Poems born of the parallels of inner and outer worlds

Sometimes it’s as though life runs in tandem. Two strands of your being compete like runners on a track. Inner and outer. You’re keeping it together externally - ‘coping’ yet cracking on the inside.

Maybe it’s a fantasy life that has to coexist with your real one, the one you’re actually living right now.

Maybe you’re deliberately compartmentalising two aspects of your being.

At what point do they merge, does one become the other?

I see this duality as ‘The Chariot’ tarot card. One master struggling (or succeeding) to control two horses that so often pull us in different directions.

And sometimes we think we know the outcome, which force will come out on top, the dominant one.

But just like the athletes that sneak up from nowhere on race tracks to win a race, sometimes events and emotions can take us by surprise. Overtake.

It’s been that sort of couple of weeks really.

Managing the chariot. Steering.

Realising that she who gets the horses to work together, has the smoothest ride.

And it’s not always easy to do, is it? To get that plodding, dependable (yet dull) shire horse inside you to make friends with the one that thinks it’s a bloody unicorn.

But I do like to encourage them to eat at the same trough. Feed them my ideas like apples, my heart as wild oats, pet them and say “look, I love you both”.

And sometimes I braid their manes and tails together. And when I manage to do that, they’re so fine. Enriched by the traits of the other. The strong fibre of the shire horse alive and twinkly for the fairy dust of the flighty one.

These poems reflect this theme.

When is teamwork compromise?

When is dreamwork realised?

I will go through them at the end.

Photos are all my own.

Man of my heart

He plays, silent film

In my cellophane world

Glazing me clearly

Despite him not there

A Saturday moonset

Wild strawberry sweet

From hill top of solace

To edge of my seat

A copse lapping water

In time lapse of lips

Bells pealing on Sunday

The launching of ships

Infusing my musing

Whilst bruising scarred land

A man of my heart

I can’t touch with my hand

White statue in the dark

Come back when clocks resist half time

So silent feelings ring

When home truths leave you destitute

And prayer an ailing wing

Return when violet wounds are beige

And plunging thoughts desist

When peace pipes smudge your burning dove

Replacing reddening mist

Old rafters brought your mind to roost

As grain of you decayed

The jackdaws riddled twilight

With their rattle dose of day

Blame is a bloom, it blossoms

Feeds on empty, soon grows fat

Regrets, they visit often

Cause they see the welcome mat

I cannot move, immobilised

Amusement for your park

Cemented to a view of us

White statue in the dark

Water’s daughter

I ditched the chill so staid and still

For switch of summer rain

Pitches of my fever killed

Night’s daydreams born in pain

And estuaries of salt, they harbour

Swims I can’t forget

Fallacies and fault to garner

Starboards never met

I am the water’s daughter

I besiege rogue shrieks of fire

Submerging last surviving hearts

To call out flame, a liar

Sometimes, I feel vulnerable

Sometimes, I feel vulnerable

My inner child laid bare

The monsters, large and tangible

Me, overwhelmed and scared

I wobble like a milk tooth

I hover as a fly

I quiver like a field of wheat

When harvesters go by

But vulnerable is preferable

To feeling void and numb

I love myself a little more

Embrace the tears that come

Louise

I loved you in my company

I loved you from a screen

The essence of you, radiant

My strong, enduring queen

Warm brown eyes, so calm and sure

Such energy of light

The faith you had in better days

Despite your darkest night

Some women live in monochrome

Stagnate and people-please

But you were born to blaze a trail

My beautiful Louise

Meanings/insights

Man of my heart

This is about those we feel affinity with, yet aren’t for whatever reason, with us in our reality. They can appear so vividly, yet it is an inner world. Do we glorify, eulogise them? Give them qualities we wouldn’t do if they were with us? Do we turn them into solutions? I played on cellophane/film because it reflects that duality. We see our ‘film’ of them through a ‘film’.

White statue in the dark

This is about feeling like an onlooker. Sometimes people have so much going on, that all you can do is be there in their ‘park’, their drama. You are a statue, frozen, observing. And after a while, you harden like a statue too. But remember you are ‘white’ in the dark, light, a lantern, a star. The ‘dark’ being their own mental landscape.

Water’s daughter

This one is about the emotional component of you (or someone/something else) trying to drown your flame. It seduces you, water - warm summer rain. I played on ‘switch’ to denote change but also had ‘switch’ in mind as its old fashioned ‘whip’ meaning too. Emotional flogging. The way you can end up hurt by something that once felt gentle and good.

Sometimes I feel vulnerable

This is the most direct of the poems. I looked out and saw the field across the road. Cut down. I considered of all who made their homes in it - dormice, rabbits……suddenly exposed and felt their panic. Felt that feeling rise in me. Embraced it.

Louise

I went to her funeral this week. Louise was both inner and outer world to me. The most dazzling collision of both. I knew her in real life but she also inspired me when she was posting from her travelling adventures; ‘on a screen’. She lit both my dreams and my reality. Even when dying of cancer at just 44 years old, she was a shining light, such a inspiration to all who knew her. I go forward carrying the blessings of having known her wonderful spirit. As someone at her funeral said;

“she once had a business called Live As You Dream and for me, that encapsulates her, she really did live as she dreamed - big.”

PS I write different things depending on mood. You can find other poems I have written under the ‘Poetry’ header at the top of my home page. You can support me by subscribing (free or paid), buying me a coffee or leaving a comment.