Risen

The gravel street was warmed by the rusting sunset

hours ago. Now, lit up by bulbs and sparks,

we sit with it and watch the opposite's onset;

silent, bound to the tune of a meadowlark.

The sap-filled tree stands, the hidden sun

heats the splintered wood of the bench's tired frame.

A light spits forth, and so the ritual is done.

On the whispered lake now shines a thin flame

that shimmers upon the rolling waves. We watch it grow,

averting our eyes from that crack of light

that burns our eyes if stared at. Wind now blows

away the clouds to announce the end of night.

And we too must part like the solemn clouds

destined to be caught by light and crowds.

Shine

Dusty light filters through;

eyes wide,

lips spread,

rolling over shut out

of my head.

The echo resonates

soothingly

with the tremolo

fading; longingly

mellow.

Windbreak

I let the drizzle fall and form its stains.

I'll dye the rest so it can look the same.

Thinking what it would be like outside

while melted wood is running down my thighs.

And still my joints creek like weak trees

that are easily swayed by the whispering wind.

Knowing I have no time for her heavy hands

and yet I can't help but miss the moaning reprimands.

Affidavit

That which could inspire such sweet prose,

secreting the scent of such a sweet, sweet rose.

While any other dream would be,

twice as sweet with honey.

Might honey not come from bees, 

And I would sign my affidavit,

so sweetly, suavely, sagely,

in my finest calligraphy. 

So that the bureau

would have no choice but agree.

But I will give them their honey. 

with the bees, 

and they will know;

so must they know.

The Orchard

In the old orchard

we wandered hand in hand

beneath the vibrant branches,

heavy with dew, and age,

and we, young in years and spirit

saw the future ripening, in fragrant blossom and mellow fruit;

in warm rays and grass as green as our thought.

Now, in the rusting Autumn,

the fallen leaves cannot cover

the obfuscation of the clouds and the wayward moon

like the face of old Death

so small we can hide it behind a thumbnail

if we can only raise our hand.

Dead Bird

The buzzard bled,

led on its back

with his head twisted to the ground.

His mouth would gape

and then close

as if something inside his beak

was attempting

escape.

His feet clutched together tightly

with his eyes

wide open;

almost breathing, it seemed;

his wings pulled

cruciform,

and like Christ he was surely

lost and

gone.

Shadowplay

Her wings whip the day sore

sinewed by the dusk;

shadowplay on the moon.

To fade into fog then to gloom

twilight flies, fallen glances;

whispers blurred by cloud.

Following a regal path proud

to feed on fuzzing bug haze;

whipping the day away once more.

A Post

Mist

I descended into a mist

and in the midst of it was you.

I descended into a mist

in your eyes, a smokey blue.

I descended into a mist

but I could not see it through.

I descended into a mist

and in the midst of it was you.

Autumn Leaves

Your auburn leaves rusted their coarse crust

onto the cobbles of my drive,

and I've been craving your metallic taste to touch my tongue,

just as the sun touches those leaves still standing,

and pierces scattered rays through,

like searchlights for those leaves once lost,

until the golden glow, with each glance upwards,

dissipates into darkness

and the premature dusk calls of the search for the night.

Spring Leaves

Leafs bleeding dew as the rays pour from the horizon

nature with no disguise on.

Earth in equilibrium,

towering trees,

in the furthest reach of the eye

A flightless kite awaits the night.

Silence is golden,

ans so is the sky.

Alone in Kyoto

I saw the city pavement

— a whirl of activity

I saw the glamour and movement

— a swirl of anonymity 

Sharp faces, sharp clothes.

Bright streets, dark woe.

Autumn's Nostalgia

The unmistakable nostalgia of September is upon us,
the hot breeze s
                            w                 through the air,
                               e           s                              caressing magnolia petals
                                  e    p                                                                               as it dances through 

the neighbouring woods.

The only noises that penetrate the whirling air are birds singing,

leaves brushing each other, and the rustling of my book pages

whilst the smell of distant floral laundry detergent percolates

through the thick and heavy summer air,

content with imitating their natural counterparts.

First Drops

The air is filled with water 

and the stalks are rustling dry

with the thunder speaking softly

in a corner of the sky

and the whirl and chase of leaves and chestnuts

pursuing down the lane

and the chill to raise your grumbles

with the first dark drops of rain...

Wasted

I have committed the worst of sins

one can commit. I have not been

Happy. Let the glaciers of oblivion

take and engulf me, mercilessly.

I applied my mind to the symmetric

arguments of art, its web of trivia,

when my parents bore me for

a much grander purpose in this

Life. It never leaves me. Always at my side,

that shadow of a melancholy man.

