"Fly away, my soul ...

Dear me, dear me ... I meant to do this chronologically but occasionally get it wrong. Here's something I wrote to the same guy a few months earlier. I think it was when he went off to Coorg to try and get off the smack and straighten his life out.

Fly away, my soul
I can't hold you back any longer.
Go and look for the sun.

But if you get tired of searching
come back to the warmth of my arms.
Just let me know when you're coming back
so I can shed my armour.
(Written on October 17, 1985)

What I like about it is the way I expressed feeling exposed and vulnerable without him, having to armour myself in order to survive without him. (And we think this is "love"?!)

A few months later I wrote another version of this poem, by which time I was, like him, badly hooked on smack, and I think I (or perhaps we) had begun to realise that our love affair was a threesome - him, me, smack - and that our being together only pulled us down further.

Fly away, my soul
We can't be one any longer.
It's time we looked for the sun.
And when we've found what we're looking for
come back to the warmth of my arms.
Just let me know when you're coming back,
so I can shed my armour.
(written on 22.3.86)

Big Ears

Here's a bit of wisdom from an unlikely source:

"A painting that goes wrong is better than one you never even tried to paint."

Thus spake Big Ears to his little friend Noddy (yes the little chap with the bell on the end of his hat - the one who lives in Toyland). I'm hoping that these words were written by Enid Blyton herself, but perhaps they were written by whoever writes the script for the Noddy cartoon. Whoever wrote it, it makes much sense to me, and I'm glad little kids got to hear it too.


I want to sing like the birds, not worrying about who hears or what they think - Jalaluddin Rumi

"Forever pulling down ...

"Dear me!" isn't enough here. It's more like, "Good GRIEF!" I was almost too embarrassed to post this one, but then I thought: maybe there's a lesson in here for someone who surfs by. A lesson about low self-esteem and bad poetry.

Perhaps I should have titled this "Forever pulling down my pants"! Or the more succinct "Doormat". When will we girls ever learn? When do we open our eyes and see the ride for what it is?

Forever pulling down his days,
turning special moments sour,
being there when I'm not wanted,
dragging it out hour by hour.

Something somewhere is going wrong.
Something tells me that it's just me.
Somehow I'm not good enough
and we both end up feeling empty.

We make love and the next second he's dressed,
while I lie there sated but feeling like a whore.
And when he leaves, his kiss is cold,
and he's hurt as I've hurt him so many times before.

He very rarely asks for much,
but the times I've responded are so few to recall.
Yet he still loves me, I wonder why?
I love him but somehow can't give him my all.

I wonder if I'll ever do it right,
when I'll learn to put his feelings before mine,
to give him, without making an effort,
the intoxicating shivers of love's sparkling wine.

(written on Dec 23rd, 1985, at 8:15 pm)