You are currently browsing the tag archive for the ‘Silence’ tag.
When it’s 4 o’clock in the morning,
and everyone around you is still sound asleep;
when you are up and awake and already imagining,
still dreaming, thinking, creating, writing,
and you feel comfortable to open the door
to the place inside you that leads to your soul,
the place where everything you can imagine
is just waiting to be let out and allowed to run and leap;
when an idea comes to you,
when you can already hear the melody and voice
of a beautiful and exciting new piece of music;
when you feel something that seemed so small once
begin and never stop growing inside you,
the feeling, the experience, the time, you,
are heart-racing, away;
the silence, the noise, the close, the far,
feel like they are all inside you, and connected to you,
and I can tell you that when I have those moments
and I am touched by true inspiration, like I am every day,
it is absolutely breath-taking and epic.
There are times in your life
when you can’t say what you want to say,
because words simply fail you;
there are times when I say everything I want to say with one word-
I realized once that the more powerful thought and idea of anything
can be found when you seek out the far-between and the few.
Never give up on love;
never turn your back on something that means everything;
never doubt your heart,
and never even think to stop the flow of what makes you who you are;
never stop looking, never stop talking,
never stop cooking, never stop doing,
never stop believing, never stop watching;
keep being inspired, keep being inspiring,
keep being too awake to be tired, keep calm,
and do what everyone keeps telling me to do…
keep writing.
Silence. A pause. A full-stop.
A time to think and see.
A natural and needed interruption,
a resonant song-lyric,
a breath-taking moment,
an opportunity to not have to worry about anything
and simply be.
We all need a break sometimes-
even the best play has an intermission.
We all need to stop and look outside at dusk
and watch the luminous lightning-bugs and fireflies,
and hear the sound of the crickets chirping.
It can be a truly beautiful time,
especially when you have had a lot on you mind recently,
and you want to let all your pent-up feelings and emotions go-
that time when you are looking up at the twilight sky
and you know and you see the universe is telling you something
that it wants you to hear, and you need to hear-
that is the time when you can leave the front door of you open
for the stale air to leave and to let the fresh air come in
and clear your mind and vision, to see things come in
and go out of your life with every breath that you take,
and with every gust that the wind blows.
It can feel cold for a while
while you catch your breath and you breathe in deep,
it can be one of the few moments in your life
when you can actually feel truly free.
Sometimes you don’t know you need someone in your life
until you meet them and they fill your life, days, and hours,
with every part of them;
sometimes you don’t know how much you need something in your life
until you feel like you can’t live without it ever again.
Sometimes you don’t know a road you have been traveling on for years
until you break down on it and you stop and see its scenery
up-close and unexpectedly;
sometimes you don’t know your own self
until you look in the mirror and you ask yourself ‘Who am I?’,
sometimes you have to act selfishly, but not hurtfully-
single-mindedly, but not unashamedly.
Sometimes you have to live the life you want to live
rather than the life others would have you live,
so that even a tear can be a smile of happiness from your eye.
Life is about finding peace.
Life is about finding balance.
Life is about acting on things when you are sure about them,
and about using every ounce of emotion- including fear.
Life is about making the most of everything,
exposing yourself to as much as you can,
and letting your heart, mind, soul, run free of any leash.
Life is about taking every chance.
Life is about… that!
The easiest thing to do is to say nothing,
the easiest thing to do can feel like the best thing to do,
and because it feel easy to you it seems like the best thing to do-
and if you go too deep and if you happen to go too far
with something even though you know shouldn’t
but you did because you needed to-
it can be a long, hard, heart-breaking journey back for you.
“What is the alternative?”, I ask myself everyday.
I am unable to just switch off my emotions
and forget what has happened with the snap of a finger.
That is what happens when you fall into the powerful realm
of love, and you immerse yourself in every effect of its drug
and the way that it makes you feel- love is great, amazing,
unbelievable, but what people don’t tell you
and can’t explain to you fully is that love is a road
that is hard to turn off from,
and the speed that you drive down it
and what every moment and experience does to you
is extremely addictive.
Silence is a bullet to your heart.
Holding back can fracture your mind.
When you feel like you are the only one in pain,
explaining to anyone else can seem like a story
you have no idea from where to start.
When you need someone to listen to you and be there for you,
and when they choose not to be there,
the world can seem riddled with darkness and doubt,
hard to take, and to put it mildly unkind.
You feel like you are alone,
even though you are not.
You feel like you can’t even sit looking out at the world
from the place of love and security that is your home.
You wait for a response from someone with an anticipation
that makes your entire body feel inflamed and hot.
You feel confused by every conversation that you have,
because you feel like you have run out of things
to say to each other.
You make yourself believe that you can do no right,
that you will always feel this way forever.
People see you,
and even though you think they have no idea
what you could possibly be thinking and feeling,
they know exactly what you are going through-
the expressions on their faces are as telling as your own,
the memories of a similar time in their lives floods back
and they don’t have to feel a thing, they just know.
The key to getting through anything is to reach out, not recede.
