What is the matter with her?
Is it dark?

She keeps it undetected
Except for occasional silent tugs and pulls
Upon the large things in her universe.
Does it stream through your hair like the solar wind
Sparkling and glowing upon your brow with aurora,
Or emanate the blue of your lowest mood
A Cherenkov glow
As the unbreakable light-speed barrier is surpassed
In the medium of your blood-filled heart?

The dark stuff is everywhere and nowhere.
Never seen before by science
You hold it deep within you
Sheltered from prying eyes
Or hungry Nobel-seeking hands
Or the silent sentinel listeners
Of the radio telescopes.

She gathers more now,
Until her fragile, silk-over-bone frame
Fills with swirling black axions
Until they spill out of her eye sockets
Like the streaks of wet mascara.
She tugs and pulls at us all,
The em-ones and em-twos are unknown
But not the universal constant
Between human hearts.

Snarling words, biting and dark
Bark and leap at the gate
Demanding to be set free
In hoards and clouds like locusts.

First they are placated by gestures upon keys
Performed by compelled fingertips.
Pixel-by-pixel, the screen is slowly darkened
Black against glowing white
As more and more are released
And they squeeze in to all the spaces
Blackening all until the there is no more light.

Then to runes upon the pristine innocence of white crisp paper
Their only resistance, the tip of the dragging pen.
Still they come like insects,
Thick and tumbling over one another
To stain the pulpy fibres wet with thick, sticky liquid
Dispensed by the rolling steel ball
Until all is encrusted with the dried ink.

With all words unleashed
There is no end.
There was more
With fewer.

'Thirty days has September,
Now it's easy to remember.'
'How do you do it, my good chap?'
'I simply use my iPhone app. '

Twelve to six to three
Twelve to four to two
Divided and separated
Stark white eggs stored cold in fibrous cardboard trays
Warm eggs, just laid, strewn among the damp straw
Twist a plastic tray, it cracks and squeaks releasing ice-cubes
Chunks of ice kicked along a frozen asphalt road
A rusting metal bolt from an unknown car, sits against the curb
A drill-bit bores through metal revealing shining inner steel
Razor sharp shavings curl from the oily machine
Thorny thistles offer velvety wisps of cotton
White drifting seeds float on a warm spring wind
Sticky sap from a tree trunk you touched for balance
Fuses to your skin and tries to stick your fingers together.

Five ten fifteen twenty
Twenty forty sixty eighty
Tiny black seeds like pepper scatter on the snow
From a hard octagonal pod that cracked between your fingers
Black hockey pucks spill out of a bag upon the ice for practice
Players spill out of a gate onto the ice to take their sides
Spectators spill out of the small arena into a parking lot
A new snow during the game has left it covered in a white blanket.

One hundred two hundred five
A thousand a million a billion
Stars pour out across the sky
Clustering sometimes thick as milk
Sometimes scarce and as black as molasses
Thick and deep and going on and on forever.

the weight of a hand
resting in yours
the resistance to the touch of a single finger
upon another
the sizzle of a thousand hairs between fingertips
the dampness of breath upon your cheek
the redness of pair of lips
...or of a blushing forehead
...or of cheekbones under droplets of perspiration

the silence of an empty room
the sense of someone close
...who is a thousand miles away
...and thinking of you

Rain soaks through my shoulders
And trickles down my spine
Like fingers over cracked and fractured stone.

Your breaths come like zephyrs
Your limbs tangle up with mine
Your voice, the only one I've ever known.

   And Coltrane blows a story tall
   To a bass line like a siren call
   Building tapestries of Cashmere
   For a dry and blistered blank concrete wall.

   You'll always be the bright full moon
   That filled my chest and filled the room
   While Rome is burned to embers
   The drums of war rose carrying the tune.


Footsteps on city walls
Hands upon splintered wood.
The battles lead to losses for all sides.

Honey comes from stinging bees
I'd get some for you if I could
But winter left us lost on drifting tides.

   Still Coltrane blows a story tall
   To a bass line like a siren call
   Building tapestries of Cashmere
   For a dry and blistered blank concrete wall.

