Just for one day...

 "I, I could be king. And you, you could be my queen."

David Bowie

I have given up trying to explain or define this unique blessing / curse that is my eyesight. This gift I wish I could share with all my dearest friends & family. And yet, simultaneously I wouldn't wish upon my worst enemy... last thing at night, I remove my glasses, what little vision I do have plunges into a spinning kaleidoscope of colours & intense (think impressionist painting or out-of-focus photograph) fire and intensity.
Every day environment, furniture & objects transformed into swirling Van Gogh like stars... Reaching out clumsily, more by intuition & memory, I put (throw?) my eyewear on my bedside table, all the world a swirl & a blur. I snatch one last up close & too personal glance at my mobile phone, to check the time. flick off my lamp (once again by memory more than overrated sight).... And: for thirty seconds, my mobile phs blue light throws a final, last-ditch upward afterglow onto the blur of contents on my table. A unique, comforting last blurry snapshot of colour and visual beautiful confusion. And then. abruptly, finally: night. Darkness.Tired, weary eyes slowly close, in search of, in hope for: sleep. Or, even better, to dream...

Two weeks into lockdown, I brought into the sanctuary & security of my bedroom (and included on my bedside table, amongst a collage of post-surgery pills, asthma sprays, eye drops, chocolate wrappers, solitary candle,
 eyewear, tiny vase with a fresh flower stolen from my front garden, glass of water). I add to this tiny jumbled array of flotsam & jetsam universe a framed photograph. taken of you & I on one of my (many) fiftieth global birthday parties... It still amazes me (to this day) that such a tiny, cheap & poorly-made picture frame, matt board & glass could (somehow! a miracle!!) contain such an immense & all-encompassing, giant, pure Leo heart

as big as yours.

Perhaps the biggest and most purest of heart in all the world? Yes, my sight may be frustratingly limited & incomplete. But I see some things in this world (the important things) that no one else will ever see. Well, not in quite the same way I do, anyway. But in this small stand alone example, more blessing than curse,

now the Afterglow blur before darkness, last thing I see (wrong word, find another later perhaps, in edit)

before darkness: a warm purple & blonde & flesh-tone blur. Perhaps this is it? your giant (invisible to all but me, perhaps?) one in seven billion heart... Is this what pure, unadulterated & true love (grown in distance, apartness, not close geographical proximity) looks like? A love so big & so strong it could illuminate

& cure and light up & set on fire this broken world...

Then. Once more. Darkness. I close my eyes. Once more seeking slumber. But I still continue to see & feel your warmth, your smile, your maji, in my mind's eye. I hold it there for as long as I can.

Goodnight beautiful Leo. 

  I hope for the briefest of moments, you too can share (distant yet close) my unique blessing & way of seeing.

A blur of love, yearning, nostalgia, mystery and the great unknown). I wish I could find & accompany you in the sleep that follows, in the luxury of a mutual dream... but a cocktail of pandemic & pain medication may not allow this sweet, just out of reach (but hoped for all the same) luxury... I'm SO sorry (in hindsight, in all this Covid-19 madness and uncertainty) that I missed your 40th Birthday celebrations in 2019. But (zombie apocalypse or crazed American President-induced Armageddon, withstanding), I promise in nine short years (on this new, as yet unrevealed) world we're all headed towards, I will be there for your 50th, like you were there for mine. This tyranny of distance & fickle artist income won't keep us apart. And with Bowie's voice & saxophone blazing in our ears & hearts, we'll burn up the dance floor. Please: All I ask of you is this... Don't be afraid to let this blind man lead. And just for a moment (or a lifetime), with Heroes spinning on the turntable

as our magic movie soundtrack moment, I'll show you this (more blessing than curse) way I have of seeing...

My 2020 vision.

Happy 41st Birthday, A!

"Put on your red shoes & dance the blues." David Bowie

(c) Brent M Harpur 2020.

(Originally written: 3AM, 8/5/2020.)

Call and Respond 11:11

I'm pleased for the flush. The words. The the the, I cannot find the words. Please be kindly. Eased from the blush: If you can't find the words,

settle for songs of birds. Lead me, blindly.

In this distance, I will hold you close.

(c) Holly Lee Philipson & Brent Harpur,

April 2020.

"When I don't write, I feel my world shrinking.

I feel I am in prison.

I feel I lose my fire and my colour.

It should be a necessity, as the sea needs to heave, and I call it breathing."

Anais Nin

This WaterSign would be more than content...

