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.
Something more
When you kiss me,
the soundtrack to my life
fails and skips
like words and heartbeats.
Pinch me, quick!
Fingers crossed I don’t wake up…
A new flame
It wasn’t the best of rests,
but it was the sweetest night of sleeplessness.
We laid through
dark, dawn and day,
dizzy with kisses.
In her dressing gown and slippers,
she made for the kitchen
to make me buttered toast and tea.
I stood
beside
and kindled her smile.
Coins and Kisses
I
won’t
loan these
words, interest-free,
repayment guarantee,
until my heart balance reads well above
the red,
instead
of leeching from my overdraft;
fruitless sprees,
falling from my moneytree.
Not by label nor declaration
V What are we now?
C Too soon, too soon.
These hands, these lips,
they’ve barely met.
V As have our bodies;
bare on bare,
C our tangled hair,
V our tongues and teeth
that nibbled as we writhed
beneath.
C Hush now! Don’t speak so loud,
don’t talk so proud
or boast of me.
V Then what can I say?
How do I refer to you and I
if not by label or declaration?
C We’ll find another way
to say
those words...
V No common phrase or poet’s line
could ever serve as replacement.
C We know those words should not be said,
at least, not yet.
V But our vocabulary
falls
somewhat short
of where we’ve come to be.
C Don’t think so loud
or walk so proud.
V Then answer me,
what are we now?
C Words-
V fail you.
Now only kisses come from your lips
where once you dared to utter-
C but never that!
V True, but close.
C It cannot be.
V Too soon?
C Too soon.
These lips, those words,
they’ve barely met.
V But bare on bare
they’ve tasted more.
C So what are we now?
V We’re everything,
C but not by label
V nor by declaration.
C We’ll go about our every day,
V we’ll act as if it all were true
C and we’ll find a safer way
to say
I love you.Little red car
Black on black, the crystal sheet
slipped gently
from the naked road, fell
wet upon her tarmac skin
as morning spilled
and tumbled in.
Warm hands of colour touch the scene;
a red-breasted bird,
a rusty-red car
and, all the while, my redder side pines
for red on red and the cotton sheet
where my naked love still lies asleep.
The draft
This is a connoisseur’s world,
a society with a bitter tongue
that has no taste for romance.
This is an editor’s world,
with a ring in its nose and a red disposition
to charge at the cape of emotion.
It’s alright, I understand,
that anvil round your neck prevents you;
forged by a blacksmith who never learnt to love.
This is a foreign world;
these words are not of your language.
That guy
I’m that guy
who hogs the four-seat table,
with his pad n’ pen,
looking completely outta place…
coffee was a bad choice.
2Even the Christmas tree
leans in for a stare,
but when I go to meet it
eye-to-spine
it whistles and blinks at an awkwardly rapid pace.
He just wishes
he was as cool as me,
droppin’ lines
insteada spines.
Come January, you’re spent.