   I'll offer you a silk cocoon
   A watercoloured afternoon
   While Rome is burned to embers
   The drums of war rose carrying the tune.


Morning sun brings the day
The smell of candles still
Clothes hang to dry from chairs along the walls.

Take our time to wake up
Arms protect you from the chill
"Yesterday," the radio news recalls.

   Then Coltrane blows a story tall
   To a bass line like a siren call
   Building tapestries of Cashmere
   For a dry and blistered blank concrete wall.

   The sunrise like the silver moon
   Paints us in gold and fills the room
   While Rome is burned to embers
   The drums of war rose carrying the tune.

Is there still a tired cafe
On the corner under canvas
Pondering the long boulevard?
Does the faded owner smoke all day
And complain about the haze
And how finding pretty waitresses is hard?

I once lived thereabouts
And earned a meager pay
Writing broken tales for magazines.
Nights filled my belly with wine
My eyes the chanteuse Lise
She starred in my most fictional scenes.

I never found a way
To read my ink blot cards
and learn where my psyche led me wrong
It oft' left me lonely
With just black espresso
And the echo of Lise's sweet song.

One day I moved away
Back to blue ice and snow
From that old city of fumes and haze.
Yet still on thick warm nights
A song burns in my soul
In familiar, best forgotten, ways.

Sometimes,
A tiny sliver of time
Wedged in between
The end of a work day
And the lethargic march
Into the routine of the evening.
Inhale.
Exhale.
Continue.

Take one, just one.
Take it far away.
The only thing you had left
The only thing you recognized anymore.

Take just one,
Out of all that you had
Far from everything you knew
It was your rock, your anchor.

Take only that
Which keeps you awake at night
Brings you to desperation
And leaves you feeling raw.

There alone, hanging on
To the last remnant of your life,
Only that one emotion,
When you finally let it go
The others are returned
One hundredfold.

Call me when you have gasped your throat to splintered wood
Reach for me when your fingers have calloused to fractured stone
From the depths of the stoney pit of echoing isolation
When your legs hold you weary as rusted tin-soldiers

If your heart is hardening like lava reaching the ocean
If your song is submerged in a rain-on-tin-roof din
If your hugging arms are pulled asunder by monsoon landslides
If your eyes have filled with the angry spray of November hurricanes

Remember a warm hand against cold skin
Remember closeness like a heavy felted great-coat
Remember a low voice breathing fireplace hot upon your neck

Remember two hearts
Just two rib-thicknesses apart;
Two taught drums,
Beating in time
Together
In song.

As I ***** the streets of town, buildings made of grey and brown
Speak to me of people and events I still remember.
Steps upon well-trodden ways, rain makes blacks upon the greys
Painting scenes among the maze, from a long lost warm November.

We once lived on this side-street, our apartment there, small but neat
Moving in we fought the snow that came early that November.
We didn't have many things, but winters all gave way to springs,
And summer nights gave us wings to launch us into each September.

Many of them passed that way, weekdays of work and -ends of play,
Camping on cool clear autumn nights warmed to fire's final ember.
Years passed by uncounted then, new homes we found on new streets when
Our spaces seemed too small, and to the movers we'd surrender.

Walking round I see them all, the homes we made in this town so small
A lifetime spent and good times to remember.
Finally I walk o'er the hill, past the campground now quite still
To a peaceful lot just past the mill, where she went to rest one cold December.

My footsteps give me some small peace, how happiness came with such caprice
When we lived among these streets that I soulfully remember.
We loved the leaves and cool of fall, the change of seasons, first snow squall
And the love was greatest in our very last November.

The change of month took her away, how lost I felt on that sad day
How can I but hate the first day of December?
I miss her arm that fit with mine, I miss the way that her eyes shine
Just every second of lost time, since we loved our last November.

It is in that wooden place
Among the too-close trees
Under a canopy of woven reasons
That block the lancing stars

Balanced on the edge of possible and improbable
We choose from a bouquet of what-if tales
Paths to tread carefree
Always avoiding the cold shining steel
That patrols around the edges
And reflects images of reality
In a clarity
Nobody wants to see

Anyone can laud a sunny day
And lavish it with praise.
It's such an easy proposition
Amid warmth and golden rays.

