The Aviation of Her

The piano is weeping

several continents away a
Japanese pianist
hidden in cigarette smoke.
Provoking a hotel bar.

Her black vinyl approach

1000 philosophies scrolling to
pursue a definition.
Meaning
Each tear becomes a letter
from the foreign alphabet.
Chasing down cheek, in gallop.
Sentences of love soon
appear, a poem.
1

It is written on her face

Then a neon glow anticipates
parted lips
smoothly caressing a
far-fetched idea, a bullet
between tongues
Lost in hair, she thinks
in an asana of the sun.
Feet lost in waters of a holy
river
a plastic life is long away
In a moth she flies
past lands on which she wept.
A guttural mosaic, chewing
through his quilt
repeatedly burnt by the only
thing
that keeps her.
2

Heirlooms Carved in Me.

Shabazz
Shillingford

Prologue
This is dedicated to the spirit. The
creative spirit that haunts every reader
to this book and we both thank you for
coming.
Shabazz

Published by
Shabazz Shillingford Productions
Heirlooms Carved in Me
London 2009

The copyright holder reserves, or holds for their

own use, all the rights provided by copyright law,
such as distribution, performance, and creation of
derivative works; they have not waived any such
right.

"See how the hand is invisible while

the pen is writing;the horse
careening, yet the rider unseen;
the arrow flying, but the bow out of
sight; individual souls existing,
5

while the Soul of souls is

hidden"Rumi, Mathnawi, II 1303304

Contents
Past Life 266
The Bread of
Shame.7

The Muse of my
Work9
Day of Reckoning, Night of
Karma..11
The Aviation of
Her..12
Freedom Notes14
The Vessel.15
Arabian Nights and its
Traveler..17
Hidden Cancers.19
Unborn Potential..22
The Shift in
Consciousness..24
Orb of Love I 25
Reverberations of Gongs and the
Gutless. 27
Wild Horses are like
Me.29
Walking these Streets at 4am..32
Modern
Bedouinism..34

Wuthering Wolf-Child.. 36
The Water Cycle 38
Papa40
Kamikaze me41
Pagan Instruments..42
Decade of the Hermit..43
Facing Mr. Ego.44

Past Life 26.

I call them heirlooms
when
Some are carved on odd scraps
of paper, on cardboard,
on walls beside my bedside
8

and forgotten journals

that a former ghost
a former isotope of me
handed down to me through every

Reincarnation .

The Bread of Shame

Endless light.
It's contagious, so we've been told
Enlightenment and other adjectives
do no justice so open your heart.
On the trappings of Earth, with
all the delicious opiates, the bejeweled
needles,
9

the rare riches and instant gratifications

soon bring me to a form of light.
But subconsciously, what evil are we
baking?
Closer in breakneck speed. Too fast.
Those quick fixes drag me there
I taste the bread of shame.
It consumes me and all, combusting with
its seedy yeasts
I short circuit to the ground
I fall.

Where is the meaning in my life?

To be deserving of bread, I had to work.
Transform myself.
To reach the light I had to resist
the demon's beckoning with twisted
shortcuts
across this dangerous landscape of
interpreted
negativity.
But like a magnet I repel.
I never was the owner of my talents
10

but the manager.

Stripped bare, I owe everything
to the light, to the inspiration
To perfection.
I chose the path of most resistance.

The Muse of my
Work

The broken mirror

I smashed
like an act of self-mutilation
of this seemingly innocent.
Heirloom.
So in this book, I attempt
11

to pick up the shards

of consciousness
It is a metaphor
in so many ways
Sticking them back together
Is a reconciliation
of parts of yourself
parts of your history
I attempt to form the coherent whole.
Putting them together
to find a meaningful truth
Join me
I try not to cut myself
or
self mutilate when I collect
these sharp and lucid splinters of
memory.
But these poems are carved in me
For once you smash the heirloom
you will never look at yourself
the same way.

12

Day of Reckoning,
Night of Karma.

On a blank wasteland, void of time

Karma approaches
like a snake in the bushes
slithering with deadly promise
A smile turns on my face
Because I know
13

the balance will be addressed

I reach out
Burly tattooed arms
and naked flesh.
I reach for the beast.
Awaiting to be judged
Something inside of me blossoms
Like the fruition of a violent organism
It is the remembrance of pain
And the understanding of karma

The Aviation of Her

The piano is weeping
several continents away a Japanese
pianist
hidden in cigarette smoke.
Provoking a hotel bar.

