I vow to Thee my Country

Why is the world cocooned in law,

The ten thousand commandments of man?
While what society should abhor
Is forced out of our hands.
 

There is a place where angels dwell

And politicians reign;
Cast out of heaven, though worse than hell,
Paradise lost again.

They’ll play their games, but never see

The tears in children’s eyes,
And leave behind catastrophe
For those who shall survive.

‘They shall not grow old’ we say

‘As we who are left grow old;
Age shall not weary each bitter day
Nor the years condemn the cold’.

Dulce et decorum est

Is the lie we no longer believe.
Too late for those we’ve laid to rest
Too late for those we conceive.

He was still a child on the day that he went

To fight for the London MP’s,
To fire shots he never meant
In a desperate aim to please.

He was one of the first to die,

Referred to as a ‘gonna’.
Yet still bloodthirsty Generals cry
‘Death sooner than dishonour’.

Falling

Late at night, alone with your dreams,

Someone walks right over your grave.
In the silence are whispers and screams.
Death comes, but who will he save.

In one heathen moment the earth will confirm us,

While we play with words but can’t make them work.
We all die alone, life can no longer harm us,
And, dying, forget the lies that we heard.

And when once again existence betrays us

We assume that death will prevail;
And try to run, but who tries to save us,
Unable to win, we don’t want to fail.
 

We put life into boxes, put lives onto shelves

To surround it with visions and lies,
Try fooling the world, but are fooling ourselves,
For who can see truth through blinded eyes?
-          We all shall die.

The Beyond

In the cold stillness of midnight

When hate is all that you feel –
You long for the touch of a gentle hand
And the sound of a voice that is real.

And praying alone in the dark

She’ll curse parasitic devotion –
While sitting as silent as evil disguised,
An image of infinite motion.

Missing

People sit and keep their peace

Beneath a grey, uncaring sky;
Vehemently defend their creed
Of who deserves to live or die.

And who will walk a step behind

To catch them when they fall;
Though out of sight and not of mind
Who shall see it all?

They all sit back and smile at days

That slip beyond their grasp –
Not realising the game life plays
Will wipe away the cast.

And who will tell them where they stand

When lights begin to fade?
Who will keep hold of their hand
Though circumstance invades?

And yet you can rely on one

Whenever life’s unfair.
Through whatever’s said and done
Turn around, I’ll still be there.

Yesterday's Dreams

Somebody whispered,

Their words meant nothing.
Lovers once kissed
In a time for loving.

People once prayed

When prayers were heard;
And nobody faced
The things that they feared.

Days passed like thunder

Dividing the air;
You see people blunder,
Forgetting to care.

It’s hard to continue

When life’s lost its meaning;
And who will forgive
The look that’s deceiving.

You look in the mirror

And don’t recognise
The face before you,
The pain in the eyes.

When whispering words

You so long to hear,
The phrase ‘it is over’
Touches your ear.

While other ones suffer

We cannot forget
The feeling within us,
The pain and regret.

But it’s too late for guilt.

The die has been cast.
We can’t change the future
Or re-write the past.

Illuminations

When all alone in the dark,

At one with the earth and gloom;
She heard the tread of gentle foot –
Felt somebody else in the room.

At odds with the world outside,

Out of place with all that surrounds her;
She was aware of a stronger force –
Of somebody’s arms around her.

When staring at empty years,

Each day of which is the same;
She was conscious of whispers between the air –
Of somebody calling her name.

When part of the future of life

In a land that time forgot,
She saw where she stood in the context of earth
And murmured ‘I have met God’.

Jeffries

Sometimes heaven has two meanings

In the calendar of its days;
Like those who say but never mean things,
Those whom we love, yet go away.

Sometimes you wish a dream together,

Hold the future in your hands –
But nothing lasts forever,
And who’ll tell her where she stands.

Perhaps

Like an ambition never realised

Like a secret left unknown,
Like the look in someone else’s eyes –
Is the road that takes you home.
 

Like a love that keep you dreaming

And a hope that still goes on,
Though outside it’s always raining
And the music lacks a song.