But it is, I'd say, a refinéd taste,
When a day dawns bleak and grey,
To find some joy in heavy clouds
That bubble-wrap your day.

And even given pouring rain
That many see as vile
The drum of raindrops on the roof
Can bring to some a smile.

A wailing wintry driving blizzard?
Seems to most so rotten.
Yet for me I get a thrill
From a landscape wrapped in cotton.

Now a slush-and-sleet-filled day in March
Is a horrible kind of weather
I fear it seems to void my thesis
And brings to no one pleasure.

It erodes the city's state-of-mind
Optimism is diminished
Everyone is in a huff
And wants it to be finished.

Oh, for a bright day in July
With no one feeling huffy,
The golden sun to rule the sky
and clouds so big and fluffy.

On a frost-whitened afternoon
There are wet black lines through an urban park
Throngs of people pulse along paths.
As all manner of routes come alive
With tributaries of humanity.

On a warmer day some slow and linger
Pausing in the shady spots
Bodies pool there to escape the sun
And the city embodies the lethargy
Of its denizens.

Trains and cabs and buses
Corral and group clusters of humanity
Eject them out in a seething mass
Upon the sidewalks of the tallest buildings
Which vacuum them in through tiny orifices.

From the greenery filled parks
To the traffic-grazed sidewalks
From the tallest buildings
To the tallest trees
The motion of life permeates the geography.

Immersed in it, I feel my blood flowing
Without my intervention
And my lungs breathing
Without me ordering them so.
So too my heart warms
Whenever you are near.

Reddened legs dangle over the edge of summer
feet kick in time with passing rail cars
the heat of the day soaks through your clothes
yet you shiver a little at the touch
of a cold steel tendril from a bunch of yesterdays
The daylight passes in big meaty chunks now
leaving wide charcoal grill marks
and there's a ****** spilled-syrup stickiness
that persists on a spot on your forearm
Late afternoon means a silica-sand grit
when you run your fingers through your hair
And still that heavy waterlogged boot
that you can't get a hand around
sits in the hollow of your stomach
Along the sidewalk ahead now
the trees callously toss their shadows
uselessly across weedy lawns
rather than provide an ounce of shade for your path
Oh you'll see the end of all this alright
You'll come out the other side of it all
feeling for the source of the draft
under the door
to your one room apartment
and smother it there
where it lies
with the same old tattered blanket
that you used
last year.

so too the shifting powdered sands
from pulverized mountain ranges
that sift with a
whisper
through my fingers

and the planet turning
grasses creeping in
then going away again
baked out by the aging
swelling sun

but the sands still drift in lazy dunes
grains freed from their hour-glass
still shifting under foot
and warm through my fingers

and sift with a tsk
and a breathy sizzle
and melt away afterwards

as the dry touch of your
lips upon mine
on a sun-baked afternoon.

Difficult for unpracticed hands
Valuing it, protecting it, nurturing it.
It should have been all that she needed to carry
She felt sure it was there,
In the dark place
Beneath the joy,
Between this breath
And the next laugh.

I see some echo of it there still.
It shows itself in the negative spaces
And desperately needs the light and air.
She thinks it small and cheap, and well-covered
Beneath the bite of a vinegar voice
In the folds of a silken smile
Muffled by the thick wool of persona.
  
She keeps her arms folded
Her irises blank.
Idly pulling loosened threads,
And tunes the prototype.

Sometimes there is the terror
Of cutting isolation
Of an icy apartness  
In a dense and moving crowd
Of friends and cohorts.

Once she tried to let it free.
Arms spread wide in the street.
Ready to give that gift to herself
From deep within the erected façade
Amid the mass of anonymous humanity,
Amid the ******* legs and cab-hailing arms.

Later, a mirror brings a cold draft
Chilled by the empty spaces.
And then a fear,
Not knowing where it was anymore.
Hidden too deeply?
Lost along the path?

Maybe it was never given to her at all.