14

Her black vinyl approach

1000 philosophies scrolling to
pursue a definition.
Meaning
Each tear becomes a letter from the
foreign alphabet.
Chasing down cheek, in gallop.
Sentences of love soon appear, a poem.
It is written on her face
Then a neon glow anticipates
parted lips
smoothly caressing a
far-fetched idea, a bullet between
tongues
Lost in hair, she thinks
in an asana of the sun.
Feet lost in waters of a holy river
a plastic life is long away
In a moth she flies
past lands on which she wept.
A guttural mosaic, chewing through his
quilt
repeatedly burnt by the only thing

that keeps her.

15

Freedom Notes
I tasted the air
like apples on a sidewalk palm
voyages in a barrel
swaying hips to the voice of an ocean
A taxi rhythm, when you've lost your
direction
and yet every moment
is life's destination.
A miracle within this envelope of life
In my vision
diamonds are riding waves like horses
that would gallop on white sands.
16

Free in a million definitions.

A sigh for heaven to see.
My veins not red
my heart not beating, breaking, shaking
I would have been immortal on those
shores
in every pearl
A place where the rain is glitter
the crops are jewels
but nothing more than this ethereal
window.
From the seeds of despair

The Vessel
I speak conceptually
like a vase you pour
hot waters right to my top.
You expect me not to falter
between your violent eruptions.
How must I carry flowers and expect
Them not to burst into a violent chorus of
song?
But soon in water thoughts turn to lava
dropping in the ocean.

17

Arguments are falling around me like

ancient continents
from underwater volcanoes.
I feel it in from the back of
my throat
trying to escape!
Hours later, A million years maybe
from my vague mineral deposits you
invent glass. Now you are the convex
lense.
Because you are so blind to all that
occurs
but then you should turn that
mirror on to yourself conversely
illuminate all those inner truths
that show me the way to your heart
But in the ceiling crack
a laser shines a healing light
all of my lava like tears evaporate back
into
the motorways of our love.
For God is closer than my jugular vein
and therefore closer than you will ever be
to me.

18

Arabian Nights and

its traveler
I wander the hot concrete.
Like a lost Bedouin
in and amongst this jungle of glass
complex emotions and abstracted fears.
Looking for my faithful camel
but in my choices made
he was no longer there.
The burden was to heavy
and the sin, you ask intrepidly?
19

it was far too grave

But there is no need to worry
I am different in love
I experience this ecstasy.
Everyone is desensitised too
lost from your power
heathen to all this.
Turning away into the sand dunes
I twirl over
into the black street
onto hot asphalt and stares
my head tilted
I am open to you
they question they wonder.
I accept while everyone in the city
accepts love
with tilted heads, rising like dervishes.

20

Hidden Cancers

You build me up
in all of these sweet confidences
I hold back the tears
because its gone.
And now I
roam the streets in agony
and then I smile again.
But its just a fading whisper
of the happy memories collected
and amassed in the circumferences
of my cheeks
21

I fear the acupuncturists needle

Then they.
Let out a roar
a screech and a scream.
Like an erupting tumor dormant.
Every nuance of your pain.
All of that unseen tension
That creates your shudder and unseen
shadows.
But now
we have come to realise
when this tumor goes back
to its dormant phase
you put back on the mask
like some sort of sycophantic joker.
Hiding the tension and the ghosts you
really feel.
Haunt me, with your words
I invoke you

22

Time is the
veil between
cause and
effect.
Yehuda Berg

23

Unborn potential

Down inside deep

is a growing child
under immense pressure.
He is drowning although alive
Society creates a poisonous amniotic
fluid
Preserving him for their interests.
But
he doesnt know what to do
I light a candle and see a flame of water.
To seek him out
where is he?

