I feel better when I see your smile

I’m better when I look into your eyes

I’m gratefull I carried you safe inside

Now you are my precious child

I feel better that you give me strength

I’m better when your close to me

I’m gratefull that you give me hope

not much else could compete

I feel better now you make me feel alive

I’m better now your in my life

Gratefull for my beautifull child

I’m better now I’m a mum

This is my strength to carry on

Once I was a child innocent and complete. I thought world my Oyster my friends and I were the elite. No problems or worries we could not defeat. Secure in the knowledge as we played in our Street. Adventures abound the occasional frown. Spirits so high sad thoughts seldom found. And if there was Spite or a rival to fight, Our anger short lived was gone overnight. Dependable neighbours. greetings cheery and bright. Community spirit friendships held tight. We shared our emotions the highs and the lows. Whatever the weather our doors never closed. Children no longer run in our streets crying with laughter stamping their feet. Children no longer play in our streets. Welcome warm sunny days, smiles sticky with sweets. Children no longer play on our streets.

If she could sing Her voice would sound like fledglings On the wing in spring. But her songs are silent butterflies. Her musical wings have been clipped Along with her childhood, Her trust and spirit stolen. Extinguished through fear and betrayal. Occasionally she glimpse her image in a mirror She would mime with a hurt smile, “and the coloured girl’s go, do do do do do do do do do” But behind sad eyes screams a woman’s voice. Her desire paralysed through psychological war fare. In school she sings in unison. Nursery rhymes hymns playtime chants. No one there tells her to shut up. Or to keep secrets In the playground her shadow whispers. Until she reaches her front door. Then Once again the Joy that was song And colourful strings is mute! Injustice became victory & truth one Sunday Kindness touched her soul Acknowledgement gave her liberty As the inaudible screams soared towards the sun The battle was over for….. “and the coloured girl’s go, do do do do do do do do do”

Breathe, and consider.

Use perspective, take the time

To appreciate the stars,

And the moon up in the sky.

Be thankful,

Take the chance to give.

Hold on to hope,

Not the negative.

Seek not reward,

But take the win in a smile.

Small steps taken,

Move us on all the while.

Be open, grow.

Banish fear.

Yesterday is gone,

Today is right here.

Listen

Listen Hear the wind in the trees, gently tickling the leaves. Hear the tall grasses breathe in the summer’s warm breeze. I’m there with you. I hear it, too. I love you. Listen. Hear the distant train as it trundles away. Hear the sweet song of the bird that chooses to stay. I’m there with you. I hear them, too. I love you. Listen. Hear the crackle of the sticks as the fire grows quick, Hear the spark of the light as it burns so bright. I’m there with you. I hear them, too. I love you. Listen. Hear the snow falling silently, dulling the pain. Hear the roof holding strong, under the rain. I’m there with you. I hear them, too. I love you. Listen. I feel better when I’m there with you. I hear them, too. I love you.

I feel better when I resonate with airborne hum over magnetic fields whose shape and colour morph time and tongue. I feel better when I am within scientific beauty hewn from generations whose brilliance, separated by centuries but bound by city walls, transform diagnosis and track the patterns. shaping fall and rise. I feel better when I tingle through the harmonies of human folk whose chords and truths thread cultures and faith. I feel better when I am walking through landscapes unchanged by millennia whose geometry, shaped for shelters sketched by deadmen’s shoes, couple ancestors and ribbon the times. switching chaos to order. I feel better when I sun bask eyes blind orange fleckled by azure dance whose rhythms and coupling beat to Maxwell’s drum. I feel better when I am dappled by light’s eternal nomads whose flashes, through sun tunnels dug deep by quantum waves, trigger sparks and shatter the dark. giving day from night.

