A Rhythm of Life Read online

A RHYTHM OF LIFE

  by

  Patricia L Graham

  © Patricia L Graham 2013

  All Rights Reserved

  ISBN: 9781301101078

  Licence:

  This ebook is licensed

  for your personal enjoyment and should not be resold or copied without the author’s consent.

  Thank you for respecting this author’s work.

  Cover by: Graphicz X Designs https://graphiczxdesigns.zenfolio.com

  Logo by: Vistaprint

  A RHYTHM OF LIFE

  SECTIONS

  INTRODUCTION

  Childhood Poetry

  YOUR FRIEND (age 13)

  GROWING UP (age 13)

  The Seventies

  SCENE

  THE FLIES WILL REMAIN

  REALISATION

  JOGGER’S DELIGHT?!

  The Eighties

  MOTHER EARTH

  RAINBOW DREAMS

  MY BACKGROUND

  THE EYES OF A CHILD

  The Nineties

  UNDER AN ABYSSINIAN SKY

  WHAT IS LIGHT?

  I AM WOMAN

  Millennium Years

  LAST NIGHT’S STORM

  LIVING IN A 21ST CENTURY UK CITY

  MAPPING IT

  SPARROW

  FLIP FLOPS-A-KENTE

  SOME WORDS ECHO

  THE LUNCH

  OUR VICES

  REFLECTIONS

  AUTUMN’S TREADMILL

  TRANSCRIBE

  NATURE’S RHYTHM

  CHAMPIONS SONG (lyrically)

  DOWNPOUR

  DOUSING RAIN

  POPCORN HOT DAY

  END GAME

  FEEL IT

  WAS LOVE EVER HERE?

  WORLDLY WIDE

  WHAT IS THE EXACT TIME?

  HEARTFELT

  SILENT LIGHT

  THE REALM

  ReadMeDo

  VerdanaBee

  Dedicated to the memory of my childhood siblings and

  All who Love

  When love is left at a distance

  That hole can be hard to fill

  But desire only ever mimics love

  Love Heals ... Cherish ...

  SECTIONS

  Childhood Poetry

  The Seventies

  The Eighties

  The Nineties

  New Millennium

  INTRODUCTION

  This kaleidoscope of life from hot to cold, spans across time and aspects of my existence. I present a poetic and spiritual collection which includes one flash fiction piece of prose. I actually won the school prize for my year with “Your Friend” at a London comprehensive but couldn’t attend the award event on account of flu.

  You will find contained Jamaican resonances, as I was born in Jamaica before migrating to England as a young child.

  Finding time on my hands in 2011, I took the opportunity to draw a number of writing threads together. I hope this collection will offer something to everyone who ventures to have a read. It is probably more suited for young teens and up, running into my maturing years as it progressively does, alighting on a variety of subjects on the way. In putting the text together, adapting the original formats and shapes, I was suddenly struck by how much more deeply personal it really is to me than I at first imagined. Also, I write pretty freely when it comes to poetry because I prefer not to feel restricted by traditions. It is all more a matter of expression for me. I therefore sometimes rhyme and sometimes I don’t. As long as what I write makes sense, if you get my drift. I think you’ll also feel some rhythmic undertones embodied herein.

  As for so many children, one’s pattern of life can be eclipsed by circumstances and some separations will turn out to be permanent, laying out a raft of issues for all concerned to work through in individual ways. When this is done in a cold climate and a new culture, the prospects can be additionally daunting. Parents must be so grateful for the fact that children are so resilient at such times. However, my life at thirteen had already been blighted by much loss and certain abuses. But that’s for another collection altogether. I imagine that this one in parts is somewhat lighter overall than others currently being planned.

  I am left with the feeling that in taking the time to write over the decades, I have somehow managed to leave myself a life-line of some construction which has enabled me to trace changes over time in stringing together my own time capsule. It has helped me to realise how fundamental it is to someone’s existence to encounter people who enhance your life, whilst deception inflicts and impacts in ways unimaginable, infringing on potential that can alter the course of one’s development and simple dreams. As people, I think we really need to talk and listen more and to make time for this in a world where people seem to have less time than ever before for each other face to face. In the end, all relationships depend on communication.

  So what is left to say about the resonances of my life shared and scripted here? Perhaps only that the elusive thing called love comes in a variety of forms along life’s pathways. I found some of the poorest people on the planet to be so generous and welcoming to me. You can’t buy or sell love, trick or possess it. It has to emanate from the core of your being. Love has the capacity to heal and much, much more. It really embraces that sense of selfless rather than selfish aspect.

