Can't remember the last time I got paid
Lost my worldly goods
Now I am stranded
By the house on the water
The river is the only thing
That moves real fast
As time nestles in.
Life seems normal
On the water
Like an everyday occurrence
I got laid last night
Drew my mind-set around my body
Down through my toes
The river keeps coming from nowhere
More and more
My mind is reeling like a movie
From your touch last night
The morning starts
With mist on the water
The wintery bare trees
Hold the mist at bay
Like a man sitting smoking
In a dim and crowded room
Just waiting for something
Gray and bad-lunged
And slow to move the day along
That cold sun pulls back
The ice like curtain
Man, you got to see the sun
Another day by the water
And I ain't got no work and no pay
By midday no one's calling
But the ducks that skim the water
The rocks can't hold back the river
Hushing sound of water
I try to think of something else
But baby, your power
Has me someplace else
Picture you naked as you were
Got to have you, got to be there
All the time
It's your distance
That keeps killing me
And the waiting by the river
Call you, got to call you
From the house on the water.
May 31, 2018
May 31, 2018 at 6:34 PM UTC
If the sky were a pool, a swimming pool,
You cloud would fit the rule
Sunglasses and Lillo-pose
Who caught who you suppose?
It's as though you'd just noticed
A human at the window
Peeper human had seen the model cloud
In her fronds of glamour shroud.
You are staring because I'd been
Now you've noticed that you've been seen
With a gusty windward swoop
You drop somewhere into the pool
Ah, I say
And back away...
May 31, 2018
May 31, 2018 at 6:30 PM UTC
Upon a will not of my own
My eyes lured westward
To the settling rustic clouds
Spread wide-winged across the sky
And from an open vortex came
The leader's shrill reply.
The ducks of Sabie braced the winds up high
Their wishbone flight kept in harmony
Ignited a compelling thrill
Deep within my half conscious eye
For yet again I listen into memory.
The days spent at Sabie might have gone by
But these alluring creatures pass here now
Stirring a hidden intimate thought
Which grew from Sabie's twilight river banks.
Where unattended grass abounds in profusion
The blades tall from country breath and
Wide pastures naked to the windy storms.
Against a reddening sun and a blackening bridge
Which overhung the ice-cold waters,
Those ducks bleated their melancholic cry
Like a marker for a question why.
Their passage seemed a continuous dream
Their throats resounding the restless stream
Sabie, a shelter to beautiful liberty
That reverberates against green clad mountains
Where heaven unites with a shy still spiritual grandeur
I watched the haunting waifs wander through the sky
Like a ghost refection against my sub-conscious mind.
A holier feeling, as a church spire lost in mists.
Of a rainy day, yearned within me.
Their swaying wings cast shadows in my heart
Their beauty and their vagabond souls
Provoke a thought of sublime content.
That evasive mood on which poets' conjure
A strength of divine sorrow and subdued delight.
While the river's rhythmic pulse beat over the rocks
And in the darkness seemed a sight of slithering glass
With the tall trees mirrored in its sun-stained depth
A subtle yearning reached within my soul.
An urge evolved to save this temporary while
And rest within this insulated haven
Where to hear the ducks invokes an embracing joy
To be a limb, a fringe, a relative of this deity-like company.
Present falls too soon on shallow ears
And the ducks of Sabie, might they be
Lose their reminiscent shadows to the dark horizon
May 31, 2018
May 31, 2018 at 6:28 PM UTC
Dust balances in the sunlight
Curtaining a mystery room
Of hazy sunbeams
Working fabric of gold
From its sacred loom
Spindles turn in ballet curve
And mingle in a hue
Of bright clarity
And hidden to the few
Who believe
They never see the view
May 31, 2018
May 31, 2018 at 6:27 PM UTC
Watch the falling of the rain
Through the dusty window pane
Life's out there, a lost soul
Coming through the rain
I see him pushing in vain
The storm is too angry to let him pass
But still I see the falling rain
Through the dusty window pane.
This house sometimes leaks
Leaving stains for weeks
Claw marks down the walls
It's what the dampness seeks
That confuses me from house to leaks
I've thought of hiding them
But they show upon the window pane in streaks
What funny little freaks!
On sunny days there is no sign
And I forget that window confine
Life's with me, a restless soul
Pushing at the living vine
I see him and know the sign
That sunbeams whistle out a tune
Dusting out that little memory of mine
Just so that I know, with me it's fine.
