My column in this week’s Winkler Morden Voice and Altona Rhineland Voice newspapers.

It’s been my voice
It’s been my words
That have moved before me
Like a ship’s sharp prow
Slicing through water
Tearing apart the darkness
And sending cowards scurrying –
cockroaches before the light
Running into a field filled with lies
To hide in the winding weeds
Compromising character
Like it hadn’t really existed

Never shut up,
Never back down,
Root out truth
Like the dying in a desert
Digging for a drop of water;
Refuse to carry the weight
Of a world dressed in falsehood
Strip it bare, strip it bare
Whatever it takes.

Purple is the crown

That rests on royalty

Like amethyst atop

Or orchids rising in the sun

Demure and drawing the eye

Of every silent passerby

It is a magenta star

Stealing across the sky

Suiting a select few,

A breathtaking beautiful view.

Privacy is overrated

I live my life

Naked and bruised

Bleeding on everyone

But

It becomes a problem

When I tear the clothes off others

And parade them before the world;

My shame is my own

To hang on the line

Like so much laundry

Drying in the sun

For all to see.

It should be enough.

I knew a guy,

Talking to him,

It was like

Walking through a minefield –

One wrong move

– BOOM –

One wrong word

He would explode

“Why would you step there!!”

As if others planted the explosives;

He was a landscape destroyed,

Wrecked by his own devices.

Abandoned.

People stopped walking there,

Until he became the trenches of WW1

Haunted and forgotten.

One can be surrounded
And completely alone

Or

One can be alone
And overcrowded

But

If I’m to be alone
I’m glad it’s with you

It is a grey day
And I’m in a grey way
Did the clouds bring me down
Or was it the other way around
It’s hard to say
But I’ve lost myself
At least for now
In the thick mist
That surrounds
But it will lift
As is the way of things
Just wait it out
The sun will arrive
Without a doubt

Remember Tuscany’s cerulean skies
The blue above the green olive groves
As we walked beneath the branches
On the summer hills above Vicopisano;
Remember exploring the streets of Rome
Leaving our footprints in the Eternal City
Or wandering beneath the lights of Luca;
Or the day sailing on the Tagus River
Drinking vinho verde as Lisbon looked on
Then later climbing to the Moorish castle;
Remember exploring through London
Along the dark and ancient Thames
The journey to old Highgate Cemetery
Overgrown and filled with the famous –
Karl Marx, Rossetti, and Richard Adams;
Then there was welcoming Amsterdam
And her busy canals flowing at our feet;
There was New Orleans and Puerto Rico
Mexico, and New York on New Years Day
There were windswept black sand beaches
Along the wild volcanic coasts of Iceland
And Reykjavik’s church Hallgrímskirkja –
You can see the lighthouse we visited
From the windswept heights of the spire;
The cold waters of Selfoss and Hengifoss
Cascading into mists upon our faces
As geyser and the hot springs waited…

Remember how we witnessed the world
In the glory of the ancient and modern
I saw it through your eyes,
You saw it through mine
What days of wonder.

How do I describe
This very blue that sits
In the centre of the sky
And how it is softly
Shaded to white
Along the low horizon
As the cool breeze plays
Like coy lover’s fingers
Light along my dimpled skin
While the still world is bathed
In the gold of a new morning sun
Such that it seems there’s a stillness
Of a life lost in it’s own beauty…

It is impossible
To put into words.

I birthed this poem
Inside of my head
But I forgot about it
And now it’s dead
A simple limerick
With simple rhyme instead
And it will rot behind my skull
As words forever left unsaid.