The key to getting over a wall is to grow,
to look up, to want to overcome what is in front of you,
and to tell someone what you need.
It’s not a bad thing. It’s nothing to be ashamed of.
It’s never the wrong thing to express what you are thinking,
especially if it involves something intense
and all-consuming as love.
The key is to keep thinking, to keep doing,
to keep making, to keep walking.
For me, I know better than anyone
that if you have something to say
then you must say it, even if the person you are saying it to
doesn’t like it, or doesn’t want to hear it,
hears it, reads it, and then quickly forgets it,
and doesn’t reply to it.
The only thing I will say if you are feeling something in anyway,
is don’t stay silent, don’t fade away-
pick up the phone when someone is calling.
Keep talking.
The stars above twinkle brilliantly
in the shimmering light of the Summer night,
the heat in the air, the closeness,
the stickiness, the dryness, the silence,
is like a blanket over everything,
but a cool breeze that feels as if it has magically
come out of nowhere makes everything feel
more like heaven then hell-
not too cold, not too warm: just right.
Well into the night, families, friends, people,
everyone is taking full-advantage of the great weather
and are out in their gardens enjoying themselves-
some people are drinking,
some people are just sitting there in the open-air,
some people are writing, some people are reading,
some people are trying to get a good night’s rest,
some people are listening to music-
this heat can make people do funny things,
things that until they surprise you
with something completely random that they do
you would never think they had it in them-
it’s like they’re under a spell.
It’s amazing to me how calm it is,
it’s phenomenal to me how beautiful the world looks
even in darkness,
it’s astonishing to me how much I and everything seems at ease,
it’s perfect to me how much people feel drawn together
to be together by something universally-natural and subconscious.
Lying on my bed, the insomnia from the heat of the night
soaks into me thoughts and makes me dream awake
of far-away tropical rain-forests, white sandy beaches,
and swimming in the cool revitalising ocean coast
of a lush isolated island somewhere,
and when I do dream the images that explode into life
and colour my imagination, my mind, my heart, and my soul,
make me sleep, wake, and live each day without a care in the world.
Sitting in the park on a beautiful morning,
surrounded by light, life, and sound,
what I am doing feels life-reaffirming,
what I see is phenomenal, stunning, inspiring-
everything feels new, fresh, original, one of a kind,
never been seen before, bright, beautiful, pulse-racing, exciting.
I don’t want to leave.
I don’t want it all to fade-away.
I don’t want to take anything for granted.
I don’t want this to just be another day.
It doesn’t have to be, not if I don’t want it to-
not as long as it is all about the me and the you.
Everyone walks though life at different speeds.
Everyone lives different lives with different needs.
In the city, I see people of all ages and nationalities going about their day:
students coming to and from university,
smart-dressed men and women commuting to work,
children with a day off from school enjoying the sunshine-
as they smile, run-around and play;
kids discovering things with their parents,
parents discovering things about their kids-
from where I am, I see and I embrace
what they will probably never remember or think about
until they get older;
those moments that define a child and a parents relationship with each-other.
It is really nice to see and to read the under-lying language
that only a member of the same family is fluent in and privy to-
those looks and expressions that only they know the meaning of,
which if you are an on-looker it is like a foreign-language,
or a code that you can never know.
You don’t realise how precious time is until you get older
and you see the people and the places that you remember
change beyond recognition;
you don’t realise how much you miss
until someone reminds you of something that you shared together,
that meant so much to you at the time,
but unfortunately got filed-away in the filing-cabinet of your memory-
now only a snap-shot of a moment, which you never meant to ever forget
but which fades over time like an old photograph-
that can be brought back to mind and life
with the help of only the smallest of reminders
and enjoyed again, if it is a good memory,
of a time in your life that you always want to put-away
and rediscover again over and over on a sunny day.
Every day I see someone I have never seen before-
even in places that I have been to a hundred times,
or down roads that I have walked down more times than I can remember.
I see a new face- I see the beginning, the middle,
or perhaps the last chapter of someone’s story-
and every time I share eye-contact with a new person
I cannot help myself from wondering who they are,
who they will be-
I do not judge anyone by how they appear,
because to everyone- even those who you think you know-
there is always more to see.
I cherish the little things about people and about life,
I adore the moments that people freely throw-away without a second thought
that tell you about them- a story that they recite to themselves
when they fall asleep at night.
Sitting seemingly alone on a bench, on a hill,
in a park of untouched green grass,
looking out, looking up, looking within,
I have a moment of ponderance,
and in silence I think about the story that I am writing,
the legacy that I am leaving;
why I am who I am;
why the people and the things that I care so much about
mean so much to me;
why even though I have no one beside me I am not alone-
what that means, and why that is so important to remember.
Let’s go for a walk in the woods, just you and me;
let’s go hand-in-hand, as golden leaves fall all around us,
and conkers drop to the forest floor
from the branches of tall horse-chestnut trees.
Let’s go for a walk in the woods,
as the seasons change before our eyes;
let’s go for a walk in the woods
and be showered in sunlight,
as it breaks through from above and below
to hail the arrival of new life and new skies.
