Acquired Taste

In our palm, a crushed sphere.
A circular glass orb.
Our world, like a snow globe,
Slowly cracking under the pressure
Of pleasure, the stress of leisure,
A common measure for first world acquired taste.

Life is an acquired taste.

We strain to collect that bitter sweetness, that
Pain we so desire to enable the ideology
That our existence has been without vain.

Because those few seconds, those few days, those few years,
All add up to a sum of self worth, from death to our birth,
And yet when our mouth experiences that accustomed taste,
We are, for some reason,
The reason for our own permissive waste.

Life is an acquired taste.

In our palm, a cracked artefact.
We tighten our grip. We try,
Try to hold on,
And in holding on ever increase that compression,
Avoiding that valuable lesson;
That in conclusion, we are disillusioned
To cutting our hands, still clenching our fists, still checking those lists.
The irony of desire
Leaving us cold in the fire.

When and what is true satisfaction?

So my soul will solely feast
On life's bread and water.
A home of mud and mortar.
And if by chance pebbles of gold come my way
I will hold them so close,
So delicately between my fingers.
A treasure to be treasured.
A pleasure to be pleasured.

Life as a common taste
Never an acquired waste.

Love is Torture

These Transient Nightmares

Why do these transient nightmares come without meaning?
      I could guess their affect.
      I would be correct to recognise its instigation,
and these moments,
      that cruelly make my vision sore,
substantially come when I'm alone at the end
      of day
      of distraction.

I burden myself with too much self attention,
      and yet I am oblivious to what could be self affliction,
           and cannot cure or find any form of redemption.
Perhaps the sickness I obtain surfaced,
      subconsciously forcing a recognition.

Could be, if not, spent to heal
this time spent to consider
unless, if not, that act of healing
is to consider
unless, if not, to consider
is the cause of this distress.
Why do these transient nightmares
prolong and progress?

White Horses

Far out at sea
    There are horses to ride,
Little white horses
    That race with the tide.

Their tossing manes
    Are the white sea-foam,
And the lashing winds
    Are driving them home -

To shadowy stables
    Fast they must free,
To the great green caverns
    Down under the sea.

Irene F. Pawsey