May 31, 2018
May 31, 2018 at 6:15 PM UTC
I remember as a quiet child
The summer days upon the grass laid
Banks of a timid stream
Sitting cross-legged, bending
To stroke the muddy waters
With a part of forgotten wood
And all around the warmth of
The summer's glowing sun
An intake of breath would
Bring the scent of tall trees
Bounding to my favorite nest.
footsteps followed shallow paths
That meandered to and from
The stream which gurgled as a child
In excited and gay temperament
I did then pause in rapture of my sense
And touch a life of serene sublime
A tender moment to solitude
Yet as I sat flat upon the grass
A gentle butterfly swaggered
In its pride of showy acrobatics
White and blissful in balance
With my sun-filled dreams
Nature showered in a halo of blushes
Collected the dusty corn colors of summer
And sprinkled then at my feet
For a secret wish for me to dare
Then... through my reverie
I heard some voices cheer
Some boys scuttled the biggest log there
back into the stream it sped
Some part cooled in water
Some part basked in sun
I recall the echo of buzzing beetles
That zoomed across the water
And were hidden by the distance
On the other side
Some dragonflies hovered with curiosity
In some infrequent time
The red and green of their wings
Seems now lost to me
They shimmered like chrome
Of tireless helicopters
This was a busy side to my young years
What with barges of driftwood
And scurrying air-traffic
Yet the call of the water birds
Stayed only after the sun had set
And leafy foliage lingered in silhouette
The birds crossed the sky with
To me a mournful cry
As a reminder the day had said goodbye
Yet little did I realize then
That in flowering adulthood
I would return to those summer days in sweet lament
And cherish that moment of child content.
May 31, 2018
May 31, 2018 at 6:05 PM UTC
Migrating white butterflies
Like snowflakes in mid-summer
Dancing on heat waves of January skies
Thousands upon thousands,
Can't tell one from another
This must be the celebration to summer.
Like some mystic fable they appear by magic
Their wild scattered bouncy flight
Springs chaos amongst all city logic
For they paint a rural innocent insight
To the mysteries of summer's secrets.
Their cascade is tumbling northwards
Like bubbles blown from a gypsy child
Hidden in these concrete woods
Hearts wild yet breath so mild
They simply pass as lacey summer reflection.
May 31, 2018
May 31, 2018 at 5:35 PM UTC
Dressing, I slip into my jeans
Brush my hair while looking
At my reflection in the mirror
Old and betrayed
My nerves already frayed
'Too low for zero'
My mind-clock registers
Age was just a number
Until you are really there
I don't mind the graying hair
A new line somewhere
It's the mind, the death of love
Love for my existence
And the bleeding persistence
That ****** dance with forgetfulness
But one thing I can't forget
As I stand dressed and ready to face
The demon of my drudgery
My head starts to throb
I foresee an attitude
It's in his grudging old bearing
I foresee a bad day coming
I try to convince me not to care
Indifference and rude commentary
'I don't like to be seen with you in public'
A joke, a sarcasm said, I smile
But inside my stomach turns to bile
Distancing is the fastest way to salve
Need to escape from the space of the car
It's suffocating space with scenes in halves
One side of the view; the passenger
At home I become a wishful thinker
Independence, freedom from
Shadows, deceit and hollow looks
Hide I do, in sleep and whatever books.
May 31, 2018
May 31, 2018 at 5:23 PM UTC
Singly among the sand castles
No one noticed until he was there
Above him or in his path
We had built him like children
Build sand castles
We carved and patted him from moist earth
He was soft, yet rigid as he lay there
His gaze was skyward and uncertain..
We left him there to see what people do
And walked a distance to the dunes
We watched him among people
For he was one now.
They came. Families, elderly couples
And children too and stopped
To admire and express delight
At this sand man's sculptured form.
We felt happiness at the pleasure be brought
He made them stop a moment to feel their surroundings
And recognize his contented solitude.
Teenage boys came to jeer and leer.
One of them looked around as if in secrecy
And plunged a driftwood stick at the sandman's groin
Then quickly ran away laughing at his tale.
The stick protruded boldly
Our sand man's hands were at his sides
He felt no ruler of the sands
Only a gentle soul made of mockery.
A girl and her brother approached
After we had removed the offence.
The young boy was waving his 'mighty sword'
(Some stick which had washed ashore)
At first, with his sister in charge
They stopped to admire
But then she walked away,
Turned her back to venture on.
"Hello", he said to the sandman
As if to acknowledge someone there.
Then with his 'mighty sword' he pierced
Into the sandman's groin and
Ripped up to his chest
Then swung his 'sword' and
Cut the sand man's throat...
Why? Why! we cried in mind
As the young boy ran away
Murderer! we yelled in our hearts
IWe hurt for man
We sat stunned at this violence
This desecration of a soul.
We couldn't just leave him there
Blameless, yet aware
So we buried the sand man and prayed
Dust to dust, sand to sand
Sand he may have been
But soul he was for us.
May 31, 2018
May 31, 2018 at 9:17 AM UTC
Dream-like, the owl perched
High upon a headless pillar
As a surrealistic statue
Bathed in a lupine moonlight
A still night
Wintery and ghost-like
I had suddenly noticed the owl
And got the feeling
It had always been there
That I had been unaware
The two of us had been staring
At the same view of the city lights
Its head then moved
As if in a nightmare
I blinked, but still it was there
Alone and timeless.
May 31, 2018
May 31, 2018 at 7:14 AM UTC