chris english
Door Face – Shield Face, Oil colour on canvas, 48 x 36 inches. © C. English.

Door Face – Shield Face


This stable, three dimensional World
Is in between us
As we hide and lie
Behind the doors and shields
Of ourselves.

Although we meet eye to eye
In the literal construct of reality,
Do we ever see what is really there?

My mind is not on a planet
Speeding around a sun.
There is no clock.
It is you that draws me close
In the here and now.
You are the gravity that pulls me in.
There is no time. Just here and now.

Thinking of you
Inside this tub of flesh and bones
My consciousness smoulders
In a warmth of euphoria. Actually,
Side effects of anti-inflammatory medicine.
All the same, embers of a past fire
Is enough to sustain and fortify the sanity
Of this wreaked ship, sinking on crumbling joints.
Emotional lava that lies within
The crevices of my mind
Is still there.

Sometimes, the mellow flame of memory
Flickers from that furnace of my heart.
A potent force spills
Over into a volcanic froth,
And I am aglow within,
Turning myself inside out into
the realm of dreams, where you always were;
And there you are always.

My fantasy swan, a graceful beauty
That is indeed a reality
In make believe; so, like a fool,
I pine inside, for a memory.
Myself, a two faced clown
Not showing how I feel.
Instead, in dreams and in so called “reality”
I hide behind doors and shields.



© C. English