Wyda
While you sleep
I’m awake
Yes, you
I wanted to know you more
But now you don’t talk the same
Your preoccupied
Your not who you were
I’m afraid nothing has changed
You still have another
And I might be just another
We could have been something
Maybe I don’t know
Maybe I’m a fool again
Again and again
Is the fools slogan
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To love. To be loved.
To never forget your own insignificance.
To never get used to the unspeakable violence and the vulgar disparity of life around you.
To seek joy in the saddest places.
To pursue beauty to its lair.
To never simplify what is complicated or complicate what
is simple.
To respect strength, never power. Above all, to watch.
To try and understand.
To never look away.
And never, never, to forget.”
~1995~
If you know my mother you know she'll be happy wherever she is. But I cant help but feel sad today. I lost my mother. She loved me very much and I loved her more than words. She was a beautiful person, a person who loved life. She taught me to love life, to accept the good and the bad. I learned from her, I laughed with her and I cried with her.
Good things happen even in the worst of situations. Through the last couple of years I gained a lot and learned a lot. I learned who she really was as a regular person and as best friends. She knew when I needed help, and I knew when she needed it also.
I came to her one night when I needed help and said to her "how can you do this? how can you go through all of this?" I told her how difficult it was for me and I needed to know how she did it.
She told me she had almost nothing left. She said when she was first sick 12 years ago she went through a wall for us. If it wasn't for us she couldn't have done it. The only reason she went through the pain and suffering was because of her husband and three children. And that morning at 2 a.m. she told me that she now had nothing left. She had put her life in the hands of God and it was now up to him.
She said she expected me and everyone else to go through that wall. She couldn't do it anymore. I went through that wall - with all my life I did it. Because she did it for me. She was worth it. I would do it again, without question because I loved her more than words.
That night we cried in each others arms, and without words knew we would know each other forever.
I was a part of her and she a part of me. We will never lose her. Now you can look at me and see her spirit live. It lives in my brothers and in my father. It lives in anyone she ever knew. Be proud of who you are because you are part of her and she is now a part of you.
Her last words to me were " You are a very faithful person Mark, very faithful. Mark, look after yourself. Look after yourself"
Mom, I will.
~2016~
I awoke from sleep one afternoon
What now seems so long ago
To see an unwraped gift
And a tiny envelope
Placed on top
Her handwriting spelling my name
Written as she loved me
Uninterrupted to this day
I opened to read
In blue and white
An apple a day keeps the doctor away
She was ill
With what seemed like a long hard road to go
But we lived with it before
Since I was nine
Since she was forty
Yet this time it was for good
Half asleep I read her small note
Written for no occasion
Just to say
How much
She loved me
And all these years later
Without her here
My age has changed
My memories are faded
And failing
Yet the handwriting lingers
Her life and affection
And the love between
Mothers and Sons
You can feel love and affection
From so many years ago
Her handwriting lingers
In my life now
As she would of hoped
You can feel love and affection
From so many years ago
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Dear Mark,
Appropriate saying on the front of this card!
Just to tell you how much I love you.
You are a very caring and loving person.
I am so proud of you!
Love you now
and
always,
Mum
xxxxxxx
~Nairobi, 2016~
I lay in a bed
My head doesn’t have anywhere to go
Tied to itself
Ready to go anywhere else
I can’t escape myself.
Warm tears aren’t shy
They pour down my poor face
For every stranger to see
Unraveling who I really am
I lay in a bed
I can’t make
I have a feeling
Faith burned holes right through my eyes
I can’t see myself
Ready to go anywhere else
I lay in a bed
I’m not allowed to leave
If the life I can take should spread its wings.
If words be the breath I take and sing.
I will never forget it.
I'll never have to remind myself.
~2001~
After so many days away from home, after so many days in this place, it all slips into the scenery of things. It seems like it never began, it was just always there.
Try to think back of life as a child. Sitting in the front seat of the family car, parked and idled in your stone driveway shaded by the willow tree's fine canopy. Looking up eyes peered out the side door window and you thought about a place. A place now so far away you can only dig a hole forever to get there.
Grandma told me stories and I told Grandma how I wondered why good time must go fast. I cant remember where we went that day, where we drove off to. Just the car. The tree. The passenger seat. I remember being buckled in. Being too short to touch the floor. I wonder now, where was my mother? Where was Dad? I had brothers...two of them. Each of us with our own poignant yet silly memories. Questionable but fact.
I wonder what they remember about being parked in the driveway. Do they remember the tree falling down? The old garage door used as a pitching target? The Stones and willow leaves in the Fall time.
~2016~
Now things are never what they seem
Transformations have made me
the man I’m not meant to be
No, it’s never what it seems
And all I have are the memories
Privacy, it’s unnecessary for intimacy
The impermanent universe
is in your face and on your breath
Tell me a story that isn’t mine.
It’s all about to happen
when we least expect it.
The passage back to where I was
It’s gone without a trace
Abandoned in me
A childhood dream, childhood memory.
Of forever love setting in an endless summer
I know you, but you only know my name
All things in me are changing day by day
Like the passing weather I’m not here to stay
And the passage back to where I was
Leads to me
~1998~
One day I’m going to travel
My hazel gaze set in stone
A Michelangelo
A place I have not yet met
~2016~
I’m not running like I run when I hide
My memory is better
Better than letting go of everything
Valerie, Oh what are you going to do about it?
What are we going to do?
Out on the Autumn lake
Old red boat
That Grandpa made
Fishing with you for one last time
Over the shallow rocks with bait
Laughing at ourselves
We almost made a mess of everything
Almost
Valerie, Oh your memory comes to me
What am I going to do about it?
I’m not going to run like I run when I hide
My memory is better
Better than letting go of everything
It’s stubborn to be you and me
But what are we going to do about it?
All we did was laugh
We almost made a mess of everything
But all we could do was laugh about it
We laughed
We laughed about it
~
I sewed together three red hearts
A present for my mother in bed
Each one bigger than the last
and smaller than the next
Red length of yarn
Attached all of these into
One act of love
From a child whose mother would never release
The sorrow she now felt
For soon she would recover
The house begin again to sound
Like routine had taken over
All the children off to school
Like all children do if they do
Making sense of the nothingness all about
Three red hearts sewed together
Stitches and symbols of our hearts
Never to be separate
Her three young boys
Never to feel how she felt
~Nairobi, 2016~
My eyes are open
My mouth is closed
With nothing to say
Nothing to waste
Truth is seamless
Manifested in my losses
Let it come through me
All that I’ve been
Will you come to me tonight
To my room
My fever slips into my mind
What I say comes before me
Let me hear
What I can’t see
Let me feel
What I can’t hear
Let it come through me
All that I’ve been
Finding Similarities Rather Than Differences