Another Mans Sorrow

-Another Mans Sorrow-

If I could have reached out to that young man, reading lines from an old mans eyes, the sorrow of passing lives, snuffed out in an instant through those bleak manifested lies. I would have taken his hand, and spoken softly with eyes fixed, a gaze unbroken, and simply said: 'Remember, it all means more than you will ever know, even if at times it may not seem so. Be careful as you go, and try to learn how not to walk in another mans sorrow.'
  
© Richard Michael Parker 2013

A Living Gift

-A Living Gift-

Wandering through the cemetery yesterday, whilst I walked towards the hospital, not sure if I was going to make it there, I got to thinking about what a life means, surrounded by all those stones. Wondering if I had achieved all that I had wanted to achieve... taking a few photo's while I had the opportunity... forever the opportunistic artist.

It was cold and sunny, and my little angel shone with a dazzling lustre in the crisp sunlit air. She, and a few other things, suddenly struck my eye, and I guess a certain realization came upon me, as it so often does in such moments. The realization that the real gifts we leave are not the bridges of stone or mountains of metal that we build, or even the organizations, the rocks and stones we move about us, but rather the hearts we have inhabited, the intangible fleeting moments, where one soul has communed with another. Where one heart has spoken gently with some other, whose rhythm and rhyme has met with our own in that instant of time.

So that the earth, or the eyes that see it, barely recognize the footprints we have left behind, barely notice the coming and going of each soul as they have lived. Yet, it is the passing of the flame which is the true gift. The flickering light that passes between hearts, between souls, eyes opened to one another, so that the soul of each becomes one within the soul of the other. And though it may seem as though the tangible remnants of a life are meagre or as nothing, or even if it be mountains that we have moved, the truth, is that in the subtle communion of that moment, a moment in which we have shared of our true selves, we leave an indelible footprint upon the soulful road of another.

Lives made all the richer for the passing of that flame, the evolution of each, enriched in those heartfelt steps, moving ever forward, bolstered and encouraged by that communion. So that often the measure of our lives is completely intangible, as we effect the world in ways we could never imagine, simply by being, through the sincerity and authenticity of who we truly are.

We effect the world as a living entity, and we connect with other lives, displaced from our own by many miles or many years. Generations may pass, before the seemingly intangible meeting of hearts and minds, souls, that open to one another in an instant of time, effect each-other, though vastly removed from that initial communion. Lives, affected by our being, through the quality of our existence and intimacy of that communion.

The recognition of a shared existence, often removed from one another by generations, and vast distances in time and space, and completely intangible in material terms, unrecognized by sentient eyes. Life, this living gift, each soul offers to another, is a thread in a fabric of time, a weave upon a tapestry, so vast, that in the blessing of that gift our own lives extend themselves far beyond anything we may imagine. The meaningful associations we forge with those who enter our lives, and are themselves a part of an extended tapestry of existence, that have preceded them, progress further to touch still more lives, in ways we can scarcely conceive.

These connections would and could never have happened without us, no matter what we may conceive of our own worth and the worth of the tangible material we may leave behind. For we are part of the great panoply of existence, and because of this truth, intrinsically and irrevocably valuable. The inviolability of this truth is that our worth is not in the things we have left behind, but in the hearts we have touched, the souls with whom we have communed, and the quality with which we have existed.

Each courageous moment of sincerity, of authentic vulnerability, is more profoundly precious than we can ever comprehend. It should never be forgotten, that our legacy is first and foremost one of the soul, and it's worth is measured through the sincerity of our communion. For it is this, that is passed as a living gift, to lives, enriched, not just within the circles of those we have known, but to all who will be touched through that communion, across the vast reaches of space and time, for the gift of life, ultimately, is in the passing of that flame.

© Richard Michael Parker 2013

The Scarlet Shore

-The Scarlet Shore-

Bright scarlet,
bristled against the shore,
the sonorous whisper of the sea
languidly seeping between the green,
trees, a canopy of silence,
swimming in the breeze.
An ancient song,
a timeless air of birds and bees.

The surging rush,
the cool crush of salted flesh,
sizzling, drenched and enmeshed.
Soft moaning thighs,
wrapped around each melting sigh,
muffled amidst these yielding lips,
the soak of warm tongues,
awash in a licking tide,
these rolling hips, crushed inside.

This torpid sun,
that slowly rocks the fevered brow,
seeps between the cracks,
languid, slow, and now.
Sparkling in your florid eyes,
wavelets, teased upon the shore,
the suckled lips of soaking mouths,
quivering within this trembling roar.

An intimate repose,
caught within this moment.
The fevered sands of time.
Your fingers locked in mine,
the grip of loves fomenting rhythm and rhyme,
slips between these dripping hands.
The writhing hourglass,
dishevelled and tanned.

Sundown,
a gulls fading call,
smooth and warm against my breast,
a treasure, troved from out a pirates chest,
shot through with scarlet waves,
a timely reminder of natures ancient ways.

© Richard Michael Parker 2013 

A Still Life

-A Still Life-

What is a poet without words?
No paint upon the palette knife.
A crusty cake of stony blues.
The frozen peaks of a still life.

© Richard Michael Parker 2013

Without The Cost

-Without the Cost-

More joy,
More tears,
More fury,
More fears,
More brokenhearted rent capitulation,
Than any word could express.
The hours of anxiety,
The days of endless misery,
The forlorn degradation of resignation.
The cold sweats.
Waking in the dim twilight of your passing,
The endless nights, silently awaiting the dawn,
The furious anger wrapped up in scorn,
The melting ray of this suns mocking peace,
Hidden behind these curtains, a closeted release.
The razors edge,
The morbid dread of loss...
What meaning could there be without the cost!

