In vain
So many times I’m cast aside,
like sun when you want rain.
I hate the way you shun my shine,
but love you all the same.
So many lustful vacancies
stray loose across my way.
I loathe how effort goes unseen,
but love you all the same.
So many calls go unreturned;
proclaiming love in vain.
I wish, for once, my voice was heard,
but love you all the same.
For all the same I love you.
I love you all the same.
Here I proclaim in falling rain,
let love not be in vain.
Horizon
I watch for you in the dusky face of evening,
from across a barnless field, when cattle lay low,
where no hilltop obscures nor skyline opaques;
I watch for you, Horizon.
When the deep blue light of a worn-out air
is wed with a web of golden hair,
I leap from my duties and run to the gate
to watch for you, Horizon.
By day I trail my clumsy feet,
refuse to play, and choose to read,
yet come the hour – how I blame the hour –
I watch for you, Horizon.
Like the ever-sheer and distant cliff,
falling far and far beyond my reach,
I too have fallen for your power,
and watch for you, horizon.
Destination
Where am I from, and where am I to?
From ashes to ashes, and all that I grew.
The farming, the harvest,
the feast and the cheer,
the love in the eye of the one you held dear,
the light and the dark, creeping in every moon;
from ashes to ashes, and all that I grew,
where am I from,
and where am I to?
Food for thought
Is it the far-off cry of a city street
that howls to the moon in a midnight hour?
Is it the content of my casting vision
that nets and hauls a detailed catch?
Or is it the tonguely echoes
that sour my breath with what’s been said?
Perhaps the sprightly scent of you, my dear,
that beckons me towards your lips
and prays a silent parting,
shall serve the purpose of my muse
and slow the heart departing.
How soft we tread when lines are few
Half a page could never do
nor fill the quota set by words
that so demand a grander view
of all their trees and all their birds.
Yet even I who never flew
(the less that’s said the more that’s heard)
know half a page could never do
nor fill the quota set by words.
Four corners
I lay to sleep,
and crease the deftly folded sheets
where once a fair a fiery heat
had shared the bare and naked splendour
that rocked the pulse and room with pleasure.
I hold the pillow,
hot and cold within my arms,
the kiss and bite between my palms
that both conflicts and keeps me calm
but fails to bring me from my woe.
Four corners never felt so far apart,
and here I lie,
caught amidst the sew and seams
where dreams now fill the space, not you.
Who knew how fast this feeling grew?
Tether
With this string I shall tether
our ankles together
so, darling, when you go away
I can pull on the slack
and haul you right back;
it’s probably best that you stay.
* * *
When the thread starts to quiver
I feel like I’m with her,
pulling taut by the light of the moon.
And I’m sure it delights her,
the thread pulling tighter,
to dance to her favourite tune,
but this fool starts to wonder
if you have grown fonder
of the distance, the dancing, and dreams.
On her heel there’s a blister
where ’tether had kissed her
and it’s breaking its way through the seams.
It was then that I wavered,
how I wish I’d been braver
and blind to what I came to see;
at the end of the line,
I broke and I cried
on the string that she’d tied to a tree.
Pray for wings
Fate rests upon the public hum,
stop and start towards its goal.
Roads, lights, pockets of change,
conspire against the timetables;
a dozen worried glances
at ever-going watches
plead with the ebbing flow
and pray to gods they never loved
or ever cared to know.
Amidst the crowd of worriers
who’s daily meet may not be met,
there sits, restlessly, a longing heart
who woke this morning before the sun,
sung this morning before the birds,
but laughed too soon at the day’s potential;
now they’ll never know what could have been.
Feather-light, a woe descends,
to fall and float beside them.
Truth be told, it’s company
when dreams have been forgotten.
The longest mile
With a rubber-band around my waist,
I edge away,
I edge away.
Flat-footed steps with little haste,
I wanna stay,
I wanna stay.
I trail my heart across the floor.
I had her smile, but I wanted more.
And I never got to say those words.
She was never mine, but I was hers.
And I wanna stay,
I wanna stay,
but edge away.
I edge away.
Spark
Out their line of sight,
the slight
and brushing palm
stand my hairs on end,
as they stretch
and bite
at your fingertips,
I fight
the growing tide
and hide
beneath a blushing skin,
to turn and see your glinting eye,
the sly,
enticing ice of blue
that beckons me upstairs
where you,
adorned with silk desire,
await the spark to burn your fire.
