It stopped.
Your mahogany façade now encases
more than the minute intricacies of time,
preserving something besides stale,
wooden air. Abiding now is an essence,
a moment,
an instant that will never
ever, reoccur.
What ghostly hand grasped your swinging
metal heart? Oh towering vision.
The cogs that are inside us continue
but you are dead. For now.
Frozen at 11:09 last Tuesday.




©*Thomas Gabriel

My window has no seat, why would it? I wish it did.
There is just a glossy magnolia ledge, barely wide enough to
cater a slender bottom. Upon the ledge books and candles
rest, illuminating the murk outside. Directly opposite orchard
trees recede as I welcome autumn with a zealous smirk.
For now faintly visible between their visceral arms are the
all-seeing hillocks that in winter will dominate my view.

An impartial observer once stated they were mere freckles
on the landscapes recumbent spine, but to me their sight alone
is vertiginous. On balmy April days I would surmount them,
a personal expedition, up there where I’m the valleys curator, wearing
pristine white gloves I meticulously unravel the terrain: an ancient
manuscript, the vellum inked with meandering streams, occasional farms,
cursive hamlets and little else - a land of sobriety and dearth.

In November though there is a permanent mist and its source
inexplicable. Does it simply effervesce from the precipitous tors about?
Is it the villager’s enshrined collective sigh? No it is something
more. Sitting atop the villages head it’s the beloved satin bonnet you
wore religiously as a child. Wholly impractical for this season
its gossamer fabric offers little solace or insulation to those below
as its pleated extremities elope with the moss-brown hinterland.

Fervently stoking their hearths the villagers broaden the
ethereal cloth with a smoke not acrid but satisfying and nourishing:
with a terrifically edible, hardwood flavour. From my hillock
vantage, the sanguine stone of the manorial chimneys is all that
penetrates the film; casually they release torrents of smoke like
ivory doves that weft patterns instinctively into the sky’s pallid damask.






©*Thomas Gabriel

I
miss you
       at night;

when I tuck my feet in

they
  look for
    yours still.

It's getting close to Christmas
and I'm scared to be alone.

I want you to know
one thing.

You know how this is:
if I look
at the crystal moon, at the red branch
of the slow autumn at my window,
if I touch
near the fire
the impalpable ash
or the wrinkled body of the log,
everything carries me to you,
as if everything that exists,
aromas, light, metals,
were little boats
that sail
toward those isles of yours that wait for me.

Well, now,
if little by little you stop loving me
I shall stop loving you little by little.

If suddenly
you forget me
do not look for me,
for I shall already have forgotten you.

If you think it long and mad,
the wind of banners
that passes through my life,
and you decide
to leave me at the shore
of the heart where I have roots,
remember
that on that day,
at that hour,
I shall lift my arms
and my roots will set off
to seek another land.

But
if each day,
each hour,
you feel that you are destined for me
with implacable sweetness,
if each day a flower
climbs up to your lips to seek me,
ah my love, ah my own,
in me all that fire is repeated,
in me nothing is extinguished or forgotten,
my love feeds on your love, beloved,
and as long as you live it will be in your arms
without leaving mine

I do not love you as if you were salt-rose, or topaz,
or the arrow of carnations the fire shoots off.
I love you as certain dark things are to be loved,
in secret, between the shadow and the soul.

I love you as the plant that never blooms
but carries in itself the light of hidden flowers;
thanks to your love a certain solid fragrance,
risen from the earth, lives darkly in my body.

I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where.
I love you straightforwardly, without complexities or pride;
so I love you because I know no other way

than this: where I does not exist, nor you,
so close that your hand on my chest is my hand,
so close that your eyes close as I fall asleep.

I hate it when he's gone
and I hate leaving and knowing we won't be in touch.
I hate when he's not around to hold me
and I hate the separation.

But what's to hate?
Isn't this love?
The feelings, the touch, the moments of pure happiness
The perfection.
Nothing is wrong, right?
Isn't this how it's supposed to be?

The changes are exhilarating,
I'm jumping into ice water from the hot shower I just took.
Is this the fairytale?
I hope so, this should last forever
but is the happy ending just merely a feeling that can fade?
Not to those who convince themselves it's not.
Thats what I'll do, that's what we must do
To keep loving, to never give up
I can't give up, not on love.
I love him, it's all I'm sure of
And if I can't be sure, then what good does the love do?

I lay out in the grass and talk to the earth.
The pine scent of your breath, in the breeze.
I hear the creatures of your forest chirp.
The salty taste of the open seas.

I feel the rain falling on my skin.
Like mine, your growth is never done.
My thoughts are blown away, with the wind.
I wither away happily, in the sun

I remember a time when time was just a number,
where the only times where school and dinner.
When I didn't have to grow up to be what I want,
but I could act it out in a secret lair or a parking lot.
As you become old, they try to rid you of you imagination,
well I say nay as I fly my submarine in a train station.
You know what take my wallet, live my life,
because I am a ninja hiding in the night.
Go ahead, try and catch me if you can,
Big old stupid corporate man.
You might be sophisticated and civilized,
so what, I am a 50 foot spider that can freakin' fly!