Genesis

When out of place with heaven and hell,

A stranger to the earth;
A searcher with no place to dwell –
No dream, no hope, no mirth.

When loving one who’s out of league,

Adonis in your eyes.
While seeing words you want to read
And knowing that they’re lies.

When in despair with those around,
A bird without a song;
Who keeps their feet nailed to the ground
And all alone, goes on.

If in some nightmare of your own

You too could hear her prayers,
Release her from her tortured roam
And tell her that he cares

If, as the light is failing those

Who’ve often failed themselves,
You too could gently let her know
Love is a maze of hells.

If you could know the love she feels –

The pain, the joy, the care;
As ceaseless as the turn of wheels,
And yet he can’t love her.

SJ

She heard his voice in dreams of silence,

Saw his face upon the wall;
Reached out and grasped the world beyond
To rise above it all.

She tried to think the whole thing through,

She tried to change her mind.
No one else can know the pain
Destroying her deep inside.

She thought of him by night and day,

The moments she had willed.
The way he’d look, the words he’d say,
The hopeless void he filled.

When she wakes up feeling lonely,

When she feels her life has gone,
It’s as though the fire was only
Supposed to last this long.

But candles flicker out some day,

The flame will not recur;
For every time he turned away
He turned away from her.

He

He is as elusive as any rainbow, as unattainable as any star. Between parting smiles, thoughts will wander, linger, invent. What hopes and wishes can pass between the empty space. A search for longing, a desire to own, the need to possess is overwhelming. Yet he stands too aloof, so far away. He will be waiting for you. He will stand there forever until you turn around and answer his call, meet his gaze with yours. Though the surrounding rhythms of life beat ever louder; who can walk away from the sadness, the loneliness in his face.

He can never know what anyone else feels. He cannot be expected to guess, to create. It will never be too late for him; the time shall never run out for him – though we are left out of breath trying to keep up with life.

He is alone, a wanderer, a fragment broken off from the whole. He will return in echoes of thunder. He will speak in nightmares of hell. He will live in a world clouded by tears. What can he do?

He looks heavenward, but sees no glory there. The light fails itself, broken by its own weight, and he in turn collapses under the pressure of an empty world. He turns up the music to shut out the sound of an ever present lift, a continued existence which he can never be part of. He dreamed in black and white, saw colour only in the words that never touched his ears, the hands that never met his, the eye that are blind.

It was a sort of fear that possessed him. An enclosing darkness, a suffocating fog. As part of existence he wished to be severed from, he lived. Amongst dying dreams, fading hopes, he passed by.

He probably never knew that she loved him too.

Impressions of Life

Somewhere within an eternal silence, untouched, enclosed within soft watery perfection, where the turbulent waves of the surface can never touch you, where the shore is left unwashed, she watches you. The face in the clock, the hand in your hand, the voice that whispers upon your ear and plays upon your senses. She is there.

When you hear choirs singing, her voice is one of the whole; in waterfalls of music she is but a note. She is a certain expression on your face, the glint in your eye, a gasp in your breath.

Close your eyes. In darkness you see her. Alone you are aware of her presence. As anger grows she burns within you. With passions she caresses.

Where will you fit in? To which degree of the compass will you fall? You dream you shall be in the orchestra; you will be one of the voices; you shall have a part to play, a song to sing. Mirrors show us what we want to see, but sometime we look into the living, human mirrors and then, briefly, the fantasizing has to stop. Real life intrudes, your dream is over, the interlude is past. She has slipped away like mist in the wind. The hand moves round the clock, passing fragments of her face. As flowers stare towards the sky – blind, an empty and horrific glare, she fills the space with sight, makes sense where none can be found. There is no answer, no explanation, on the surety of her continue existence. Whenever you turn around, she’ll be there, just a step behind you. She’ll be your support, the only one you can ever rely on, though contemptuous words of her slip from your lips, splinters of insult – lean back, she’ll catch you.

She’ll always be with you till the day you pass on, have a different guardian angel –

-          If life can really be called that.

