My river: your familiar effulgence, wrapping my distress in your gracious tributaries. Changing my name to chance whilst fate looks on, somewhat perturbed but unmoved all the same. My river: sweeping me through your conquering rapids, beating my insensitive brow, … Continue reading My River. A poem.
Still standing. Waiting. Where are you? When are you? Your bus is long, long overdue, but I will wait, anyway, wondering if my timetable is completely out of date. Hoping my ticket to ride is still valid, not expired. Still … Continue reading Still Standing. A poem.
Watery Kiss. A haiku trilogy 1. Concrete My feet are concrete. I swim the depths of my heart. Ocean bottom calls. 2. Goldfish My lungs filling up. liquid in mouth, on the brain. Goldfish down, am I. 3. Calcified Funereal … Continue reading Haiku Friday. ‘Watery Kiss’, a haiku trilogy.
Here amongst the mammals shuffles the dinosaur, all rippling muscle and strident flanks. As he lumbers around the errant, tiny creatures, he wonders why he’s here, and what brought him to this place. Here and there the animals pair off, … Continue reading Dinosaur. A poem.
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.
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.
I live in surreality, not quite alive, not quite dead. I wander from one point to the next, a confused and weary traveller, conspicuously without intent. The pleasures of the material and the impractical align in tacit disapproval. I am a wanderer in confusion, lost in the blizzard of bodies, grabbing myself for warmth like a frost-bitten seeker faced with his last insurmountable peak. Someday this journey will be done, and the last thing I see, may be the first I ever saw. As if all that mattered was the concentric circle I travelled in and the hoarfrost patina on … Continue reading Frost. A poem.
Bereft. A haiku trilogy. 1. Ebb The last ebb of life, seeping like sweat from my pores. Let it go, you fool. 2. Ash My heart is sliced from my chest, burned alive; all feeling, now ash. 3. Bereft My solution lost upon a sea bereft of possibility. . Well, I hope you’ve had a better week than me. Steve 🙂 Continue reading Haiku Friday. ‘Bereft’, a haiku trilogy.
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.
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