The Shawl

Piety understanding sorrow
Eyes which gleam with black
Soft fingerprints press against the shawl
The salt of tears held back
The smell of embalming fluid mixes with
The hum of natural weather
Hollowness of coughing resounds
Candle wax burning
The air like the taste of distilled water
The shawl comforts the mournful
The soft touch of the dark comforts sadness.

Christopher Baird 2011 ©

A Director's Vision

On overcasting days like this
When the shadows are not staged
The director of the play shouts
To all the actors dismay
About the lines they remembered
Being taken out of context
Not being accurately said
Or the wrong iam
With the wrong pentameter
Practice and struggle
Seems to be on each mind
As well as a business that pays
With seat count and rhyme
In due time, the universal truth
Seeps from the stage, if there is such
For each tear marked face
There was a different moment
That the director was wrong.

Christopher Baird 2011 ©

Oceans and Seas

From the Ocean
From the Sea
I see you Here
Alongside of me
Your voice
Still harps
Pushes my Heart
I let all things be
I remember all the good
You encompassed for me
I know your soul is freed
I once saw you walk
Now I see footprints
Which I need
Strength to carry
All the weight
Boiled inside
Life deeds
Life dies
Life breaths
All in a cycle
You’ll come back
To my memory
Intact
Always innocent
Always pleased
Like a balloon
Through trees
Into the distance
We watch
As you travel
Another Ocean
Another Sea.

Christopher Baird 2011 ©

A Remark

Your joy flows with the wind
In times like these I know
We’ll meet and speak again
Like a memory that is too faint
A picture that is out of place
I resort to the higher mode
Of remembering how even
Your essence used to glow
And still does, in my heart
Just one of many, even you left
In place was a mark, you lived
You conquered spirit for God
I can only thank you in remark.

Christopher Baird 2011 ©

Those Eyes That Smiled

God took something from me
The thing that was never mine
Life can be a gem you see
Shown through innocent eyes
Which still smile
Which causes me to cry
Because I could be so weak
To fall for the traps
Laid out for me, for myself to grow.

You stop me in mid monologue
Still smiling, in some way
I shall talk of death and decadence
But not here, not now, not in that way
Even in hurt, with tempest dismay
I am more forever glued
To the word we could not say
Which led you quicker to the truth
While struggle snares me here
I will stop thinking, I will pray.

Christopher Baird 2011 ©

Tasty Jazz

The cool jazz hand

Collides with the strings
The trumpet bellows and lightens
Drums’ hollow sound fill the air
All around the atmosphere is eatable
The taste of music, swimming fish in the glass bowl
Upon the table, we all are entertained
Being fixated with the clairvoyant music
One which tells the future of eternal bliss
If we listen and tune ourselves into the direct flow
Life laid upon the platter, each with their own dish
Tastes colors sound art, mixed together
Washed down with no care but the moment.

Christopher Baird 2011 ©

The Inside

Sunlight exceeds the day
Forever fixed it seems new
All the strength of reality
Seen through a weak
Also lavish lens
Working in eternity
Spins of the fingers
Upon the thread, a tapestry
Woven, like love
A newly discovered passion
Bulges at the seems
The confines erupt, expands
Space grows as love grows
A container is filled
Cooled it stretches
The envelope must always hold
The letter must always describe
The characteristics
Amount on the inside.

Christopher Baird 2011 ©

The Hot Air Balloon

The hot air balloon had weights
Of which held it to the ground
Like a magnet in a crowd of iron
Until the sands with the wind blew
And the gas from the fuel injected
Hot air into the lungs of destiny
Higher and higher slowly it rose
Throwing off the soul, of holds
Into the sky it rose higher
The soul, the weight
Until the carriage was then swung
Unhitched and only the balloon left
The earth, no weight to halt the ascent
Forevermore.

Christopher Baird 2011 ©

Fragments

Calm before the storm
Eternal moments in hours
A divine course in young love
Mastery of the truths we grew up on
Launched like a ship from the harbor
Into once chartered waters; redesigned
Forever on the back of freedom
A pilgrim searching out new consciousness
A new state of mind, shared with brothers
Sisters of the same womb, a generation of artists
Pulse beating and strong like the gongs of the east
With traditions thrown together and patched, worked
Into a seamless blanket of warmth of the human soul
Consoling each individual entity in ways that lost before
Until the coming of another gathering, where each was only
Another friend in disguise, strangers are known by shrewdness
Brotherhood, known by the elements that compose it, together
Altogether found, like broken mirrors reflecting upon the ground.

Christopher Baird 2011 ©

Dream Filled Ties

A symphony orchestra was conducted
I did not know a man of the wand
Also wrote, but I suppose I attempted
Musical notes, alongside the things I too spoke
And one day I hope to grab a pen and illustrate
Precisely what’s in my head, an assortment
Worlds dreams are made of, fabrics with a thread
They say the mansion has many rooms, in which to lose
The one way to win it all in thought upon pillows swell
Feathers building mellow melds of perfect mind synchronicity
Oh what a light night of the soul, free lucid in full control
Of not knowing what comes next, I suppose only life could attest
To knowing such sorrowful joy, what woe is it not to be
In surprise of what may, what may not be, and to spread
My angel wings carelessly among the stars floating endlessly
In tune with my surroundings, my nature and my crowning
In bed with all my downing, nature landing until I rise
Stars in my eyes, wondering the formula for another night
Of just the right drop of dream filled ties, my daily surprise.

Christopher Baird 2011 ©

The Eiffel Tower

The two sat at the small café
The tourists snapped pictures
Everything was natural, in place
There was nothing left to save
Not even changed faces to each
A smile was sent, and a reply
Mirrored languages, one learned
Years had passed, and somehow
The information on the post card
Stayed the same, as did the memory
A man and his bread passed by on bike
With a ring he crossed the street
The silence was broken once again
The two stared at each other
Their reflections in the mirror smiled
At long last, the two had their moment
A flower grew between two hearts
The broadcast of true love traveled.

Christopher Baird 2011 ©

Upon an Island

With snow on the frame
Do you remember my true name
If things truly changed
Can either continue on the same
There’s much in the World
No view the same
Of all these accounts
All the words that could surmount
Would you remember to speak
Of a friend you once knew
With the same colors and hues
Of the first light you glimpsed
For me, I still knew
The correct way through
To say it with a chime
With wind through my mind
And the exact moment when
You stepped in
Launching ships
A harbor now closed and remote
Upon a sea dwelling race
Nautical miles away from the normal
On an island where we loved to be
With closed eyes my hands still can trace
All the memories still set in place.

Christopher Baird 2011 ©