Well I am getting older. I’m surely not that unfit. Every man needs a belly . I just enjoy the odd cake. Anyway, beer’s good for the soul. Wine’s made of grapes, it’s one of your five a day. Everything’s bad for you these days. I’m sure I’ll manage it. I’m sure I’ll keep up. I’ve got all the gear. What do you mean no idea. I feel every step. My lungs do their best. Muscles pulse with heat. Heart pounding in my ears and chest. Drenched in sweat. Beginning to regret. It starts to come together. Body and mind in unison The endorphin’s hit every sinew. It’s over who would’ve thought it. Mind clear, body exhausted. All stress and worry left in the dirt. I’ll think I’ll do a marathon after all it wasn’t that bad. How much could that hurt?

Well known sights, smells & sounds, Familiar footsteps on hallowed ground. A journey of habit made a thousand times. Through choice or obligation, All manner of occasion, Close or distant relation, They all belong here. A place of memory, history and foundation, The centre point calling across the nation. Breaking the everyday routine, Drawing everyone back to their mean. Where everybody is equally craving a kind look, smile or word, That place of sanctuary where I’m happy to be seen and even occasionally heard.

The tree locked in by

Thick encrusted cylindriform bark

Shutting it out from sky, sun shine, moon light.

Rough winds shudder thud and slam against its

Massive woody hulk.

Within tight cytoplasmic cells, membranes surround

Living organisms.

Tissues and DNA

Cramped and clustered with bacterial entities

Huddle and battle for survival.

A smell of urine and bodily materials at its base

Where casual drunks, the homeless and love-struck passers by

Have carelessly left their forensic identities

Slopped out in the ancient cracks and crevices of its skeletal root system

Protruding from the ground in grotesque architectural gestures

Distorted and constrained.

Adults and children play in the dark inner cavity

Spying at the outside world through gaps in

Nature’s perpetual

Entertainment model.

Sunday walkers, youthful gangs and family groups

Shuffle round at certain times and on specific days staring, mumbling,

Blowing smoke from secret cigarettes and joints, hiding,

Contemplate and argue on

the justice and

Injustice of their human state, how they got here and what will happen

When they are finally released.

Another day another enchantment, as my naive heart seeks it’s nourishment, and I hope for things that are seldom seen.

With you, is there hope of an unfulfilled dream?

Or will confidence shake?

And reality awake to the sight and the sound of a world run aground?

Will loneliness be my only caress – or fate surely thrust the two of us into life with each other?

where we could discover that two against the world can win.

Then this fragile heart can really start giving.

The view has become full of promise

As nesting birds in pairs

Signify a change of luck

And flowers, as if in a relay race

Pass the batten from one species to another;

Krokus’ and Snowdrops to Daffodils

Daffodils to Bluebells and Tulips

Earthworms and roots below are furiously burrowing

Whilst the surface appears a place of serene beauty

As with Swans and Ducks upon a lake

But this germination is not unlike imagination

Where seeds, like ideas grow

Challenging the ‘Old Season’ – which has had its day

Just as the blossom on the trees give way to fruit

And berries of the black, the green and red

Which become a store of energy In the struggle for longer days

As we strive to keep darkness at bay

There will be time enough for darkness In the winter of our lives

GARDEN HAIKU SERIES – TU BISHEVAT: ecological awareness and spring tree planting dedication festival

Children sleep and play.
Bird song, wood smoke, candle light
Mingle. Sirens scream.

Solstice. Summer and
Midwinter gardens. Singing.
Sacred senses wake.

Flames lick detritus.
Spirits howl. Walk the fire path
Chanting regrets.

Garden ghost dreamers.
Distance recycles the past.
Smoke curls in the wind.

Fiery moods caress
Labyrinthine memories.
Leaves flare in the fire.

Smoke curls in the wind.
Leaves flare in the fire. Dreaming.
Sacred senses wake.

The birds sang as the wind blew gently in the warm summer breeze,

shadowed in abundance of greenery, towered by whispering trees.

We walked together through the wild meadow, filled with blades of green,

I say you’re a true beauty of mother nature, the sweetest thing I’d ever seen.