People

Through walls of silence we call out for love, reach a lonely hand through the mist, and bring it back – empty; lonelier than ever before. There is a part of us which can never be, a void than haunts us through loneliness, a vacuum that will never be filled despite our hopeless prayers. We are just people hiding all the need inside. Like children, we need other children. We were born half and can never go through life alone, never fulfil our dreams without something else, someone else.

It is dark, darkness enclosed by sky, enshrouded by trees, suffocatingly close. The moon was reflected off the glassy water, almost as perfect as its parent; like a mirror it repeated the glow, echoed beauty. Then suddenly, in one careless moment the mirror was shattered as, in someone’s arms she was carried out from the depths of the moon, her wet body glistening, limp and dead. She had found her other half. She had toasted her reunion with the sun.

With every step rekindling our yearning taste for life we will be left to recover in silence. We can only be whole for a little while, that is all we are granted. We cannot argue with nature, cannot change the beat. We stand warned, we have been told. It is for us to forget, for us to go against the possibilities set before us, to attempt to become one of the chorus. We reach out through the haze for something solid, in which we can place our trust. A hand holds our hand and lead us through the mist, and when we emerge from the other side we see the world behind us and that the hand is a child’s hand.

Others

They know the language,

Share the smile.
Don’t care for anguish
In their lives.
They’ve leant the word
Yet far too soon
Hold out for love,
Reach for the moon.

They’ve heard it whispered

In their dreams.
They know the world,
Not what it means.
They’ve made their wishes
Through the night.
They’ve learnt to love,
They’ve leant to fight.

And never lived to see the score,

Never looked behind.
The values held so dear before
Were out of sight and mind.
They wanted to go on forever,
Want to be the one
To suddenly return and never,
Never regret being young.

Fencing with an Omelette

Step 1 – break eggs

Whispers in the mind distracted her, fingers tightening around her heart made her catch on her breath, gasping, wanting life and yet wishing to die. When would she reach the fulfilment of her life, the ultimate, when love and wonder mix with all the other worldly emotions. We are fragile as eggs, kept perfect, harmonious and innocent within our shells. Ho swoon they will be broken, destroyed and the moment stolen from us. Alone we stand together, where on difference in another person makes them so alien from us, immediately cast away, forgotten. It shall be timeless. The words have been inscribed on the heavens, in the stars, throughout the sea; timelessness is murmured in the clouds, seen in shadows on the moon, remembered by mountains, subtle in beauty. It shall be timeless. It is an order. We cannot go against the law set down before our petty lives were even considered, before our verse was written, before our part was cast. We were never meant to be. Our existence is but a minor confusion of the powers that be. Our existence is a mistake. We should not be here. And yet gradually fade away, as the sound diminishes after the cymbal has been struck. It shall be …

And across time children were laughing, all together, living in a way which seems to pass us by as the years build up. Seeing life from a different point of view which are we are now blind to. They think they’ll go on forever, they think they will succeed where others have failed; believing the world had been lacking until the moment of their birth. And what a wonderful way to live. Where every tomorrow opens up new possibilities, new hope, new smiles, new tears. Together they will break hearts, wreck lives, leave their mark of pain. Yet now all they do is sit together and laugh, thinking of loved ones, planning their parties. If only life would fit the plans we make. Why not let God be God?

 

You ask her a question, she gives you a proverb. All she could do was to call out across the air, through a kaleidoscope of autumn leaves, through a lifetime of tears, burdened with experience; all she could do, all she could give to them, all she could off, all she could say was ‘stay young’.

 

Necropolis

At dawn and dusk the sun and moon appear. Garish and defined against the indistinct surroundings, gleaming like eyes in a flawless complexion. We walk alone, unaccounted for. We make mistakes in life, in death. And then suddenly, what was once on either side is now side by side. Like crosses on the skyline, a memorial to ourselves, or a rising tower, a monument; standing alone amongst yesterday’s tears, rising out of a forbidden mist to claim its crown of sunlight. Towering above the meagre bushes below, which bury their faces in shame. By night it glows with warmth. By dawn it stands as king; an imaginary, dreamlike freedom. And how small we seem. So petty and insignificant. The divisions between us melt as the mist falls away around our feet, as though it had been cast from heaven; as we, someday, shall be.

