Beautiful Mess

A Home is Hard to Find

By Mark Bishop

I just want a place to go

Away from the gorging waves

which  make their portion the once familiar coastline

Away from the winds that howl

as piece by piece the scaffolding of this life they carry off

I shout back

"It wasn't finished yet!

Give me just a year!

A year or two more!?"

But what's the use

I have yet to see the winds bleed

or the ocean show remorse

What Cannot Be Forgotten

By Mark Bishop

Somewhere between the hands

The roads

The calendar pages

The slippery grains which count the ages

I find

That the yawning, lanky yellow line

Stretched across this ribbon of time

Tough a friend more loyal than breath

Makes not a mark upon my thought

Instead my mind holds to this:

That once every star sang of heaven

Once I bathed in the ocean's waves

Once I wept in the rain, in the bitter cold

That once we laughed, embraced and said farewell

Oh more precious than a thousand more dashes on the pavement are these to me

Though dashing suns shut the door you see

When I wring this life

When I pour out my memories I do not find a steady stream

Only drops

Only moments

Land of Understanding

By Mark Bishop

How many wordless hours have I longed here in the wood
And known the stilling of my heart when still so far the heavens stood

How many thoughts have wandered the dusty winding trails
And found in these a better home than plasterboard and nails

How many tears have had their birth and run their course into the stream
In but a moment swept away to join a grander dream

This soil grows the silence somehow the trees have understood
This place that only listens knows me better than I ever could

Lifeboat

By Mark Bishop

The salted breeze swept stranded cries from yonder ships just out of sight

into ears and over neck they disappeared behind the night

Then 5, 10 a hundred more they shook the hulls and mast

from those unknowingly into this maelstrom cast

Theirs was the ocean of chaos and ardur

Which calously devoured  both palm and harbor

These plights of the sojourners harried and cold

Clawed at the sails and fought my rudder to a fold

Oh to be done with this jagged horizon let me see it straight and sweet

Let the crashes and the roars find in the depths their sleep

if not for me than for those tears that deepen each briny cascade

For what sailor has by happenstance this fearsome voyage made?

On nights like tonight

as the compass needle spins

when the blue pitches and yawns mocking my desperation

I dream the world were not so fickle a place as this

But this is where I live

This water is my home

I will spend my days amidst the breakers and the foam

I like those who cry am wed with the waves and the currents

I must endure these hurricanes and fight the crashing serpents

I would leave, yes I would go if it were up to me

But my story is on this ocean

and my world is the raging sea

Instead of Crying

By Mark Bishop

There's a sadness that doesn't come out to shed its tears anymore
Something so sad it's lost
There's a pain that doesn't write letters from war
Something so hurt from paying the cost
Of being human
Of being dust
Oh to hell with us
    or not

The waiting is the worst
bearable at first
but now I wonder if there will be anything at all left for you to resurrect on the last day
You've promised me sorrows in the stay
but every heartache borrows what little I have left to give
left to live
just left

Tomorrow's joys don't seem to mend a broken heart
grant at least that I may grieve
at least that is a start

Uncommon Worth

By Mark Bishop

Coincidental meetings and happy greetings

spur horses of friendship and long manes of correspondence

brushed and splotched as stars on night's canvas

to find in the bramble such flowers as these

it is a rare thing

Syrupy black words worth their weight in gold

pumped in full authenticity from the broken red craigs

treasured, refined, distilled and drank down

to find in such a flower nectar so sweet

it is rarer still

Diamonds, lacking purses big enough to swallow them

languor near a caverns silent stream chamered by the stone 

longing to be seen

daring soft hands and fickle feet to delve and there uncover from blackest coal that which is precious

these are everywhere