I kissed your lips, then you placed your head on my shoulder,

I say Wherever life takes us, I’ll be there for you, even when the world gets older.

We make a pact between the deep blue sky and the beautiful terrain,

I say You are my world, you make my heart race, so crazy, so crazy insane.

That’s why I feel better when I am with you,

That’s why I feel better when I am with you.

The sun began to set into a golden glow,

I say girl, you’ve captured my heart, captured my soul.

We know this space is our special place,

I tell You baby, you have such a beautiful face.

We embrace the scenery, it brings real peace and joy,

I say you are my girl and I am your boy.

We make a pact between the deep blue sky and the beautiful terrain,

I say You are my world, you make my heart race, so crazy, so crazy insane.

That’s why I feel better when I am with you,

That’s why I feel better when I am with you.

Your eyes are as deep as the bluest ocean, With a smile that’s brighter than the sun,

Our time together, has only just begun.

We make a pact between the deep blue sky and the beautiful terrain,

I say You are my world, you make my heart race, so crazy, so crazy insane.

That’s why I feel better when I am with you,

That’s why I feel better when I am with you.

Our footsteps reach the sand,

Still Together hand in hand.

That’s why I feel better with you,

That’s why I feel better with you.

When the dark curtains that envelop our household are strung back by your cheeks.

Your smile the only illumination of my day.

Imperfect teeth cutting through jagged words and flailing fists.

The laugh, by no means angelic, not the laugh penned by romance authors,

a laugh of raw, unfiltered happiness, alone in a void of misery.

A reminder of hope in a seemingly hopeless world.

A smile of childish naivety, striking through the reaching fingers of approaching adulthood.

No longer wholly innocent.

A smile that contradicts many of the daily emotions you fight.

Yet is the singular thing that carries you through.

Reminding you of moments worth living for.

Reminding me that you, our memories together, good and bad.

The smiles and laughs that we shared through childhood, will always be worth holding out for.

When I’m down or feeling flat,

I think about a pug in a hat.

When I’m tired and full of sighs,

I think of hedgehogs with goggly eyes.

When I toss and turn ‘cause I can’t sleep,

I think of pink fields with purple sheep.

When I’m fed up of all the knocks,

I think of lizards in fluffy socks.

When I can’t get up ‘cause I’m too low,

I think of penguins playing tick tack toe.

When I wish I’d never been born,

I think of squirrels chewing ears of corn.

When I feel I just can’t do a thing,

I think of frogs decked out with bling.

When I sit hoping this feeling passes,

I think of parrots wearing reading glasses.

When I start to think I’ve lost the plot,

I think of a bulldog asleep in a cot.

When I’m mad or feeling sour,

I think of hippos dancing on a flower.

All these things can make me grin,

Like a cow playing chess on a wheelie bin.

So next time you’re down or feeling flat,

Remember to think of a pug in a hat.

I feel better when I am….. ….sat at the piano at the end of a day

When people have poured out their distress.

We share this pain through words and music.

It drenches me, leaving me soaked and weighed down.

I let these feelings flow through my fingers,

Bypassing the conscious mind.

Chords and melodies arise from the deep,

Finding form for the unformed,

Expression for the inexpressible.

Notes come like a torrent,

Building up in power and intensity,

Breaking through the dam of my defences,

Cleansing me, refreshing me,

Ready for another day.

This is my medicine,

My way to survive the merging of minds.

I am not just the therapist, I too need this process,

Coming together in a healing river,

Then diverging,

Finding our own calmer waters.

Rain, Guns ‘n’ Roses and Wispas I’ve bitten.

Perspectives I got from not living in Britain.

Dave Gilmour solos and Beatles CDs.

These are some things that can help me be me.

That slip of a girl that sings blues deep inside her.

Tim Burton movies with Winona Ryder.

Sonnets, acrostics, pantoums, villanelles:

Just some more things that aren’t totally hell.

When there’s letters

From the bailiff

And the D Dubya P

I simply persist

With the things on my list

And things continue to be.