Rooted

The crowds that linger in desolate spaces are bound by nothing,

and yet are as rooted as the trees that whisper in autumn.

The merciless soil grants no escape to those without a sense of self,

They construct cells to hold the sacred and unwilling,

Square and rectangular blocks housing all their frivolities.

Burdened by burdens masquerading as necessary joys.

Still

People are a distraction

both from ennui

and motivation

which is why

I feel so distracted

from the motivation

of a useful attraction.

Inhaling Summer

A half-bloomed hydrangea 

swaying in the balmy air —

I close my eyes

and let the scent linger.

Dregs

You left this morning

a strand of hair, the door

half a cup of black coffee, on the floor

a note

singing nothing you hadn't sung before

already, as the pitch black of night simmered down

I was drinking up your dregs for more.

Clouds and Cliffs

A landscape of clouds and cliffs

lurid in luscious green,

and sandstone rolls and lifts

into the twisted perception of dream.

...

A                             r                               t

both compliments and compromises 

the condition of the human soul

——mine——

lies waiting for a muse to perfect it

and so too does my soul.

Lost Network

I like to wake
before the tinny jingle
of my phone's alarm,

when

I can get good and lost

in the vast countryside

where

it's like I'm the only human on earth,

but only as long as

the network signal is strong enough

that I can be assured my isolation

is a temporary fantasy.

Accounts

I've tried deleting your number out of my phone to convince myself that

I won't contact you again. And I don't, yet I still can't help but

scroll through your social media accounts,

[on which I have unfriended you and

erased every trace of our virtual contact

or sentimental photos, as though it would rid me

of what had occurred]

Yet I smile at some things you say

and at others get a little bewildered what I ever saw in you.

Still, the smallest mention of another loser's name

or any implied intimacies

and I still get a warm bubbling sensation in my stomach

and a tightness in my chest.

I probably don't care. 

I'm pretty sure

I don't care.

It's nothing.

Yonderly Shores

The susurrus brush of sinuous waves,

systatic with the siccaneous sand,

is soft in her sun-clad syzygy

guided by the virason's weathered hand.

The fusillade of over-turned fossils

foraminate the fool's merry frescade—

a farraginous flânerie falls short

of foaming footprints he's now forced to wade.

And so the shore laps up the shingled kiss,

an insatiable disregard for man;

insidiating with the sea to spoil

his own lecanoscopic day-dreamed plan.

And so the shore stops his saccharine kiss,

the velleites of man in ignorant bliss.

Share a Life with...

I've been looking for someone to complete me,

but the search is like

hunting for a Coca-Cola bottle

with my name on,

and finding any name but mine,

or with a different spelling variation.

My unloveable heart matches

the obscurity of letters,

but then again I suppose

love is just a intelligently marketed drink

that I have no real desire for

when its flavours fizz out

long before sell-by date.

Train Carriage Confessions

I find it no coincidence that you seat yourself here,

beside me,

when there are empty rows available.

Equally apparent, is that I am caught by the same instinctive attraction—

my attentive gaze greeting your curious glance

towards my pen

then

into my eyes.

Neither of us, with our timid temperaments,

have the intrepidity to initiate a decisive action of discourse, and so

I sit here

half-wishing your peregrine eyes

would pass over my obstructive shoulder

and read these confessions,

knowing them to be as true

as the light I can perceive inside of you.

Silence and Sirens

There's little difference in the susurrus spoken sound

of 'silence' and 'sirens'

yet within their substance

is considerable distance

That is how I feel

about the sigh of you and I.

I've spent an ephemeral eternity

trying to establish

which of us, despite apparent semblance,

is guilty of the din.

I've started to surmise that it is me—

the bashful banshee.

Searching for the Sun

I wake with the aching beauty

of the world. The sunlight shines a

sparrow's silhouette through my window ajar,

but it is gone before

the morning's melody is heard.

The fact that every thing is profound

takes nothing from the unique, singular

profundity of every moment, fragment

and splinter of our being.

The path is full of gravel.

I shovel the stones because

I like to hear them clatter.

I don't remember which way

the sun comes up.

I hunt for it in the mornings

then I just sit among the rocks

and pick at the weeds, thirsting

their way up, hoping for rain.

The weeds get their wish,

and I wade back in wet and worn

sighs.

The storm clears and

I'm left

still searching for the sun.

...Of our Time

Do not mistake what is being said for what has been said,

for even though time transcends the fragments in a spasmodic puzzle,

there is weight in each word

(repeated or not)

and with each imbrication

our individual actions implicate,

we are each of us

essentially the sum of our parts.

Plummet

Children sitting on the cliff edge, examining

the ebbing tide,

tossed pebbles first, then flowers.

The flowers floated;

the children sank.

