I am not a poet. In fact, I'm pretty far from it. Words don't flow beautifully and elegantly from my pen. Reading poetry isn't something I consider a favourite pastime either. I consider myself one of those basic poetry readers who love a poem when it has a steady meter and a pretty rhyme scheme even though I know that words don't always flow like that. So, who's my favourite poet? It used to be Robert Frost (not because that was one of the only poets I actually knew but because they were poems I could actually read and interpret). Then I discovered Erin Hanson. You may think it's too rehearsed, inauthentic and perhaps even a little fake. But these are the kind of poems I love to read and want to share. I got a little overenthusiastic and may have shared too many, but I really do love them and I hope you'll take the time to see why. We are painters without paint, Mixing the colours in our mind, Glance upon our palettes And black ink is all you'll find. But from its depths we pull A written sky of brightest blue, Swirling drops of dreams Into the things we know as true. With just the flicker of our wrist We can make the moonbeams sing, Spill golden rays of sunrise Over all of everything. We can conjure calm or chaos By just willing it be so, Pave roads to where your thoughts Have never realised they could go. Our pens can pull you on a journey, On a pilgrimage, a quest, Drag you through your darkest hours And then blend them with your best. So when it ends you stumble backwards In shock to find it's black and white, We are painters without paint And that's the reason why we write. -e.h You mustn't live so lightly, Spin your stories, tell your tales, Let them dance across the oceans And set the wind upon your sails. For every truth found on your travels And in the pits of your despair, Is a shout into forever Of "I existed, and I cared." -e.h Have you ever heard the planet Hold its breath before a storm? Like an audience in wait Before the curtains are withdrawn. It's the gentle buzz of wild things Straining leaves toward the sky, The steady thrum of wings Taking their owners somewhere dry. Then for a second it is nothing But the beat of nature's heart, Until as though its lungs have burst The grey sky rips itself apart. And just like that the earth's alive As it collectively exhales, The wind whips through the trees Whilst they all bend beneath its wails. Then as the first drop falls There is a gasp, and then a pause, Before it seems the whole world breaks Into a deafening applause. -e.h You have never known a world In which you weren't the point of view, For everything that happens Happens relative to you. And no matter where you are, Where you are is your own place, Nobody else will ever occupy That point in time and space. A lifetime is forever When you look at it like this; That your consciousness is all You can be certain that exists. You see the world has never known A point of view that's quite the same, Your own has never been before And it will never be again. -e.h The city is built on the backbone of wild things, Beneath it their ancient hearts beat, Layers on layers of lifetimes Lying dormant below every street. And above them the world rumbles onward, A jungle of windows and walls, Like ants on the run from a rainstorm The traffic chaotically crawls. You can still sense the souls of the wild things, As the stars are switched on in the night, Tangled betwixt all the powerlines And the ghostly glow of streetlights. It is the feeling of something much grander, Like the city has simply been borrowed, And the wild things on which it was built Will reclaim it in some far tomorrow. It's the echoes of calls long forgotten. The reminder we're living above the unknown, And that we are not the first nor the last ones Who will call this same piece of land home. -e.h All of beauty has a burden; A price we pay to see the stars, The weight of knowing where we stand, Of knowing just how small we are. For in our tracking turns of time We feel the ache of getting older, And the heaviness of the heavens Pressed upon our brittle shoulders. We alone query and question, We alone, despite how small, And so it goes that unto us The cost of knowledge rightly falls. With arms both strong yet shaking We carry the beauty that life has got, Amongst the awareness that all that we know Is nothing compared to the things we do not. But if this is the price of existence; That we must stare infinity right in the eye, Then it's the tiniest price we can pay For the chance just to look up in awe at the sky. -e.h Don't grow weary with your wonder For there are sunsets still to see, Land you must get lost in And other selves you'll come to be. Don't grow weary with your wonder For this is just the opening act, And if wonder's what you search for Wonder's what you will attract. So when weary be your world And darkness drags the daylight under, Turn you face up to the star And don't grow weary with your wonder. -e.h If you catch the train to nowhere You'll find the strangest man I've met, Who claimed his ears were always ringing With the sound of his regret, Back then time had not yet taught me Regret was not a sound I knew, So I thought nothing more than silence Was left by things you didn't do, He said he hoped the sound of nothing, Was the worst I ever heard, Because regret drives you crazy As the taste of swallowed words, "It's a stone thrown in a well," he mused And this I've not forgotten: "It's listening all your life And never hearing it hit the bottom." -e.h Am I the I who thinks the words Or the I who hears them thought? The I who sheds the salty tears Or I who knows I am distraught? Am I the I who asks the questions Or the I who understands? Does the I who thought to ask Already know which I I am? -e.h Let me tell the tale
Of a girl who didn't stop, Who climbed up every mountain Without a pause upon the top. She'd dance until each blade of grass Was clothed in drops of dew, And the sun knew her by name But the silver moon did too. For a fear had settled in her bones; A fear of sitting still, That if you're not moving forward It must mean you never will. So in time her dance got slower And she looked at all she'd seen, But found gaps inside the places That she'd never fully been, For she was a human doing Human moving, human seeing, But she'd never taken time To simply be a human being. -e.h
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Hi There!
I'm a university student who loves to keep themselves busy with anything but university work. I also enjoy looking like a banana as you can tell from all the yellow coat pictures. I've somehow managed to turn into a music and photography geek. I'm not entirely sure how that happened but let's just go with it. That seems to be my life motto at the moment.
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April 2018
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