Do you love me (like I love you)?

I found her on a night of fire and noise

Wild bells rang in a wild sky

I knew from that moment on

That I'd love her till the day that I died

And I kissed away a thousand tears

My lady of the Various Sorrows

Some begged, some borrowed, some stolen

Some kept safe for tomorrow

On an endless night, silver star spangled

The bells from the chapel went jingle-jangle

Do you love me? Do you love me?

Do you love me? Do you love me?

Do you love me? Do you love me?

Do you love me? Like I love you?

She was given to me to put things right

And I stacked all my accomplishments beside her

But I still seemed so obsolete and small

I found God and all his devils inside her

In my bed she cast the blizzard out

A mock sun blazed upon her head

So completely filled with light she was

Her shadow fanged and hairy and mad

Our love-lines grew hopelessly tangled

And the bells from the chapel went jingle-jangle

Do you love me? Do you love me?

Do you love me? Do you love me?

Do you love me? Do you love me?

Do you love me? Like I love you?

She had a heart full of love and devotion

She had a mind full of tyranny and terror

Well, I try, I do, I really try

But I just err, baby, I do, I error

So come find me, my darling one

I'm down to the grounds, the very dregs

Ah, here she comes, blocking the sun

Blood running down the inside of her legs

The moon in the sky is battered and mangled

And the bells from the chapel go jingle-jangle 

jingle-jangle jingle-jangle jingle-jangle

Do you love me? Do you love me?

Do you love me? Do you love me?

Do you love me? Do you love me?

Do you love me? Like I love you?

All things move toward their end

I knew before I met her that I would lose her

I swear I made every effort to be good to her

I made every effort not to abuse her

Crazy bracelets on her wrists and her ankles

And the bells from the chapel go jingle-jangle

Do you love me? Do you love me?

Do you love me? Do you love me?

Do you love me? Do you love me?

Do you love me? Like I love you?

by Nick Cave And The Bad Seeds

Untitled (#3)

two minutes past the witch’s hour 

he wonders will she come.

he does not summon. 

he invites. 

the muse creeps in behind him

from neuron raging skylines,

against the bar she spies him

and in the dream he is alive.

ghostly in her elegance

a puppet in her presence,

she lives where dreams meet the dawn.

a quaking in his chest

his heart a frantic menace,

she that brings him the words yet he cannot speak

should not speak, would not speak 

but writes.

his fire bright on through the night

she leaves his pen quaking,

with her calm she saves him.

by Doug Metz

Campfire © Jennifer Phillips

Morning theft

Time takes care of the wound 

So I can believe 

You had so much to give 

You thought I couldn't see 

Gifts for boot heels to crush 

Promises deceived 

I had to send it away 

To bring us back again 

Your eyes and body brighten 

Silent waters, deep 

Your precious daughter in the

Other room, asleep 

A kiss "Goodnight" from every 

Stranger that I meet 

I had to send it away 

To bring us back again 

Morning theft 

Unpretender left 

Ungraceful 

True self is what 

Brought you here, to me 

A place where we can 

Accept this love 

Friendship battered down by 

Useless history 

Unexamined failure 

But what am I still to you 

Some thief who stole from you? 

Or, some fool drama queen 

Whose chances were few? 

That brings us to who we need 

A place where we can save 

A heart that beats as 

Both siphon and reservoir 

You're a woman, I'm a calf 

You're a window, I'm a knife 

We come together 

Making chance in the starlight 

Meet me tomorrow night 

Or any day you want 

I have no right to wonder 

Just how, or when 

You know the meaning fits 

There's no relief in this 

I miss my beautiful friend 

I have to send it away 

To bring her back again.

by Jeff Buckley

Get your stamens out

Get your stamens out (Zantedeschia aethiopica) Calla lilies © Jennifer Philips

Bluebells reaching for the night

Bluebells at night © Jennifer Phillips

Bluebells reaching for the night © Jennifer Phillips

Queen's tears in the night

Queen's tears in the garden of the night (Billbergia nutans) © Jennifer Phillips

So I may return with you

So I may return with you

to our beginning

following love

crossing the threshold

of your oneness - 

hold me a flower

within the night

tremble my thoughts

divide my passion

deep in your heart

collect the moisture

from my tears

distil me an hour

reserve the perfume

following love.

by Joy Hester

Belladonna lily © Jennifer Phillips

Abstractify

A crayon picture - "Abstractify" I did as a kid © Jennifer Phillips

The rival

If the moon smiled, she would resemble you.

