Shake out your shining tresses, Love
Undress their dark contour as the pink stars rise
And drowse around the smoke-ringed moon,
Like roses in a whiskey glass.
Take time to dream a dream, my Love,
Tresses fallen across the curve of your face --
Sleep away the late summer moon,
Spooning the stars asleep in pink lace.

Lay down your weary bones, my dear,
Stretch out on vanilla feather-winged dreams 
My whisky rose petal kisses blown into the night
Finding you on glittered opalescent moonbeams
Grab hold of pink-starred sweet slumber
As  silken tendrils puddle upon your chest
Tangled up in each other's lithe limbs
Our blissful hearts beat together in tender rest

Like stars spilling from whiskey dewdrop lips 
Words streak across a midnight sky of longing

What proverbs may come from these whiskey lips For every lightless night spent apart For every unspent voucher to destinations we will never travel to
Find something beautiful
And don't let go
All things of beauty
Must pass away
Maybe one beautiful thing can stay

Hold tight the breathless moments spent dreaming in aurora skies
For every darkness carries the remembrance of the sun
How it left warm kisses upon fluttering eyelids 
In this way we too will find heaven

That undiscovered heaven whose patterns we have run through
and dimly remembered sun
the hopeless light that sits quietly
In the souls of the storm-born
That far
that distant
That's where the hurt is
That is the proof of love

We wanted to make sense of the world, So we colour-coded it, like our school schedules.
Then we realized we got the colours wrong.
Outside colours weren't the way to organize, so we looked on the "inside".
Who was to think that we can see everyone's colour?
They looked at the emotions we display.
Just because I can't smile everyday, doesn't mean I'm different.
It means I am sane enough to not wear a mask everyday of my life.
Then again, sane isn't exactly a word that describes me...*
Something else describes me, something I took long to admit
something the world doesn know partly because I haven't told it
but mostly because the world always sees what it chooses
After all in not knowing there's nothing it loses, or there is
In case it could profit from knowing about my bruises
And my random thoughts that cloud my mind everyday like a mystic frost
Times when I'm all caught up in this boundless ocean, life,
And cannot see my way or the sickening and thickening waves coming my way
Nobody knows I'm a ship with no radar, only no body ever paid attention
That's why I lean on only nobody, and nobody's my ladder.

Some months ago a partnership was initiated
With our individual verbiages for you being instigated
All care is taken when composing as a duet
As we aspire to put upon the paper our appealing minuet

While she takes the high road and I take the low
We often meet in the middle of the poetic flow
Bringing together both of our wits
More often a hit than ever a miss

Keeping on track calls for a unified side
To stray from this course our poem would be a disjointed ride
Every now and again we check what's been noted for the crew
As we'd not be satisfied with a misconstrued brew

With topics covered to numerous to mention
All of them our potted clay of invention
We can celebrate what we've placed in our cooking pan
Even though our muse didn't give out her recipe plan

So with a little of this and a whole lot of that
We mix it together for the perfect batch
There's no need to over cook as it's already done
The way that we look at it as all in great fun

Being too serious isn't of our writing tag
We just stow wit and wisdom into a bag
If by fortune we get the arrangement this side of right
Our vocabulary combo may be of your delight

With the poem to our taste we raise our glass high
Using just the right words just the way that we like
No need to ferment this tender bouquet
We send it right out with the feeling it's perfectly aged

Now is forever
Was never a faith for me
When you're free,  if ever
We are free
And if I appeal to you
In some broad way
Then we will prove
That something gold can stay

Glimmering simply
Glimmering? Nay
If free we are ever
Then gold cannot stay
Cause staying is forever
And faith is by day
But by night
It is light and
Flame that we crave
So stay if by candle
For shadows remain

Are the shadows as important as the light,
In the future that we don't mention outright?

Shadows are the memories
The ones we've yet to make
Shadows are the forever
In the faith you claim to hate
No, not hate but
Never pray
Shadows are the moments of ever
When candle by breath met death
And took my breath away
So yes
Think not of light
But what is left
In darkness and your lingering
Breath

We do cling to this breath
But why I cannot say
Being neither the mind's heaven or hell
I know little of shadows
I only live by them
And once over then forever over?
Then while we live, we'll live in clover
For when we die we die all over

To wake again by candle's flame
For that's the nature of this game
To love and lust
And linger here
In shadow's breath
And tangled hair
In clover fields and bales of hay
Lovers always, never stray
Ever always
Though they go
Back together
It's all they know
And so my love of little faith
Of never forever
And doubting place
Gold though it glimmers
Dulls with age
But broad
Your appealing memory
Stains
My heart and my mind
My soul does so claim
This glorious reason for angels
Insane
Hell and its fire
Your mouth is my rain
Kiss me
And ever
Forever
Proclaim.....

A collaboration with the lovely
                Joseph Paris
© (stanza 2,4,6)MV
© (stanza 1,3,5)JP

Up here it is more temporary; the
Sun has already turned.
In six months, the only light will be
That of the snow piercing through the
Darkness of a
23 hour night.

Words such as swimming and
Barbecue have the same taste as the
Cardboard of the box you are provided
With when being told to
Clear out your desk immediately.
And the winds pick up from

Closer to north with promises of
Ice cold rain in them.
Then just ice.
I fear not bullet nor blade, but look
Down and shiver at the thought of having
A brief, bad summer

Such as this.
I spent a week on Helene's parents'
Boat in the fjords, fishing and eating
Cod still wet with salt water, but yet;
The skies were grey; the breezes
Ungentle; unsoothing.

But I read. I wrote. Saw viking sites
Where the ground still
Smells of sacrificial blood and
Mead, and there
I shrugged the disappointment off as I
Closed my eyes and imagined paddle

Sounds and Norse grunts from a
Thousand years ago; rugged
Travellers returning after months at sea
Under a fierce foreign sun, finally home.
Thinking nothing at all
Of the weather.

God labored on his six day creation plan
On the seventh he took rest as a working man
For to bring into existence nature's many beautiful things
His magnificent mind had exerted its wondrous visionary springs

As God stood back and saw that it was good
Adding man into the neighborhood
Placing on him all of its worth
Fully in charge of this Mother Earth

Tending to the vegetation and grand rivers with a hand of responsible care
In the glory which God gave his flock a share
Being his custodians bought unto them an obligatory task
That in each new day they could brilliantly bask

But alas what happens when you put man in charge
The head on his shoulders tends to get rather large
Then you add sneaky Satan into the mix
And it's pretty much been a down hill run with his malevolent fix

A cursed torment he bestowed on the divine Earth's ring
God's people wandered from their sublime path of conserving
A shepherd's voice was needed to call them back to their reside
Where nature's best interests did preside

Something only God can to the least of these perfect
To carry his vision is a burden on mankind's back
But God's love shall turn the wrong doers defiant track
So the world can be beautified in blessed anointment

To get back to perfection that he's always designed
But this time to do it all through the Son of God acting as the undersigned
Sitting at God's right hand man's intercessor
Who'll ever be the Savior of the sinning transgressor