Beach dusk is romance.
Sprightly smooth limbed figures
Barefooted on warm sand,
Bathing in pink sunsets,
Watching tragic beauty descend
With clasped hands.

Standing in the middle of the sea,
The sun looks no bigger than it did from land,
Ghostly noose reeling it down to the horizon.
As it approaches the water starts to boil,
Calcium leaches from seashells
Unbearably hot.
Somewhere out there someone's mother cries
And blood stains the skies.
Complicit in our sight we cover our ears
Standing in the middle of the sea.

Beach dawn is ******.
Footsteps trickle back onto sand
Still hot from night's inferno,
Each grain with a distant soul.
Their bones line our shores,
Flowers in an eternal summer.

Two is company, three's a crowd
We halt the steep hike, me, myself and I
Solace seekers stuck with each other
Lonely yet overwhelmed and we don't know why
Campfire is kindled; we gather around
Rubbing numb hands and flexing sore toes
Nobody speaks as we stare at the ground
With its half-frozen mud and crackling dead leaves

The flickering embers hurl our shadows
Like blood spatters against the clouds
My marionette falls as its strings are sliced
Cosmic ****** painted on the dying sky
Our riddling commences on the next thunderclap
I find myself asking what it all means to me
Gulping the heady steam of trepidation
Standing on the precipice of the caldera of dreams

Silky sopranos twisting thin: crystal notes
Spilling, glassy beads from a fat music jar
Soothing as the nightly breeze against our shores
Bearing new and forgotten scents from afar

Midnight dew forms on freshly mown silver grass
Slides down pumpkin cheeks to settle finally
Unperturbed as the scarecrow by the red skies
Rumbling low, the whispers of dreams yet to pass

The sighing willows still sway under the weight
Of the cold luminescent moon, even now
As it waxes and wanes and rages at fate
Whose warm breath yet still stirs the earth deep within

The man leans forward in his seat, reaching down with bony arms
His hunched back jerks every time the bus jolts - often enough
That the concern leaking from me almost covers the empty seat between us
While his shoulder blade rocks against the textured purple grab pole he leans on

Bright evening sunlight floods from the clear glass windows
His sports shoes gleam a blinding white against his black long pants and high socks
The laces on the right shoe have come undone
Thin fingers wrestle with the half-tied knot, plucking at the tangle

Just opposite him sits an old woman with short grey hair
Her cheekbones sunken in a permanent scowl that reaches the eyes
I cannot fathom if disapproval is directed or a decades-long feature of her face
With clasped hands she stares into space and never meets my gaze

The laces are fully loosed; the man now loops them around his leg
Several inches above the ankle and his trouser cuff
They circle once, twice. Then they intertwine haphazardly
I am reminded of a confused toddler with strings

We stop once again and the woman gets up to alight
He does the same, inching to the door with a crawl - he has no cane
She scans two bus cards; he goes straight out
Each unsteady step threatening to collapse his bent frame

The bus doors close. In the evening heat she grabs the crook of his arm
Pushing him down the sheltered walkway of the bus stop
At a sickening pace. As the bus drives off
I glimpse a pair of white laces, flapping around black trouser cuffs

Are we to be knights, valiant and courageous?
Who leap into the fray with eyes ablaze to drown in blood of foes
Or grudging conscripts, having held just enough ground, with
Sullen faces due the touch of the next dawn
Whose names never make it into tales

They detest bald carrion-cleaners so, they do
Even as winged beaks rend the flesh of fathers, sons, brothers
Stripping carcasses from putrid decay to liberation, clean-picked white bone
To spare their loved ones the odious descent into pestilence
Misguided hate hovers in place of black clouds of flies

Weep! Bemoan! Execrate! For all the use it may be
Brick by brick watchtowers fall and signal flames choke into trails of smoke
A portent; walls recede, the castle shudders and recoils
Screaming crow murders knell the looming storm

Are we to be knights?