The night now.
Always the night.
Seemingly unreachable through a thick, leaden afternoon
But finally edges fade and muddle in unison,
Into a place that erases all acuity.
It moves across the city
On a sticky pudding of humidity
Daring the streetlights into action.

Oh, the night
Of asphalt and chrome.
Of oily skin and enfrizzened hair.
Of shouts and whoops and horns.
When even distant sirens
Sing the lament:

The night.
Always the night.

A hammer upon the landscape.
Thunder like a toppling mountain.

Flashes like x-ray explosions.
Supernova surprise.

Sheets of rain.
Glistening-rebar javelins
Pierce the asphalt
Shatter the concrete.

Long shards of glass
From the grey
Steel-wool clouds.

I haven't written a poem on that website yet today
No words have come along for me to digitally say.
If I can't find a phrase or two for all those folks to see
This sunny day will turn to night with nothing new from me.

Surely I can find some words to mark this day that's ending
Even if not notable and unlikely to start trending
There's nothing here that with your beer you'll raise up in a toast
But if I'm not mistaken now, I've something I can post.

I will lay on the short grass
Nobody will see me
Vanilla-cream-pink against a thousand shades of green.
Insects encounter the mountain,
Such little things but with a power
To shrink large woes with their meanderings.

I will let the grass grow around me.
Tendrils writhe beneath my back
To search and plead for sun.
But turn white, bleached of chlorophyll.
Immovable and arbitrary, I am the barrier.
We share a common bond as his victim.

Others numerous soon rest their heads upon the soil,
Their hair grows down into the ground,
Weaving loops around roots and between stones,
And into cracks in the bedrock
******* at the moisture there
Until the trees, the grass and I
Turn brown, brittle and dry.

First words carved from stone.
Chips fly and sting when they bite
Cheeks and forehead and forearms,
Tiny welts, hard to see, but they're still there.

Later words moulded from grey, colourless clay.
Too wet and hesitant and sticky to hold a form.
They want to slump again into an unformed mass
Like the one from whence they came.

Words scraped now in hard-packed, ****-bound soil,
Each requires pulling and tearing to take the slightest form.
A rain comes before the phrases could all be scraped together,
The concrete-like surface quickly softening into mud
Soon it's as if they were never said at all.

He insisted we go down
To a place near the river
He was briefly obsessed with the boats
And explained he didn't have anywhere to stay that night.

All these constant changes of subject,
And weird self-obsessions,
Then he calls ME half crazy,
As if that would make his company pleasant.

Why does he keep checking the origin
Of my tea
And of my oranges.
He's a loveless, non-committal fool.
Just when you think
He understands what you're saying,
He says something stupid.
And I don't say anything,
Just let the river do the talking.
He's delusional about our relationship.

And he wants to come on vacation with me
And he doesn't seem to care to where,
And he thinks somehow I'd trust him,
And he makes lascivious comments about my body.  

Jesus, how did sailing come into this?
Is he some evangelical nut?
Oh man, he is going on about this.
Sailing, and garbage and flowers and seaweed.
He clearly cannot maintain a train of thought.

I look at my watch,
I take out my mirror,
I practice my 'yeah, sure, I'm interested face.'

And again he's off again about coming on my vacation,
And again he doesn't care where to,
And again he thinks himself trustworthy
And again, with the unwelcomed comments about my body.

Her voice is flute-song upon a wind
Known both in tall, still trees and coastal gales.
Every pleasing sound,
If of nighthawks or of August rains,
Gathers in breaths, both in and out,
In notes forbidden to all others.

A waving blade of grass, or a tumbling leaf
Will half-obscure the slight nothings
That escape upon her tender breath,
Or punctuate a moment’s surprise.
Illustration of a serene purity and tenderness
That dwells sweetly within.

Too upon those lips,
Escaping from tender cheeks softly,
Quickly appearing, yet sparse,
Between those pillars of her smile,
That restrains poorly mirth and glow,
A name comes quickly,
And delivers opulent wealth and pleasure
To be my own.

