JIM VS NILOFER CREATIVE CHAIN

.I’M ALL (TITLED) OUT.

The witches’ glare

The wolves snarl

The air hums with discontent

The writer yearns his days away

The watcher sees nothing but himself

The girl runs for running

The dancer dances one last step

The piano keeps playing

We’re trapped in the roots, pulling us back

We’re waiting to be unleashed

We’re still just kids and we’re still just trying

We’re still keeping the same places in our hearts

But we won’t forget

We won’t forget any of this.

Breaking back, pulling apart

Tearing down trees of unreachable peace

Beauty is in here, hiding away

Come out to play?

Or kick out at the familiar

Letting it become whatever we once were

BEAUTY IS IN HERE, HIDING AWAY

Look closely,

At that corner, where the trees

Are covered in snow.

Look closely,

At that house, where the family

Cuddles close to the fireplace.

Look closely,

Into my eyes,

see the reflection

of The snow, of the family.

Beauty is in here, hiding away.

CUDDLES CLOSE TO THE FIREPLACE

There’s a burning in the solitude screaming my escapes away

The rocky roads, all walking themselves to the heart

Wrenching away smothered slumber in familiar walls

Sneaking through the welcome

Of an open front door

To find understanding arms and that fire always, always alight

Here I forget the things I haven’t done

Here I clasp togetherness and love unbound

Living and breathing never felt so comfortable in home of home

This foundation of myself scattered in corners and windows and paper scraps

HERE I FORGET THE THINGS I HAVEN’T DONE

In this magical place, that has no name, I come across and think of only my accomplishments and not my failures. I do not think about what I have yet to do, but think of what I have done. I have loved, lived and laughed.

In this magical place, that has no name, I think about your eyes, and the spark I inspire in it. I do not think about the places we have yet to go together, but think about the places we have gone. We have spread joy, love and inspiration.

In this magical place, which is just your arms around me, I draw the map of our lives in the palm of your hand. You tell me a joke to make me laugh. You add more details to our invisible map and kiss the back of my neck before drifting off to sleep.

THE PLACES WE HAVE YET TO GO (TOGETHER?)

Oh, we live days by days and brush past a thousand, who stays true, who sticks it out, or strays the way away? I’ll follow the heart race and run no set plan, hoping a handful catch on to my paper-thin imagination wings.

I carry you all with me when the walks stretch off the attached map, you roam in my heart the second I come across something new. Old habits, old memories, it all matters and it all counts. Something about the silence of a street never walked, something in the feel of a one-more-time, knowing it’s only the start of something, that breathes the day wide open.

Sometimes, pieces of people come undone, till they hide away in melodies or sneak over places known, in shadows of past, in desperate, beautifully desperate, reminders of moments not coming back.

‘Remember when this felt like forever? Oh, we never spoke a word sometimes, but how those words feel critical now. I don’t want to lose you, I can’t lose you. There’s so much to go, there’s so much to see, you were always the one who knew the breakdowns and untold beauty. I’m moving, you’re moving… let’s do this together, yeah?’

You are the every second I know I can do this when paper writes out I’m not so sure I can..

OLD HABITS, OLD MEMORIES, IT ALL MATTERS AND IT ALL COUNTS.

A familiar road;

A familiar face;

A familiar melody;

All hidden by an unknown haze.

I -

tried to throw these all away,

tried to forget every little thing,

tried to erase it from my memory.

But-

Every now and then,

I walk down that familiar road;

I see that familiar face;

I hear that familiar melody.

For a moment-

The haze is gone;

I remember who I used to be.

FOR A MOMENT

Clouds pass, sky stops burning up a sun shining for the sake of it, the perfect, natural sake of it. I catch a breeze over treetops, I hear, see, touch, taste, something strongly pushing my heart outside the comfort and way into the tightrope of possibility and punctured dreams. Its beat kicks every step I take, it floats and fights to free concrete certainty.

It reminds me nothing is forever, nothing is definite, nothing is quite the same as it ever was.

It calls me away from striving for more, or holding at the drifting past. It is in the moment, it is only the moment. It is my beautiful.