© Richard Michael Parker 2012



Artwork: Isaiah Stephens

God Paints Between The Cracks

God Paints Between The Cracks

 'Grow your blossoms, blossom!... Don't let them wilt in an untilled field. For they were sown in your life to bring joy to all who would bathe in their aromatic wonder, and dance in the fever of their hue. Only you, can choose as to whether they blossom or wilt. For the field is your own. It has been furrowed, ploughed and sown. So that now, in these vital winds, the wild seed, swept between the gaps, settles into each weathered groove. For God paints between the cracks.'

© Richard Michael Parker 2013

Green from Sami Takieddin on Vimeo.
 

Come Be A Tree...

-Come Be A Tree-

Come be a tree...
Come sway lugubriously in the summer sun.
Come play in a zephyrs touch, at close of day,
when all the work is done.
Come drop your leaves upon my feet,
to stand, naked and replete,
proud in the winter snows,
a velveteen squirrel snugly nestled upon your nose.
Come drop your acorns into my earth.
Grow these wild sapling loves,
deep in the silent belly of my girth.
That we might flame upon this wild sky,
an iridescence of cupidity,
entwining green limbs,
enmeshed in fiery autumnal hues,
the majestic ruddy screams,
spitting upon the cool reach of those ancient blues.
Come float into a dream,
the snowy mountain pass whistling in a breeze,
the restive silent comfort of the midnight frozen tree.
Come rustle in the wind,
when the lark sits proudly upon your bough,
the golden dew sparkling in loves dawning sky;
Come fly, when springs budding blossom,
pollinates your hair in a swirling heady dance,
the supple maelstrom of this dizzy dappled trance.
Languidly creaking in a sunlit kiss.
The moon rising between each silent limb.
A nightingales song enraptured in bliss.
Come ride through the seasons in silence,
to watch the world swim in giddy motions.
The somnolent dipping cycles,
of our own deep emotions.
An ant crawling upon a limb.
Come be a tree...
The elegant timeless simplicity,
each breath, a pause,
a gentle swing upon a bough,
these cycles of eternity,
the simple truth,
of me and you,
and I in Thou.
 
© Richard Michael Parker 2013

Wrapped in the Swaddling Cloth of Innocence

-Wrapped in the swaddling cloth of innocence-

Stultified in this absurdity,
caught in the ragged ends of this storm,
branches bedraggled and naked,
the leaves tattered and torn,
scattered upon the walkway of this love.
Seated upon the old bench,
beneath the corpulent trees,
resting, I find a kind of ease,
some sinew of peace, a remnant of holiness,
left over from the fire in that breeze.
The sun, ekes its weary way,
making skeletons upon the ground,
as they cross our path in the dead of that sound.
Turn your face my love,
that I may not see the tears,
the constancy of all those faltering years,
the running game,
torn from the pages of your book,
read a thousand times in the darkness,
the silence of the shadows moving in time,
to the passage of our sun.
Come, sit a while, hold my hand,
watch the moonlight bathe our world
in her silver balm,
the restive calm of gentle limbs,
wrapped in the swaddling cloth of innocence.

© Richard Michael Parker 2012

Waves

-Waves-

True love knows no end,
nor does it know a beginning my friend,
for it was, even before you discovered it,
even before it had opened your eyes,
with it's infinite tenderness,
or the passion of it's fiery blow,
corpulently born in the belly of the world below,
had rifled your senses,
and shot you through with it's fire.
It was here before you had even acknowledged it's presence,
and will be here,
long after the remnants of your desires have faded;
The final vestige of your will, sacrificed,
burnt upon it's holy funeral pyre.

It flows through the infinite soul,
where time is not linear,
connecting it's seconds through meaning,
it's hours in associations and feelings.
Eons pass, in fragmentary breaths,
love, woven between the gaps in the stillness.
Forgotten souls,
people and events, rediscovered,
the secret thread of life uncovered...
Eternity, is but a moment,
a breath in the light of loves blessed truth.

How many lives do we live?
How many times do we meet those we have loved,
unremembered?

Eternity... Yes!
It is a beautiful word,
and the space between each sound
every syllable that has been heard,
is filled with the steeping waves of love,
washed upon a shore,
the silence and the certainty,
together, evermore.

© Richard Michael Parker 2013

The Silken Gown

The Silken Gown

No matter how splendid, travels.
There is always something wondrous about coming home.

The silken gown, strewn across the bed,
like a second skin, shed...
The drop of your delicate shoulders,
the unimaginable joy as you swept through the room,
lighting all those darkened corners,
your bright flowing hips,
the delicate slips of silken skin,
brushed, crushed from within.

To watch you sleep,
long dark curls, lingering upon the slip,
loves softened yielding bosom, your fulsome lip,
plucked in the ripeness of this mid-summers moon.
The suckling kiss, the petalled rose in bloom,
full parted...
Heaving against this alabaster shore,
rising with the swell, uncharted,
surging from the oceans pearly depths,
Je t'adore.

I have always loved these moments,
late in summer, awake within the dappled midnight hour,
swooning in the beauty and the heat,
soft emanations in the night,
doe eyes caught in the moonlit bloom of your soul,
peeking from out a forest of soft shadows,
your silken gown, The cool fall of softened fingers...

Home...

© Richard Michael Parker 2013