Let the monsters in.

Let the monsters in.
They have waited long enough on the other side of the door.
They have waited, patiently.
Some of them even took up knitting whilst I amused myself.
Some of them did cross-words puzzles, I’m told,
As I filled the shell of myself with stolen dreams,
And I sang myself stories to put my fears to asleep.
As I believed, truly, fully,
That it was me: me, me, me,
That girl breathing,
That girl humming as she walked under the sun –me!
Under the sun.
I even fashioned myself masks to play my parts,
My caring mask, my lover mask, my human mask,
Oh wonderful masks, with their perfect fit,
So well attached that when I grimaced
It really looked like it was me -smiling,
Me loving, me living, me, happy. Me.
But the monster cannot wait any longer.
They must come home, inside.
They’ve being, rapping, knocking, tapping,
As the sun darkened and the masks lost their fit.
Tapping, knocking, rapping.
The monsters. Let them in.

Secret Garden within.

A Universe, expanding.
A song, never ending.
An answer, waiting for the question.
A mystery which is mastery
Of that known before conception,
And there after soon forgotten.
Realms of the mind,
Fantasies. Revelation.
For some.Divine Matrix.
The Spirit of Man.
So many names for a rose,
Which, indifferently, smell as sweet,
Not caring for chants or bowed heads,
Or dancing fires or humbled knees.
The rose just is.

There is space of sacred love
Within us all.
There, a part of us have made a home
And from there it has watched and grown, immune
From our fears and prejudices and limitations.
When we walk into our garden of love
And reunite with it, we shall be whole.
Finally alive. Incomplete, no more.

Gypsy Ramblings

Do you ever feel like walking away, walking about, just get off your chair and walk, past the door, the garage, the garden, the street, the avenue, the highway, until the concrete dies out and the day melts into darkness and the cold of the nigth wraps you up and your tears trail behind your steps, and you worries bounce off and get lost, and your names get stuck on a tree branch and just hang there, and whatever you thought you were peels off and becomes a shadow and the scream in your mind turns first into a whisper and then into nothing? Do you know what is it like?

It's like the murmur of gypsy caravans rolling away in the middle of the night, trading softly over the wet grass. And after the dance and the drums and the guitars, there is just the soft crackle on the bonifire, warm sunflower surrounded by the wild children of my own Neverland, as they slumber before the next move, the next big journey into the great big somewhere.

'What is it that you want?' the high brow bitch in me asks, raising her chin.

I want one last adventure before I become venerable.

One last dance in front of the fire. One last fly with my cape flapping behind, just for the heck of it, before I put on my glasses and I become Clark Kent/Superman/Saviour of the world forever more, remembering that with great power comes great responsibility (or was it Spiderman?) and all that blah blah blah. One last run, naked in the rain, without worrying about my lungs and my dignity. One last time away from me, embracing the alternataive I, my gypsy girl making music with the bangles in her arms, one last time.

Perhaps

by Karem Barratt


Half moon,
Temples of mist, floating over tabletop lands
From where sweet cascades topple
Like diamond earrings in the lobes of a young bride,
A dream. The priestess of my soul cloaked in red,
Silent. Expectation hangs in the stars, silent,
In the dancing sands, silent, in the glowing eyes
Of owls and elves, silent,
In the breath trapped in my lungs, silent,
In the tear twinkling from the corner of my lashes,
Silent, silent, oh so silently, the wind, still, the I, stirring,
The bush about to burst in flames, Odin’s knife
A breath away from his iris, Kore about to step out into
The light, Hades watching, silently, the mirror, misted,
Waiting for my hand to rub clean the mystery,
For my heart to gather the courage to strip off
The coats of myself and see, truly see, what the
Whole universe has been waiting for since the last time it
Collapsed into a white dwarf, a black hole,
To unfold in a big bang, the unseen seen for the first time,
Once more, the silent truth we have known since our
Bacteria days, the look, the watch, the world behind our
Sight, the link, the light, the undescribable form, moulding,
Stretching, emanating, dancing with itself, within itself,
Projecting a without onto the silvery surface of its mind,
Hoping to be the flesh of its own dream, the me,
The all, the one, the unknown, the force, the I.
Perhaps.

Warrior

By Karem Barratt

A warrior, a sword, a path un-walked, a call,
The flow of life birthing stones for the warrior to
Step on, caves for the warrior to shelter, dragons
For the warrior to slay, rainbows for the warrior to dream,
Arms for the warrior to embrace, tears, for the
Warrior to taste; anger for the warrior to feed on
And then fight against. Mercy, to sustain
The warrior at that moment when the sword
And the naked flesh draw gasps from the universe; hurt,
For the warrior to forgive; doubt, for the warrior
To drink and swallow and spit, and ties for the warrior to brake.
Love. To nurse the warrior in the warmth of its soul.
Solitude and silence, life did create for you, warrior,
To cocoon in, and open the back of your dreaming self.
There are no promises in this path. No golden treasures,
Nor glory nor fame nor thanks. There is only you, at the end,
Warrior.

There's only you.

Alone

By Karem Barratt

She breathes in my sunsets and tomorrows.
She smears away my peace with her stride,
As she runs, indifferently, over the border of the night.
She is the tolling bell on the tower of my heart;
My sea of bluebells; my lavender fields;
The rider of my nightmares;
The shadow of my fears, stretching under my door.
She laughs at wolves, all too real, waiting
For her to pass with her basket full of certainties,
Brimming with unyielding faith in the power of self,
And post-modern myths of un-breakability.
But break she will.
And the light in her smile will darken.
And the bell tolls in my tower will no longer be
That of weddings and feasts, but a warnig of Vikings
Landing on her shores. And her tears will flood
My soul, as I tie my hands and let her go
To fight off her dragons.

Alone.

In the Shadow of His Absence

She walked without him,
In the shadow of his absence,
Made a cup of tea,
In the shadow of his absence,
Sat in front of the silenced TV,
In the shadow of his absence,
Slept in the stale king-size bed,
In the shadow of his absence,
Bought bonbons for herself,
In the shadow of his absence,
Wiped away the tears,
In the shadow of his absence,
Dimmed the lights of the living-room,
In the shadow of his absence,
So she would not see him there,
In the shadow of his absence,
Staring at her, sternly.
From the hating, bitter corpse,
That used to be his love.