IT IS MY BEAUTIFUL

At a park bench, she sits down and waits for me. I’m standing behind a tree, looking at her, as she looks at her watch frantically, probably wondering where I am. She gets bored and fiddles with her Ipod, seems to be finding that one song to fit her mood. I try to guess- probably something heavy to get her from stop thinking about why I am late.

She searches frantically for something in her bag. I see her take out the novel she has been reading for a couple of days now. After every few seconds she checks her watch. She is unable to concentrate on her book, so she keeps it away.

Her eyes close, probably listening intently to the music. Her fingers tap lightly on the bench. She looks like she’s getting impatient and that when I approach her, she might just scream at me.

I wait a little while longer, wanting to watch her. She closes her eyes for a very long time, lost in whatever she is listening. I approach her now, kiss her lightly on her lips while her eyes are still closed.

Her eyes open, and instead of getting angry, instead of screaming at me, she smiles, takes my hand, and offers to share the music she’s listening to with me.

I take her hand in mine, and her ear piece. Both of us get lost in our own thoughts, together.

HER HAND IN MINE

We’re sitting at a standstill

Our lives laid out in timetables and shorthand memories

Scrawled on our faces and open eyes

We’re lounging on a café mid-noon’s slumber

You have your face pressed against the window

I feel lost in the journey’s careful break

It feels like a new day everyday when we just get up and go

I order coffee, you just keep that hair twirling in your palm

You keep that gaze on the open road

Sweetheart, we’re dreaming the days

The split second an untouched forest

Cries out for a couple of new kids

Sweeping away the dusty tracks

Making new of ourselves

Together the moment is shared

Every moment

We are the moment

Trekking on a five minute bus ride

Never felt quite this romantic

Dreary streets light up

As you just get this the way I do

Words run home as our feet move

Faster than our racing mind

Trying to bring it all in and soak it all up

Emotion, this.. emotion..has to slow

Else we’ll no longer be able to breathe the reality

You stretch out and tear yourself away from the window

I whisper ‘it’s okay, we’ll go for it one day’ under blankets

Shaking and shifting the care

For anything other than that freedom

Lying in wait out there on the roaming roads

It’s true, I’ll do it one day

I’ll reach out and touch time

As I take her hand in mine

As we believe

Never…looking…

back.

(Please, just promise you’ll wait for me…)

WE ARE THE MOMENT

I have seen it always, moments I keep close to me, moments that were not mine. I see my best friend finding true love; I see another finding joy in the laughter of her children, I see strangers meeting in parks; playing in the snow. I see every one’s moments, except for mine.

I see you blending in with friends. I see your moments through a tinted glass window. I see you create moments in the rain, in the snow. I see you living life. I see you creating moments, making moments. Your moments become mine.

You spot me one day. I was caught off guard, not prepared. You moved towards me, kiss me, creating a moment that has both of us in it.

(CAUGHT OFF GUARD, NOT PREPARED)

Everything has smashed apart so wonderfully I can’t breathe the same way.

Nothing is quite as impossible as they tell me, a sure-fire destiny can get all shifted out of focus. Like a wash of constant love for simply being around to experience.

Ready? Who’s ready to dance and dare as we duck and dive past the downer darkness. Oh, the strings are my only wings, the voices just lift and lift as I hang on to clouds floating inside as much as they are sneaking in distant sky. This battle is a constant unknowing of not quite being sure of anything concreted, merely making what you can of the dreams and destiny flushes.

Smiling and shaking and shivering and just flowing it all through you, thinking for the thrill and moving with the changing tides. I’m never ever quite prepared. Never firmly holding onto the loose shield around myself for safeguard, knock backs and lost lanes all a part of being all-in.

Feeling the spirit inside swallow you whole in magic and mystery and romance and wonder without ever holding back one single tear of who you are.

The bird grew new wings as he braves the gales all keen eyes and picture-perfect trust in the moment, tapping out words just trying to create the movement in my heart. Make this never stop…make this my always and only.

MY ALWAYS AND ONLY

Dear Annie,

I’m sitting here, wondering how I am going to pen this out, mainly because I feel that I should have done this years ago, when we were just children and everything in life was simple and uncomplicated. But, well, I didn’t so I only have now, just a few minutes before I drop off this parcel at your home and go on to do what I have to do.

