Make it leave.

When Tomorrow is yesterday,

You might understand the hows

And whys of things of the past.

You could be tricked into guilt,

You might start to reflect.

Don’t look at the past with

The eyes of tomorrow,

For you didn’t know then what

You now know.

Regret will eat your dreams

And kill your bliss.

Feed it a bit

And it shall eat you whole.

Rather

Starve it out.

Make it go back to the

Darkness.

Make it leave with its suitcases

Full of envy, judgement,

Cynicism.

You weren’t made for Regret.

You were shaped for Hope.

You were created for Joy.

You are meant to try

And fail,

But always attempt your hardest

Aim for the best,

Fly the highest

You can.

And give Regret no hold

On You.

It is the Worry of yesterday

Looking down on Tomorrow

Trying to steal your flowers

And dry out the grass.

Make it leave

For it only brings sorrow.

Cracked wings

He is sitting on my heart.

He is sitting on my heart.

I can't help it if he is sitting on my heart, 

If he gave me his name and a bit of his blood,

If he is the root to the branch I bloom on.

He is sitting on my heart.

I saw in him a hero with cracked wings.

He had wanted to soar too fast, too high, 

With the courage of innocence and youth

He had missed, by so little, so few, 

The wisdom that comes with the years.

He is sitting on my heart.

I envy his spirit

I admire his battle

I praise his dignity

Mingled with insolence

He was a bird unable to fly

Whose eyes couldn't brush the skies

By fear of crumbling under the weight of grief.

Sometimes innocence cannot be regained.

He had lost the flippancy of childhood drawings, 

The liberty of the soul that had been spared.

The journey is long for a bird who cannot fly.

Contemplate these wings, majestic, 

These feathers moire and bright

Which momentum has deserted.

Still he learnt to walk.

His coat kept its shine

He went to the end of the pilgrimage, 

Never counted the steps.

Did he will his audacity to me?

Would I, too, have tried to fly?

His legacy echoes in my mind, 

Like the song of an eagle

Calling me to greater heights.

He is sitting on my heart, 

He never abandoned me.

I sewed him on my heart

To keep him in my memory.

To my grand father, Michel Barberon,  who survived the concentration camps in Buchenwald, who took risks but never saw himself as a hero or a brave soul.

Arabica

Early morning, coffee covered with amber foam, 

A table at a cafe, the cacophony of people around, 

I hear the sigh of the appliances, the scream of steam, 

I smell the brown aroma, the whiff of tea in china cups, 

I taste lemon tarts and butter croissants, 

In the midst of this morning noise, the southern Spanish accents echoes. 

I pay attention because

This voice comes with a smile, 

Which comes with a look, 

Which comes with a move.

Every day, around eleven am, 

I hear this accent, 

I see this smile, 

I meet this look, 

I respond to this move,

This moment never comes promises. 

I know nothing of him other than

His country

The tone of his voice.

He doesn't know me except that

I like strong black coffee

I'm not from this land.

And every morning,  

He brews the nectar with zing, 

He starts off my day

Like the song of a clock

He lightens up my steps

He warms up my smile

No strings attached, 

No promises, 

No identity even.

But he hung up my drawing

In the corner of the coark board

He grined subtly and

Read my name.

Short lived

I once thought disappointments could keep me put. 

I believed goodbyes, unanswered dreams and prayers

Had the power to burn my wings and scar my heart. 

But my wings grew back, with feathers made of silk, 

Softened through the years and the disappointment still. 

And my heart was scared, a little bruised and thrown around

But it healed over and held on tight. 

I tried to be cynical and believed I became old. 

I once thought I could be somebody else, who would know

No excitment too high, no sorrow too deep.

Who's heart would be safe and never skip a beat.

But being someone else is only short lived,

I realised my heart was meant for leaping, skipping and 

Falling.

My wings were made for flying, soaring and 

Crashing. 

The good couldn't be without risking the bad, 

I couldn't be happy if not willing to be sad. 

I am a dreamer, I paint thrills, adventures and tomorrows, 

Better.

I am a lover. I carry my heart in my pocket. 

I want it to meet hearts to make it bigger. 

I want to cherish life and people

And maybe even, 

A man, 

If life would grace me so.

To live and to love, 

To lose and to gain,

To hope and to mourn, 

To have and to hold. 

I tried to be cynical and believed I became old

Until I was bored.

The face I love.

The face I love 

Has tiny, young crow feet at the corner of its eyes, 

From laughing and smiling, crying and feeling. 

Its skin is marked by the years it's been living, 

Its journey is written on it, 

Like a loud and vibrant testimony to being alive. 

The face I love is alive, 

Fully, unapologetically alive. 

It's been sunburnt before

For playing a little too long on the beach.

You can see the bed that tears have molded on its cheeks.

It has loved much, 

It has given much.

It has felt much. 

The face I love is a canvas for its heart.

Where kindness, grace, generosity are

Painted in bright colours and bold patterns.

Where humour and hearty laughter find 

Their way into the picture. 

The face I love

Has tried,
And failed 

And tried again.

It pushed its limits.

It has suffered, waited and longed for better days.

It has a past, with strings and burdens attached,

A present where release and healing are blooming, 

A future. A blue-skyed future. 

One built on the bricks of perseverance and goodness.

The face I love

Makes mistakes.

The face I love

Is not a mistake.

The face I love, 

The face I love, 

The face I love.

I love this Face.

For its soul and despite its failures.

For the way it stares in the distance, forgetting reality.