Wade

Wave-licked

with thigh-rolled jeans he had strode

out to where the sea catches its breath,

forgetting the electronical device in his pocket.

And in that wind-plucked foam, 

made a father-pose,

though no sandal'd tussock bug rolled the dunes

waving the prize of a perfect wooden pistol,

and the shore was repeatedly planed clean,

clear of all gust battered figures.

The Noise That You'll Hear...

The hollow crash of waves on sand

is behind me.

now the sun, through sand,

sears my feet callused.

from sand to stone,

from stone to grass,

and home.

My skin glows like a coal.

I can still hear the water

as sleep slowly follows.

Sequestration at Sea

My aimless heart dances atop a tide-free ocean

with no pull to bring him to shore.

I know that he does not mind being at sea

but my mind's not as sure anymore.

I can't decide if I'm more frightened at getting stranded

or that it's what I hold deep within my will.

You see, at heart I am still a buoy

who is destined to stay innocently still.

With luck, I will be led to safety by a lighthouse

and arrive at your body of land.

A life spent avoiding being on the rocks

might prevent me caressing the sand.

So I will concentrate on making my life a speck

barely seen by hostile telescopes.

I will sail as far away as I can

then drop the anchor and cut the ropes.

Spun

The spider hung grotesque

upon his palace made of string.

My palace shuts out all the light

his trembles in the wind.

The maxim goes that I am strong

and he is weak and thin.

Yet here he sits, an emperor. And I am yet to spin.

Masquerade

Insincerity is society's greatest hypocrisy

and I cannot stomach the illusion.

A plethora of prepared pleasantries

to choke on in calculated confusion.

So spare me the sycophantic simpering,

complimented with a soap opera smile.

Remove the mechanical masquerade that custom has made

and display your human hatred without guile.

Estuary and the Ebbing Light

Forget my thoughts floating down the river,

let the bank pick up stray reeds and algae

like an unrestrained dog owner with boundless and bundling

love. Let there be darkness,

allow the mouth to open up and pour brackish water

into a grey pool of jagged generations.

Clasp the sky's air, wiggle your dirty toes,

splash your knees, sing to the birds, tell my thoughts

to stop swimming upstream, where they might

find the source to be furiously underwhelming.

Night Shames

Composing conversations

in my head

with the ideal conclusions

to relieve dread.

But what I can construct

within a thought

is never completely construed

the way it ought.

And so I must recompose

with blushing shame

a peripheral panicked past

penned to my name.

Routine

Tiptoes traverse the muddy trail,

heeding not the heavy heels

which hinder their tender tread.

Rhythmic rapid repetition

through foliage fair and frail,

each steely sinew anneals

to a thorough structured thread.

Rhythmic rapid repetition

must eventually derail

from the salubrious appeals

of the constant path ahead...

Helicoid

Sunday's splintered sunlight

punctures panicked moments

that the mind construes as truth.

A subconscious retelling

of Monday's mundane memory

that manifested in my youth.

The authentic narrative

from a nebulous night

in a morphinic stream

is surrendered seconds

of a worn-out waking life

wound up in last year's dream.

The Mystique has been Lost

The mystique has been lost—

paper print-outs replace

the palpable ticket of card complete with a shiny seal,

now scanned lazily and discarded,

the mystique has been lost.

The mystique has been lost—

seen through a plethora

of phone screens capturing the same pixelated images,

to share to more indifferent, unseeing eyes,

the mystique has been lost.

The mystique has been lost—

a predetermined set

readily available to be previewed on the Internet,

playing only the most $ucce$$ful hits,

the mystique has been lost.

The mystique has been lost—

and through the sea

of vexatious tropes from a diluted, stagnating scene

that the Internet age has brought

the mystique has been lost.

The mystique has been lost—

and yet the music has not.

#Ink

Carve something graceful

into my chest meaningful;

so to kiss and clench.

Crossed Paths

There is a saccharine romance,

a scenario spoiled by chance

when passing by a stranger

known only by a smile and glance.

And so the sweetness is subdued

to its lonely circumstance,

in a crossing of dreamy eyes

which can both beguile and entrance.

Both parties go separate ways

whilst their minds skip, hand in hand

both pondering what could have been

if confidence had more command...

The Changing of Guard

Waves peel away the pebbled sheets

on the maritime mattress,

folding gently towards the foot

of the ocean bed.

The dawn sun rises

at the dusk of the lunar reign.

The bed is freshly made

to be slept in again.

Dishwater

Ink ingrained into the palm of my hand,

a furtive reminder;

now here—

subtle enough to be washed away.

Sunshine Under Lock

The morning mist

makes way for afternoon bliss

that the month must miss.

But the early bloom

and her serotinious moon

cannot come too soon.

