Title art by Carol Stocki. Click image to visit her studio

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Thomas Newman “Ghosts”

This is the part where I open my heart
Reveal all the cool shit inside it
Given that I live, breathe and bleed through my art
No reasoning need be provided
Not here to lock horns, pouring scorn burns the fingers
Stagnation soon tilts inward towards ill communication once we let that shit linger on too long
By that point, we are gone baby gone
On to the next one, quite obviously bitter
Less likely to open our hearts and advance past the part where we do things in halves and unfasten the heartstrings to lighten the arteries
Party to fits of untimely suggestion
We’re less than inclined to investing our time into besting our plight and addressing intestinal blight

Deep in our abdomens, savage war rages
Second brains staging their protest, engaging our systems, enlisting the twist in our guts to dig ruts within which we construct our resistance
Pistons now firing, inspired by the fire in our bellies that burns with infernal persistence
Each vein a train, locomotive in motive
Ferrying very most hopeful of fluids on cruise control straight to emotive
Hearts on the rise as they no longer side with protests of the first brain that vote has been rigged

Confusing?
No shit
It’s a relative conundrum, there is evidently little more humdrum than coming undone at the seams
What then becomes of our hopes and our dreams
Do they get a say while they’re drifting away in our slipstreams
This is the part where we open our hearts
Reveal all the cool shit inside them
Given that we live and breathe for our art
We have tools of the trade and just cause to parade them, really ought never deny them

Together we shine that much brighter, inviting a new lease of life to the same tired horizons
Prising ourselves from the holes that we dig
Thinking bigger and better, unfettered by debtors who sweats us for payments undressing of prior arrangement
The rules of engagement are quite elementary
Providing we lower our sentries
Proceed not with caution endorsing distortion as forcing precaution divorces from course that is endless
Life it goes on both regardless, relentless
But need not result in the lengthiest sentence
Should sharing be caring then why not declare in a heartbeat or less that we’re heartily blessed
Averse to the curses which lurk in the hurt locker, clogging the arteries, jogging bad memories, generally making hot mess

Becomes a no-brainer with two in the chamber
Unless we play Russian Roulette with a room full of strangers
Sure there is danger but when is there not
We don’t drop potatoes just cos they get hot
Got to hang tough and with softness intact
Apply dash of science, don’t make it exact
The future is bleak only when painted black
Good reason they call it fall back
Much rather rise in the high tide inspiring blue skies than devise cunning plans to exact
Some of us do know the crack
Some of us love and bereft of condition
Some of us sign an unspoken petition to made-to-fit bullshit that lacks intermission
Some of us gift full endorsement to wisdom
Others ain’t gurning unless the worm’s turning

Yearning for incident, lacking provisions to slacken the leash on their fracturing vision
Meanwhile, the bridges are burning
And learning that emphatically isn’t
This is the part where I open my heart
Just to show you that it can be done
So many blessings impressed on my art and I’m grateful for every last one
Couldn’t have done what I did in returning, had it not been for the love and support I’d been desperately yearning
Seen some lips curling and blew them a kiss
Opened my heart and revealed the cool shit
Once heard a rumor that life’s what you make it
So what do you say we get down to the bliss

Remove razor blades that are chafing our wrists
Take a few risks, go all-in at the river and blindly
Worked for this sinner, was each one of you who baptized me

Until such time arrives
I shall keep the rivers flowing
As I feel something infinite growing within
This lion reclining in shade and with pride
Dignified every time that I bleed finest purpose through art
Open wide this pure crystalline heart
Overspill all the cool shit inside it

Richard Charles Stevens

Keeper of The Crimson Quill

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