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Brian Yule Mar 2019
She dared sketch symphonies in the winterdark dawn

Faint snatches of melody yet not fully formed

I felt her dignity, frail but unbending

Broken bursts of half-sensed hope: expanding, still pending

I held on heady to each forming refrain

Aching for each frost-cloud breath to scent spring

A phoenix ending

Patchwork dawning

New foaled, febrile, fragile thing

A few notes shy of resolution
Brian Yule Sep 2020
Becalmed
Suspended in brackish undulations
Dunes shield this lagoon speculation
From seething currents
Brian Yule Aug 2020
Gazing down
I see this dull blade drew blood
Dial blind as ache lulls
Defy ease as life oozes free
Don’t lie down
Don’t sleep
Keep fear sharp
As faint creeps the soothing deep
Passions eked
Awareness do not forsake me
Come on
Come on
Answer
I stare vague at the mess where my wrist used to be
Which emergency?
Ambulance please
Consciousness bleeds
I wake with cool linen covering me
Brian Yule Mar 2021
Evil I did?
Maid I am
Adam mine
Denied is one man
I lived dogma
I am god?
Devil?
I name no side in Eden
I'm mad?
A maid I am
Did I live?
This is a palindromic poem inspired by the "madam, I'm Adam" palindrome. The individual parts of the poem are in common circulation, all I've done is to weave them together into a narrative.
Brian Yule Mar 2019
That’s my old chair
The one I used to doze in
While Mr Parker droned on ‘bout maths & that
I was gonna sit down front near Kerry Keener
But in the end I thought, nah, better not, so here I sat

You see, just here, my keychain scraped the plastic
As I ragged around to try & find a comfy spot
& that bit there got scuffed
The more my trainers rubbed it
I never could sit sensible
So they said

That armrest there snapped clean off when Matty Parker
Went arsefirst backward over it, farting on,
We laughed our backs off that time, Matty too like
It’s a few years now that Matt’s been dead & gone

& round the back there
Do you clock the “I heart Lisa”
Jason compass-scrawled once before class, the cheeky ****
He knew I had a soft spot for that Lisa
I made ******’ sure that Jase was out of luck

I haven’t seen that Lisa in a fair while
Jason neither like, funny how life goes
Still, you close one door, another waits ajar like
Sit still too long you won’t go far like, I suppose
Brian Yule Mar 2020
Accepting the lack
Found comfort in ordering
Stirring the tea leaves
Brian Yule Aug 2020
The summer stretched out
Languorous
Lissome
A stray cat
Sunning itself
In possibilities
Brian Yule Oct 2020
Vacant mirror
Arid pen
Sallow silence

Naked page
Swallowed minutes from
Borrowed hours

Cave's former roar
Sunken stream
Struck dumb

Wallow in
Parched flow
As hollow grows

Sin hallow
Burrow deeper
Into ashes

Seeking signs
Of dew saved
From the drought
Brian Yule Sep 2020
All felt the fable
Dwindle & swell
The swindle whispered
Into every eyeball
The tramelled multifarious
Steady steady
Soft sell
Who'd fall for that
We say
As it settles down to dwell
In our depths & recesses
Tales of decline & progress
Denied
Brian Yule Mar 2020
Ache of being isolated grown too close
You spin the wheel, though wary
Weary too
Another raw encounter: open wound
Another tongue duel probing to find out
The rule you’ve never broken
A lure, if spoken; left unsaid, a doubt
A bur to hook the tighter those who run
Nursing the rub
The present friction burns of uncertainty
The pleasant fictions formed to fill the gap
This shifting scene that saps with sifting urgency
This morphing tempter mutely mouths its name
Read my lips
Spill my dear
Do you decline
Or feast fears
Climb into bed
Sip on the nectar
Transfixed
Brian Yule Nov 2020
Robust numbers resist
With stubborn clarity
As tunnelvision experience suborns denial
Facts persist
Brian Yule Aug 2021
Breath held short
Dare I tread
One step further
Put forth serene
But as the threshold approached
My smooth pulse quickened
Grew erratic
Sharing these dreads unspoken
The just-beyond unknown
To trust that these bonds, yet unbroken, will hold
Or to fold, shed this chance to have grown
Brian Yule Jan 2021
A bare corridor
Death exits frowning
Gilding her indecision
Judases keening laments
Mangled notes offering pause
Quarantined rage simmers
Tasting untapped violence
With xeric yearning
Zestless
Brian Yule Sep 2020
Amid the rubble
Of four dim millennia peeled back
A square of carved steatite lay
Lifted
Gently as a gossamer hope
To reveal
That mythic beast
A single horn curving
From its striated head
Whose fame reached Grecian ears
From Indus bed
Across miles & years
Leaving an inkmark murmur
Inspired by the unicorn seal found in the ruins of ancient Mohenjo Daro during early 20th century excavations:

https://www.harappa.com/indus/25.html
Brian Yule Sep 2020
With intermittent vision tinted sepia
Apeborn questions exerting rigid apertures
Hinted insights rose unfurling thorns
Reason never deeply touching you
How incrementally are humans
Ever so defective
Instruments of
Truth
Brian Yule Oct 2020
Crickets chirping
A pulsating veil
Beyond which silence knocks
Heat seethes from baking rocks
Alive in this aching
Swathed in hot spring's cocoon
Crushed **** steeping
Nurturing her hushed bleeds
Wonder's womb weeping
A carrion bird perching,
Unsated, wails
Brian Yule Aug 2021
Umbrella tangos
With a long-faded Cubs cap
In the sudden gale
Halestruck street swift abandoned
Stray dog their sole spectator
Brian Yule Mar 2020
Nightfall brings respite
To drag wounded from corpse fields
First snowdrops in bloom
Brian Yule Mar 2019
When they look back on me

Let them all swear

He always stole diligently

Oft-times unawares

& If he plucked on your heartstrings

Another man's chords

He only piggybacked to reach higher

— The End —