You leave the same impression

Of something beautiful, but annihilating.

Both of you are great light borrowers.

Her O-mouth grieves at the world; yours is unaffected,

And your first gift is making stone out of everything.

I wake to a mausoleum; you are here,

Ticking your fingers on the marble table, looking for cigarettes,

Spiteful as a woman, but not so nervous,

And dying to say something unanswerable.

The moon, too, abuses her subjects,

But in the daytime she is ridiculous.

Your dissatisfactions, on the other hand,

Arrive through the mailslot with loving regularity,

White and blank, expansive as carbon monoxide.

No day is safe from news of you,

Walking about in Africa maybe, but thinking of me.

by Sylvia Plath

Moon © Jennifer Phillips

Queen's tears

Queen's tears - Billbergia nutans © Jennifer Phillips

Being sad in the library

As I walked in the dark through the tunnels and tunnels of books, I could not help being overcome by a sense of sadness. I couldn't help thinking that if I, by pure chance, had found a whole universe in a single unknown book, buried in that endless necropolis, tens of thousands more would remain unexplored, forgotten forever. I felt myself surrounded by millions of abandoned pages, by worlds and souls without an owner sinking in an ocean of darkness, while the world that throbbed outside the library seemed to be losing its memory, day after day, unknowingly, feeling all the wiser the more it forgot.

by Carlos Ruiz Zafón

Mimosa Rocks

Mimosa Rocks NSW © Jennifer Phillips

Half asleep

There comes a time

when poetry comes,

and there comes a time

when poetry goes.

It's beyond my control

if it doesn’t want to stay.

It stays crouched inside, 

because to allow it out

means the feelings come, 

and the feelings bring pain.

And life when half asleep, 

is comfortable.

© Jennifer Phillips (All rights reserved)

Somewhere in Victoria © Jennifer Phillips

Silence

"There are all kinds of silences and each of them means a different thing. There is the silence that comes with morning in a forest, and this is different from the silence of a sleeping city. There is silence after a rainstorm, and before a rainstorm, and these are not the same. There is the silence of emptiness, the silence of fear, the silence of doubt. 

There is a certain silence that can emanate from a lifeless object as from a chair lately used, or from a piano with old dust upon its keys, or from anything that has answered to the need of a man, for pleasure or for work. This kind of silence can speak. Its voice may be melancholy, but it is not always so; for the chair may have been left by a laughing child or the last notes of the piano may have been raucous and gay. Whatever the mood or the circumstance, the essence of its quality may linger in the silence that follows. It is a soundless echo."

by Beryl Markham

Dietes grandiflora © Jennifer Phillips

The past and the present

"You can clutch the past so tightly to your chest that it leaves your arms too full to embrace the present". 

by Jan Glidewell

Small waterfall in a forest near Marysville, VIC © Jennifer Phillips

Blind date

© Jim Unger

To the night

Good Mother Night,
Roll me up in your darkness;
Swathe me safe, unseen;
Suckle me on the trickling milk of stars;
Till I drift into forgetful, foolish dreams
Of love’s perfect flowering in the brightest of days.

by David Singleton

Guinea fowl plumage © Jennifer Phillips

Branch etchwork

Branch etchwork @ Jennifer Phillips

Flower pattern

Flower pattern by my 10 year old daughter © Jennifer Phillips

Spring flowers

Pink hyacinth © Jennifer Phillips

Spring magnolias © Jennifer Phillips