  However, here’s hoping my words also prove sustaining for you as well. There’s not much more that I have to offer ...

  One Love

  Patricia L Graham

  Blessings

  Childhood Poetry

  YOUR FRIEND (age 13)

  Mine eyes will pity and despise you.

  My lips will yield kind words

  which will deceive you.

  My hands will comfort

  and denounce you.

  My heart will break for you

  and yet forsake and hate you.

  I am your friend,

  who will both love and turn against you.

  GROWING UP (age 13)

  I am but a speck,

  Untouched and unaffected by the joyful,

  Yet hateful diseases which clothe

  the adult mind.

  Daily as I grow older,

  new deeds I will learn.

  Yet mother with all her accumulated years

  and loving kindness

  Can never be as pure as I;

  Free from the sins which time

  will slowly bestow upon me

  To rid me of my wholesome soul.

  The knowledge of good and evil

  Will take root in my heart to corrupt me.

  And when this earthly form of mine is motionless,

  Then will I be reborn again?

  The Seventies

  SCENE

  He’d stand there every day it seemed:

  Tall, slim, hat perched on his head;

  One hand in a trouser pocket,

  Butt in his mouth,

  Back pressed against the window pane.

  He’d squint, nod, smile,

  Rock back and forth to the record shop.

  “Seen. Yeh man.

  Music is de ting yuh know.”

  Then the other day he asked me: “Whappen dahta?

  I check yuh every day yuh pass ahn ya.

  Suh wheh yuh a guh?”

  “Work, work, shifting white man’s dirt,

  office work, clerk.”

  “Seen,” he nodded.

  “Dat ah nuh my ting still, yuh know.

  But watcha now, de dahta can len I man a dunni?

  Sih, dem people don’ sen I no money yet.

  An I’d like fi buy a draw dis day ya.”

  What an awful bore.

  I missed him yesterday.


  Today when I asked for him they said …

  “Who Lucky?

  Well, yesiday marning

  de man suddenly decide to do a ting, yuh know.

  And well … bwoy, I don’t know …

  Him just collapse and dead suh!”

  Seen.

  I wondered if Lucky ever dreamed of

  Achieving something special.

  Sure he did, and though he never said, he intended …

  But now he’s dead;

  But left his impression on the window pane; on me.

  Scene.

  THE FLIES WILL REMAIN

  An empty belly rumbles to a hunger fathoms deep:

  So steep, so deep it gashes on a mind

  inflamed with things forgot,

  Then plummets back to a range of burnt out coals;

  Remnants of a stomach where juices flow

  only to burn holes,

  Where holes they burned before.

  Day after day,

  To lie, to sit, to stand if you can;

  Staring stupefied, staring senseless –

  Waiting …

  Waiting for that moment to sweep

  the very last fear away,

  To cast all careless cares away …

  There is no real sense of time here.

  Only the flies remain to remind us –

  “We live!”

  Why do they stay?

  I have not the strength to brush them away today,

  to play,

  To brush them away.

  REALISATION

  Realisation:

  What do you know?

  Takes mental concentration;

  Can you control it?

  It’s hard to understand reality

  When you’re trying to control your sanity.

  With all the theories we are taught

  to believe,

  Life’s illusions are many to perceive.

  Obscurity is the world in which we live,

  Use your initiative, explore your mind.

  Contradictions:

  What is right or wrong?

  I know comprehension is hard

  when you’re young.

  Could take a lifetime for you to surmise

  What’s happening in view of all the lies.

  All this friction serves only to confuse you,

  Making it easy for others to abuse you.

  Understanding this I hope you can see,

  Use your initiative – explore your mind.

  JOGGER’S DELIGHT?!

  Brrrr ...

  The five o’clock alarm,

  An electric storm to the brain,

  Surges through a limp, blissful body

  Buried beneath a blanket pile;

  Jerking it into a jaded constriction of wakefulness,

  From some exotic haven of computerised luxuries.

  A hand, automatically activated,

  Forthrightly stamps out the infernal summons and promptly relaxes again;

  Eyelids closing on a now vacant screen –

  Light years too late ...

  Yawning, stretching, sniffing, scratching;

  A shivering, languid, sour-mouthed jogger stumbles out of bed,

  With half a remembrance of yet another pledge to assault the insidious flab.