Waist deep.
The thick black syrup meets skin
A sharp black/white line
Across the pores
Like a moving limb of day/night
Across the distant craters of the moon.
To tread deeper and pulls the surface down
The mirror-black surface bending, pulling.
A meniscus
A relativistic bending
Of space and time around a star.

Deep below the surface
Wiggling toes are sluggish
Movement of legs are impeded
A tug at each hair on legs and toes.
And the hydraulic squirt of the liquid
Below the soles as your weight shifts.

Ah, but sometimes shallower now,
Withdrawing belly skin pulls with it
The deep brown-black rubbery surface
That will not be left behind.
It will not relinquish this new intimacy.

What horror comes with the rising depths?
Liquid darkness comes over shoulders, chin and cheeks.
A sweet salty taste now upon the lower lip.
A tug, a pull at the chin with every breath
Every attempt to lift it above the surface.

Fear. Darkness. Unknown.

Over mouth and nose.
Sticking to eyelids.
Thick and warm into ears.
A bubble of air tries to escape from under your chin
And tickles as it pulls up on the hairs it passes.

The cool open air irises-off above your head
Only a momentary depression in the top surface.
Until there is no record, of your having passed here.

Silence.

A sweet and sticky seal, impermeable between this world and the void.

Silence.

Push up now with strength in frightened legs.
The suction is immense, the pull strong.
It does not wish to let you withdraw.
But you push and breaking the tension of the surface
You emerge.

Great thick layers of darkness remain.
Hands claw great gobs of blackness from nose and mouth.
A gasping, stuttered pull brings icy, bitter air.
Standing now, a black shadow-ghost emerging from tarry blackness.

Velvety and warm was the invitation,
Soothing and intimate was the gentle touch,
Silent and heavy was embrace,
A smothering, airless dark at the end
And silence.

But sweet, oh how sweet and warm.

Crack.
The past cleaves from the now.
Your surprises and concerns
Lay in the street,
Until dried and fragile
They take flight on the wind.

A hum,
The future like a freight train
Slow but massive,
Inertia like a mountain
Pushes you forward, aside
Or goes right over top.

The moment –
If you can grab it –
Is the now.
Find the handles and pull them close.
Silence and stillness from the gale.
It is a seat beside the heater
On a cold frozen night.

Tomorrow I will need to go
To a place I'll never know
I'll go there again next week
And find some more of what I seek.

I look for silence, sharp and ringing
I look to leave the things I'm bringing
There among the nothingness
I'll stop, and drop, then quick egress

Tomorrow you will find me there
Within a space I know not where
You'll find me there again next week
In silence where we dare not speak

withoutshapeormeaning
withoutreasonguidenceorrules
selectanddivid­ethepiecesasyouwill
weallmustdecideforourselves
wherewewillexcise­ourmeaning
andclaimourstakeamongthebrambles
thataretheseethingcur­lsandstrokes
inaworldofhintslookstouchesandgestures

feelfinallyw­ithyourfingertips
donottrusttheeyesandears
seekthecracksandbreaks­
sensethestrengthsandsinews
butchoosewiselywheretosnap
foryoumust­keepthepiecesyouchoose
youmustbuildyourworld
withthechoicesyoumak­e

A window into the soul
Water rushing along a gutter
The awaking to raindrops
Hard upon ancient metal flashing.
Gurgles echo in the drainpipes
Droplets join with a chaotic torrent
That interweaves fingers
With the cobbles in the street.

A window into the soul?
But memories melt like softened snow
Down off a high fence of wrought iron
Caked with ice
Though the blacker the metal
The more warmed by the electric afternoon sun.
Crystals drip into syrupy tendrils
And dissolve the moments past.

A window into the soul
The melting left the cold cinders
Once hot and glowing
Now long extinguished.
Even the ash is long washed away.
They sit among stones,
Tendrils of weeds.
Can anyone identify and name them
Among the petrified earth?

A window into the soul
A drought across the landscape.
Whiffs and wisps of smoke on the wind
Crackling sounds of burning trees and grasses.
Waves of flame sweep over a landscape
And even forgotten charcoal
Glows red again.
Flames dance and animate
An inner fire, that only rested
But was never extinguished.

