It’s just small talk. Idle conversation. But every sanguine movement of her mouth and every captivating word that passes those bewitching lips, buoys me like the drowning man lost on a tormented sea. She is the lifeline extended, dragging me … Continue reading Small Talk. A poem.
Today, she gave me bliss. I was confounded but content, my feet mired in tar, holding me firm. My mouth unfrozen this time, heart quickened but not expired. Conversation played across a court; a sporting event, a contest of champions. I would send the ball, she would receive returning service like a tennis pro. So perfectly matched, like two people moulded from the same supple clay of our sculptor’s eloquent fancy. How can such beauty be real? Does it only exist to haunt my dreaming and waking hours? I wanted to profess to her ghost my wants and needs, how … Continue reading Bliss. A poem.
That overbearing, all pervasive dark matter, the swollen river that floods my heart and breaks my banks, chokes my throat and pierces my brain stem, that sticks it’s bamboo needles under mental fingernails, creates tattered meat from perilous fortune, twists my will until my spine shatters like crystal and leaves me a pointless fool. All because of you. Continue reading All Because Of You. A poem.
Lost Muse. A haiku trilogy 1. Purpose When it takes its leave. Gone: the purpose, the will and the testimony. 2. Black Where do we exist, now that the sun is dimmed, fallow and so spent. 3. Steps What I would give to hold her hand. Another step beyond this despair. My love for the 5/7/5-syllable majesty of Japanese haikus will never dim. As will my longing for my muse, no matter how hard I try to extinguish it. Steve 🙂 Continue reading Haiku Friday. ‘Lost Muse’. A haiku trilogy.
Porcelain, sheer and shining. Untouchable, lest you break. Cracks irreparable, iceberg deep. You/I are/am my/your porcelain. Continue reading Porcelain. A poem.
The sadness creeps over, a ponderous behemoth, encompassing my lands and being. It seeps into my streams, polluting them with its murky ill-will, making a mockery and a mire. It kills off my grass and trees, turning my greens to blight, leaving animals once proud and determined now abject and homeless; caricature mascots. It crawls over my buildings, infesting every room and board, making inhabitants into castaways with the shore so near, so far. And everything collapses under the weight of its load, a gravity far too serious for this light head(ed) over heels, a Hercules turned weakling, bent knee … Continue reading The Sadness. A poem.
The road smouldered as steel-tread fingers ran over it, each car an indifferent lover. Nothing was out of the ordinary but the extraordinary. I could no longer look upon you, the pain too sharp, a constant thorn. My cannibal hypocrisy consumed me with self-deception. One last glance (you, the diamond amongst coal) and I drove away into the hazy mid-afternoon grey. That was the day. The day I let my muse fade. The day I turned from you, away. I realised dreams were mirrors and reflections, untouchable and jaded. I wanted tears, but an empty shell holds no water. No … Continue reading Fools’ Gold. A poem.
He stared at the mirror, at the composite he had become. It held a reflection capturing his bitterest Hyde and Jekyll moments. He placed his hand firmly on the vanity, turned on the tap and watched the water spiral down … Continue reading Coriolis. A short tale.
When will I be free of this life and all its bitter swill? Force fed, every grueling meal mixed with bile and contempt, returned to sender in a spray of misgivings, a spent force that paints the tile in acrimonious colour. When will this life leave me be, so I can rest in audacious peace? When will I sleep and dream of nothing, free from pain and imagination that only ever led me astray. When will I break the chains you locked me in, through no fault of your own. When will I leave this sad and weary shell behind, … Continue reading When (part 3). A poem.
When did I lose you? When did I turn my back on you, then turned around and you were gone? When did any hint of recognition leave your eyes. When did I become a third wheel, constantly turning out of place in time and space. When did this supple heart grow dried and worn, to wither in the sun like a weed. When did I lose the will to be with you, let the scales unbalance and my love be cast aside in bitter rebuke. When will I ever learn? Continue reading When (part 2). A poem.
When I talk to you, when I’m lost to the sanguine artfulness of your words. When your silken, soothing tones surround me like the warmest winter blanket. When the only light I need to guide me is in your rainbow eyes and sunshine smile. When the aspect of your face is the only solitary star in the darkening sky. That’s when I know I’m home. And that’s when I awake and know I’m still alone. Continue reading When (part 1). A poem.
I’ve tried to forget you (I don’t want to forget you). My emotions lay on the table like spilt wine; I tried to lick them up in a desperate alcoholic binge, without a care for my fellow patrons’ regard. Why are you fading from my mind, like an Alzheimer memory, like the seaside whispers of a shell, broken to pieces. I’ve betrayed me, so. I’ve let you go. I should let slip the dogs of war to chew on my weary bones, to remind me that I’m just a lonely man, that you’re just a lonely woman and that soon … Continue reading Game Over. A poem.
She is the subtle knife, slid between the ribs of reason. The subtle knife that slides into my heart and cuts it up, with far less subtlety than I deserve. Continue reading The Subtle Knife. A poem.
Are you faded and fated, to pass from memory as if you were an afterimage on grainy film stock? Or consume me whole like Jonah’s whale, where I will suffer forever and a day? I have wanted/needed you so desperately that I could not move or breathe without you taking control of me, like some mad puppeteer, pulling strings while I dance to some obscure polka tune. Why should I forget you? You, who stole anxious days and nights of worry, where my thoughts betrayed me and I wondered constantly if you hoped and dreamed (like me) or even felt … Continue reading Love Never Sleeps. A prose poem.
Sometimes when I’m by myself and the night has swept daydreams away, like dust from polished floors; when lights click off and the house settles in with creaks and purrs of contentment. Sometimes, I wonder where you are and whether I’m in your consideration. And sometimes, when my mind plays trick or treat with facile retribution, I want you here to play those games in person. Continue reading Sometimes. A poem.
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