Ghost

/gōst/ Pronunciation [gohst]
–noun
1. a disembodied spirit imagined, usually as a vague, shadowy or evanescent form, as wandering among or haunting living persons.
2. a mere shadow or semblance; a trace
3. a remote possibility

you keep changing…
a glimpse in a window
a half smile in passing
caught glance, chancing through

ghost rider

you hide and seek
visiting by proxy
kind words that peek
from isp anonymity

ghost writer

photos of times passed
make believe pictures
of ideal happiness
motivational wishes

ghost images

let’s play a game
I’ll wave a wand
with magical proclaim
you appear from dreamland

ghost of a chance

honestly, truthfully
I want you to be
so real for me
but you’re an ideal
…
incorporeal

give up the ghost

focus on the now:
letting go fragile
hope: you might just show
and make it worthwhile

ghost of a smile…

ink lined

I am drawing a line in the sand
it’s a mark, and a boundary
it’s a visual representation of what I have planned
it’s there, so you can see
what, and who I am

I am drawing a line on our friendship
it’s a mark of trust and giving
it’s measure of our mutual dynamic
it’s there for understanding
what we are, in sync

I have drawn a line around my heart
it’s a wall, that’s built high
it’s a measure of how I’ve set myself apart
built against use, and take and pry
what is independent: stalwart…

I am walking the line of my life
setting my own rhythm, my own choices
it’s a break: an emotive, cleaving knife
against leading lines of past influences
what I am, left to my own device

Where do you draw the line?
What matters: what’s right or wrong?
Tell me, how do you define…
song lines, battle lines: your stroke, long
drawn: an indelible, ink fixed sign.

boomerang – part two

I think it’s inevitable that sometimes contacts and links we have made over the years will come back to haunt us. We can drift apart from people, or conversely the break can be quite sudden.  Either way, the parting is made and you move on.

Or so you would hope.

Sometimes the other party decides that perhaps things aren’t over and they recontact you.

Often this is done honestly and it’s all above board, and if I choose not to renew that contact, that is my choice to make. But sometimes, just sometimes, I will renew the friendship – if the approach is forthright and open from the start.

What I do not appreciate is cloak and dagger stealthy tactics that are intentionally designed to deceive.

That happened over the last day or so and I seriously didn’t appreciate the ruse. Especially when said person used one of my other online friends to get to me using an ‘alternate’ identity. If it happens again, I’ll cut him off the same way as I just did today.

I don’t take this kind of thing lying down, and I sure as hell won’t play ball with you if you pull a stunt like that with me.

This isn’t pointed at my argonaut friend. I think you are possibly from a different era, and at least you were up front and honest in your comments.

Sweetest smile hath sharpest tooth -  and that goes for me too .  Consider this a warning.

Eleutherios

“Neither Being nor Non-being
neither air nor earth nor space:
what was enclosed? where?
under whose protection?
What was water, deep, unfathomable?
Neither death nor immortality, day nor night -
but One breathed by itself with no wind.
Nothing else. Darkness swathed in darkness, unmanifest water.
The One, hidden by void,
felt the generation of heat, came into being
as Desire, first seed of Mind…”

- Rig Veda

There was only ever one
dark born
in the deepest void of night
Phanès, golden amber bright
Eros, violet primordial desire
kindler of passion’s fire

would you deny her
now bound up
in serpent coils
tendrils
of fleeting lust
love, dazed
now turned to dust
in trembling hands

Protogenos watches
with sorry eyes
His once ultimate prize
fallen, now lies
silently weeping
for what once was
an open heart given
like a full blown lily
heady with the scent
of ardent rapture
now rent
in two

so

pure…

makes harder
these steps
away
and the taste
of liberation is
bitter sweetly
lingering
as memory
clings

like a small child in
cold winds

Oh that you would wrap your wings
around me once more
to feel the white heat ardor
as pure as ionised air
as clean as crystal water
as deep as ebon Erebus
the devotional chaos
from which you burst
full formed

but Mnemosyne
gently mocks with
a jaded smile
as she reminds me
that freedom’s trial
is setting free
him who you hoped
would be
the One

definition of friendship

The term ‘definition’ can mean two things:

1) The establishment of the boundaries and confines of something… be it the contours of a body, the geographical boundaries of a map… or how long it takes for a friend to respond and the depth and nature of that response.

2) The meaning of a thing… what exactly is the meaning of a prelonged glance, the cast away comment, or in this case – the dynamic of two people in a platonic relationship?

I’ve had good cause to examine both aspects over the last month or so because my own boundaries have changed, as have the dynamics involved with the contact I have had.. or not had, with friends.

