(The Expanding and Stagnating)

Lurid luminescence in lucid vitality,
vivid in its vibrancy.
Emotional palette motioned by memory,
memory in its infancy.
Experience expanding the layers of learning,
beliefs in elasticity,
motioned by memory, stagnating in stages,
stubbornness stripping layers of learning.
New experience expanding further thoughts,
negating failed experience;
learning presses on.
Memory motioned by memory,
stubbornness stripping layers and saving
saving layers that suit.
Coarse layers stripped by time,
stagnating in stages

Failed experience

Motioned by memory stripped by time

memory stripped by time

s       t       r       i       p       p      e      d                    b        y

(the expanding and stagnating of)                                                                                                 time.

On the Mount

Incandescence on the mount, a thumbprint of sun sat

on the summit as swallows bob through haircut branches.

a certain someone alone with grass;

his thoughts are moths his skull of wool.

nature’s cut to frames, still her light restores his centre.

flakes of fairy dust feather my eyelids—

sharing design, or something intimate

to imbue and bond below a yew and imbibe

chimney smoke escapes the terraces below

and

wind of near seasons knock the day.

A September's Sunday by the Sea

Light catches all that comes out to greet it;

glints glittering in pebbled hills

glints glittering in the ocean's wafered waves,

glints glittering in Sunday's satisfied eyes.

Sounds orchestrate for those who hear its silent cacophony;

a crash of footsteps, uneven yet definitive,

a crash of waves, constant and icy,

a call for company, cold and unconvincing.

The breeze joins in, droning docile;

moving the flickering corner of this page,

moving overhead, a plane's engine sings and a father's finger

moving, pointing duly to the sky for his squinting son to see.

A cloud of delicate birds mould into forms,

migrating south, grasping the warmth with their wings

and faintly heard behind is the constant hum of traffic,

Sunday drivers strolling coastal roads to coastal towns.

All is quiet and peaceful

if I let the surroundings relax my mind.

All is noisy and vibrant

if I let the surroundings focus my mind.

All is beautiful.

Freira

Fervent fevered frowns

on a mossy fingered bridge.

Folded foliage sways

in faint but fickle leaning,

frightening the freira

whose lightly seasoned feathers

brush against the ridge.

A most maternal dismay;

the ballet of flidge.

A Second Floor Scene

A scent of freshly laundered linen

as your stripes slide off swiftly

and the creases                                

                                             of your skin

are snatched at in delirious delight

under the gaze of Venus' light

and the blinds                                   

                                 stir in the wind

snatching at the open window

where we echo in the night.

Under the Mill

That hour elapsed with urgency,

my hands trembled but my will did not

as I watched you, watching me,

wonder in those great vessels within their emerald oceans

and I averted my gaze down to my plate,

long purged of its contents.

My eyes found the waitress's, an unspoken request,

as a folded receipt was brought over with packaged mints,

and I promptly overlapped it with plastic

and held open the door, buttoning my jacket

as we made our exit, into the sky's embrace,

fingertips glancing at first, then strengthening in grip.

We circumnavigated that reedy body of water,

reflecting your soft countenance, and mine paled with plans

 - we paused - 

lips glancing at first, then strengthening in grip

before we carried on upward to the rusting sky,

my thoughts anxious with times ans suppositional circumstances.

As our mirthful minds crossed that inclined threshold

we could both discern a city's silhouette in salmon skies

and found a place to rest aching legs and full stomachs.

I opened my mouth - unable to speak; and instead looked out

to the sea where white waves wandered, and my eyes wandered

to those deep emerald oceans once more.

My hands trembled but my will did not,

as I watched you, watching me,

and you replied,

"Yes!".

Night Gifts

Those gifts we sometimes receive in the night

are met by an audience expecting

to see on our faces, signs of delight,

but find the scattered wrapping perplexing.

There's no doubt thought has gone into the gift

and it is something we will come to need

but when there are presents through which we sift

never is it the instructions we read.

So the gifts are collecting dust, somewhere out of sight

and each one is in need of dissecting

but there's a danger that would cause a rift

from a prior warning we didn't heed.

Since, I've paid great care to each gift I've got

and rue every gift I have since forgot.

New Block

Laundry detergent invades the air, 

stifling the petrichor concoction

that collides with the swept leaves

discarded to the cobwebbed corner

where the puddles declare soles out of bounds.

Freshly baked biscuits stake their claim,

packaged neatly with plastic and ribbon 

but they too crumble to the scent

of disintegrating damp wood

burning black and iridescent red.

Smoke rises into the crepuscular sky

and is ushered away by the wind,

the fire crackles on as biscuits are opened

and freshly made beds are disturbed

as childish feet disturb leaf piles under amber glow.

Copper Pennies

Christen my blood in your name as

I try to lick it clean. It tastes

mildly of copper pennies tossed

into the river and it will

sediment into the rocks, and

one day you will find copper-brown

stones at the base of the creek when

you leave me here to go swimming.

Chasing the feeling of it all,

I have to leave, return to that

creek on a summer night.

Pause where the water illuminates

the light of something lost within you.

Maybe we'll find it after all.

Worn

The lone man stalks the road,

old patched jacket sewed

marks snake where he once strode.

A stolen meal, nothing owed

he still lives by moral code

that lone man nothing slowed.