And then it bows its head, becoming once more submerged by mist as another sinner falls from God – and is forgotten. Behind silken veils of translucent radiance and hidden beauty, it seems to near, so part of our world and yet is inaccessible, forever out of reach.

We cannot live by dreams alone, but exist with our hopes in sight, overshadowing our days, watching our every move. Then the surrounding hills pierce the veil of mist, and the monument’s magnificence is rendered insignificant – till dawn.

And we are left to retrace the steps until we can find somewhere from which we may begin again.

There is a sort ot timelessness ...

A place exists where granite lives side by side with granite, like the world’s first birth. Granite upon granite, rising skyward, stretching as far as the eye can see. Uneven, placed carelessly, rock upon rock, overhanging in some places, cavernous in others, parts of each stone chipped and dented with ruts like God-created steps. Some blackened by salt water or bleached by the unforgiving sun, speckled with yellow lichen.

And beneath, a foaming swirling mass of froth and bubble. A pure, virginal white – untouched by man. Throwing itself, forcefully and sacrificially against the eternal granite, dissolving into a million salty tears as despair sets in. Still it beats the stones, washing round the base of the eruption, ceaselessly, relentlessly, one wave washing against another, into another and smothering the fists and fingers of the universe, the form of which would still be recognisable to Eve in her first glance across the world. Yet still it torments, turning and returning, never weary, never battered. And the rock never moves, no stone ever tumbles. The sea retreats, beaten, and advances for attach again. It cannot make a dent upon the granite, never carve the whisper of an impression ….

And in writing it the moment is lost, the memory destroyed.

On Waking

The world looks strange by morning light,

An unclaimed heaven within our grasp
Which talks to us by day and night
But will, like lives and loves, not last.

And all the time it’s still the same

The days tick by without a whisper.
In years to come who will be blame
For never forcing us to listen.

Through all the changing days and years

In skies that torment, rage and weep,
May we save our dreams and tears
Until the moment we shall sleep

Suicide is Painless

It was to be the final meeting

Between two halves of a whole,
To separate thought and feeling,
To sever body and soul.

Each is and has one world,

The feeling locked inside;
A part of which returned
When all the rest had died.

There’d be no anger’s season

To force upon them hell.
Instead a calmly reasoned
Let’s call it a day farewell.

And one shall go on living

Though the other one has died,
Resentful yet forgiving
In painless suicide.

Though love is love’s own cure,

What dangerous steps to take.
More heartache to endure
From feelings that are fake.

The devil in Cupid’s bow

That loses love, and gains less
Tells those who are alone
That suicide is painless.

In Memory of their Feelings

'But o for the touch of a vanished hand

For the sound of a voice that is still'.

Division is the greatest fault of man. She was next to him and yet so far away, part of another world, cut off by bullet-proof glass. She saw him there and fell. She saw him smile, watched him move through the sweeter air surrounding him. She felt his warmth and sensed his mood. She heard his whisper but could not reply to his call. It was not dedicated to her.

He had caught her eye. There was something there. It wasn’t an empty socket. He saw, he understood. There was a connection made. No words could express the type of love that followed this innocent glance across a room. Each day he saw women’s faces on each wall. Never crying, never thinking, never speaking. In doubt, with silent words, he told her he loved her, begged God to grant him freedom.

She longed to hold him, feel the warmth of his body against hers, yet mankind stood between them; bullet-proof glass. He could reach out to her, but she could never reach him. Unknown and yet well known he dominated her.

There is, in all of us, a desire, a need for life and we can only live while we have the strength to go on fighting. For them it was a silent battle where they would be neither winner nor loser. If only time could stop so that their love and happiness lasted forever, so that the desire they held for living would keep them dreaming. Dreams of paradise had become reality, visions of love had come true. But we live in a changing world where we are the ones who change. That world chose to divide them, that world didn’t understand. That world had failed them in so many more ways that they’d ever failed themselves. Yesterday was their life, today was ‘in loving memory’ of things that are beautiful and never were, of things that are lovely and never happened, of things that are wonderful and never should be. Sometimes you can be on both sides of a valley. They were not so fortunate.

