The Director's Cut

Lights, camera, and rolling!!

"I don’t know how else to tell you this, but I’m not in love with you."

Cut.

Hold your pose, loosen your grip, tie up your hair, a distraught woman is a disheveled woman.

And lights, camera, action, rolling…!

"I don’t know how else to tell you this, but I’m not in love with you."

And Cut.

Cut your ties, cut your off screen romance, your stealthy kisses in the dressing room, cut your oh-so sugary sweetness, cut those lies that bind you to goody two shoes, cut those enormously dilated eyes to pin size evil, stick your nose in the air, be haughty, attack him with words, destroy his soul.  

And, rolling,

"I don’t know how else to tell you this, but I’m not in love with you."

Cut. No No No No No. You are not his mommy, you are not his sister, you are not his friend and no, you are not his lover. You are the devil deep inside, wreaking havoc in his life. You want his pain, you want his tears, you want his strife, you want all the waking hours in his life, his days, months, his years. You want revenge before he cheats on you, you plot his failure before he pops the question, you squash his desire, you mince his heart, you swallow hard and remain unfazed by the power you wield, break his heart and send him back to the start.

And lights, camera, action. Rolling

"I really don’t know how else to tell you this, but I’m NOT in love with you."

And Cut. Better, but I want it to be bitter. This cannot end in hugs, this cannot meet in kisses, the next shot is agony, tears, growing pains that no prescription pill can kill. Think about the end, a man in a suit, heading an empire out of his car, and behind this man, was once a woman, YOU. You, who say the lines he needs to hear, so he never looks back, he’s not rejected, he’s catapulted by these words, he’s not enraged, he’s will conquer the world, he won’t stop at you, he’s going for the balls of his creator, a showdown with his maker, aim for his heart and stick a needle in there, a jabbing sting he won’t forget for the rest of his life, this film rests on how you do this…so do it, just do it, do it.

And lights, camera, rolling!

"I really don’t know how else to tell you this, but, you’re gonna need a replacement. I’m not doing this anymore."

Ode to Pond, River and Sea

Rush, rush rush, into the decisions
we take too lightly to later unmake
we take only too easily,
Calling what is done as done and dusted.
In the perfect state, what does it matter?
But wait, let a minute go by
In this perfunctory haze,
I catch your amused bewilderment
Take my eyes, let me show you the way high


What’s this here…
Like a woman of stories and fairy tales,
She lies in wait for daylight to change color
And draws upon her face
A million expressions that tell her children of sudden misfortune,
Of timely rescue and of restoring the good king to his crown.


See this guy here…
Like a man who enjoys scaling the scope of tall tales,
His calloused hands tucked into his coat pockets; he quickly strides along his way
He must stay to pay two more installments on a house he owns
As he swiftly thieves his way into gain,
Using fraudulent terms and conditions to deny people their insurance claims.
In a big bad world, the end justified the means, until just now,
Flash news: the house he bought collapses and lies ruined in the rain.


Woven into all this, who watches it all? Who sleeps? Who wakes up? Who thinks? I wonder…
Who then, is amused, is befuddled and sometimes alone?
I put my running shoes on and walk out on this world into my own
While the world's weariness crawls up in our socks
Telling of the friction between feet and the ground we stand on.


They say, home is where the heart is
Home is in all places where these feet may go
Bend the light. Perceive what we will, of a great illusion
With frequent bites of figments of imagination


There are yet so many things in this feast for your eyes,
in places of mystery,
where only those of pure faith are belied
to know what moves the prime mover,
who thought of the sweetness of the jasmine bough,
the swiftness of the humming-bird’s wings
And who, the gentle grey might of the elephant in the jungle.
From a womb that conceives the delectable and nectarine
Also comes the brutal sharp sting of the bitter.

We return home, everyday, safely in time
for the transactions of ordinary life,
for packed sandwiches and a can of milk.
We return to the childhood memories
of games we played in laneways that know no strife
Sometimes, the less we know, the more we know.


Except we grow up and fight to kill weeds
in the garden that has grown up with us.
One only needs from life, this:
a shelter for body and room to stretch one’s feet.
And feed only this: the thirst to drench something core-deep
And nourish a part of you you’ve never met, with love.


I wake up to draw a breath and to say hello
Cuttlefish, prawn fries and sweet pale ale
Grace the atmospheres of a traveler’s diary,
garnishing pages of lore with basil and coriander
as the smell of morning bread comes wafting out of her bakery.


Today, I’m taking chances in a divided world
to make one more odd turn in favor
of perhaps some whim or secret wish I had as a child
to bring happiness around me, of pure intent
A poet and a painter reside
Still, in the driver’s seat, in the very soul of this world
Unperturbed by the ebb and flow of the tides
Where peace is a creeper that grows


We journey on, while home and hearth
Are keeping watch
of times between


the place to go
and the place that has been...

When the wind blows, leaves shake

Where once a tree grew

there is a marsh.

But look over yonder

A garden grows.

'More from the tokes' said the Wind to the Sun one day

Infusing his airs with earthy tobacco rising into mists of blue smoke.

The Sun shone, speaking in tongues 

of sweet rain and green grasslands 

that danced around the hills 

like a girl in a sequined skirt

She, mother Earth, shone like a warrior of strength,

 of grit, of gilded sleet found in mountain folds.

In the cob of the corn

is a delicious flavor that reminds me of the feasts on the day

they made love,

full of the promises made of pregnant clouds and rain bows.

In the pink cheer of a nebulous cat

wandering in my garden of roses,

of evening walks, of birds chirping busily in their nests,

Will it rain? Will the sun and the wind bring her along?

Will it rain in the garden of lovers who, before love fades to dust,

wish St Valentine’s day was reprised in August.

When it rains on the roses

A lone woman stands in the rotunda

She reads rain drops like a child of the divine,

Of love that is blind.

When it rains on the roses

they bloom and dance with her

every year of her life, all the way home.

There it shines a full moon

calling out to those very dreams

she spins in her sleep

claiming treasures of sea and land

on threads of her soft breath

for days she calls her winter.

In the garden, when the wind blows, leaves shake.