spindrift on the sea
fish shine as if
freshly fried

the new year has seen a more somber, a more thoughtful me. a more, i would like to believe, at peace with myself me. oh no, that is not to say that i have turned into a zen zombie.

it is all a question of accepting oneself as one exists.

know thyself.

but knowing; accepting; understanding and embracing are different. each emotion has its own paradigm. and these keep shifting.

it took me forever to understand. and i am still working on - sorry to sound trite here- love.

sometimes i wish the voices in my head would just bloody shut up!

i do not know if my newly discovered affection for the haiku and haibun have anyhting to do with this- well- epiphany is too strong a word- but something near to it- or is it the reverse.

a quiet, more meditative outlook. i have never written so recklessly before- been so audacious, experimental. i have never been so in love with poetry.

funny that one leads to another- but then- everything in my life is a balance (of a sort) between contraries.

and as blake said, without contraries there is no progression.

i am the lamb, meditating in the bath.
i am the tiger, ripping open words and verse forms.
digging into the marrow of existence.

i am the babe; i the harlot.

the voice of innocence; the rasp of experience.

i am brilliant and jaded all at once.

i look. and look again.

know then thyself, presume not god to scan
the proper study of mankind is man...