Neath beau blue skies and wounded sighs,
wind like silk caressed his skin.
Rain like splinters in his eyes
as shadows flit across the scene.
"Vindicta," the shadows mocked and chimed
as cold showers burned his skin.
"Vitriol", he chorused in his mind
where old demons lurked therein.
"Veritas, I have fought my fight..."
he spoke aloud with steadied breath,
".... and by these words I hold contrite
ye demons - lo! - be gone in death."
Avast, the showers softened
while silver linings streaked the skies.
The demons fled, undone by caution-
vindictive hearts in plain disguise.
Their words bore no gravitas
like garbled noise in quick regress
for truth reigns in fair equitas;
for acts, not words, can claim redress.

Have you ever had one of those days
where you'd just lie in bed all day, curtains down,
as you feel your soul and body parting ways
while your mind dissolves into the darkness all around?

In melancholia it dissolves, attuned to sweet nothingness
as you grasp at shadows lurking from the past
and then so sudden, oh so sudden come bursting from the emptiness
a whisper this melancholia will never last.

What the eyes see and the ears hear, the mind believes.
Mens agitat molem, in words so solemn, the magic dust that weaves.
Mind moves matter, or so they say to bitter end,
yet does it matter if the 'matter' is something the mind can't comprehend?

What is your story? What say you, curtsy, wile and whisper -
You, the everyman, blank face in the crowd;
You, the stranger on the streets, decked out and dapper;
nay We, who exist in the life of the life gone, forgotten, that Time enshroud?

What pictures do your eyes behold in visions past and present-
drawn to memory in intangible ink yet indelibly lustre?
From whence the dreams do you evoke in daytime quiescence
or cascading phantasms painted on pitch-black canvasses unfurled in slumber?

What paths have you taken, to gloom or glory
and upon which pedestals have you stood in crowning echelon -
when once upon a mountain peak, above clouds, you stood proudly -
or taking solace in sidewalk shelters with no home to go to thereupon.

What words should escape your lips in all manner of dictum
or wisdom and deceit for all intents and folly?
Words in coalescence like beads on strings, the essence of rhythm
threaded by tongues in guile and unwitting poetry:

What say you, as but a flower linger and wither
in the winds of Time; a mere flicker in the lives of stars?
What prose should speak your story, hither or dither
in unwitting poetry - nay Unpoetry! - as the Everyman exemplars?

Alas Unpoetic, the story of us all in bloom
told in unwitting poetry and archetypal analogue.
Alas so unique the lives we lead from conception in the womb
should by perchance end with a humble epilogue.

In aloneness
all in oneness
thoughts trickle
never end
but never mend
these scars

The gravitas
weight of words
push and piston
beating heart
the rise and fall
of chests

Cold and candour
truths in clamour
cresting waves
the callous pull
in quiet calm
the moon

And so I gaze
in silent praise
the constellations
glinting stars
in tessellation
your eyes

As I became
so garrulous
and perilous
chit and chatter
careless talk
to self

While I beheld
the universe
reflected
in reverse
your eyes
the skies

Gunpowder anthem in flashpan thunder
tumbleweed talk of morrow
drifts along: cras enim moriemur;
interred in epigraphs cast in callow.

In turn, they marched to battle
swagger forth with merry prattle
and in turn, I heard in faux bravado:
live today like there's no tomorrow.

Crescendo the silent beat of hearts in chests
at all things nigh and beauty,
or lovers' eyes locked in stargaze wrest,
on cue as sunrise scarlet symphony.

Fortissimo in birdsong chirp and banter
while car horns blare with careless fervour ;
on pavements listless feet in patter
as suits and ties commute in canter.

At noon the music peaks, forzando.
Soccer mums braced in cafe convo
of lunchtime gossip in staccato
while babes in prams asleep in piano.

On cue at sundown scarlet symphony
the baton slows in rallentando.
Call to slumber twilight melody-
the daily music diminuendo.

Hold my thoughts and grasp my mind
amidst the closing of the day
to see the world as we rewind
the many songs of yesterday.

No rhyme nor words
nor furtive overture
could halt, subvert,
this promised adventure;

With light comes night danced Sol et Luna
in blind embrace, they chase in earnest.
Though paths unchanged through all millennia,
they meet, eclipsed, in solemn darkness.

Like scarlet streaks on dawn-break skies
and sun-kissed peaks in summer,
you'll lose yourself in truths, not lies,
and tales told non sequitur

or warm embers on winter nights
and fireflies in the distance-
you'd know that things would be alright,
that life won't fade this instance.

