REGRESSION

Appointment on a hot afternoon:
the way to mend a broken mind, they said.
But it felt like Judgement day had come.

This was scarier than anything that came before.
He instructed me to relax, to just think of nothing
to begin with. Then he counted me down into deep hypnosis...

Instantly I'm crouching in the midst of raging fire, my hands
raw with burning weals. Bombardment of flying brick fragments
hitting me, unseen in the suffocating smoke

of cannon and musket fire. The window panes
shatter inwards. Men dying all around me,
shouting, screaming. Cromwell's army

grossly outnumbers ours. It's a hellish
nightmare, to be helplessly witnessing the fall of Basing House.
A hat feather lies crushed and broken on the ground beside me.

With terror-numbed fingers, I carefully take aim.
He's so close I can clearly see his brown eyes and his spartan armour,
cold and impenetrable as his Puritan Soul.

BANG! Dazzled eyes see rainbow stars.
Then shredded flesh gives way to bone
of bloodied skull: beautiful, like ivory.

More and more come to take his place. I'm out of ammunition.
My sword, the final life-line. It's cold steel
animated by hatred for these perpetrators of high treason.

Grey eyes now, and I think of the King
as I stab and stab, frantically seeking armour's slightest chink.
All I see are feet, vague cameos, and faces

contorted by sheer malice - now fading into agony
and dimming consciousness. Row on row
encircling me. Strange how dying now seems

so easy. A mystical transformation, deep and slow.
Sorting corpses into lives, making sense of how
they all fit into place, as if parts of a huge jigsaw puzzle...



NOW I understand
my incapacitating terror of crowded places
and bearded faces, of clamour, of fire, and of battle sites.

No therapist can erase my Karma:
only LOVE holds the key
to the whole meaning of reincarnation's experience.

I, alone, have made my choices, both good and bad
and there is no going back, only retrieval of squandered Soul parts.
Rising from the therapist's couch, my Akashic Record falls wide open.

I feel unbelievably LIGHT.  So much still to achieve
with this new knowledge: atonement,
in the language of Spirit,

is FORGIVENESS.


This post was inspired by a recent visit to the ruins of Basing House.

CLOUDS HILL

Whenever he was away
Lawrence pined for Clouds Hill more than any other place on earth.
He'd wanted a snapshot, taken in summer
when the rhododendrons were in bloom.
And he'd longed to share it's tranquility with Auda Abu Tay,
his closest friend, who had introduced him
to a myriad of Middle Eastern culinary delights, as they'd sat together
watching the sun set over the desert's vastness.
He had taught Auda warcraft - and taught him well.
It was so good to be with him, there at the oasis.
But he still couldn't help wishing to be back home...

And, now, here they finally were.
Arriving in the dark small hours, both in Arabic dress,
with Lawrence carrying a jar of sand as a momento,
and goats cheese, and his camel's harness in a hessian bag.
And it is like being in Paradise: introducing Auda
to his hidden retreat from the world, to his few close friends -
laying on an informal party in Auda's honour, relaxing again,
and lying in until well past noon...

But the old restlessness possesses him once again.
So he does what he has always done
when he needs to process his thoughts -
takes his beloved Brough Superior for a spin
along the twisting Dorset lanes: pushing,
pushing her to her ultimate limits - topping
eighty, ninety, one hundred...

There is no advance warning.
No horrified shouts in Arabic or English,
just two errand boys on bicycles.
No time to think, only
a screeching of tyres as the Brough upends,
followed by a pink explosion of rhododendrons.
And the hands of time stand still.

THE SHOPPING TROLLEY

The bridge beside Jubilee Park
stands barred like a fortress.
It's reflection, broken up by the current below,
jiggles and dances on the surface of the water.
A woman with a dog
pauses here daily, to shake her head
while leaning over the railings
and peering into the water.
Her gaze shifts searchingly
until it alights upon the shopping trolley.
Occasionally,  she scrambles
down the river bank to reach it,
sliding fingers between the bars
now beginning to rust from contact with the water.
She attempts to pull it up
as she imagines again the group of teens
with their loud voices and manic behaviour
taking the trolley with them,
then shrieking with laughter as it falls from the bridge
with an almighty splash.

But, alas, her best efforts are ineffectual. The thick mud
of the river bed refuses to surrender it's prize.
The shiny, silver, alien treasure is just too great a status symbol...

THE CANNON

Standing by the old army cannon,
linear time visually shifting.
I'm drawn here again to touch the past,
my hands resting on metal:
an organic sensor. Through it
I'm back there in the thick of battle,
dodging the explosions all around me.
Been here so many times I'm part of it all -
will probably physically cross the barrier one day
and be generations back, on the Continent...

I'm in military uniform, firing at the enemy.
The noise is deafening, the fear overwhelming...

No one notices me standing here -
I'm already fading into the history books.
Only a lone gull is curious and approaches
the strange time-traveler only partly here.
The ether shifts around me, above me,
but I am utterly still. Observing the wraiths, listening
to the muffled shouts, until I feel dizzy.
Then I shake my head and push them back.
And I am, once again, alone.