you learn, my god do you learn!
from this the most brutal of teachers
that all of our backs are bent
from the weight of all our affections
spilled and spent just to fill our burdens
with all these little lies that
never did any harm until we began to believe

and ain't it heavy
to hold up your own head

so put your hand to the plow
and score your crooked rows into the earth
crack apart the stony ground
'til bone and sinew stretch and ache at
every expectation frustrated
and every weed choked seed that you have sown
fills you up with failure

and ain't it hard
to beat your own heart

so stand,
stand and face the sun
til it burns your blistered skin
and breaks away your burden
wreck, wreck your wretched heart
wreck all apart your broken heart
stand straight and face the sun again

then broken bodies groan, and graves
split open when breath breathed into ashes
breaks all the slumbering children
free from death and dust
and seeds sown sprout and
stretch their fragile limbs in praise
burdens break and roll away
like stones from tombs at break of day!

and ain't it something
to die to live

and ain't it something
how you were never alive until you began to die

i can smell the japanese magnolia flowers from here
but i cannot see you

oh how i love you

you are goliath and i
i only have these small stones
i looked in the water
and there were many stones
large and strong ones
that could surely bring you down to me
but i could not carry them back to you
because i am small and you
you are far away
and they would have driven me into the ground

so i chose the small stones
because they were worn down and small like me
so i knew they would fly true to you
and i could carry them

the japanese magnolia blossoms have fallen
they became too beautiful for their branches to bear
the weight of their own sweetness made them fall
so they are replaced
by the softer shoots of spring leaves
that stay tied to twigs because
they are too fragile to let go

and you, and i, and goliath, and these stones
are felled and made true
because we are weak
replaced by something that can bear us

i cannot smell the japanese magnolias anymore
but i can see you

oh how i love you

some photographs. been shooting a lot of 800 speed film in my canon ae-1.