The Jeweler

-The Jeweller-

'I like it, but it is a pretty dangerous thing to do'. Not that focussing on the jewel amidst the darkness is not beautiful, just that to ignore the truth of the context in which that jewel shines is to be absent in truth somehow. It is as if to say, 'all that other stuff, it doesn't matter! we will ignore it and in ignorance it will simply fade away'... but that rarely happens. Not only is it semi delusional, and in a way judgemental, but it also speaks of a kind of travesty of perception, a lack of sincerity and humility, as if you are saying, 'that darker stuff that surrounds you, well, that doesn't matter', but of course, it does matter. It is someone's life, and that matters, all the tawdry little moments matter, all the quirks and hard to bare iniquities matter, they matter because they didn't just come from nowhere, they have a story too, and though that story is hard to hear, though that story may be washed with pain and suffering, still it is life, and for that person, it mattered; It mattered so much, that they took it upon themselves in the guise of a dark shroud, one that is hard to bare and uncomfortable to look at, but still it mattered. Yes that jewel is beautiful, but we are not stone collectors, fashioning the uncut gems we find in others for our own device and pleasure, rather, accepting the darkness too, listening to it's story also, gives context to the jewels we find, and gives honour to the life we share, the whole life, not just the parts we find easy to look at, and in so doing, we give honour to that person we love, giving love, even to the darkness we may find, and the stories that it tells. 'The stars shine brightly within the firmament, set in the night as jewels upon the sky, and never brighter were all those celestial ornaments, than when in darkness the twinkling diamonds caught my eye.' 

© Richard Michael Parker 2015

Swallow Tail

Swallow Tail

Velvet butterflies brushing their gossamer wings,
tremulous fluttering's inside my soul,
lifting from the hearth to the whole.
I feel them rise from the pit,
swirling through incandescent skies,
filling my heart with the warmth of your breath,
slipping like silk ribbons caught in a breeze,
the gentle ease, of all you have become to me.

Tickling sensations,
these trembling emanations of light,
surging through these rice paper gates,
erupting upon my face with a smile.
A brilliant star, in joyous release.

I sat in blue corners once,
masked in the mourning of some mottled solemnity,
wondering what it was that you might have been to me,
seeking that which was before my unsighted eyes,
before my heart, the chase inside,
blind to its light, in the depths of its hide.

To cease the search, and in being, simply love.
To curtail the endless courtship, the chase,
the hunt from above, and in risen heart,
watch the doe bound within the open meadow,
free from her forest retreat,
the supple greeting of each loving gracious fellow,
the swallow tail swimming in the breeze,
kissed between the sunlight's balmy phlox,
and those distant oaken trees.

Love steals my heart, and floods the plain,
and on my tongue and in my ear, I hear
this gentle wind whispering your name.
The fluttering diaphanous flight,
of these butterflies of love,
caught between the chrysalis,
and your bless'd light, above.

© Richard Michael Parker 2012

There Is A Light

-There Is A Light-

"I don't know what to tell you" he said.

"I only know it gets harder every time. The world grows a little darker, and the wind a little colder, and there comes a moment when you wonder whether you ever felt at all. So dark and numbed by it all.

Perhaps your standing at a check out, staring blankly at the head in front of you, waiting for your turn to dance with the plastic bags and fake food you have bought for dinner, and there comes a moment, in the drab monotony of that emptiness, a simple moment when all the pain in your heart and the blocks in your head are forgotten, lost in the mist of that nothingness, when someone says something, or you do something quite spontaneously, and for an instant the light that is within you breaks through.

Seize that moment. Know it for what it is, the truth of the light within you.

For that light is never extinguished. Though it be dulled by scars that have built upon your heart, with every betrayal, every sunken hope, though it be obscured by the towers and walls you have built in your mind to protect your heart from the withering assault of that pain, it burns still. It's light kindled in the depths of the deepest darkness. It is just that, as time passes, and the tarnishing's of love set down their slow decay, it gets harder to remember. So hard in fact that at times, the blocks and the scars, the pain and the masks we build to forestall it, halt the light, until, seated on the throne of our own turbid mind, we can no longer see it's glory. No longer feel the warmth of it's ray, as it passes inspection, obscured by all the tissues and walls that lay between awareness and the truth.

So, in those moments, those simple moments in which love, or communion, laughter, or a simple gesture erupt out of you, quite beyond your conscious control, understand that this is your soul breaking through, this is the truth of you, the light that shone so brightly before the world and all it's infinite betrayals got a hold of you, and twisted your vision into blindness. Know that you are more beautiful than you might ever have suspected, and that though you can no longer see it, still, it remains, and in those moments of emptiness, love has a way of opening a new door.

All that remains, is for you to walk through."

© Richard Michael Parker 2015

The Perigee Of Early Spring

-The Perigee of Early Spring-

The moon, she shines,
without favour or disguise, both,
upon the joyous and the bitter sunken eyed.
The weeping pools,
seeping between the corpulent shadows,
tree wrung gargoyles,
hung upon the bough of the midnight queen.
Seldom seen, upon the fleck of cherried air,
heavy in a dream, bare upon the sacred hill,
where the drum and tambourine, beat upon the wind.
'I'll meet you there'! - 'I'll meet you there'! '
Where the golly goblins sprawl,
between the orange scented call; 'There'!
Where your hair, all tangerine,
flounced upon your green eyes, moonstruck,
glared into the fires feckled hue,
and plucked the rosy suckle bare,
to shuck the huckleberry blue.
Dancing on the naked hill,
the parchment and dishevelled quill,
dipped into the inky well, pounced,
between your painted toes, and silver bell,
all crackling groans of an ancient toll;
The swollen dips, the sunken lips.
We learnt it well;
We learnt it well.

The moon, she shines,
without favour or disguise;
The road is long, and the way is dark, without her.

© Richard Michael Parker 2014