The Breadth that Breathes Between Strangers

There is a breadth that breathes

between strangers,

it is what predicates them.

Born in the bloom of hostility

in a dewy-eyed spring,

it bears no rational prejudice.

Yet we send our souls to slaughter

of stuffy summer petulance;

even a breadth can be confining.

Floating Above Water

You approached like a red balloon
against the cerulean sky,
carving your certain way through the clouds
to catch my  sun-spotted eye.

I tried to avoid your burning gaze
hearing of the damage that could be done
but nervous glances downwards met
the placid reflection of the sun.

My tense disposition knew one way
to maintain an amiable shade,
so I smiled into the ripples
of all the paths that I have made.

Then I stretched up on to my toes
reaching your form with a pin,
and hearing the pop I closed my eyes
to immerse myself within.

Above the Motorway

I see vehicles parked on bridges over motorways.

I wonder if it's an unmarked police car

measuring the velocity of careless crimes

or a lost soul contemplating their final act.

I'm sickened at which my instincts would prefer.

Surrounded

The dissonant swarms

are surrounding again

inside my head.

Inside my head,

swarming my thoughts,

they surround me again.

Where can I escape

when they are in me?

I can't escape

this part of me.

Each snapping jaw drones

and my neck snaps to look.

I'm lost again

back in my self dug rut.

Undulated Dew

Silence—

as deep as an ocean,

seems to end our spring song too soon

until soft warmth

drips

off your roscid lips

and sends ripples across the room.

Wild Dance

Whistling winds whip away at withered leaves

coercing them to sway and dance

into an invisible ballet,

like a stringless ventriloquist.

Airy and wispy, the strength amazes me

and I feel myself pulled

by nothing

towards nowhere

but on and on

nonetheless

and I wonder what allows

such a boisterous wraith

to wreak havoc on the elderly residents.

Angry turbulence and resentful gusts

I fight against on all vectors

trotting on myopic as a mule

saddled in dignity.

I ignore the dancing leaves

and pierce through the medium

like an arrow through flesh

and I continue through the contiguous solution,

heeding none of its warnings

of an immensity unseen

and far too visible,

and march on triumphant

only to be left dancing in the current

along side the foliage

I once ignored,

and hated.

Sawdust on the Wire

Here it is, that feeling.

Starting at the centre of my sternum,

where I keep store my solemn secrets.

The same scene floods back.

Starting at the centre of my sternum

and, working their way up to my brain,

the same scene floods back;

sawdust on the wire.

Working their way up to my brain,

the new pills soon take effect.

Sawdust on the wire

dissolves in the synapse.

The new pills soon take effect.

Here it is. That feeling

dissolves in the synapse,

where I keep store my solemn secrets.

Spillage

Nobody realises how much they piss

until they aim into a pint glass

and now all that I'm left staring at

is another sentimental spillage

that my body's cell can't sustain.

The Final Stretch

A variegated verdure of tendril-like veins

vesuviate their stillatitious sudor.

Sweat sweeps down sinew strengthened trunks

with each strident stride; with each replanting of the roots,

engraving an ephemeral power

against the pot-holed pavement.

Natures' tempest, with its own truculent power, contends each giant step—

torrid torrents transfluent to the fluent pounding.

Yet each droplet,

each beat,

each step

fades...

until the spirited spurt of a storm with home in its sight

reaches the final

S        T        R         E         T         C        H.         

Flyaway

In memory, of the child

who bounced the ball into the field

and though he searched, he realized it would never return.

While the grass and the earth choked it

the child stopped and turned away for ever.

He moved on — It remained.

Self Cycle Reset

The greatest consequence

a lost soul must conquer

is who he has become.

This terrifying notion

keeps me awake all night

til I forget with untroubled sleep.

And I wake up

some three months later

forgetting that I ever existed.

Cloud Walker

I dance only with colours

but the world's all black and white;

I laugh a lot in dreams,

but I can't say that of real life.

So I dwell on the threshold

of phantasmagorial bliss—

noctambulating my nepheloid nights

with feet rooted in the sun's kiss

Undue Residue

A simulated resonance

echoing in my

ribs.

A wind chime rusting

in a disintegrating

space.

A crow pecking negatives

in the saran-wrapped

sewage—

I leak

and we

drown.

Jalapeño

This morning,

out of boredom more than hunger,

I looked into the cupboard

to find a jar of jalapeños.

Let us not get into the argument

of whether they should be stored

in the cupboard or fridge;

they were unopened

and so warranted no need to be refrigerated

whatever your preference.

Anyway, this inviting jar was labeled

hot and sweet,

and it made me wonder

if I would ever have a jar of jalapeños

to call my own.