The illusions we chase in our work-a-day world
Our actions paint allusions to the person we try to be.
We neglect the elusive goals we proclaimed in our youth
While they sink silently into alluvial beds of time.
Ultimately we wax effusive about how we flew so high
And evasively rationalize the 'here' to which we have drifted.
As if we, exclusively, had missed that bus.
We wear obvious scars of the abusive universe.

Snow, once wind-packed and
Crackling with a layer of ice,
Turned soft and wet under foot,

Like a rigid, schedule-driven life
Softened by a glimpse of mortality.

Like a hard impersonal heart
Warmed by the touch of a hand.

Like a cacophony of public chatter
Melted by the sound of a friend's "Hello."

Fresh weather will bring new snow,
And plummeting temperatures freeze the landscape solid again,
But these other things leave a glow that continues
After the moment has passed.

Time passing -
Is not the tick, tick, tick, of the movies.
It is a barely audible, high-pitched ringing in your ears.
It is the low thrum of a distant compressor somewhere.
It is the sound of the long shadows brushing against the wall.

Time passing -
It is the fabric rustle of changing your position in a chair.
A cat padding along the oak floorboards of the hallway.
An electric cube powering a computer.
The sizzle of speakers turned on with nothing playing.

Time passing -
I hear it from a silent telephone,
From the idle doorknob and hinges.
From wooden steps leading to my front door.

Time passing -
It is all of this,
And nothing.
So much nothing.

Stone cold, the blackening sky, stole our fields of flowers
They came like a silent flood over our continents
To block our sun and steal our humanity.

The ships were silent, and filled the skies.
Then down their marching hoards descended
Overwhelmed our puny technology, rendering us as apes.

Under their shadows our world went neolithic
They rendered all that was electrical or light to junk
We were left as scurrying ***** things among the soil.

Vastly reduced, our very memories were threatened
Forgetting how once we ruled our own planet
They plucked up our people like we once picked flowers.

When they came for me I was a child
The elders still telling me of the times I never knew
I had to learn their ways as I learned our own.

One day all our careful plans came together
And I sat hidden deep within their ship,
The thing so long pursued was found

Within that place, their robot brain
Where I could redefine their enemy as themselves
Then quick to a transport and back to my people.

Shortly then with a single bullet
We sparked their hostility sensors
The dark metal clouds burst soon with sun-like flame

We will never know the all that they knew,
Though we pick still among the mechanized ruins
And try to discover "from where" and "why."

More powerful than all our smartest elders
Covering the world with their dark mechanized oppression
But brought to an end by hands of a boy.

Many years now, since we brought them down
The hulking hulls worked now into barns and homes.
And once again we learn to talk across the oceans.

It wasn't long after the flames had ended
When in the fields the sun again warmed the soil
And fields of flowers there began to bloom.

There among the lushly verdant
Mosses damp and darkest green
Enchanted by a single word and
They call to life the darkness queen.

She slept with one dark resolution
Born of ages long forgot
Sworn to find her retribution
For what his villainy had wrought.

Sorcery built his path immortal
Claimed her castle of the North
Centuries five bring forth a portal
The key? One word to call her forth.

In an old, forgotten oak chest
A parchment found, it told the tale
Three women struck out on the quest
Resisting rain and blowing gale.

Gathered round the glade of green
At time foretold by old quatrain
They prepared to raise the queen
One word to resurrect her reign.

Rising now from forest floor
From deep within the ancient henge
Brought forth she flies to wage her war
Raised-up by one brief word: "Revenge"

Five forlorn fugitives stood tall
Five warnings to all who approach
Heavy bows move with foreboding in the wind
Chained to the wall of the ever-dark wood.

Needles brush needles,
Their tips like razor claws
Needles against bark,
Coarse and the colour of old blood.

They gaze across a soft blonde prairie
And the elders tell the tale.
"Avert your eyes, do not look upon the fugitives."
"Past those five, none return."
"Better to stay on the plains and live."

Five tired, twisted sentinels mark the boundary
A dark forest wraps around the low black mountain.
In our fathers' fathers' days, they say,
Pursued by horsemen they made it to the forest-edge
Five murderers, fugitives from the people.
Five went in, and none came out.