Here. Here, at a time when a lot of people in the world are frightened, dumbfounded, lost for words. I am thankful for the writers and the poets, whose outflowing of words, of wisdom; like water to cleanse and awaken us, they sate our thirst & moisten parched lips. I cast aside my umbrella, as a gentle, persistent rainfall brings our deserts and our gardens back to life again. Refilling our riverbeds and our lakes, helping us find our way back to the sea. I will add these mere droplets, tiny words of mine, to the universal ocean. And I will watch, with reverence and wonder, as the tides slowly rise. Today, for the first time since moving into my new home, I can hear the gasp, hiss and roar of the sea. Her ancient song, language and call, it enters me. I am soaked through, but born a-new. I feel her waves and her tide churn & froth deep inside me; healing me, healing the world. I am one. We are all one, with the flood. Tears & saltwater are now one & the same. I no longer wish to breathe underwater. I no longer yearn or learn to swim, dive or sail. No. In this new world we are hatching,

this Water-Sign would be more than content:

Just to breathe. And sigh.

Deeply, like the sea.

(-for W & H.)

(c)Brent M Harpur, 5/4/2020.

"In the thunder-crash / we're a million minds within a flash." Peter Gabriel, 'Here Comes the Flood'.

“Little islands are all large prisons; one cannot look at the sea without wishing for the wings of a swallow.” Sir Richard Francis Burton

“I am longing to be with you, and by the sea, where we can talk together freely and build our castles in the air.” Bram Stoker, 'Dracula'.

Begin Again...

 

There in the fire

deep in the flame

I see your face

I remember your name.

Distant yet close

in isolation

it's true

we're all losing (a little) our mind /

But please, all I ask

(in difficult moments)

is that we don't lose

our ability to be kind.

And there in the fire

deep in the flame

May we burn away our fears

our hurts & our shame.

A new world's a-coming,

and in the absence of cars, aircraft

 birdsong

it'll return /

Spiders will be welcomed back into our homes,

ancient rituals and songs

we'll re-learn.

For there in the fire

deep in the flame

May we never lose hope

we can begin

again.

Yeah, there in the fire

deep in the flame

When all else is ash...

Love will remain.

(-for W.)

(c)Brent M Harpur, 30/3/2020.

"It's the end of the world as we know it [it's time I spent some time alone] and I feel fine. Fine."

(Michael Stipe/r.e.m.)

April Fool Lockdown Blues, Part One...

In these desperate times,

none of us (really) have anything to lose /

So much to gain, perhaps

and if we're really lucky, a distant muse?

And all of this ought to come as

no surprise :

Some of us will be reduced to ash,

scattered in wind

And others,

we will rise.

Try to stay strong, dear.

It won't be long, dear.

I close my eyes, think of you.

And if I'm thinking of you,

you're right here in my bubble with me, too.

In my mind, my heart

(on the other side of this ocean)

I can see that tiny spot - you know the one,

just behind your knees /

Like the wind I will gently blow on it

& find you humming,

like the re-appearing bees.

And when all this is over,

when all of this is through /

I'm going to try real hard

to find a way back to you. 

(-for a distant muse.)

(c)Brent M Harpur, 1/4/2020.

"Oh, that I could shrink the surface of the world,

  so that suddenly I might find you standing at my side."  Wang Chien

Like a week in the desert...

(Uluru, 2015.)

In this space between the space
My heart's a-racing in the human race
In desert sky your face I trace
I'm lost again, without a trace.

Stars so close I can feel them on my skin
Your skin so close I can taste the stars
Howling dingoes the only sound
My blood so red, so red the ground.

So far we've come & yet so close
Close but no cigar
Two strangers in a car
Too close to have come so far.


(For Carrie.)

(c) Brent M Harpur 2017.

"Stripping back the coats of lies and deception
Back to nothingness, like a week in the desert."

Neil Mullane Finn

“The planet’s famous red colour is from iron oxide coating everything.

So it’s not just a desert. It’s a desert so old it’s literally rusting.” 

Dick Weir, 'The Martian'.

"I've been through the desert on a horse with no name
It felt good to be out of the rain
In the desert you can remember your name
'Cause there ain't no one for to give you no pain."

Dewey Bunnell

This Fickle Beast...

This fickle beast 

has taken so many bites from me
of late
that I'm barely surviving.
But part of survival, I guess
is knowing which parts & wounds to reveal 
and which to hide.

I have swallowed
so much foolish male pride
(these last few months)
that I now have a permanent stomach ache.

I have heard 
(and ought to learn from your wonderful, wise example)
that there is safety (survival?)

in numbers.

I soldier on,
batten down the hatches 
(whatever that really means) 
and tell myself:
"It's just a Winter thing!"

But that telltale box
of now-unloved
books, kitchen appliances & clothes
(slowly-but-surely growing
in the corner of my living room) reminds me...

This is more than a casual,
early-onset
of Spring cleaning.
Snow and the seasons
(it would appear)
are uneasy to predict with any certainty.

Unlike
my old (yet new) familiar, loyal friend;

change.

(For Sofie & Holly)

(c)Brent Harpur, 2019.