24

But now he is rejected

and that womb becomes a sewer
we have lost the discipline
to grow our children right.
You eject him like an orphan
and yet I believe
something more abstract now.
he is you and I
the un-foretold circumstances
a plait of intertwining
and interrelated events
mistakes and chaos
It is the human experience
he is the child we do not see

25

The shift in
consciousness

The opening of a lotus

above my head here
I am underwater
like a frog in the absence
every morning I understand the process
I am here now
like liquid solids and ice
I have changing emotions
I am a leap-pad
for changing seasons
26

Orb of Love I

I am wading in
but the waves are high.
You are the fort, but the moat is lost
now drenched
in the sea of all our tears
writhing in heart ache I send you
a glowing gold orb
testament to my love.
Yet you ignore
When its late and half past three
you see me knocking on your window
Pain.
We think about each other
in the darkness and the ignorance of
nightfall
but that cannot be made known.
27

I float back like a spirit over the city

in agony, it rains over again

On this note
that is all that proves me to be alive.
That fake love stabbed me twice.
I wade seamlessly out of your
consciousness
but then I drown in the sorrow of your
regret

28

Reverberations of
Gongs and the
Gutless.
You ring like a bell deep in me
your reverberations are strong
yet I have some reservations.
I pull up then I tread inside
I try to figure out should I go and die
on this train track in this dreamy night
here
But the walk is soured
there might be nothing after
youre now a mere silhouette.
I never asked nor did I beg
I only asked that you make me
something worth living for
but now u cant I
must now die.
29

Im waiting to just see pure darkness

The juxtaposition of this romance
is similar to death
when your heart is playing
darts, with our reality

Knock the bell and

awaken me
from this lulled exuberance and free
us
I never dared question why I might
have fallen I just loved but I could not
Receive
So will you come on with me?
You never could be what I wanted
When the day arises
I find myself alive
yet my train is leaving
I leap, I try
but the magnet of your love pulls
and I dont desert
but I am just a slave
pulling at the umbilical cord

30

Wild Horses Are

Like Me

Under this thick moss

you will see me so small.
Am I insignificant to you?
And thats how it is?
I have no more tales
of love and of fate
I just know that you
make me bleed with fear
and when you come near my
atmosphere, everything stops.
So I drowned myself.
Self consumed baptism.
Burned and charred myself
self abused myself
just to find that love.
But like wild horses in revolution
I kicked up a fuss
31

then I leapt and bolted

through you and I
made my own formula
and left you
as a sorry remainder.
Vanish from my earth
I keep it warm and moist
I always plant the best
but Im never second best.

32

To be, but a
vegetable

The potato peeler slid down

all the walls of my soul
manically, desperately almost
searching for some sort of
starchy goodness
some form of utility
and there it stood
the feeling of injustice
like a flame in the deepest
of seas
the burning sensation of indifference.
I gather up the potato peel
hide that raw naked truth
patch up
no thought numb and vegetated
What is on the surface of life
is illusion
We are nothing but shallow puddles
physically.
But our souls are truly
something else.

33

Walking the streets

at 4am

Alone I know, walking these roads

I walk up then I tread inside
trying to figure out should I go and die
on this train track in this dreamy night
here
but the walk is soured
by a three nights of pain
there might be nothing after
youre now a mere silhouette
I never asked nor did I beg
I only asked that you make me
something worth living for
but now u cant I
must now die
Im waiting to just see pure darkness
the juxtaposition of this romance
is similar to death
when your heart is playing
darts, with our reality
34

knock the bell and

awaken me
from this lulled exuberance and free
us
I never dared question why I might
have fallen I just loved but I could not
receive
so will come on with me
u never could be what I wanted
when the day arises
I find myself alive
yet my train is leaving
I leap, I try
but the magnet of your love pulls
and I dont desert
but I am just a slave
pulling at an umbilical cord
I
have
no choice
and my pain is here
on this paper
it is done.

Modern Bedouinism
35

I wander the hot concrete

like a lost Bedouin.
In and amongst this jungle of glass.
Complex emotions and abstracted fears.
Looking for my faithful camel.
But in my choices made
he was no longer there
the burden was to heavy
the sin too grave.
Clinging by the neck my proverbial
albatross.
But there is no need to worry
I am different in love.
I experience this ecstasy
everyone is desensitised too
lost from your power
heathen to all this.
Turning away into the sand dunes
I twirl a thousand times over
into the black street
onto hot asphalt and stares
my head tilted
I am open to you

they question they wonder

they accept
36

and everyone in the city accepts love

tilt heads and rise

Wuthering WolfChild
37

Far away on a cliff top

and amongst the moody moors,
a wolf child grew cold and deserted.
But little did you know
that he did not grow, in the spirit of Love
Instead he grew up hate and internalised
a sense of pain that bore no fruit
Whilst we,
like wolves in a thick forest
foraged for food all day.
Ignorant.
Then the mountains calling us up here is
cold,
no one wants to face the damage.
You wade in for me
as Im too tall.
I'm now passed and heres you.
When he comes down from the wolf lair,
emotions flow like waves
but the changing seasons
are constant like the ills of a twisted
society.