I’m leaving town, and I’m not sure when I would ever be back. I want to see you, in person, but I know that if I do that, I will lose the strength to go, so all you get is this piece of paper that will spell the things I could not say to your face.

You are my best friend, and I love you, not in the way that friends love each other. I would do anything to make you happy, I can’t think of spending my life with anyone but you. You always tell me to date girls and to go out more, but the thing is, you’re everything I ever needed, but I now know that I am not everything you need.

You found someone else who makes you smile the way you make me smile. The way you talk about him to me, is the way I write about you in stories, in my journal.

I can’t stay in the same place as you now that you are going to promise to spend eternity with someone else. I need to leave, but I know that there isn’t going to be a day where I would not be thinking of you and the memories we shared together.

You are my always and only. No one can replace you. Goodbye.

Your best friend,

Sean

(ThIS PIECE OF PAPER)

Dear you,

I’m shivering, wrapped in the blanket you left as you rushed out; it fell to the floor and trapped your figure in my eyes. I clasped it around me and I try not to think of how it is soaked with the pattern of how you left, more than a memory, an imprint of our past. The colour of our love and the vision of our losing fight to pretend you weren’t going to have to leave me. The window was left open and I caught your shadow against the candlelight as you stormed out. Thinking I didn’t understand, maybe that I blamed you.

Will you receive this swamped in mud, eyes out to sea, daring a breath around a thousand bullets or a sickly stench of death? Or perhaps the mood is more hope than hell, maybe more something than the loss I can only begin to imagine in my safe, secure head. We’ve had a couple of raids, just a few wounded worries really.

I.. I can’t explain this need, or this detachment, or understand the possibility you won’t come back. I want you to read this when you’re away from the men, selfishly I want you to just keep it to you, not scream my name to your only friends when the night hits and the rations taste like defeat or remind you how far away I am. I cook the same we always have, just because. When you cast sights on the terror, do you feel me holding your hand? Do you? I..how can I send my every moment with you, to you, shall I sit and cry or believe the day away?

I feel the lonely morning strike out suddenly, I’ll hang out the washing and hear the sound of falling bodies. Then I shake it away and grip tighter to our past, pushing it, fleshing it out into this day, and the future knocks on my little fingers as I clench for what is yet to come. Funny, or maybe tragic, how I get so sure you’re back or are on the way back or just closer, than I start to laugh in the face of impossibility and picture you towering over everything with me at your side, like old times, when you’d shroud me from the rainfall or just keep those brown eyes on mine.

This parchment is nearly done now, darling, so I won’t waste any more of myself on this lifeless grey staring at me, with my fountain pen shaking as though angry at me for feeling like I’m making your difference.

So keep strong..just. Just keep strong. I am always with you and you are never without me, with all I am.

I wait for your return with the hope we live for,

Yours faithfully,

Your beloved.

p.s – Please don’t leave me..

SO KEEP STRONG, JUST KEEP STRONG

Dear you,

I keep a picture of you in my pocket at all times, so I bring you around with me wherever I go. I think of you all the time, love. Even when the going gets hard, even when I see things here that I would never want you to see. I wait for the day when I can enter our home again. I imagine that when I come back, you’ll just know, from my footsteps and open the door before I get the chance to ring the bell.

You are my strength. Thinking of you keeps me going. I try to listen to our song, at least once a day. Whenever the music comes flowing into me, I think about how when I come back, we will paint our house light purple, and finally choose some of the photos to frame up in those black frames that we bought so long ago. I wonder if they are collecting dust right now. But fear not love, I will come back, and we’ll do all of these things together.

Here, I don’t talk much to the people that are around me. Usually, late at night, I pretend to be asleep, while I’m actually closing my eyes, dreaming of you, wondering if you’re thinking of me at the exact moment that I am thinking of you.

I never talk about your letters, or you, or what we have to anyone here. Most of them will never understand what we have.

I miss your hand in mind. I miss the way your hair smells after you take a shower. I miss your voice, your touch, your smile. I miss you, love.

I’ll be back soon.

Love,

Me.

P.s. I could never leave you.

Written By JIM HALL and NILOFER ASHRAFF