Alas I'm but a simple man
with magic in my pen.
I'd write loose lines with feeble hand
with thoughts that spring like winter wren.

She is not love, she is not war
     but flames impassioned in the lore
     of the world in mirth and thistle crown-
     bona fide dour endeavour whittled down.

She is not love, she is not war;
     a familiar face in dreams of yore
     in the world where nightmares rage,
     the mellow touch of soothing sage.

She is not love, she is not war;
     soft heart listless in the core
     bleeding crimson, etched in agony
     of silent pulse in numbing ecstasy.

Tick-tock twilight tempest
lone saunter by the beach
neath stars and moonlit embers
Home shies in restive reach

Fake smiles on plastic lips
Prima facie prima donnas
press play on broken records
cheap words on repeat.

'Beauty' preens on billboard prints
as sundown slicker paints the sky
over 'salt-of-the-earth', white-collared wage-mules
and souls too worse for wear.

So they lie, yes, while they lay
in flesh caskets upon prime real estate tombs;
"I've lived the life," they'd say while peering down
on those who lived just to live.

And the world plays this sad charade
in clockwork symphony every single day
as its asphalt veins pump with diesel fumes in streams
from the steel entourage with their precious cargo.

So press play on broken records
for humdinger proof
your sorrowtide serenade
the grovel & groove.

Insomnia;
of hopes and dreams
tethered to the brink of eyelids-
blink and they're gone.

These thoughts they atrophy
amidst the badgering chaos,
the harshest cacophony, yielding
to the force majeure- the zeitgeist.

Every dream
and every waking phantasm
allude to unkept promises
made to reflections.

Oh how a single beam of light,
straight and unwavering,
scatters as it passes through the fractured mirror
wielding phantoms of a former presence.

Alas the evidence is confounding:
coffee cup rings and half-written lines,
tousled sheets in empty confines,
and hollow eyes with empty stares.

These pieces of a jigsaw,
as disjointed as are confronting memories,
are just as they seem: determinants
of a bigger, scrambled picture.

C'est la vie!
These thoughts they atrophy.
Plateau. Patter.
Gone.

Have you seen the girl
down by the beach?
The one in pristine colours;
the one too far to reach?

"If only she knew,"
he mused, "if only she sees me."
Perhaps he's just too far to view
he laughs, "...or maybe it's because I'm 'me'."

He gazed upon her silently,
hoping she wouldn't notice.
Alas his heart yearned constantly
for her eyes to turn and meet his.

And as he sat and yearned and pined,
he heard a whisper in the wind.
A passing thought came up to his mind-
her heart was taken, his fair Fraulein.

Discomposed, his thoughts danced a gavotte
amid mournful, clumsy rhetoric.
His mind got tangled and besot
to read her thoughts in manic heartsick:

In his mind he saw upon her brow lay stolid furrows;
with thoughts unsaid she sings, content, her lullabies.
Streaked with wounding sorrows, hushed, her voice in alto-
she sings despite the callous alibis.

"If only she knew,
but maybe that's just unlikely."
Or perhaps he's just too far to view,
he laughs, in painful soliloquy.

We dream a dream of tomorrow,
of fresh starts and new beginnings.
We wait on sunrise for what could follow
in eagerness for happy endings.

"Tomorrow," we tell ourselves in desperation.
Tomorrow, we hope to be; tomorrow, we become.
So we live today in trepidation
for a tomorrow that might never come.

We walk these crowded roads but we walk alone
towards where destiny could afford us.
But we walk in faith to ends unknown
with hearts on sleeves, and fervent wanderlust.

Time, hope, fate- all singularities
colliding onto each other.
Hold fast the spark of entwined destinies
so we could live tomorrow's adventure.

I write loose lines in cryptic notes
for words hence lost too soon on lips.
Harken thus my silent voice
through print and pen; verbose ad verbatim.
What be the measure of a man?
His silent struggle,
unsaid yet deafening,
through words unspoken behind wax masks which
melt with the flicker of his tongue?
Or is it the boisterous facade
and the ashen humour amidst cold cares
despite solemn disposition?
Alas, I am but both
yet no less than a rhetorical entity
against the calamitous catastrophe-
the harsh cacophony of careless whispers.
With the weight of worlds weathering down,
overslung on downcast wings
I seek the world through visions made in slumber
and dreams cast with open eyes.
Yet is it too far to hope
for a better day burnished
from demons passed
or the fair maiden
behind gated walls moored
on drifting clouds?
Yes, poignant hope, but hope nonetheless
lest hope jests in pittance
of a better day for the yearning fool
as mere dreams forever on the horizon.