38

"Everyone
suspects himself
of at least one of
the cardinal
virtues, and this
is mine: I am
one of the few
honest people
that I have ever
known."
F. Scott
Fitzgerald, The
Great Gatsby
39

The water cycle

I placed
a million vespers into liquid urns
expelled from my eyes, tears up to God
like rain they fell back down
as to quench the thirst of a dry soil.
Why do I repeat that which soaked me?

An energy
so uniquely raw from violent dreams
boundless, lacked in shape, smoked
my insides a salmon pink so
wherever I went, I smelted
relationships, an echo left a stain.

Rays pierced and its

tips formed bells on the outer definitions
like a court jesters hat.
My sky was shaken by storms

40

Resistance appeared and

music was made

A masochism of smile.
Is all I have left of his grace.
A reminder cut cold of Paris plaster,
to ghoul abstract thoughts
into prompt.

Papa
41

I find symbolism in copies.

Dwindling clouds in pen
the ink of terracotta troops.

Standing to line.
In a mind of built up anger with a
plastic cup simplicity,
we build up a wall to Love.

On the verge of inaccuracy.

Millions of words re-organise
as they find meaning
Screaming

Violence and war we propagate.

So it's such a coincidence
you ask so wryly
Peace is born from a call to arms?

42

Kamikaze me
Wave reached it
an equestrian expose.
Brazen beings neon lipstick houses
a city with lamenting chairs on the
subway tube.

A bacterium culture.
Pacific specific like a million random
images
On one body
Ruling the flash bulbs, tourists visit here.

Thrown up in the air for sun.

Hair as clouds.
12+ GMT years forward,
a technological masochism
Drink me, Eat me.
I look around dumbstruck suffering
sensory overload and a failing thesaurus.
A tourist of Satan?

43

Pagan Instruments

Listening to
this ancient fire, crackling in a sadistic
rhythm.
Like rusty fingertips
on an ancient harp
Im ripping up pages
and throwing them into the insides
of this book you are reading.
Just the cinders remain, chemical and
atom
residue.
When it all burnt down
in my head.
The harp moves on to a different tune
I catch the needle, thread and loot
patching up the charred ashes
into a fulfilling whole.
We sleep sweetly in a blanket of soot.

44

Decade of the
Hermit

Today I felt like

the past 10 years have suddenly
come to a close.
Like a chapter on my life
is setting like a distant bloody orange
hue.
Fruitful but stained by regret.
There's a constant knocking at my door.
Do I stay a hermit, at this auspicious
point
in my life?
Or do I venture out?
Past my fears, the years and doubts
into the unknown and make that call?
Alas he returns inside this cave
only the bloody orange glow
in the cracks of his will
give tumultuous inspiration.
Yes, this too will pass.
45

Facing Mr. Ego

So long ago.
Mr. Ego.
You imprisoned me, us, you
now you can no longer keep me
In those cold iron chains
you keep me in social constructs
that keep us in fear
The physical barriers
on my people
may be vanquished
the invisible ones keep me grounded
they teach me a great wisdom
I wont let you define who I am.
Where Im supposed to buy my clothes
Who Im supposed to look like
The glass ceiling
helps me see everything clearly
It may exist for some
But I smashed it mentally
I was born with a purpose
only I can fulfill.
46

Your statistics mean nothing

to the joy in my spirit.

47

"What is worship?
To realise reality.
What is the sacred
law? To do no evil.
What is reality?
Selflessness"
- Sufi Proverb
Shaikh Abdulla Ansari Afghani Teacher 11th
Century

48

Published by
Shabazz Shillingford Productions
Heirlooms Carved in Me
London 2009

The copyright holder reserves, or holds for their

own use, all the rights provided by copyright law,
such as distribution, performance, and creation of
derivative works; they have not waived any such
right.

49