Through half closed eyes she saw him. In crowded streets she wanted him. When the whole world shouted ‘yes’ she heard his voice. When love made her ask questions, he was the answer. He was all of her.

When he saw her it was from a differing view. He longed to cross the path to her side, yet feared the floundering world she lived in, feared his passion, wondered whether she would respond. Uncertainty held him back. Fear of love stopped him wanting to love, but couldn’t stop his love. She was still part of his life, only a small part, but a part that he had no wish to cast off. He had the choice. She was the silent part of him.

She only fell in love.

Then the barrier came down. The glass melted, was shattered. The two worlds were joined through smoke, fire and flames. Heat matched their burning passions. Sirens clanged outside, they were deaf to outside worlds. They were one. His eyes captured a life that he longed to live where every day was profitable and mis-fortune non-existent. He dreamt of the happy days of his past, the year that he would never forget. Today may not have been a good day, tomorrow may be worse; but in his time of darkness the gold would smile through, the flaming brilliance of his earlier years when life was a long fantasy, stretching out before him into the depths of time ….

She held him close to her, trying to breathe life back into him.

And she was the one who saw it all happen, the one who saw the gold turn to fire. It might have been better if they’d never met, but their lives would still have happened, and even if they had taken a different road, they would end up in the same place, together again, eternally, to forget the past and make the golden memories once more.

‘For the tender grace of a day that is dead

Will never come back to me’.

What

What

What if
What if love
Existed?
And then
Then would we cry?
 

What

What if
What if pain
Persisted?
How would we live?
How would we die?

Do

Do heavens
Tremble
With our fears?
Are clouds
A congregation
Of our tears?

And what

What if we still
Believe?
Does life
Give us the power
To be deceived?

Water

Becomes ice
If it is cooled.
We
Are time’s own game.
We have been fooled.

Awakening

Sometimes the runner stumbles. Life is a quest for knowledge and a search for love. And no one had ever loved more than she did. Above the stretches of the sky, bulging with unheard prayers and unanswered wishes, glowing in their individual spheres of glory, is our future. Everything depends on which of those stars is on your side, playing your game.

We all sing our songs, wanting to sing a better song which sounds empty, hollow and tuneless in our lives. She was the music and he was the words, but all this starts where word end and continues where words leave off.

It was more than between them, they have made the fundamental connection. We cannot live without permanent trust in something indestructible within ourselves. That was love, a core of existence. We seek self identity, the need to assure ourselves that we still exist and are someone. He was the reassurance, her life. There was a look in his eyes, something so secret yet so openly revealed. There was a message between them which none could decipher. There was a renewed faith in hope and the feelings that they thought they’d never find.

They loved ceaselessly, breathing words like Arabian perfumes, never dispelling the dream. And then, in the small hours, when it is neither today nor tomorrow she saw that her whole consciousness had been a dream, and no one’s dream but her own, a dream she must now sustain of her own efforts. And then, even she disappears and only the dream remains with him in it. He was the impenetrable darkness for the night in which she had to describe herself. In daylight other people describe you. He was the one who developed her wits, stretched her imagination, sharpened fantasy, hammered home the memory and altered the whole sense of values.

The power of emotion between them led them into the realm beyond words, they glanced into the mirror and what they saw was not themselves; for a moment they held the inaccessible. And the soul cries out for love, like a child.

She had found a feeling that was not there before, and was not just on the surface of things but penetrated all the way through; and she longed to be with him, breathing the same air, sharing the same thoughts, in his arms; finally contented – like on resting after the trials of searching are ended. When she was with him they made fire. It was living moments, seconds which tick past, constant and never ending, minutes which are being lived and do not fade, but stay as they are experienced in the same feeling and brightness. Moments that last forever and never die.

She never saw the petals fading at her feet, saw black, saw white but never saw grey. The whispering stopped her hearing, the caller gave her up. But with him she was never alone, never powerless or without hope. They loved in isolation and the message wasn’t ‘come here’, but ‘I am here’. Love gently swept through their lives washing their weary hearts, soothing the burning flame of passion, quenching the thirst o desire. They had captured perfection in its glorious, short-lived bloom. And we can only wonder where they’ll be when the flame dies.

