My Poem ‘No Filter’

A beautiful, gorgeous, sunny, warm morning –
with blue sky above, multiple reflections all around,
people coming and going, living, breathing,
seeing, experiencing, and music playing everywhere you are,
and a different voice for every hour that you hear.

I am sitting with a wonderful cup of coffee,
at a table next to a wall of windows
that stretch as far as the eye can see;
I am looking out at the city,
basking in the daylight of sunlight,
feeling energized and inspired
by the atmosphere of outside and inside;
I am seeing, listening, drinking,
thinking, dreaming, feeling,
and doing my favourite thing: writing poetry.

I am in plain sight, and it is as if no one can see me,
or is interested in me, or what I am doing –
nobody would ever think to approach me,
and ask me what I am writing;
however, if someone were to ask me what I am doing,
or how I was feeling, I would tell them that
the only way that I can describe how I am feeling
at this exact moment, is to say that:
I feel as if I am a bird in the sky,
hovering above the rest of the world,
not even needing to flap my wings too much
in any way at any time –
because I know that there are times
when instead of exerting yourself
with a lot of flapping about,
sometimes you can get to where you need to be
by simply using the external forces that surround you,
and using them, if you have the means,
to simply and silently glide.

As I look at the world,
the natural daylight instantly highlights the colours,
the details, the resonant aura of everything,
and the reason for things to be the way
that they click into place;
as I see the spectrum of existence and life jump out at me,
I have the biggest smile on my face;
as I look to the horizon,
and then to what I see right in front of me,
the scale and the impact that hits me
of certain things, that for some reason interest me,
instantly inspire me, and I see patterns repeating,
and shapes that have meaning;
I see and read emotions, attitudes, interests, tastes,
on the faces and in the actions of everybody,
and I am intrigued and fascinated;
and I also see things that I would change, if I could –
if I could just blink, or snap my fingers,
and change someone’s direction,
or show them another choice to make,
or an alternative to something I can see they are about to do –
however, I am merely an observer, a poet,
someone who can only say what he sees,
and express how something makes him feel,
and, though sometimes I wish I were,
I am far from omnipotent,
and that is a good thing.

Life is what it is;
the world is many things,
and is in many states of being, all at once;
some things that happen can feel like a magic trick;
everyone can believe anything they want.
Whether in the bloom of spring;
whether in the cold but beautiful light and air of winter;
whether you are doing something you have done before,
or whether you are being blessed
with the sight of something you cannot ever remember
at any time before seeing;
whether you are sitting, standing, lying, waiting,
and you have a chance, a moment, to look around
and take in life and the world,
do so if you can with perfect vision
and with no need for a filter.

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My Poem ‘Aubergine’

Who can predict what a new day will be about
when they wake up in the morning;
who can tell what the moments of a life
may some day come to mean;
who can truly know why songwriters write the songs that they do,
and infuse such emotion and intensity in the words that they sing;
who can understand the ‘codeword’
shared between a small group of people,
if they don’t know what it means,
especially if you are unaware of the history
and the shared etymology that radiates from a word or a phrase –
especially when the codeword in question
happens to be “aubergine”.

It’s fun to share exclusive relationships with people;
it’s amazing to have secret ciphers in your mind
that you can use to decode an encrypted message at a moments notice;
it’s great to have the vision to see the seemingly invisible,
as if you have got a magic eye;
it’s inspiring talking and meeting someone when all things feel equal;
it’s a sacred moment when you see
the beautiful pink and white petals of a lotus;
it’s wonderful making a new tie.

People speak, even when their lips are tight and their voice is silent.
Sometimes a picture says it all.
Words and memories mean more to some people than others,
because to a lot of people things are said but they are not meant.
Nothing can hold back a flood – of water, of emotion –
and over time levels of things rise and fall;
however, there comes a point when things overflow
and nothing on Earth can hold back anything again,
not even the best built wall.

If you believe that there is nothing to do,
if you think that you have seen it all,
if you just keep repeating what you have heard,
you need to find a way to take off the shades that you are wearing
that are blurring and distorting your vision of your surroundings,
and look somewhere and go somewhere where you have been countless times –
however, if you look without any expectation,
and if you try to clear your mind of your collected emotional shadows,
you may see something that you have never seen.

Even a grain of sand has its own story;
every dream that everyone has is a truth-based alternate-reality fantasy;
even a meal could not come into being
if where the ingredients of it originated hadn’t at some point
once been a seed, or someone’s idea of a dream;
everything is the favourite of someone;
everybody everyday ventures out onto the sea of life,
like a surfer holding, relying, using, keeping afloat, and swimming,
farther and farther out on the water
towards the direction of the approaching and oncoming waves;
and as they see something about to hit them at full-speed
everyone says something to themselves,
or to anyone who may be listening,
and it could be anything:
my word of the day, that will help and assist me
in riding the waves that face me today,
is a word that you don’t see or hear everyday –
my word of the day is the tasty-sounding, nutritious,
and deeply meaningful muse, that has the codeword “aubergine”.