Let’s go for a walk in the woods
and watch spiders spin webs,
and rabbits appear fleetingly from their burrows;
let’s go for a walk in the woods
and let our imaginations run wild
while we search for the origin of every shadow.
Let’s go for a walk in the woods,
let us just stand there surrounded by transformation
going on underground and in the air;
let us just stop and breath in perfection into out lungs
and feel its effect on our mind and sight;
let us become intoxicated by nature and the suns light
and walk without a direction until day turns into night.
Let’s go for a walk in the woods
and say nothing with words, but everything with a smile,
everything with a look, everything with a touch;
let’s go for a walk in the woods
and feel inseparable while in each-others clutch.
Let’s go for a walk in the woods, day-after-day,
in the sun, in the rain, in the wind, and in the snow;
let’s go for a walk in the woods
and appreciate how fortunate we are to be here at this time,
in this place, and what we leave behind when it is time to go.
Let’s go for a walk in the woods,
let us run through the woods as if we were children
who could go anywhere we wanted, without fear-
closing our eyes, with our arms out-stretched like wings-
not even realizing the gift that we have of choosing
who it is that we want to be.
Let’s go for a walk in the woods
and walk in our own footprints-
content, because we are together,
because, as far as we are both concerned,
it will always be just you and me.
As the bell tolled ten,
as I stood at the twilight cloister between knowledge and faith,
staring up at a sculpture of a victorious St. Michael
standing over a defeated Devil,
inspiration came to me then and echoed through the space,
and I found myself there-after standing on another level.
The ground beneath me was like a river,
the rain did not stop falling for a second;
for an instant, I began to shiver;
when the chimes ended, I thought I heard my own inner-voice
say something, as if it were trying to respond.
There was no lightning-bolt that struck nearby,
but nevertheless I saw a flash of light
which I interpreted as being insight-
cloud and rain was all that I could see in the sky,
and even though it was morning it felt more like night.
I was transfixed by the university, by the nearby fountain,
by the stone spheres that were on the path before me,
and by the imposing cathedral-
even in this light everything looked so beautiful.
I wanted so much to understand what I was feeling,
but my heart could not tell me;
I wanted so much to share this inner-light with someone else,
but there was no one to be seen.
I stood for a few more minutes in silence,
and then I felt my feet and my legs
regain the knowledge of their function
and propel me on my path again.
I don’t think that I will ever forget that moment
outside Coventry Cathedral and Coventry University, in the rain,
as the bell tolled ten.
The world is silent all around me, as am I-
in the evening air, I sit in the sunshine
marvelling at my surroundings,
indiferent at everything other than where I am,
as I allow the minutes to pass me by.
All the troubles of life and the world
seem galaxies away to me at this moment-
I am happy, I am warm, I am content.
A silent breeze, the touch of a beautiful spirit
embraces me delicately as it glides across my face.
I close my eyes, because the intensity of my emotions
become almost too much for me to bare-
all doubts of mine are washed away,
never to be dwelled upon again,
gone without a trace.
I am entranced and encapsulated by this perfect summer sunset-
my mind and my entire body feels alive
and burning an energy of the intensity
that makes me believe that I am living within a fleeting,
beautiful, moment for the entire world
that no one will ever forget.
I imagine a perfect instance
when every face of everyone, young and old,
raise their head, look up at an infinite sunset,
and for only a few seconds, release their pains
and imagine their most powerful dreams,
as if they were to have already come true-
then look around them, and at a reflection of themselves,
and feel better than they ever have done,
and know something about them and about the world
that they never knew.
If every day were to begin how it ended,
we would all go through our day
appreciating the moments of peace that we are blessed with-
even those that can be found within the maelstrom of chaos;
I am lucky to be able to know
and to be able to recognise such moments when they come,
and live within them for a short time
as if they were for a life-time-
and it is to them that I look forward to,
and within them I find the greatest solace.
I wore my poppy with pride today,
I wore my poppy with honour, with reverence,
with a full, but a heavy, heart,
as I thought about the cost our world of heroes has had to pay.
I walked in silence,
and I stood in stillness,
in the shadow of the cenotaph to the lost and to the fallen-
I looked above to the monument, and to the sky,
and I wished that I were a poet who could express
what I was thinking, and what I was feeling, at that moment
to all and to everyone.
I wear my poppy today, because I am thankful to be alive;
I wear my poppy today, because I cannot, and can never, forget
my brother, my sister, my own,
who believed, fought, sacrificed, and died, for me-
whose names should be revered and remembered for all time,
and always survive.
I walk in silence,
and I stand in tears,
casting a shadow in the midday sun on the monument to humanity, Earth,
as I, we, lower our eyes, head, and heart, as-one in peace,
and in hope that Earth will one day live as a world war-free;
standing united with the faces, and the fate,
of the world we made, and the world to come,
each of us wearing a token of our gratitude-
me, I am wearing my poppy.
Never forget
The Life, the Light, the Tears, of the Poet of the Sphere 