Greggs apple danish, with less fruit than icing.

Ideas that tempt me like apples, enticing.

Snakes in the garden that tell me what’s what.

There’s a few more I have never forgot.

Trying new things and the joys I discover.

Bob Dylan songs that are easy to cover.

Words that fall nimbly to pre-ordered slots.

It seems that I’m happy with rather a lot.

When I’m hunting

For the happy

And it’s all gone wrong,

These things can remind me I already found it.

I had it all along.

You looked stunning as you danced to the music without a care,

In skinny jeans, a Rolling Stones T shirt, and a pretty rose. in your long blonde hair,

Your loveliness struck me like lightening,

Your chemistry was hypnotising,

I watched you laughing as you danced,

I couldn’t take my eyes off you, I was so entranced.

Captivated by every step you made,

I moved closer and closer as the music played.

We danced and you let me hold your body tight,

Nothing else mattered, I knew it was love at first sight.

I took the rose from your hair, Put it between my teeth,

Tickled your nose with its soft white petals and its tiny green leaves.

Your eyes gazed into mine

Wow You looked God damn fine.

The music slowed our bodies began to sway,

I looked above and said Thank You Lord, then I began to pray.

You put your number in my phone,

You Said call me, when you get home.

You read my silly love texts, I kept sending,

The rest is history, like a fairy-tale ending.

We got the keys to our new place, even took out a loan,

I Carried you over the thresh hold, worked our butts off, to keep a good home.

I tell you every day, you mean more than anything on this earth and more,

its only you girl that I’d die for, it’s you I adore.

I’ll say I’ll love you even if your eyes start to wrinkle and your hair turns silvery grey,

I’ll love you the best way I can and I’ll try to Keep it that way.

I’ll rub your legs if they begin to ache with pain

I’ll do anything for you, even dance naked in the rain.

And I’d give anything to be with you forever,

Because it’s about the love you give when we’re together.

And One day I’ll pray I’ll marry you and if you finally say I do,

I’ll give you my life forever more because I’m truly in love with you.

If we’re lucky to hear the patter of tiny feet

I’ll make sure I’ll work hard to make ends meet.

I’ll tell you every day, I’ll love you until the world stops turning.

I’ll treat you with respect and I’ll never stop learning,

How to love you.

My Precious Rose.

Sacred rock of stolen starlight,

Echoes of flames from distant giants,

Behind the curtain,

This is where you live.

Miles of air lick cheeks cold

Flames stir up as breath is born

Frozen oceans greet your lips and softly, not quite silently, they melt into a final kiss.

This is where you live.

I feel better when I feel like me, when I feel completely free.

When my movements flow, in that moment I know, that I’m free.

Free to be me.

I feel better when the music plays, it helps me move, it makes me sway.

I feel better when the rhythms surround, as my body is enveloped in sound.

For that brief moment in time, my body again becomes mine.

I feel better when I’m with good friends, funny and caring amazing friends.

Tea, cake and dog walks too, it’s incredible what laughter can do.

Chat and chocolate can make things right, I enjoy the moment and brief respite.

I feel better when hitting that ball, that tantalising, yellow tennis ball.

I move with ease across the court, impossible you may have thought.

As I strike the ball, and run to the net, I feel exhilarated and briefly forget.

I feel better when I remember what I’ve achieved, more than I could have ever believed.

I’m so much more than this new facet of me, this thing which they simply call PD.

I feel better when… I am in open countryside

The earth steadies my feet and is my foundation

The trees create a loving embrace around me

The sky opens my eyes to the ‘infinite possibilities born of faith’

And the air invites me to breathe in life and breathe out any darkness within

When I walk within nature’s kingdom

I feel her gently calling me to let go of all my cares and worries;

like a good friend, she listens to the troubles of my heart

Soothes my soul..

and in returning from the walk..

I am refreshed, re-energised

More balanced and centred

Alive, and glad of it.