  And on such a windy ... drizzling ... frost-bitten morning!

  The Eighties

  MOTHER EARTH

  If I could but restore her face,

  If I could but restore her grace,

  She would so evergreen remain

  With comely seas abundant with fish

  And clear blue skies with air afresh,

  And creatures who’d tend her every wish,

  For all to live to know her charms -

  If I could keep her safe from harm.

  RAINBOW DREAMS

  She flies by night through that vault in her mind where she comes alive;

  And greets the day with a popular smile,

  Wearing a thousand faces.

  Behind the mirror you won’t see

  a flicker of reality.

  A touch, a taste of something better;

  Glimpses of a world she’s never seen.

  Just echoes here of painful sorrow,

  Till love’s illusions penetrate at dawn.

  Here in her star spangled,

  painted rainbow dreams.

  In a crowd fighting her way home, chasing a bus;

  Runs along, drops the portfolio,

  Glad the charade is over.

  No longer that yearn for company:

  The spurned heart shies from tragedy.

  It’s over, the day is over;

  Time to resurrect those

  mystic sunken dreams.

  Ageing a million coloured phases,

  Dancing to songs

  your senses won’t understand.

  Safe in a moonlit seventh heaven,

  Withered memories lay trampled in the ground.

  There in her star spangled,

  painted rainbow dreams.

  Here she may smile, because she feels to,

  Whenever she needs to,

  from deep within.

  Waking she may cry,

  because it is make do

  And living is so untrue ...

  How to be free,

  when the feeling is so unreal?

  The spectres she sees

  don’t loom in her dreams.

  Rainbows are free

  in a star spangled dream.

  Rainbows are free ...

  MY BACKGROUND

  You ask about my past …

  Born without my mother tongue or name,

  The past is something

  I am still unravelling,

  To make sense of my future

  Which is only just emerging.

  An individual’s journey through life,

  Though at points archetypal,

  Is nonetheless as unique as a fingerprint;

  Each voyage is enough for the one.

  So I’ll here not clutter up perspectives

  from whimsical threads,

  Casting dyes of misconceptions.

  I am now what I am becoming,

  And this is where it now begins … anew.

  THE EYES OF A CHILD

  My eyes were open:

  yet I felt obliterated,

  So I closed them

  and faced the darkness therein.

  At this precipice of despair,

  light entered my peripheral world.

  I began to perceive that which was beyond

  my former sight:

  Beyond the realms of time, of space;

  Within the confines of my own mind.

  There in that allotted place,

  this inner haven,

  I felt the breath of my Creator’s love

  And became a child again.

  The Nineties

  UNDER AN ABYSSINIAN SKY

  Under an Abyssinian sky,

  mind running free,

  Moon above, land below,

  the water glimmering in the light ...

  To see the lake at night,

  still waters running deep.

  The sun ascends the sky,

  now it’s day, feel the heat.

  I love to watch the blue,

  as a gentle breeze blows;

  The shimmer of the dew

  when daylight breaks anew.

  Under an Abyssinian sky,

  our minds running free,

  Moon above, land below,

  the water simply shimmering.

  The greatest mysteries,

  the Eden of past dreams,

  Lay hidden in this land,

  grains of cosmic sand.

  And people while still poor,

  with ravaged memories deep,

  Will look ahead once more,

  Yah’s promise pray to keep.


  Yet one day we’ll sing and dance,

  at last beyond the stars,

  Under an Abyssinian sky,

  You, my love and I ...

  WHAT IS LIGHT?

  Light is colour,

  Light is sheer energy vibration.

  Light leads; as a beacon – light guides.

  Light awakens.

  Light enables you to see things hidden.

  Light reflects; light bathes and soothes.

  Light warms and warns.

  Light generates growth.

  Light empowers and strengthens,

  Therefore walk in the way of the light.

  You who bask in the raptures of unnatural illusions,

  Awaken now to the light of this wisdom

  Lest you perish

  in the intensity of her heat,

  For lack of heeding her magnitude.

  Light radiates love.

  I am Love.

  I am Woman, clothed with Divine Light.

  I AM WOMAN

  You are life poured out, fertile

  Like the rouge of earth’s magma aglow;

  The eternal womb, source/river of life.

  Your blood nourishes nations conceived in a voluptuous form,

  Nipples so sensitive, so inviting,

  milk-bursting for babies; for you.

  Such attributes you display:

  Shyness, serenity or vibrant aggression.