And

-          connecting word

There are bonds within society, intricate webs woven delicately around specific people, holding them together. Caught in a timeless world she loved him. The thought in the back of her mind, the constant reminder, the echo of hollow words ‘it will pass’ only seemed to fade into insignificance beside him. He was the smile that would dry her tears, his presence touched her somewhere deep inside; somehow she felt drawn to him.

Sitting beside him in the jeep, all she could feel was his love. His jeans were dirty, his face unshaven, his hair ruffled. He flashed a look at her and smiled. She could sense a sudden flame of warmth within her, the kindling of a burning passion, a hopeless devotion and love. His eyes gleamed and flickered, capturing a life and imagination lost by the rest of humanity.

She was the fountain and he was the pond. He had loved her when she had needed love. He had caught her when she fell. He was the nucleus of affection which she desired, the focus point she sought. With him she didn’t notice the greyness in the sky nor saw the oil on the beach. By his side should couldn’t smell the fumes of cars or hear the distant sounds of war. Love was the red in the sunset, the green of the grass and the sweet scent in the air. Love was the smile on her face each day, the lonely look in her eyes. Love was her future and her past, but most of all, love was now.

And yet she felt more than love. She couldn’t let go of the yearning desire to be with him, the need to hear his voice call her name, feel his arms around her. In dwindling light she saw them, endlessly loving. He was explosive, containing concentrated life. He was the sort of guy who lived by his own creed; the belief that if we must live, we must live well.

When he touched her hand it sent a trembling thrill through her body and the flame burned more intensely. They were at the beginning of a long road, and adventure which has just begun. It was a distant dream, far away in the hearts of mankind.

Together they were one, a part of each other, like he was the question and she was the answer; he was the voyage and she was the quest. He had changed her opinions and her way of seeing life by the sheer force, power and impact of his presence. When she looked over her shoulder he would be there, he would always be there. His eyes had watched so many of her dreams, now they watched her; his voice had called to her in fantasy, now its tenderness melted into the evening air. Their love was a treasure store. It had the potential to be so beautiful, the foundations for glory. It could be wonderful while they were still happy. But time goes on, relentlessly, pushing them further and further into an alien world, through fluctuating smiles and tears, never reaching the end. And who are they to ask the days to lengthen and hours to slow? Manipulated puppets whose love was the word…

and the word was….

misleading.

 

 

On the Crest of a Wave

There is a spot where spirits blend
And friend with fellowship meets friend,
Through fluctuating smiles and tears
Like screaming waves to our deaf ears.

And constant is the ceaseless beat
Of water lapping round our feet;
Then sinking back from whence it came
Once more to rise and fall again.

Each crested with white crowns of glory
They leap ahead before their time,
And seem to tell a different story.
As they crawl back to the brine.

Like the unheard beat of time
It is continuous for who can stop it.
A noisy, surging sea of tears,
A miracle or a dream that rotted.

Then it advances on our years
Where we play with words for there's nothing to say;
It grips the shingles, and claws and tears
As its finger-like rivulets melt away.

In the beginning was the word
But the word had been said before;
So now we assume time is, time was,
But time shall be no more.

Where Rivers Run To

Her face was pressed against the waiting room window, looking for the cloud of steam from the train. She was to meet him at the other end. The journey had been a brief one, and as she watched the country side fly past, recollections of all that happened until now filled her mind.

It had all seemed so simple before, but in reality fact changed their appearance beyond their recognition. Everything has been meticulously planned and organised. Nothing had been overlooked. She looked around her at all the homecoming sights and wondered how long it would be before she would feel the pain of their loss. She thought of what was left behind her to gather dust which seemed to come from nowhere, ceaselessly carpeting any available surface, the dust of her mind clouding the memories it held. She thought of him.

Her parents had never stood in her way before, always given her the freedom to live the life she had chosen. That all changed after she met him. It was strange how protective her family suddenly became, and the hostility they showed only brought them closer together. Now it had come to this. It was the sort of thing that happened in cheap love stories and always seemed to work. Real life people didn’t just elope simply to show the world that they loved each other and could overcome whatever troubles came their way by the power of the bond between them. Such things were not possible and she knew it.