As Yet Unnamed

A summer day, whose heat belied

its overshadowed sky, enveloped in a

variegated green rolling from one

landscape to the next,

and in a madified mound framed

the moment where I divined 

that you and I - we -

are a pair.

So dead and dry those lifeless blades

of grass, when compared to that of your

exposed shoulder,

that the torn grass could scarce

forbid our youthful hearts to know

that our neanic bond

outshadowed

natures dearth.

Which severed stump?

Which wooly verge could ever demean the joys of Venus' domain.

That day I could taste the droplets

of your name on my lips, as I

exhaled; its wide-mouthed prefix

swam towards my joining lips

pushing together in unison

before lengthy sigh

had my tongue crashing

against the roof of my mouth,

stretching out the last sound,

impossibly as it was not to smile in ecstasy.

"Begin again!", I heard

your heart skip a beat. When whispered

your three syllables recall

bleak days when no-one had sounded them at all.

The hearts of men, of women,

of beasts and birds

cannot survive bereft of loving words.

The Passing of Storm Frank

Grandad, I remember those special times

like milk-rounds protecting you from parking fines,

screaming at the warden to leave you alone

in my youth, not knowing you could park on double lines.

Grandad, I remember how you asked about the scores

as you helped me close the milking barn doors,

both bemoaning the demise of glory days past

ever hard-working as you complete your chores.

Grandad, I remember a childhood playground from your farm

knowing that I could come to no harm,

a break from play with biscuits and pop

whilst listening in wonder to your unique charm.

Grandad, I remember how you displayed your pride

for how your family have all followed your lead and tried

and the way you have been such a influence on the girls

we all feel your wonderful warmth inside.

Grandad, I've learned how each moment that passes

is an excuse for laughter and I'll pass that to my classes,

there's rarely a serious moment that can't be made light

so I will see you when I get my glasses.

Young Cardinal

In the muggy heat of early Fall, I lounged,

alone and weak, on a brown wooden bench;

Day surrendered to dusk, and mutely I gazed across

the grass, the trees, and wrinkled violet sky.

A pale young cardinal flew to my feeder,

its soft brown tufts lending a tender life to both

my thoughts and the humid air they slept inside.

Not sure I deserved her here, I kept so still

and distant, not wanting the bird to fly away -

not calling - taking cautious steps through grass.

But was I careful for her sake or for mine?

Perhaps they were as selfish and cowardly

as my dozing - fearful to move, or change too fast?

In meek flutters, the cardinal left, I creeping, yet still,

to the swishing feeder in the air now empty

of the sun's last rays. I knew too late that she

did not want silence, but life and holding warm -

crisp chirps and arm waving and kisses steady and long.

Returning in the black, I take up my bench,

my glass, my quiet and thinking, alone once more.

In the heat, my frail arms shiver constantly.

Meandered

A word is worth a thousand pictures

if carved in a knot of magnolia bark

by covalent lovers 'midst the mist

of fog-less farts from man's machines;

and foxes wield mechanisms of defense

in unveiled wooly sports-coats worn

by and by the prophet in shattered carafes 

polished into a frozen lake of mercury;

and Ribble slides to and fro, catching gnats,

sprouting seedless sunflower tender-loins

torn away from sow-less lantern skies

obscuring the pupil black curtain far behind;

and when a blind man trips on fingered feet

dampened in salty dew and mucous fun,

he sees that silence makes those who weep

hear the sobs from echoes' rain-dropped keys

up onto the eminent brows 'n' ridge furrowed furred:

a promontory for truck-driving fleets of crippled use

to warehouses bustling with oily nails and meat;

and vowels tesselate to Persian patterns

seamlessly collected by some suspecting eyes

surprised mid surpluses of decanted meaning

that floats on by like fiery birthday blimps

manned by a trillion cells named Giuseppe;

but what factory made the first factory?

and whose name formed itself first?

by the letter-less alphabet comprised of grunts?

These questions sit ashamed in the corner

wearing still a pointed cap quoting "dunce;"

and so the shell with the infected pistachio nut

cracks open inexplicably and decides

to grow into a salamander's spot–a maze–

constructed by invisible web-coasts called mind.

Pebbles and Paint

A shell

waves swell

worn down

men drown

by time

bells chime

Fleeting

On a dark night

a swan lands 

on a moon reflected lake

it glides in the water

and with a stroke of its wings it’s gone.

The only memories

are the waves it 

left.

First Date

I squeezed conversation out

like near empty toothpaste;

coarse, uneven, and not enough.

Her ice was melting fast,

and I was the empty glass

as we both sipped and stared.

Anther

To a slither of broken moon

fragile half-wrist

small polished fragment

of bone

archaeologist universe

dusting off his aged timepiece.

Folacious Memories

A life is measured

not by its number of years

but the number of souls that it has touched,

and just as a tree

may lose the verdure of its leaves

the soothing influence of its magnificent frame remains.

So folacious memories

will flower fondly even in Winter

with a deep flocculation of variegated love,

and those deep roots

that made such a strong impression, will long

outlast the Southern virason with the opening of each neanic knosp.

Lingering Festivities

There are few things more forlorn

than a Christmas tree left too long after festivities.

Like a reminder of  failures from the years, they drop dried needles

and disperse around the floor into places you won't find for months

and months

and maybe years later

so that when you do

pine scent, fresh as new, will assault you

like the memories of the past that haunt you in those 

gray quiet moments

before sleep.