Their backs were seen immersing into a green wall
Their tracks ended at thick beds of needles
The horses would go no further.
The screams and howls were heard through the night.

Five fugitives went into the forest.
The next day, five tall, ageless trees
That were not there before.
They stand, and watch, and remind the people
You can run,
You can hide in the grasses.
But the forest wields a dark justice.

Coastal mist and mountains blue as ache –
As ice crystals encase his heart
Shadows begin to flood the valleys below.
With shallow breaths he lays embraced by snows
Upon a glacial bed – its covers will enrobe him for millennia.

The merciful numbness comes with the fading of the day
Finally bringing heavy, failing eyes
And the mists rise further up the slopes
To meet the gathering cloud.

Rendered helpless by the thinned air
He pushed himself beyond the boundary of the human world
Seeking rebirth in a Norse Asgard,
To find instead an icy tomb.  

At the end all is blue and white and grey
To sleep, is to embrace the mountain.
He becomes another protrusion between ice-encrusted peaks
A mystery for another time, waiting amid the snow.

At the door again,
It begins as a quiet scratching
And then a thick, abrasive sliding-down
Like a heaviness upon the frame.
Then a barely perceived close-breathing
That seems to creep like dull lantern-light
Under the door,
And around the frame,
And through the keyhole.

And there is no talisman to protect him.
No bust of pallas above the door
He is no metamorphosing cockroach
Able to **** the gaps
With oily-black chitin feelers.

The darkness brings no tools but fear
Thick and impenetrable as the night
The ancient lizard-brain takes over
And leaves him waiting for the first rays
That will pierce the window like lances
And dissolve the oppressive world
That leans so heavy against his door.

By the river I meandered
Where oily-black water runs silent.
Malevolently, it tears at the eroding bank
And dares me to walk more closely.

Under a twisted oak I ducked
Past ancient bark and sinewy branches.
Patiently, it awaits one who ducks not so low,
And harbours a dark enmity in the long shadows.

Around a silent bog I navigated
Mud occasionally ******* at my shoes.
Gurgling, it pulls lethargically at passing limbs,
And begs for a new visitor its fermented depths.

Darkness arrives
But I'm not finished with the sun.
Hey, I was using that!
Those gears turn
Without any input from me.

Like a conveyor belt
We're whisked away
To the shadow side
And dropped into the darkness.

Nobody here gets out of this day with sunshine.
Our freedom from darkness only, finally, comes
When we're well and truly sleeping
And wish it wouldn't come so soon.

In a time I never knew
Thankfully, outside of my own lifetime,
Your stories did not exist.

With sentences carved simply and economically
You weave ideas that engage us wholly
And open to us, image-by-image,
Memories of experiences that we have never had.
Nostalgia for other lives.

Or if you turn in another direction
You bring close around us,
The walls
The darkness
The night.
Suddenly, and with the echo of distant guns.

In our own worlds, the colours are a little
Less fragile. The smells a little less familiar.
Our interactions, the lives that end or begin,
With our every breath, a little less considered.

I do not know how your words
Bring somehow more than this
Wordless life that surrounds us,
But something in those pages,
Brings voices brighter than the sun which also rises.
More thoughtful than an old man upon the sea.
Neither the rain, nor the wind
Whispers so clearly.

It freezes you in place,
A cold gust of wind from the North.
It locks you in your home
And has you hover at the window.

It freezes you in place,
A fear of where you are heading.
Your only measure of freedom
How far away, the walls.

It freezes you in place,
A mirror that holds that other you.
Those eyes are always looking back
When you chance to look at them.

It freezes you in place,
When you embrace the immobile.
Tiny tendrils of inaction
Sliding over icy skin.

It freezes you in place,
But a thaw melts the icy clutches.
A thought, an idea, a chance –
Anticipation is a burning fire within.

Yesterday died late last night in the darkness.
Today was born in the small hours.

It lay there quietly gurgling
Alone and vulnerable in the inkiness.

At the break of the sun
That stabbed then tore the horizon,
I knew it was mine.

