poetry is dead
as the air
it walks on --
good as dead
to compost heaps;
the heat reserved in sunlit stone

The created should worship and honour their creator,
Its senseless to worship something you created by your own hands or those of another human,
For what fulfillment would that even bring to you?
Even flowers worship their creator by doing what they were meant to do;beautify
The wind blows,
The sun shines,so do stars,bet that's their way of worship

And when at last she fell asleep,
For my sweetheart i kept vigil.
Synching my life breath,
With her rhythmic heart beats,
For her I wrote,this song.
But she couldn't listen, not even once,
Though only for her I weaved it.

Night had her rendezvous with dawn,
At the end of her painful journey with little light,
My love left without a word, never to return
To gift me that lingering,tantalizing, sweet pain,
That makes me real; keeps the lover in me alive.

My orphaned song of doomed love,
Lost all it's meaning at that moment.
Like a lover who lost way to the rendezvous,
It kept on knocking my door, ever after.
In the insistent beating of the sea waves' passion
I heard my lost song ringing once again.
On a night the melancholy moon,went hiding.
I sat alone soaked in pain and sang my song.
It made me melt, I deeply felt,nature too sang along,
In a frenzy, I never ever did witness before.
Then, the pale moon, on an apparel in transparent cloud,
Danced forgetting all her pain , that found expression in many ways.

I now realize,that song wasn't just mine,
It has a life of it's own,in tongues it spoke.
Day and night to lovers, jilted, all those lost by mistake,
Now, it has a life of it's own, independent from all
Anywhere it  would  go alone.

                             I wrote a song, for none in particular,
                             Soon did I realize, it speaks to all pain filled hearts,
                            Love created the wistful mood,
                            My time alone with her filled the words.
                             And one day everyone who heard
                             This song sung,  will leave, but the song won't.

                            The night air will be filled with it's mute waves of pain,
                           On it the distant stars will float.
                            The wind will hum it,the interstellar space,
                            Will echo, it's cadence aloud.
                            Neither the words would  fade
                           Nor my passion for her ever would die.

Our faithful black Labrador, who was an old lady when I was just a boy, had six pups and despite the grey on her muzzle, produced enough milk for them all. She would take her bowl to the sink when thirsty, tinned-meat to the can-opener when hungry. When tired, she would sprawl out on a rug before the coal fire, on occasion, licking her master’s feet before falling asleep.
     Sometimes, I would rest my head upon her chest, listening to her breathing. In her dreams she would sometimes yelp softly and I would soothe her nightmares away by stroking her sleek black coat.
In our garden, during the pleasant sunshine of a warm afternoon, we used to play together. Throwing a tennis ball that she would chase then fetch back and drop in my waiting hands for me to throw again. This was by far, her favourite game.
     Some considered that she ran out in front of the School Teacher’s speeding car deliberately. “Because of her age,” they said, and “her inability to cope with the pups, only just turned two weeks old,” — that my mother reared, against all predictions.  
     I never accepted this nonsense. At the time, such a thing never crossed my mind as I looked at her, sprawled across the roadside verge. Her eyes were open, but through my tears I could see they were sightless. I also saw the muddy tyre-print across her unmoving ribs and how her legs twisted at an unnatural angle. I could not help my crying, but I felt no shame: none at all.  
     The sad regret I saw in the School Teacher’s red-rimmed eyes did nothing to ease my pain.  If anything, her sorrow made me feel even worse. I felt guilty because I wanted to hate her. Perhaps I did hate her! I can barely remember now. With the passage of time the pain and the hate, if indeed there was any hate, has faded.
     Whenever I pass our old house, where Moss is buried in the garden in which she played, I recall our times together and give her good thoughts. For good thoughts are all that I have for our faithful black Labrador, who was an old lady when I was just a boy.

We built worlds in one another
Small entities
Of holding one another's hands
Of lacing your fingers through mine
And lifting your closed fist to my lips
As I gently kissed between the ridges
Of your past
We tucked our hopes and dreams in between the folds of skin that we curled up in at night
And we held each other so tight that
there were times where we weren't sure
Where one began and the other ended


We laid our souls on one another's chests
And caressed
The cavities and damaged depravities
That others had laid us victims too...

As the world defends itself from the anxiety of death,
a wind-caressed woman waits by the water,
and signals for silence, unceremoniously.
Waiting for the blood-banks to breed ideals --
which will, inevitably, be exported --
that will turn Natives into faceless, finger-painted  
neo-orphans of the broken nuclear home;
old souls, convinced to be the youth in revolt,
and to be the scrambled egg individuals of a melting ***, that disguises uniform for diversity.

Her lavender dress dribbles the spiraling air, as the copper dust swims by her ankles, knees, and thighs.
I do not remember when she told me that everything we do and say is a defense-mechanism,
distracting us from the fact that one day we will die and be as imaginative as the roles we give ourselves,
as the people we think blend into us,
and as the gods we use as an alternative to a morphine drip.

I stood by the bad river, knowing that all of my attempts at being more than what I was,
was my grasp at an out-of-reach eternity,
and a dream of a humanity that could be affected by one person.

I do not remember when she told me,
"All of our attempts at progressing,
is our way with dealing that we will someday die
and may not have been successful at living forever."

You cried, when I read you poetry,
Soft sounds of weeping down the telephone,
It was not sad though, no, never that,
A kind of, unexpected happiness had blossomed,
Filling your mind with fragrant words, this is why,
You cried, when I read you poetry.

©Paul M Chafer 2015