I will point out at this early juncture, that this is not a discussion designed to ‘have a go’ at any one party. I am not in the market for fueling existing paranoias. I am however, in the market for examining what I perceive to be valuable in a friend – and what marks them distinctly apart from an ‘acquaintance’.

This was brought firstly into sharp focus when I was leaving my last place of work. I decided to have an impromptu evening out with some people I considered to be closer friends.

Unfortunately, office politics being what they are, this resulted in some people being offended … as one who shall not be named, quoted to the office in general… “oh, is this the night out for the popular people?”

This is simply an apochryphal story to outline the difficulties of defining that boundary between friend and acquaintance (or ‘colleague’).

I think friendship is something that perhaps provides us with comfort – it’s like a safety cushion against the hard world. It’s a level of certainty you simply don’t have with an acquaintance. It’s known, established, solid ground:  with a friend you can confide inner thoughts and feelings. It’s like having a private conspiracy or joke against the Big Bad World. With a friend you can exchange a meaningful glance or comment, and for them to smile wryly and nod back. It’s a level of understanding – of comprehension based on a complicit, almost conspiratorial exchange of thoughts and feelings, often, although not always, based on a commonality of values. But it is based on trust.

I think when some of that commonality goes, then that’s when the friendship can become more distant. Perhaps you no longer share the same beliefs, or your moral boundaries have changed. The trust has gone – you are no longer certain of a trustable response.

There goes that word again:  boundaries.  Definitions and shapings… lines drawn up to cut up and segment a bewildering world according to viewpoint and feelings.

Perhaps if those boundary line definitions change too much between you and a friend, then maybe we lose the mutual map. We become lost, adrift and distant.

Then, I ask, what is the meaning of a friendship? What is it’s meaning? What depth does it go to?

This is far more of an ambivalent, undefined area. Some say that each friendship is different – that each is unique, based on experience, upon level of contact and what we do with that contact.

I have thought long and hard about this… especially in the light of four particular friends I have – who I stay in contact with online. In each case, the contact is quite sporadic, but in each case when we finally do catch up, it is with meaningful depth and discussion. We share long emails or chats online, and we discuss things that mean a lot to each of us in detail. Both myself and each friend in question will reciprocate with a lengthy response, that validates our friendship fully. We have both shared, nodded and winked, and beaten The Big Bad World back to a copable distance. It doesn’t matter if the next missive comes in a months time, we know that when it does come, it will fulfil the needs of a friendship dynamic.

What, can I ask, do we do when a friend becomes distant? Do we try to grapple back the common ground? Do we try to renegotiate our map boundaries so we might find one another again? Do we lamblast them with emails and texts until they answer? And what if they do answer? Are they happy to do so? Are they even happy to be a friend anymore?

I think, as a last parting gesture, the best thing a former friend can do is to admit that they or you, or the both of us, have changed direction… and that it’s ok. People change, as do their needs and wants and beliefs.  Sometimes, we need to part ways in order to unburden the other person who no longer understands us (or we no longer understand them).  We then need to find other people who now better fit and understand our personal road map, and the definitions of what we need as a friend: to nod and wink conspiratorially at the Big Bad World – and get on with our lives.

incubus

To sleep: perchance to dream: ay, there’s the rub;

For in that sleep of death what dreams may come

When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,

Must give us pause: there’s the respect

That makes calamity of so long life;

For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,

The oppressor’s wrong, the proud man’s contumely,

The pangs of despised love, the law’s delay…

~ Hamlet.

push-me pull-you emotional tides

writhe, as giving-need yields to selfish-greed

this long lost lover, my once close friend

surfaces, like memory long buried

a sharp pang of lost feeling

leaving me stung and reeling

as drowsy eyed, lips parted, cracked and dried

utter the name of him, who I’ve denied

and long since left behind…

turbulent dreams, bring the voices

seeking second chances: changed choices

plaintive eyes, asking to reprise

past scenarios, played out: outcomes revised

with happily-ever-after endings

a washing away of all our sins

this ghost once embraced in love

emotional echoes, behoved to let go of…

How is it that those walked away from

come, like nightgaunts, to haunt again?

with whispers like a hot, dry sirocco

thirsty, rasping, incubus, unhallowed

reaching out with grasping tendril hands

nightmarish wails of ‘what could have been’

that raise like a howling wind that screams…

I awake.

and night’s fevered cauchemar subsides

phantoms flee, residual now, those anxious cries

this final retreating vampire grasps his last

I seal this door, closed, upon the past

misgiving feelings routed: out…

damned guilt begone, along with doubt,

I’ll not dwell on what was not meant to be

Secure now, that alone, I now stand free.

… for Clare.