8 thoughts
These men
are cunning not alone with words
and it is only the simple man
who can ever truly say I love you
These men
look to the starless sky
and cast their imagery;
life bears no beauty like the empty void
crushing life between their palms
rolling it between their fingers
their eyes don’t weep for what they’ve lost
but for what they cannot find
This is no pleasure
nor remedy,
This is Breathing
This is Beating
This is Consuming
This is,
and for so long as it is,
so are we.
we’ll whisper into midnight
to hear our thoughts
above the pounding of our feet
And this poem will be forgotten
before my hand can touch the page.
Just one kiss
What fire have I
in my reddened silence
to deny the crimson hush?
An ember buried in fallen leaves
burns far more fierce than that of lust.
Whipped up by winds,
we’ll crown the hills
with waves of growing flame.
We’ll light the dusk,
ignite the dawn;
with rosy poise, we’ll catch the rain.
Storms & Whispers
But I am a fool.
A jealous man who swings from ropey greed,
back and forth,
the ever-tightening noose,
pulled taut by the eyes that
fall on you.
This is not suicide,
but suicidal,
doomed to the caverns of self-pity
that howl and wallow to the stony existence
of nobody in particular
echoing out into the valley,
the valley, where the flush of rain
draws near.
I can but put my hope in the hands of the wind,
have faith in their power of change
that so many times has swept me wrong.
But still,
I’ll take my chances
and pray for hurricane.
Do Not Cross
If you were to dust my skin for prints,
who’s would you find?
Or scan my chest for stolen hearts
and dissect my lips for promises,
how many are held there?
This is a crime scene.
Do Not Cross.
Linger
It’s the final note that lingers,
caught in your hair and your clothes,
holding on to the threads like the comforting smell
of home.
It’s the rounded roll of a lapping shore
against the tiny whispers, as it washes
in and out;
a drug-like hush in a moonlit fade.
It’s the breathing glow of embers,
their orange hearts rise and fall
like throbbing suns
seen through the slats of a wooden door.
It’s the rush of blood in a lover’s touch,
the rosy blush of tender skin,
the growing tide of heat within,
and it’s the final note that lingers.
The Hive
I should be drinking honey;
to me this café’s no more than a hive,
but in a parallel reality where bees grew wise
and built for themselves a world of their own
that too, like them, buzzed and whirred,
producing more than just honey,
feasting on more than just pollen,
their taste more refined to the culinary delights
of cow, lamb, chicken and pig,
roasted on fires,
stewed in pots;
oh how they buzzed with thirsty glee
when the fleshy odours swam beneath their wings…
but halt now!
What shall be their Queen?
Shall they praise the tea leaves or the coffee bean?
No.
They’re not the creators.
So, in place of potted plants
stands a grand tropical cacao,
the true queen of creation
whose leafy majesty feeds on the most royal delicacy,
the heart of man;
a crude design of nature that never learnt to fly.
Painting a picture
Thoughts, dreams, reality,
blending together in a mindly amalgamation,
like milk into tea
and sugar in that,
I drink them up, altogether,
a ponderous brew whose sweetness bears a question,
written in the dregs that puddle its shallows:
What are you?
You believe freedom lies in being free,
free from responsibility,
from duty,
and now you’ve but the naked canvas.
Paint something.
You can paint anything.
And as the dry brush mocks you with its many bristles,
you can but throw paint at the wall,
blaming your art on gravity as it
drips
and slides to its knees,
weeping through the gap beneath the door.
There, amidst the red, yellow and blue,
you see your eyes,
flooding the landing,
cascading
down the stairs
to rest at the foot of an empty bed;
covers thrown,
pillow askew,
but they cannot fold and shape into a lover.
Hold them as you may,
the morning won’t bring you kisses.
Ever-cogless
I’ve time to kill,
but what shall be my weapon?
With my bare hands,
I can fool time,
turn back the clocks,
break the watches,
but time lives on without its cogs,
without the sixty-pointed hands –
three hands that bear but a finger a piece –
and even with my ten mighty digits
I cannot break the ever-counting face;
forever advancing,
my breath held,
advancing,
my teeth clenched,
advancing,
my fists locked in,
my eyes screwed shut,
tick-tock
tick-tock
and still I write in thought of her
Would you release these memories from their chains
and have them howl upon the powdered face of past?
By all accounts, the stories yet refrained
are grand with love and loss that’s come to pass,
but heed the open wound and the beating heart;
there will be blood, my dear, there will be blood.
Catch every red and salty drop that parts
from vein and eye, toward the growing flood,
and swallow them with your gentle words;
they cannot hope to save the long deceased.
This time is mine to voice what’s yet been heard,
to tell you, lest forever hold my peace,
there was, there is, and shall forever be,
another heart that haunts eternally.