The Nostalgia Poem

Magic.
What an illusion. It's my favourite one, at least for now.
Midnight Oil and New Order still play on the radio, but it's not the same.
People again wear the clothes, but it's not the same.
I still see Steve Strange and Midge Ure on YouTube, but there's been a passing.
What has gone, well, it has a name.
Magic.

And we all carry it. Or carried it.
Folly is bound in the heart of a child;
Enchantment is bound in the heart of a youth.
Looking back is sweet, but the question burns:
What, if anything, may be rekindled,
And how did we let life pound it out of us?

I don't want what those days precipitated
And they weren't better days
They were just ours
hours
yours, and mine

We really were great, you and me
I loved to dance with you
my illusion, my sweet sweet substance
the world surrounding me, the world in my head
totally the same to me,
different in reality
and this is the learning
the growth
the grinding
the becoming
the leaving

The seeing.

Ah, but it was a sweet illusion, the magic.
I used to love to dance with you.
Have you left forever, and,
If you knocked on my door,
Would I take photos and tell my kids
or invite you in for another soiree of colourful illusion?

To see or to see the other.
Illusion; that which isn't.
Is it really not? Say it isn't so, at least for now,
And let's dance. Twirl with me, and let's forget.
And remember.

Magic.
What an illusion.
What magic.
I used to love to dance with you.

We're interesting beings, I think.

We reach for imagined places
Emotional spaces
That exist not in brick and steel
But in other truth from that

We collect together around our fires
Our similar quests for expanses of life
In the irrational real
The wonder of yearnings collected

We are drawn together
Not by lives, lifestyles or ideas
But by common reaching for the non-existent
By sharing our dreams
Our homes
Our tears

Coffee is our mortar
And our bricks are open sky
As we dream together
Of flying into purpose and freedom

Emotional spaces collect us
Imagined places cause us to see
One another, and find us
Imagining life
Together.

Ever have days like this?

Shut down.
A wall.
Stop.
Monosyllabic mucus covers my eyes
Blind to the stench that surrounds, blind to the colour
Blind, surviving, blind, sleeping
Unimpressed
Unimpressable
Unimpressionable

It's a still place
And perhaps not
the place of death
beheld by eyes that don't look here
Eyes that have no vocabulary
To describe this space.
This un.

Perhaps this is where it all begins again
And perhaps not; perhaps it never began at all
And we just pretended it did
And danced to a tune played on a paper harp
And sang and shouted to a parade of dust and shells
Lauded a process where joy was derived
From a construct, a society without direction
A stagnant pond
A dying frond
A vacant stare at a subject on the horizon
Which never takes form
...but which has great music.

Perhaps the people who come here
Are those from whom it truly will begin again.
Perhaps this place is where the seeds should be sown
Of repulsion, intolerance, unacceptance, fury.
Of revolution.

Perhaps destruction is the greatest hope of all.
Where we dream of a world with essence
To reinforce the fanfare
But destruction is itself a construct
And far too much work
And far too far to walk for the ragged.
It's too far gone.

Shut down.
A wall.
Stop.

Howie!

Well, this is cool. Early this year, 80's-synthpop-legend Howard Jones performed in Brisbane. Now, for those who don't know him, Howard's not just your average I-got-famous-for-my-hair kinda guy--he's a standout songwriter, and has reinvented his sound beautifully into the new millennium--his Revolutions of the Heart album is an awesome job. And when we saw him, it was a two-piece band--him on piano and a brilliant guitarist--and he carried the whole thing off superbly. A true performer. Anyway, all of that said, I took my 1985 Roland Juno-106 synthesizer (classic keyboard) along for him to autograph.

The extra cool thing: someone got it on video, and posted it on YouTube! I'm not in shot, but the voice at the start telling him to sign the Juno "as big as you like" is mine. I'm a little chuffed! Thought it was worth mentioning. Here's the link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2JD4QQmGwvw&mode=related&search=

:)

The Suburban Life

Well, I feel like a true home owner now that I've bought a lawn mower. I found a good one on ebay and snagged it for a hundred bucks. It just involved a trip from Mansfield to Burpengary to pick it up. Which is fine, I guess, except for the 3 car pile-up that turned the Gateway Arterial into the running of the snails...

