Nov 2021
The indigenous Alcantara explodes across
the garden floor, unwanted and unloved.
Rosehips are nipped
to give extra nourishment to the rose bush.
The blossoming pink Tree Mallows will last to January,
until then they are left alone.
Brambles are cut at their base
excising their climber roots,
nor forgetting the unheralded demoisturising Ivy.
My Cleparata Eremurus tubers
are gently put into the ground.
Norbert Tasev Aug 2020
Surely no one knows anymore that in my eyes, in the form of abundantly flowing streams, the flood has broken its way many times. That I was bitterly annihilated and put my little love memories underground! No one already knows where my untouchable paradise and the eternal gate of my heart have been: Prison bars are surrounded by martyrs of stalks of rosehips and are spreading richly!

Autumn dewy and mystical mist is now this earth, and in the extinct apocalyptic puddles floats on the surface of suicidal tears the lucky ones who live up there have long since moved, and only loneliness cries, still at night. Where skeletal branches vibrate trembling and shiver every sober Estonian

dictating human brain. But perhaps nothing has been lost yet, and it is not so easy to forget a busy hope that can confidently create Tomorrow during the day! "But the happier, happier minutes as trout wings immediately fell into the throats of depths!" "I can see the sunlight getting pale now!"

And the fleeing memories keep moving away from me, running. Anyway: Surely no one knows anymore how long it was, and it was bitterly difficult every day! With the consciousness of those sentenced to death, roaring on the edge of the schoolyard and when no one saw spit humility, kneeling down, rhyming for a chance to: it was enough of a series of beatings, tangles, tossing Morality into the mud! "No one asked, 'Can you help me?' - that instead of judgmental struggles, the universal humanism of peace should have been explored.

— The End —