my mother always said
"don't fall in love with a poet"
they pretend to love you
but what they really love
is writing about loving you
you are mere words to them
feelings cheapened by a page,
dusty grey typewriters,
and many unfinished drafts
of lovers both old and new,
you are the question mark,
but not the answer,
they are searching for ?
person unidentified: mystery
the page wanderer,
each poem a missing
person poster to cover their
bedroom walls.
they cannot love something
that is in their head
poets are the loneliest of
all people, my mother said.
they write to immortalize
what has long passed.
to live within their words,
but not reality,
lost souls writing suicide notes
and proclaiming it art.

If trees be poems by the earth
In avid joy I read each one
Florets writ in fragrant verse
Inked with beams of the morning sun
In shade, a fruit, a whiff of air
I rest beneath wide branches spread
A cavort of emerald canopy
Bestows comfort upon my breath
I lean against the bark, recline
And think of how it stands in time

Through tunneled years it's stoic trunk
Stands proud against frost and rain
Drops it's leaves to nakedness
Till spring dresses in green again  
On but an arm, the  koel sings
'Tis home to birds that weave a nest
Haven to sojourners ache
Clasp around, hold close to breast
I trace the names of love engraved
Now forgot; asleep in graves

On felled bark my soul I pen
On papyrus the past I feel
The murmured songs of sentiments
In susurrus as branches kneel.
Nymphs would hide or fairies entreat
With fireflies in silver light
Creatures tip toe on their feet
Lithe, in the darkness of the night
In engraved lines meaning I see
What better song, what poetree?



Trees are poems that the earth writes upon the sky -  Gibran

I see it in
         shades of
liquid coal
  slaking
    my aching
           thirst in
black ocean shoal
      onyx crystals
             washed up
            in tides
       of barely
    peeking,
night-lava eyes
     silently spoken
                   and through
     the waters of deep
my soul is
    waking up from
          eons of sleep
              weaving garlands
             of darkest green,
            seaweed tips
that I tenderly keep
       strewn, in chlorophyll strips  
                      across the stardust glow
                                       of my naked skin
                                     as I liquid float,
                       spirit whirring within
                              eyes bright
                in illuminated
          moonstone glow
picking up signals
of halted flow
This is needed here,
in this darkest of dark
waters abundant
with tight, broken sparks
shards of the living
and fragments of souls
                  a luminosity of darkness
                  making us whole
      And pulsing next to me
   in beauty's surprise
phosphorescent creatures,
     a feast for the eyes
           loving, gently brushing
                my outstretched fingers-
                     bioluminescence divine
                         on my body lingers
                   from jellies to squid
                to jet -hued sharks
    knifing through layers          
     of dark on dark
         within the
lush waters' quiet force
a dance in faded flicker
conjures the source
                 within the depth
                         of the depths
                            of my endlessly
                            wet
          in my darkest of dark
between blood and sweat
penetrating the mysteries
   that quake through
          this heart
         filling it up
  as it tears it apart
         smashing it
    to smithereens
   creating sutures
   of ironic healing
until through the cracks
both wide and slight
        shoots up
the flare
of my own
    inner
          light

Every morning when I am making tea,
I wish most fervently,
To become an electric KETTLE.

It most certainly won't  matter to me,
I'll accept it most gracefully,
Be I of ceramic or METAL.

For one moment I'm dancing with glee,
The next sobbing most piteously,
These wretched hormones don't SETTLE.

Once I whistled so daintily,
Now I  breathe so monstrously,
No longer a rose PETAL.

I may boil, then boil most furiously,
Then click off automatically,
Before I sting like NETTLE.

Splutter, bubble, gurgling I be,
Then cool and calm..so peacefully ,
There I ..in fine FETTLE!

No weather to come between us
the sky an Autumn summer blue

All lit up we lounge in beauty.
Today could last forever.

Nothing sails the sky
except the towering Sun.

Like lizards sunning on a rock
nothing moves but our eyes.

Morning Sunlight keens like a mother
cries for her dying child & leaves
abandon their trees

while fall presumes winter
will glower like black
ice

hard from
preceding
months,

where the promise
of spring seems
unattainable.

Looking up
a glass ceiling
my heart encased
darkness hovering
pitch black
& inked
a lake of illuminated
white clouds
silently watching
a drifting ~
iridescent glow
offering
enlightenment
radiating
like a Gods hands
stretching the
stained canvas
in beautiful sadness
dreamlike landscapes
Sky & Earth merge
an acquisition
of shattered tears
through a looking glass
a ghostly shadow
breath-taking
everything clear
in mirrored skies
a face ~
ducking out

masked,
cloaked
& hidden
from
the
night.

Cherie Nolan© 2016