Gypsy running.

A place of scattered beauties.
With the first table the dark haired woman places a hand on the green felt and I see the bracelets of flawed, plain colours laid out in overlapping loops. Someone realizes the tradition for me and I scrabble the stretch of elastic-bead from between the chains and charms on my ankle and scrape it off over my foot. Slipped onto my wrist, I smile at the woman fleetingly. Only I understand because my companion is fractious.
We pass through rows of columns of clay, wooden, shell and ceramic beads, arranged in pleasing patterns on bits of string and dangling from wooden structures. One woman has an open-front glass case with china charms lining the front and my friend bumps against the stand and slips her hand under the glass and grabs the tiny teapot-like blue and white ornament. I stop and stare and grab her arm and the woman notices and my companion hisses and I reprimand and my companion argues and the woman watches with dark, dark eyes and I put the charm back and apologise and smile nervously and continue to scold as I pull my friend away.
She protests against my actions, my admonishment, but suddenly there are eyes everywhere and while she complains about food and money and homelessness, and her brown waves swing from side to side as she eyes the trinkets and lets her fingers drag gently over the clicking, clacking, clattering beads, the image of a blue-green robed girl in a wigwam of tightly enclosing rods of firewood swims into my head, and I drag her on. This girl, who I think is myself, sits with her head on her knees and her arms around her up drawn legs and her hair falling across her face and hiding her features, surrounded by the memories of many small creatures. The dark wood is sharp and shiny. She is unable to get out. And this is what I concentrate on.

51 Chawley Lane.

That family smell that sticks to you and swirls about your head
as you run your hand over the thick fur of bright blue eyes blink, lazy.

And those brown eyes that blink, deep. That laugh that echoes yours,
or else your mistake. A verbal trip, skip, woops. Okay, blonde moment.

And your blonde hair the odd one out in this room of dark beauties.
Your giggle not the only sound as your stories mix and confuse.

And hitting buttons; a success story. Words battling against his head,
Let the girls be victorious! A game won by… clever means.

And those clever, clever minds holding all that knowledge
as we sit and stare or mock or drink it in; An encyclopaedia-know against your lack.

And that faded green against your back, a fruit-tea-mug in your hands.
That music is so soft it still makes me cry smile at those notes that seem so familiar.

And those people that smile with you and love with you and feel with you
in that house of heavy stone in the centre of empty fields.

Creative hesitation.

Feels like an age since I've been here, spilling my creative thoughts onto the blank space. I can't help but wonder. Maybe the extent of the non-creative work I’m having to force my brain to do is leeching the images and words from my fingers, turning them to black dust under my very eyes.
I feel strained. The words are having to fight through a vacuum of cold blackness to get to the keys and step up onto the screen. It’s a difficult journey for them, and once they get there are they actually doing anything? They aren’t being placed in positions of power or government, or attributed with abilities of magic or supremacy, or dressed in robes of beauty or art. They simple reside in slightly lax attitudes on the strict, clean page.
I feel sorry for them. Sorry that I’ve made them make such an effort for such a pointless venture. Well, that's the end of this post, then. I apologize for taking up your time.

They call it "Single-Awareness Day".

14th Feb

I can still see the way you stood.
Don’t tell me you’ve changed your stance
because that picture is so vivid.
Head tilted, resting on one foot.

The guy in front of us had roses.
Their velvet softness made me smile
and I think it was a shame.
Crimson petals in perfect smooth posies.

You laughed at my ideals, but
it was an idea taken from mine.
The box was red and hard edged;
large black letters stretched across it’s front.

I wish you hadn’t been so nervous
because the memories feel strange.
But our safe place was warm.
So do you remember last year?

"Let’s dance in style, let’s dance for a while, Heaven can wait we’re only watching the skies... Let us die young or let us live forever, We don’t have the power but we never say never...
Forever young, I wanna be forever young. Do you really want to live forever? Forever and ever?
Forever young, I wanna be forever young. Do you really want to live forever? Forever, forever young?"

Glitter

A friend once said to me, "You must have some kind muse following you around because you always seem to come across these astonishing things," - like sunsets and icicle trees. I was going to tell him No. I was all ready to go back to him and say, "Nah, I just get lucky, that's all."
And I was thinking about this as I walked through the dark to pick up my sister. But then, Oh. A sight. A glimpse into another world.

A garden to my right, with ragged grass and a shallow pond. A wire fence at the back that leaned crazily away, supported by bushes. A gap in the bushes. And beyond...
Somehow the ground after that fence dipped into what appeared to be a gaping hole, and on the other side of that chasm I saw a scene that was unreal enough to be fairy tale.
Blue-green grass. Crooked arms of crooked trees. A strange sea-like light that cause everything to look aquatic and nominal. Light caught in burning balls in the fingers of the trees. Everything glitters.
Incredible. I stop and stare. My instinct is to walk forward into the garden and towards this gateway into a different dimension, but then I step sideways and the magic is gone. A dark field with tired trees; yellow street lamps, their poles hidden in the tree trunks, casting hard shadows on the cold ground.
When I pass it the second time, going the other way, I slow down as I come to the opening and look there it is again. I stop my sister and hold her in front of me and point out the breathtaking strangeness and beauty. I describe to her what she's supposed to see and she squints and peers and then agrees. It does look odd, doesn't it?
And move on.

Well, now. I don't know about a muse. And I'm not so sure about lucky, any more. Maybe I just notice things more than other people, that's all. Or maybe someone's put a filter over my eyes that makes me see... Strangeness. Glitter. Beauty.
Stories.

"Look at the stars, look how they shine for you. And all the things that you do."

Kin.

I find you hard to write. It is as if you are too... real. Or too close. Or too much a part of me.
You ask me for a picture - why is it I cannot even do that? I know you too well, I think. Trying to get you down onto paper seems an interminable task. Maybe I could condense you into a cartoon. I think I could. I think, maybe a poem would do as well...

I need to stop thinking of you as a whole and take only one aspect. Your humour. Your image. Your attitude.

You pass me in a hurry and I know exactly where you are going, what you are doing. I think living with someone makes them hard to view from a distance. They're too near all the time.

You should go away on holiday. I did not make use of the time when you went last time, but if you went again, maybe I would. Maybe then I would sit down and think about you. Maybe then I could separate the memories and knowledge of you a little and change you into letters that form words that form... a piece. Finished. Incomplete, maybe, but finished.

And maybe I could make you happy with that...

On vigil.

They are still awake. Twenty six beds in two neat rows. Most filled, most asleep, some still rustling, some still moving. Their voices have only just calmed - what is it about these impish little minds that they can't understand the notion of "quiet brings sleep"? They rummage and sigh and complain. It's the heat, it's the noise, it's the people. It's everything and everyone but themselves. One of them rolls over in her sleep and I envy her, that she is able to rest and dream and recharge.
I stalk the dorm on soft feet and swing my head towards any noise made as if I can silence it with a look. And sometimes I can. They don't like my presence; it forces them to lay still and keep quiet. Tomorrow I will talk to them, these restless little girls. Tomorrow my tiredness will voice itself and tomorrow night... I hope for sleep.
I hear them breathing and this time no voice breaks the gentle rhythm. Maybe finally they are at rest. Their sleeping heads are taking them where I, right now, wish I was. And as they sink deeper into their dreams I sit here and record my thoughts.
I am the last one awake. Which means I am the last one to sleep.