When
You
Feel
A peaceful joy
You
Are
Truth

So you’re clearing out your room,
clearing out more of yourself,
because it’s the end of the world, isn’t it?
The end of an era anyway –
the end of the bad decision to paint
your room pink.
You never really liked the colour pink.
Your old room had been sunshine yellow,
that bright happy colour of raincoats
and welly boots and sunflowers
(and yellow was still my favourite colour
when i painted my room pink –
yellow rubber in my pencil case,
yellow bow in my hair –
a sunshine happy kind of child
but not really. i painted my room pink
just because).
You wanted the new room painted a shade
called jazzberry but you were told it was too dark.
You wrote in the card to your dead great grandmother
that you were having your room painted jazzberry
and then you didn’t.
The card was placed in her coffin and cremated with her,
and you experienced that strange sensation at the funeral
of not feeling what you were supposed to be feeling.
I should cry, you told yourself, I should feel sad,
but you had cried all your tears in advance
and you’d cried them all for dead grasshoppers
and the old house you were leaving behind.
(always the same with me, isn’t it.
tears over everything except the things that matter.
i’m crying on the floor over lino, over my bedroom,
over a dress that’s in the wash and not my wardrobe)
The new bedroom had wardrobes you loved,
mirrors you loved and hated and it was pink.
It was your safe place, the space that wasn’t
really made for you, but was the one place
in this world where nothing could get you
(except me and yourself, but that’s another story).
Anyway, let’s get back to the point.
You’re clearing the room out because it’s the end of the world
and you’ve been putting it off for three years,
but you’re a crumbly cliff and waves are strong.
You’ve been thinking of train tracks
and gosh aren’t you dramatic,
but you’re finally clearing your little self out.
The toys are easy – you keep a couple whose names you remember
(Tallulah, Alfie, Tilly, Phillipa, Clementine
//oh my darling, ruby lips above the water
and the dream of kissing your best friend
that will forever be connected to
oh my darling, Clementine//),
the clothes are easy – in fact,
it’s all easy when you start to let go
of that nasty little girl from the sunshine yellow
and from the pasty pink.
You bundle her off into charity bags and bin liners
and then you find it – the Special Box.
It was your treasure trove in an
orange Jacobs crackers box  so you open it,
thinking you’ll keep everything, and then,
well then it’s a box full of *******.
Not just ******* things that once mattered,
but real ******* – broken pens, meaningless rocks,
used rubbers, crumbled tissues, incomplete
gifts from Christmas crackers
(and how very like you and me – to keep
things that go in the bin. we cling
to the sadness and the guilt and the fear
just because).
You throw away your special box
and you throw away all your junk
(except your new junk –
every train ticket you’ve bought
since the First)
and then the room is empty.
Were you ever here, you wonder
(and what toys will you have to give to your children?
you get asked, and you say you won’t have any.
i won’t because how would i, for one?
how could i, for another?
how could i put them through all this?)
and then you remember, that yes,
you’ll always be there – sunshine yellow,
pasty pink, nasty little version of nasty bigger you,
but for now, you’ve cleared yourself out a bit.
The new room will be blue
and one wall will be papered with books
(and i see what you’ve done –
you’re using the imagery of your own poetry,
because it’s easier to live inside of your own imagery
than deal with anything else, isn’t it)
and maybe, you think and the others think too,
this is a good thing, the sign of a change to come
(but your Special Box was full of *******
and what other evidence do you need
to know that you will never change or move beyond this?
this is as good as it gets).

i’ve been thinking a lot
about your hand in mine
the way that our fingers
and palms intertwine

but i think about death
about loss, about worth
i admit that i fear
to return to the earth

where our bodies dissolve
into roots of a tree
and will grow into trunk
then limb, then leaf

but i've heard from a bird
that death will reverse
and your heart will beat hard
like it did at your birth

so hold on for dear life
with your hand in mine
if death makes us let go
it is only for time



© Mike Mortensen

When my love swears that she is made of truth
I do believe her, though I know she lies,
That she might think me some untutored youth,
Unlearnèd in the world’s false subtleties.
Thus vainly thinking that she thinks me young,
Although she knows my days are past the best,
Simply I credit her false-speaking tongue;
On both sides thus is simple truth suppressed.
But wherefore says she not she is unjust?
And wherefore say not I that I am old?
O, love’s best habit is in seeming trust,
And age in love, loves not to have years told.
    Therefore I lie with her, and she with me,
    And in our faults by lies we flattered be.

.
I wanted to change
and I could
There was an intense tune
you could say sadness, not at all romantic

but my romance
started to live in her darkness
when I understood a few
but at least I knew
where there is a life there is a song
certainly she was a sad song
And sometimes she felt too wrong

I rewrote the lyrics
And saw the mason made the building
fitting one by one bricks
when I added a new tune
My nameless noun really took the tune very soon

I sang
she sang
spring became sprung
even cool wind of love flowed on the dunes
Ah! how beautifully the words were moving in the laps of tunes

when the evening came down
in the heart of my nameless town
season went back
dry leaves whispering on the street of a lonely park
Oh! she might lost in the dark
and never came back
there's still a song,
how I wander within
the melancholy tunes of a nameless bird!
you can again say sadness

Now I want to skip
but I can't!
...
@Musfiq us shaleheen

==
I'm not anywhere
Build an emptiness
Where?
Not in somewhere else
When really i think
I'm not anywhere
==
@Musfiq us shaleheen

.......

You've lost
in the light years away
Love may exist
at the edge of the universe
You
and the dream
As the space
and time
Expanding mind
as the running water
Straightforward way of
wormhole's magical route
sight is on to you
in the rotation of time
when the space become folded
come close
within the fourth dimension
as mingle at the estuarine

@Musfiq Us Shaleheen
10th October,2017
Dhaka

Freddie was a satyr
And I wanted to worship
And serve him naked
Then serve my internship
For the rest of my life
Hopelessly dedicated
To be like Ulysses' wife;
Enraptured, captured, mated.
That’s how highly he rated.

I know out of the lights
He spent nights between
Debauchery and hell
But few seemed to tell.
They just came and screamed
Blind to what seemed to be
Too much perfectionality
In his personality to be reality.

Like so many I knew then
He was above other men, a god
And fascinated with his codpiece,
We salaamed, and slammed down
Big bucks for tickets to go see
Life much bigger than me, and squee
And clap and whistle, this missile
From the gods to gays and straights
Who could see and her he was great
And we were all there, grateful.

It was painful when he left, even though
We knew why and we still know, yet
He was too wonderful to forget
And shirk and scorn because he was born
To be a ****** miracle and musical gift
That time and death could not lift
Out of the pantheon of stage kings
And queens, if that is not too mean.
But how could it be, they were Queen
And they changed the scene.