Sleeping Daisies

Blood pools into
sticky red lakes,
congealing around islands of gravel.
Everything is still.
Even the birds seem to have stopped.
Hushed voices,
people slink past.
Some cross themselves:
there but for the grace of God...
A tennis shoe lies a few feet away,
discarded,
no longer needed.
This owner won't walk again.
A striped sock pokes out
from under a navy blue blanket.
Bananas have spilled from a leather bags;
papers are lifting gently in the breeze.
Milk has spilt,
and slowly seeps towards the lake of red,
to create a pinkish hue.
Reminders of a meal that was planned:
perhaps a celebration.
But not now.
A loved one will have to force themselves to eat.
But how can they,
with a stomach filled with grief?
A body broken,
like the bent and battered spokes
of the bicycle wheel
that sticks out from under the tyres
of a ten-ton juggernaut,
is all that is left to mourn.
The last shortcut
that went deathly wrong.

Peace and quiet.
Only the sound of bird song.
No cars horns,
no sirens,
no slamming doors.
Just nature.

Peace is not quiet,
in the aftershock of explosion,
shell-shocked,
shattered,
the silence screams out.

"Peace be with you, my brother."
"As-Salāmu `Alaykum, my friend."
"Shalom, my daugther."
Peace is a bridge across
different cultures and beliefs.
Peace seeps through the barriers
until they collapse.

"Let's share the peace."
Hug and kiss and shake hands,
but never really get to know
if that person has peace.
Or not.

Pieces of peace
in amongst the busyness.
A still moment of silence.
A brief moment of quiet,
when for a second
all the world stands still for you.

Shalom.
Wholeness.
Peace 2.0


Mimi Writes.......: BlogBlast For Peace: A Revolution of Words ~ June 4, 2008

Who's next?

Betrayed by my own impulses.
Liberation dances away from me,
as I embrace my own slavery.
Strength of mind and heart
are overridden by
fleshly wants and desires
of greed and lust and mores.
I consistently betray my own moral framework,
I let myself down.
I deny my own self,
refuse to be liberated,
choosing the live in darkness and chains.
How shortsighted is this?
Yet so comfortable.
Liberation requires a choice
and strength to stay free,
to deny the impulses,
to resist the old temptations
that seek to chain me up again.
If only freedom didn't come with a price.

You pulled the wings of butterflies,
poked hamsters in the eyes.
You're cruel
and all the while you smile
and tell me lies about where you've been.

I can smell her on you still,
her cheap perfume.
You're lousy, cheating scum:
and I've changed the locks.

You are bigger than we are.
You have history laid out in Your hands,
end to end.
You can see it all.
You know it all.
You love us all,
from beginning to end
of our brief little lives.
Your heart beats for us,
bleeds for us.
You gave up everything
so we could be
close to You.
But we can't quite see
what that meant for You,
what that means for us.
We only see in part
what You have done.
We don't quite understand.
We dismiss You,
diss You,
ignore You,
think you're nothing more than
a white haired grandad
lazing on a cloud,
impotent,
irrelevant.
But You're
omnipotent,
omnipresent,
majestic,
glamourous,
awesome and holy.
Yet You love us.
From the tops of our idol-filled heads
to the tips of our grubby little toes.
You died for us.
So we could be free.

I'm an open book,
with a technicolour cover
that tells it all.
No mystery,
no intrigue,
nothing to catch a reader's eye,
nothing to make them want
to find out more
about the story inside.

It's a myth that you'll complete me.
How can you?
You're not me,
you can't get inside my head,
you can't know my need.

We've been sold a lie,
a romantic notion
that there is a 'one'
who makes us whole,
fixes the broken bits
and mends our souls.
But it's a dangerous untruth,
that means we're never satisfied.
Because no one can complete us.

And so we keep on searching,
looking for completeness,
throwing away commitment vows
when we think we've found it,
yet again.

"You complete me"
haunts us until we realise
that it's more about what we give
than what we get.


Writer's Island prompt.

I chose him because circumstances meant
it could never be.

I chose him because there was no chance
he'd be interested in me.

I told him I'd love him forever,
after the second glass of wine.

I pursued him
until he got a restraining order out on me.

I convinced him I was nuts,
oh so successfully.

I told the world how I felt,
and that stopped him getting close.

I'm a commitment phobe,
you see.