For the love that dawns on it when it looks at me. 

The face I love

Is real.

Is unique.

Is beautiful.

Is in front of me.

The face I love

I seek it when I hurt

I find it when I wander

I am bound to it.

The face I love.

You are the face I love.

I made you a promise

I made a vow.

You will stay the face I love.

To be in...

To be in love like no one cares, 

With a hand in mine and a song in my head. 

To be in love. 

 

I like company and I'd like to share mine. 

We pretend it is as good to be alone as it is to be two. 

Not to me. 

I savor being one, who I was meant to be,  

Being quiet or loud.

But to be in love. 

Hearing a voice respond to mine. 

To share moments of beauty and others of pain. 

To be known, fully known and loved still, 

Loved because. 

Feeling the warmth of one's presence,

Fit together like two jigsaw pieces, 

Knowing his voice, its tone and what it transpires, 

Learning his worries, his joys, his questions and

Certitudes. 

To hold his hands, carry his burdens, 

Let him carry mine, 

Learn to tell him I need a hand, 

To notice his smiles, his looks, 

Count the hair on his head. 

Carry on through the struggles, 

Fight a little, 

Without the sun setting on our anger, 

Persevering, 

Because love florishes, it grows, 

It births, It bears fruit. 

It leaves legacies and carries generations to come. 

To be in love and raise children.

That look like him, or me, or neither.

Children that will be given our family, 

To shape and to hold, 

To be loved by and to hold onto. 

To be in love.

The wanderer and the Pursuer.

The thoughts of my heart often overrule the whisper of your love.

Still you whisper,

Still you murmur that you love.

Me.

As much as I wander, you pursue.

You pursue and I run.

But I turn around and wait for you,

Always in the end,

Because I, too, love.

You.

Naive little souls

It's a little bit like a hole in the road.

We didn't see it coming. 

The shadow of the trees might have hid it there. 

We could have been watching the birds for a little too long.

Or a bed of leaves was covering it up for a while?

But there's a hole in the road. 

Can we walk around it and leave it behind?

Would we pretend it's not there, act a bit blind?

Could we tell the hole to fill itself up? 

Should we stop by it and wait until it is no more?

Holes in the road, unexpected turns of things, 

Words that dig deeper than they seem, 

Faces that turn from benevolent to pernicious, 

Silence that reveals to be manipulation, 

Control which for so long disguised itself into love, 

Family that prove to be wolves among the sheep. 

They all come without warning.

Did we look up to long?
Did we want to think of the birds and the sharp blue sky, 

More than we were looking for direction?

We might have simply thought that life had been sweet and easy and it would always be.

We didn't know love could turn sour. 

Naive little souls we were. We took discernment for suspicion

And love never suspects evil, does it?

So we walked around, head in the clouds, 

Dreaming of tomorrows painted in pastel colours, 

Finding todays tainted with anger.

Naive little souls we were.
Shall we keep on believing?

That hearts can turn, situations change and scars heal?

We are waiting. For the sweetness of yesterday to come again tomorrow.

We believe today is a simple hole in the road that isn't meant to stay.

We believe you'll come to your senses.

That you'll see, that we were naive little souls, 

with open arms and gentle hearts, 

That we are hopeful stronger souls,

 with open arms and gentle hearts.

Wanderer

I am a wanderer. I have been going in circles, 

Thinking I was walking a different path

Trotting along, whistling, hoping for new scenery, 

Just around the corner. 

But the scenery is the same.

Over and over again, the scenery doesn't change. 

The same tree, the old dry footpath, the piles of leaves to the side

The grass that neither seems to grow nor die.

The flowers ready to bloom but forever stuck in between. 

I am a flower, not a bud,not blossoming.

There are leaves around me, keeping petals in place

Open, just enough, so I can't retreat in my green shell, 

Sufficiantly closed so I can't spread out and sprout. 

I've grown too much for this pod.

It's keeping me in.

But maybe, just maybe, I am not big enough still.

Big enough for this world out there, 

For the wind that blows, the sun that burns, 

The rain that drowns, the cold that bites.

Not big enough, too big, grown, in the making

Ready, under prepared, humble, proud, 

I'm everything and it's opposite.

I'm strong and weak. 

I'm a hopeful flower stuck in its bud, 

Will the time to prosper ever come to me?

Will my tiny green shell ever set me free?

I am a flower, stuck in between, 

Looking for space to grow

I am a wanderer, going in circles, 

Looking for a newfound land.

I am a dreamer, bound by reality, 

Looking for a promise.

Unwritten

People stir up poems in me that can never be written.

For words rarely truly match the value of hearts and souls.

I have many pages blackened by ink, that hold so many emotions,

Yet the shape of the letters, the rhythm and sound of sentences

Lack in expressing my love, my grief, the things I've longed for, 

The faces I've lost, the dreams that never came into being 

and the parts of my heart I gave away and were never returned.

Some inspire light, bouncy sonnets, that float in the air, 

Translate the feeling of being in love, of receiving a smile

as the greatest gift ever given.

Others fill me with words like pebbles: small but heavy, greyed by the years

That will pave the way to my next fears.

Verses will draw the silhouette of old loves, they will paint the colour of their lips

Say the sound of their laugh, the smell of their skin.

But memories can't be held in a few lines. 

They keep on unfolding, emotions persist to disrupt my day to day life, 

With small flashes of light or deeper holes of dark. 

Words sketch the outline, but the weight or the light in my soul, 

Will never fully hold in a couple of letters.

People stir up poems in me that can never be written.