I am Tabala Rasa Born in circumstance I come with no knowledge No previous romance I will be made by you Moulded and shaped Circum to your will Live for your sake To listen to your words Is to dance in the fields My mind rich with life My heart now revealed Don’t stop your teaching I will fail to grow Keep watering my being With all that you know
Author Archives: benhenleysmith
3 days & 3 nights
Once a month our sky changes it’s way The moon vanishes for 3 days and 3 nights It slips behind sheets of blue and black The darkest stretch of the heavenly cycle It calls to us Jonah struggled in the belly of the whale Beowulf sank to the pits of the lake For 3 days and 3 nights they did not give up They rose again from the deep Can I be as brave? Tears drip knowing those I love will enter this struggle Yet my belly decides to never give up Not to darkness that sheds light on noble resolve I shall fight for 3 days and 3 nights I will
Go together
My feet stumble My words mumble My life humble I know why The chapter gone The era worn The curtain drawn Goodbye Two hearts shown Two people grown Two lives sewn Forever Your time blessed Your souls left Your bodies rest Go together
Naked ambition
I feel it pull from the depths Sparking tears and sweats A silent wish Bubbling beneath A sacrifice made A career now fades A life incomplete Sending it’s tremors My own gravity is reversed As his messages unearth He is silently calling I’m trapped Though I know I shouldn’t I’ll do what he couldn’t Leave it with me A circle complete
Untrodden
Mans search for meaning and fulfilment Was no greater than his on that day Desperate for validation from peers Holding his breath for a chance Lean and tall with an intensity of character Few posses charisma at their fingertips But his eyes told a different story Lost and nauseas, too long at sea I’d been searching for a soul misplaced With aptitude to power our ship A hype man to mould and then release A birds loving care before its first flight I went all in He saw his opportunity and he took it Difficulty and challenge was inevitable But his force of will was unprecedented A year on, the glint in his eye sparkles Enlightened by ambition and friendship Though the path chosen is untrodden One foot now follows the other A new found belief in his own direction Gifts identity and contentment But don’t look back too little or too often You’ve come quite some way my friend
Paint in watercolour
Visions live in our imagination
Time and space weave together as stories
Pioneers paint visions for others to see
Explosive ideas that burst at their seams
Beware, change is life’s only constant
Systems are random, complex and peculiar
Your stories will mould and naturally so
Whatever you do, paint in watercolour
Use your thumb and smudge the edges
Listen to others who slate your endeavours
Soak information like a sponge gone dry
Seek out contrarians and withstand their pressure
Continue to celebrate your wildest ideas
Don’t stop imagining, building or crafting
Fiction defines what it means to be human
So paint it in watercolour, may it be everlasting
A mother and a friend
The darkness took hold
A numbness years old
Reawakened by circumstance
Stress took its chance
Lying under a tree
Crying unequivocally
I spiralled out of control
A lost broken soul
Rain mixed with tears
As the sadness triggered fears
That death might take
My mother and my brace
But unexpectedly
With care and dignity
She took my hand
Like only she can
Right when I worried
She didn’t die, she hurried
To support and love
My own soaring white dove
Thanks only to you
I’ve nearly seen it through
A mother and a friend
Time and again
A dance with the moon
A dance with the moon presented itself
But left before we could find our embrace
Darting between the clouds and the rain
Carelessly teasing, hiding its face
The stars watched on from their elegant view
As I stretched out my eyes for that glimpse
I sit here at night peering into the blue
Hoping to dance but we haven’t since
So I wait in the dark for that moment to strike
It’s shocking white that resets my core
Bolts my imagination back to true north
And humbles me back to life from before
Decent job
Pour your heart into the bubbling pot
It’s spitting blood from its previous lot
The time and patience of ordinary men
Hitting the grind time and again
An economy for the many, not for the few
We didn’t realise that the many was you
Hungry for power and forgetting the cost
Bleeding the poor when all else is lost
A race to the top, best job in the land
He’ll do it better than the others can
Before long we’ll be back here again
Handing out the keys to number 10
Maybe I’m free
Two generations share in reflection
Stories of a man who caught their affection
Rarely does both a mother and a daughter
Share in their grief with one another
Days like these can hit close to home
The thought of those left on their own
The end of life isn’t easy to face
The inevitable condition of the human race
But Jack’s soul has found rest with his closet companion
Together now on their greatest adventure
Up in the clouds they hold hands and giggle
Remember stories from when Gladys was little
Your passing teaches us one last lesson
That runs counter to our initial perception
That though death is life’s hard reality
The idea of death can set us all free
