Soul

The Old World

I remember the times
that old world was mine.
I remember the days
when daily, I’d pray.
I remember the hymns
that I’d joyously sing.
And I remember the lessons
and sermons and blessings.

But what I remember,
what I remember more,
are the people who taught me
of James, John and Paul.
I remember the people
who let me hold on
in a time when I could
scarcely see dawn.

For a time in my life,
they were the best of friends
and they stood by my side
while I sat by theirs.
They were everything
to a lost, broken boy,
but the only ever possible end
was obviously tears.

And the tears still come
from time to time;
a broken heart
for lost memories.
But while I’ll yearn
for lost memories,
I will always remember
when that old world was mine.

© Blake Leitch July 15, 2014

Never a Chance

I never stood a chance.

I tried to save my soul
and I tried for the blessed life,
but I was a wolf amongst sheep,
the wrong form for the right.
I tried to shift shape
to make myself a better me,
but I was provided no answers
for surviving insanity.

Now the question of
a life back on that side
is one that sticks to me,
eats at me from the inside.
I miss the many faces
and the ever-hopeful ways,
but I feel that moving forward
would be back to yesterday.

The problem yet remains
for my eternal hopeful stance:
I know too much to know
that I will never stand a chance.

© Blake Leitch September 30, 2015

Linear Conundrum

I am no mathematician
and I am no deity.
I am human
and see linear time.
But logarithmic thinking
has got me thinking;
time feels shorter as time moves onward
because each new year is a smaller slice of life.
So time maybe isn’t linear;
time may be more complete now than seems.
What we call time may not be time,
more an unveiling of the whole self.
And if that is true…
fate may be real.

© Blake Leitch May 16, 2015

100 Reasons

1 I am here because my life is learning
2 I am here because boredom is staleness
3 I am here for new eyes
4 I am here for worn shoes
5 I am here to try a part that’s new

6 I am here for the drink and what comes with
7 I am here for the concrete jungles at night
8 I am here for new light
9 I am here to shine bright
10 I am here to brush off the needless rough

11 I am here because I want to be
12 I am here to spend some time with me
13 I am here for a shoulder
14 I am here for a hand
15 I am here, sometimes, for no glorious plans

16 And I am here, sometimes, because my mind has run wild
17 I am here to be launched into the open air
18 I am here so that the wax may melt
19 I am here to be caught
20 I am here to face fear

21 I am here to discover a deeper me
22 I am here to find out which path to take
23 I am here to let go
24 I am here to hold on
25 I am here because I must find of what I’m made

26 I am here to unapologetically witness beauty
27 I am here to unapologetically witness sense
28 I am here to feel
29 I am here to taste
30 I am here to unapologetically try my hand and mind

31 I am here to evolve into a better me
32 I am here to find out just where I have been
33 I am here to reflect
34 I am here to react
35 I am here to move forward in my own world

36 I am here to prove something to myself
37 and to those I love
38 and to those I don’t
39 And I am here to learn how to let go of naught
40 I am here to learn how to hold on to my alls

41 I am here, sometimes, selflessly
42 I am here to listen and learn and teach
43 I am here to offer my hand and mind
44 I am here to offer the waves of my tides
45 And I am here to simply love, sometimes

46 I am here because the cat dragged me in
47 I am here through no mind of my own
48 I am here because someone said yes
49 and someone said no
50 but no one said bless

51 I am here to learn to accept what is mine
52 I am here to learn that I am fine
53 I am here to learn that others are there
54 I am here to learn hearts
55 I am here to learn tears

56 I am here to open up my eyes
57 I am here to open my heart
58 and mind
59 and whatever’s left, to open too
60 I am here to accept a fearful truth

61 I am here to detox from my own lies
62 I am here to let go of the falsehoods I learned
63 I am here at the twist of my own arm
64 I am here to believe
65 I am here to return

66 I am here to smile at others
67 and me
68 and nothing
69 and all
70 and to find an old me

71 I am here to embrace the who-I-have-been
72 I am here for reasons I still don’t remember
73 I am here for reasons I still don’t believe
74 I am here to emerge
75 I am here to relearn

76 I am here to make change I want to see
77 I am here to restructure where I have been
78 I am here to mould
79 I am here to reform
80 I am here because I can frame what others can’t see

81 I am here to discover just why I am
82 I am here to discover just what I am
83 and who I am
84 and where I am
85 and to lose all sense of when I am

86 I am here to take charge of my life
87 I am here to repent with each added line
88 I am here to be the entire coin
89 and sometimes heads
90 and sometimes tails
91 and sometimes neither if such is right
92 I must must learn my passion while I am here
93 I must nurture desire
94 and fatigue fear
95 and deal with ghosts inside my bones

96 I am here to make mistakes
97 I am here to make new ways
98 I am here for you
99 I am here for me
100 Most of all, I am here to be.

© Blake Leitch October 6, 2014

The Arms of Possibility

Put down the papers
and turn from the screens,
pick up a pen or
take time to sing;
for you’re damned either way
you direct your life,
but right now is unlike
all other nights.
After so many evenings
of monot’nous change,
calm has, at last,
taken her place.
Maybe forever
will never be,
but forever will surely
always see
that today existed,
that a choice was made.
Maybe it was absence,
or something as great;
but whatever lit up
the latest great dark
will forever be guilty
for now’s second half.

© Blake Leitch March 24, 2014

Of Quality: The Writer’s Dilemma

What’s the point
When all that’s asked
Are memories
Of days gone past?
This isn’t why
The poet writes;
He writes for, rightly,
What is right.
But play the puppet
One frame more
And give a show
Of which they’re sure.
These empty words
Will over soon,
And you can live
A writer’s ru’n.

Or…

Maybe falsehoods
Written down
Are no more real
Than playing clown
To entertain
The enter’d few
That care enough
To hear from you.
The only point
To write that song
Is for them all
To sing along.
We only ask for
Eyes and ears;
They justify,
Or death, we fear.

© Blake Leitch November 4, 2013