The train pulled into the station. He would be there soon. She moved like a ghost between the crowds, hoping no one she knew would be there – already an unlikely possibility. She felt herself swaying gently as though in a sea of turbulent worries which she knew little or nothing of. Voices rose around her ears. The pressure she was under gradually increased and she felt herself sinking beneath the strain. Once sitting, the haze around her began to clear.

With a great clang on her heart she suddenly realised the enormity of what she had done and the impossibility of it all. It had been decided on impulse. But she now didn’t know if she had the strength to carry it through. She felt him seize her hand.

‘Come’, he said.

All the seas of the world tumbled about her heart. He was drawing her into them; he would drown her. She gripped with both hands at the iron railing by the platform.

‘Come’.

No. It was impossible. Her hand clutched at the railing in frenzy. Amid the seas she sent a cry of anguish.

He called her name.

He rushed beyond the barrier and called to her to follow. He was shouted at to go on, but still he called to her. She set her white face to him, passive, like a helpless animal. Her eyes gave him no sign of love or farewell or recognition.

Curl Up and Dye

As she rose that morning to yet again tread the same pavement to work there was an air of discontent around her. It was as though she had suddenly realised that this was what her whole life was coming to. There was nothing beyond this, as far as progress was concerned. She could go no further. This was it.

She stepped outside and shivered slightly with the crisp, untouched air. The streets shimmered with dew and the morning sun glinted on satellite dishes peppered across the estate. She did not lead an ideal life, and knew it. So much had once been expected of her that she really once believed she would walk into the world and make it better. Like everyone else, she thought she would make an impression. But had now realised that the world was too small for everyone to be great. Millions of others were in her position. Contented nobodys. Just going through the motions because it was what was expected of them and the thought of something better was quickly banished, the question 'why?' never asked. Until now.

She stepped carefully between last night's fish and chip papers blowing aimlessly in the fume-filled wind. She walked this road every day, devoutly following its path, blinding herself to the life it held. The people here had nothing left to hope for. For them life was over and had become a repetitive act rather than an individual performance. Sometimes things just happened like that and there wasn't much you could do about it. Well, she was going to. She had had enough, seen enough, done enough. She went into the small salon and took her coat off.

'Morning Mrs Jackson. What will it be this time? Just a trim?' She watched the snippets of hair fall to the ground in a pile at her feet. This was where people came when they felt down and out. They really believed they could be someone different by leaving some of their hair on the floor behind them. Or maybe it was just the feeling that this gave them. Confidence.

The hairdryer drowned her thoughts. The phone rang. 'Yes, two o'clock will be fine. See you tomorrow. Thank you Mrs Jones'.

She twisted the rods into the old grey hair. It was strange how different it was to the younger customers', so weary, dead and leaden.

She briefly looked around her. There were a couple of people waiting, other reading magazines under the dryer,  another having her hair washed. While she used synthetic air to dry fake coloured hair.

And always the smell of heat and shampoo. The time wore on, yet seemed to dangle on the minutes long enough to accentuate the weariness of her task.

It was a strange sort of life. Constantly having people come to you to be changed, be made into something different; and even she, having turned over the sign to 'closed' walked home the same person as she had been that morning. Perhaps a little more tired, perhaps a little older, perhaps a little closer to dying; but she would go back the next day and see Mrs Jones at two o'clock as well as the other women in need of a miracle. She couldn't work miracles. She was only a hairdresser, only human.

As she walked home she breathed in deeply so as to get the smell of shampoo out of her lungs. It was as clear cut as that, like black on white.

A Meeting of Minds

When brother fights with brother
And two people don't get on,
And what divides each other
Are the things that they did wrong.

When you see your sister smiling,
And you hear her loving words,
When you feel the pain of crying
You understand how much she hurts.

There's a place for the broken hearted,
There's a parent for us all,
And the miracle we've started
Is to tumble and to fall.

When the whispering stops you hearing
And the caller gives you up,
You meet your end at your beginning.
All that's left of us is love.