{ FREEDOM  “We may want to linger, to stay, to arrest the flow and talk about it, photograph it, lyricize it. Yet this beauty is mercurial and we must let it go, for it is already slipping away to be replaced by the new.” -Stuart Sovatsky }


YELLOW FIELD OF WHEAT


Angel of Death skims blacker than tar
a skeletal knock overturning bowl of oats
smelling of frankincense and ashes
to carry you to a yellow field of wheat
where you will dance radiant waltzes
haloed free

your laughter pranced across blue walls with
Michael Jackson, Spider-Man and cheeky elves
relishing Kentucky Fried Chicken as you
played scrabble with forlorn neighbour
your bony body birthing revolutions of
roulette with green life and grey death

how you endured those precision needles
wanting to instead drum tapered fingers on
waiting desk overflowing with car sketches
your thirteen year old bald head smiling
veins on an enchanting spring moon as our
hidden tears crystallised hospital sheets

we tried to keep up with you scoffing
encyclopaedias, Dickens and muffins alike
cancer like a chess game mastered chemo
doctors and nurses becoming kings or pawns
time in the now or endless pathos stalking
Laurel and Hardy keeping our hearts unlocked

on Merlin’s star-patterned couch you will
jokingly converse with Pele and his team
soccer ball silent under quiescent table
my ink cannot pen sad lines as I feel your
lips still ******* for warm dripping milk
your freedom moonwalks on a yellow field of wheat


©GhairoDanielsPoetry2012

We used to float,
Raising our glasses.
The great unknown before us,
Surely great.

Life in its many colours
Filled my senses, and friends were treasures.
Time an illusion, and crying… just to cry.

With your loss,
My shadow grew.
Every shade of paint against the sunlit skies
Greyed, faded—
Dead trees forming a rigid silhouette.

For one to love life so,
Lighter than the morning breeze,
Understanding beyond understanding—

On your knees you pulled the moon near,
You kissed the sun
And found love wherever you went.

As I drag my shackles day after day,
As the moon moves nearer to me,
I cannot see it.
I do not feel the warmth of the sun.
Nor do I embrace love wherever I go.

For it was ordained then
That I would survive you—
Though the weight had not been foretold.

The shadow puts its hand on my shoulder,
A solemn kindness in its grip.
It is time to go,
To endure… again.

I trespassed through many lives,
some of them mine,
yours most of all.

Being young
does not excuse,
only shows how long
I've known better.

I thought breaking
was just another way
to change shape.
I mistook leaving
for becoming.

You stayed.
You learned to sleep
on a wet pillow.
I know.
I brought the storm
and called it weather.

You wake.
You endure.
You build a life
where I am a name,
a story you no longer tell.

You rise
like someone who had to.
I vanish,
like someone who chose to.

I see it.
Even now.

And I wonder
what it cost you
to stay kind
to the memory
of me.

I’m drained
My strength lessen
Too tired to continue
I want to give up

    But my heart won’t stop beating for my deepest desires
    My eyes won’t stop seeing me as the future of fashion and searching for more
     My legs won’t stop walking or crawling
     Even my pen won’t writing

I’m tired
My heart
My eyes
My legs and my pens won’t stop telling me I can’t stop until my dreams come true

the sorrow isn’t poetic
it’s thick
cold
mud that pulls
without mercy

every breath
feels borrowed
from something deeper
that wants me quiet

I move
but nothing lets go—
chains wrapped in memory
hands I never asked to hold me

somewhere in that silence
a spark
quivers
burning bitter in my veins
small
but mine

I don’t know if this is healing
or fury
but I burn
everything behind me
to make room
for something else

the dark doesn’t disappear
it just flinches

and I
with bleeding hands
still climb.