[Hint - it's fun to read this one out loud :) ]*

Upon a crusty and spinning crag
Herbert's trusty craft did set,
Out beyond the path of Mars
In an asteroid belt they met.

Picked from out of thousands there
He selected a rocky home,
The perfect kind of rocky mass
To end his spacely roam.

First Ceres was too large and bold
And Pallas was too pale,
Old Vesta flew with sluggish wings
And Hygiea seemed too frail..

Ah, Sylvia seemed a likely rock
And her orbit seemed fine too,
But t'was Juno caught his eye at last
So what else could he do?

He sat his craft upon that rock
And loosed his robot throng,
Soon they mined and smelted ore
And built a structure strong.

That dome rose up with welded struts
To stand on a bright-lit plain,
The jewel-like panes filled out the place
O'er that kingdom he would reign.

Industrious 'bots and a stately home
So there did Herbert rule,
O'er a stark and rocky, lonely view
In the asteroid belt so cruel.

T'was far away to the nearest soul
No one to share Herb's tea,
To simply chat or share a bite
How lovely would that be?

Deep beneath old Juno's crust
'Bots mined for all their worth
Pulling out rare stuff and gems
And sending them to Earth.

But all the gold and diamond stones
Could hardly even start,
To fill the void that Herbert felt
Where he knew he kept a heart.

Yet, several rocky asteroids out
Across that rocky belt,
Another set upon her task
With ores and **** to melt.

Past Callisto and Iris zones
Where Cybele and Psyche spin
Fair Susanna tended Hektor's mines
Of silver, zinc and tin.

Now orbits often twist and dance
And trade with one another,
Where one boulder once was kin
There soon will be some other.

T'was thus that Herbert's Juno rock
Slowly made it's way,
To catch-up Susie's Hektor world
And shadow it one day.

Sue looked out her glass abode
To see what blocked the sun,
Then seeing Juno with its mines
A visit seemed like fun.

Toward a spot near Herbert's ship
Suzanna's came a-falling,
Imagine Herbert's bright surprise
Seeing visitors a-calling.

A shapely suit with bubble head
And jet-pack soon came floating,
To Herbert's door that afternoon
The sight had him emoting.

"Well hello there friend, and who are you
That to my rock comes knocking?"
"Just another miner fool
Whose sun your Juno's blocking"

"In just a little while, I'm sure
Our asteroids will part,
So why not stay a little while
And a friendship we can start?"

Double shipments soon they made
To send away to Earth
While their robots toiled each day
The sweethearts shared their mirth.

Great love did our Herb and Susie share
Built on those pleasant talks
And soon a tractor beam they fixed
Between their drifting rocks.

And still today in spacers' lore
They talk about that tether,
That linked two hearts among the rocks
Two asteroids bound together.

In fading denial, I faced the leaves
And scattered hoses
And the pots still distributed about the yard
Where seeds had once ****** stalks and leaves,
And colours had burst, among the greenery.

In the chill wind, I removed them
The ice-encrusted aquatic plants
And exposed black cold water below.
Sunk a bubbler into the pond's depths
And caught glimpses of the orange inhabitants.

To the warmth, I retreated
As the sun turned up the shadows
And the creeping, early approach of night
Intruded upon the late afternoon,
And the winter, upon the fall.

The answer to what it was
Was what is wasn't.

As you sit down to eat
With vigour and zeal
Good friends at your table
Make the most of the meal.

As you raise a glass
Then toast as you dine
The long evening chatting
Makes the most of your wine.

As at last you head home
It was good friends, well met
If there were still conversations
To which you didn't get.

A dangling thread pulled
Will either cinch up into an awkward knot
Or pull everything apart.
Sometimes the best strategy
Is snipping it off,
And letting it float away
On the wind.

Sit on a chair
Between two people
That you do not know.
On your left,
And on your right,
You will find
Yourself.

Wrap your arms around someone.
When you do it right
You do not avoid losing them,
You instead lose yourself.

Awakened
By a breaking light
That dissolved the inky night
Aside the bed begins a path
That leads
To everywhere in the world
And begins
With one foot
Upon
The
Floor