I cannot let myself
Be consumed by you
I am weak enough
Already
Without taking
Your wounds
And making them
My own

Please know
That I will
Love you still,
But I cannot be
The nerve endings
Connected
To your
Spinal cord

i   am   going
into    the    limp    dark
   where   silence   recites
a brief  candleflame
  
    it is   as if  these cavernous   impulses
rush   back    like  children
     whose  heads   are diadems
and   you,   their   mother   of   spring’s   masterful
    hands    neither  went
      nor      came

to   a   dream
    of
        roses  which
trudging    kisses   smite  the loam,
    giving  them   reckless meanings
yet    all    the   same

   in    death
and   in    beginning,  in  these large minutes
your   eyes  contain
such    light   which   all  things  darkled
    are    born anew
with   timid  
       names

My skies are sponged in soft grey
water-pressed, water folded
water borne.
Anon, I have only ever been remembered in this way:
When the light is wan.
But I promise you, more than
the sky now promises a hopeful sleep
I will love you beyond hills and houses
Beyond clay, which melts in the rain
My love is a kiln, I am caught in the
hearth with you
And now if I was thrown,
I would be shattered instantly.
But I can stand a thousand days of rain
I can hold under high heat
I am glossy earthenware
Finer than any diamond or gold nugget
I will nourish, comfort, and warm you
I will love you such.

Here between these walls
The world is intoxicated
And you and I are the only ones sane
As we negotiate each others pain
And compensate it with blissful pleasure
Only we can fix all that is wrong
Beyond steamed windows
Outside where the world drowns in rain
Bit by bit
We discover the secret of happiness
And peace
As we fulfill the hunger within us
I swear we are half way there to ending poverty
We are overcome within ourselves
We are not you and I
But one
I'm wearing your old sweater
And we snuggle propped up against the wall
Or each other
Our arms wound around and palms pressed close, fingers knitted together
Your fingers stroke my hair
As we listen to the different heartbeats
And voice our own dreams
With words we build separate versions of an ideal world
Cora you say
How come we're here like this
We're both so different
And I reply that it doesn't matter
We both have too much respect to let differences matter
Respect for the right of others
To reach for achieving a utopia without harming another being
The secret is to never see yourself as superior
And balance it with never seeing yourself as inferior
It doesn't matter what the colour of your envelope is
Or what factory you were made in
Your brand is not the name of your religion or the soil you were born on
The essence and material are the same
I can feel your smile tickling against my forehead as you whisper
I think I know what you mean
Let me show you
And a foreign sound reaches my ears
It's a slow rhythmic tune
With soft vocals
I have no idea what the words mean
And at that moment
Not for the first time
It crosses my mind
That if everyone spoke the same language would we still be like this
But it doesn't matter
As I listen like a blind man with no sense of time
I understand the song is about love
And there's a touch of longing
I can feel the melancholy in her voice
And the nostalgic homesickness in his
As the song plays on
I imagine the two lovers were reunited
I can feel the gratitude
And relief
I can see their future
And its everything I've always dreamed of
My kind of utopia

Good morning,
The war is over.
We have examined the cause of famine,
And no more shall perish from hunger.
We have stopped aging,
We are becoming younger.
We are growing trees that fight disease.
Our natural resources are plenty,
We have done away with the archaic concept of money.
We now master over the natural forces of disaster.  
We have decided to stop fighting,
And start providing relief.
Good morning it is a new day.
I have just awoken from a deep sleep.

They called it the shallow graves, the place where death plays
Spin the broken needle. it snows in July under here.

Under the bridge they huddle in their cardboard palaces ,
psychedelic moments followed by the falling in to oblivions grasp.

They slept in their depthless tombs, blankets hiding that moment
Of alone time where that last hit was the one that hit home.

I watch as so many lives that once were, are now gone, this
Place of broken syringes and dreams. Sleeping in hollow mounds.

Both we, we both
Created, In the image of God;
Both we, we both
Got an angelic applause.

Both I, and thee
Were devised in the holy river;
Both thee, and I
Shareth kidney's, aura's, liver's.

We art us
As tis us means we;
We meaning me and thou
Mine lover, soulmate, queen.



©Brandon Nagley
©Lonesome poet's poetry
©earl Jane Nagley ( Filipino rose) dedication

each tempered by slivered moments:
slovenly on the floor lay tethered,
both, separate,
honest light.

when it is time that you do not
see anymore, the shadow of my passing,

when the twilight gives rise,
a felled star in the world,

when damp kisses are beleaguered
by the driest of lips,

out of merely, a wide-eyed vainglory,
there will be nothing that all my songs
send a dancing, tiptoeing light
careful to arrive at one day

when you face is held with utmost care
and my hands not its owner,
but a handful of names.

when it comes that we are two fish
struggling in a current's dream —
not a single twitch is born. you will slip
past the interstice of love's net
and i cannot see you anymore in the
depthless blue.

the intelligence of stone tells me
nothing but silence, hemmed in
to a great monolith of daylight.

i exaggerate, the sinking of ships
and amble blindly with the whole of
my motion, like flotsam weary of its
  preordainment. portraits sow themselves
battles, cleaving them minutely against
  the simmer of quiet. when it is time
to let you go, i will watch you leap forth
  into the ripe air like a child seeking
home, reiterates in flight a height
  i cannot reach for.

when it is time all of this,
    mote it be, clenches in thinned streaks
of turpentine, all of my walls will be clear
  and not a sign of your colour
   will scream pain like a tortured vandal.

We caught the tread of dancing feet,
We loitered down the moonlit street,
And stopped beneath the harlot’s house.

Inside, above the din and fray,
We heard the loud musicians play
The ‘Treues Liebes Herz’ of Strauss.

Like strange mechanical grotesques,
Making fantastic arabesques,
The shadows raced across the blind.

We watched the ghostly dancers spin
To sound of horn and violin,
Like black leaves wheeling in the wind.

Like wire-pulled automatons,
Slim silhouetted skeletons
Went sidling through the slow quadrille,

Then took each other by the hand,
And danced a stately saraband;
Their laughter echoed thin and shrill.

Sometimes a clockwork puppet pressed
A phantom lover to her breast,
Sometimes they seemed to try to sing.

Sometimes a horrible marionette
Came out, and smoked its cigarette
Upon the steps like a live thing.

Then, turning to my love, I said,
‘The dead are dancing with the dead,
The dust is whirling with the dust.’

But she—she heard the violin,
And left my side, and entered in:
Love passed into the house of lust.

Then suddenly the tune went false,
The dancers wearied of the waltz,
The shadows ceased to wheel and whirl.

And down the long and silent street,
The dawn, with silver-sandalled feet,
Crept like a frightened girl.