So, half an hour later than anticipated, I arrived in Burpengary to pick up the Victa. Nice place--semi rural, very quiet. The seller was a nice bloke, a sparky who works for Energex. I got him to start the mower up, and we ran it for a bit. We then hoisted it into our Mazda 3 for the cross-town trip.

I must admit, though, I had no idea of what was coming next. The Chroming.

Driving along with my windows up due to the rain (Yes! Rain! At last.), I got intimately involved with the fuel and exhaust Victa coctail. A sweet suburban smell. And wait--what was that I saw out of the corner of my eye? No, it was nothing.

The cars in front of me were going dreamily slow, and their consistency seemed softer, somehow. Almost like I could tap them with my own Mazda shaped sponge and spring away again. What was that object in my perhipheral vision? I'm sure it had tentacles.

And then it came, crawling across the motorway like a blanket of pink polyps. It took me a while to determine the nature of this invasion, and even how the cars in front of me managed to avoid it. Skill, I guess. More tentacles. Octopuses? Octopi? Octopotami? Pink slime with suction caps.

As the car kept driving itself, I was able to lean out the window for a closer look, reaching down to the road that was zipping past at 78 spongebobs per squarepants. Scooping up a mass of pink, I found that it didn't detach from the collective, but was somehow drawing me into it. There was friendship and warmth there. I was becoming one with the slime, and it was a sweet thing.

I let my Mazda swab itself to our house with the mower and left for my new home.

Huh? Wha...? Windows! I wound down the windows and got some oxygen.

That was a close one! ;-)

New Reasons (poem)

Well, I just wrote something that will probably find its way to www.chuvv.com, but I thought I'd put it here as well. What can I say? I get a little melancholy sometimes, and think about the past. Here's a poem called New Reasons, about what I guess is ultimately the getting of wisdom. I just wish others didn't have to pay the price for my tuition.

Drew


New Reasons

Stumbling through blindness
I learned to walk and see
And in sweet sadness saw
What I'd left behind me

Not a perfect trail
In fact, quite the opposite
And in my sight I find
Curious cause to revisit

And amongst my various successes
I find new reasons to mourn
Not just to cast off and continue
But to pay homage to souls I've hurt
To lives who've similarly moved on

If all earthly resources were mine
And I could even move heaven
I would turn it all backwards for a time
To a time where I could bestow upon myself
Eyes. Feet. Wisdom for the avoiding.

And yet I can't, and instead find
New sins for the absolving.

And in lives from which I've departed
Where scars are healed and vanished,
I'm but a phantom furnisher of fissures past
And am not missed, but regretted.
These lives die inside me
And yet unjustly steel me to live more

Eyes. Feet. Wisdom for the avoiding.
How might I walk so as not to hurt
And how might I hold precious those souls
Who are inherently more precious
Than my ability to behold?

How does my dissociated heart forget
What miracles surround me?

I need eyes for the miracles
Feet for the journey
Wisdom for the healing.
That I would be perceivably precious.
That I would become not a phantom
But a presence of closed fissures
And a hand to touch you, my friend.

And in these I find new reasons.
A past inescapable
A present sorrowful and sweet
And a future connected.

The Weekend's a-Comin'!

...and bring it on, I say! Man, these last few weeks have been CRAZY. Let's see, where did it all start. Ah yes, BUYING A HOUSE. Then moving into it, then going to the Hillsong conference in Sydney (can everyone say "church roadtrip"?), then getting sick. Of course. Only human.

But Hillsong was really great. I was so impressed with the heart of the place. It's important to me that a place that has become famous for worship songs, actually wasn't pushing hard on "here are the A-B-C's of leading worship". No, there was a whole lot more passion in there for knowing the person of Jesus, and affecting the world around us. Power to them, and more of that agenda for us all.

This weekend, I think I'll eat quite a bit of chocolate. And roast some lamb. :)