Love is but a ghost;
So very hard to find.
It is but a smear;
A shadow lost.
It has found a new fear
It has shed its last tear.
Love is but a memory
Lost in the back of my mind;
A temporary
Illusion, a vision,
An addition
For loneliness that I sometimes appear
To escape into whilst awake at night;
Feeling confused I turn out the light.

©Jack Aylward
26th January 2004

TILL AIR, TILL BREATH
KISSED THE MARGIN OF MY LIPS.
TILL SOFT, TILL WARM
THE SPICES OF ***-POURRI
CLASHES TILL SOFTENED HANDS
TOUCHING MY FACE, STROKING MY HAIR.

HER VIOLENT PASSION FOR LOVE
EMPTIED IN THE CANDLELIT ROOM
TRANSPARENT WITH ECLIPSED HEARTS
MANY WITH ROMANTIC FIRES
MANY DEEP AND ELOQUENT;
EACH MATCHING THE COMPLEXION OF HER FACE.

THE COMBINED ATTENTION OF MY HEART
ARTISTICALLY MET WITH HER HAIR
FULL WITH MULLED CHERRIED WINE
LAVENDER, STRAWBERRY, GINGER AND VANILLA
AS THE SCENT
FROM THE CANDLES
ESCAPED THERE.

©Jack Aylward

A bird hovers his heart
Like a flower opening up into happiness.

©Jack Aylward

Into the mist of our daydreams we socialize
With watery eyes
Peering at another's disguise.
Our dreams like liquid worlds
Of cris crimson lake;
Sensuous as we make
And break love
Where we fold
And hold
One another
Like lovers,
Lying like flowers
As we lie
There for hours
Watching the sky
Above us
Move....

©Jack Aylward

To love we conquered
Whilst we were still young.
I walked that earth,
I touched that sun.

Those lips I once kissed
Were my first
As they were the sweetest to thirst.

Your hair had the golden mirth
Of the sun;
We made love all night long
As we would lie together
Watching the shooting stars race
Across the sky.

But since we have parted
I've started
To think how much I've missed
Your face.

©Jack Aylward
22nd June 2005

Silent walkers architect
Their perspective minds.
Mirrors change the light of their visions.

15 years alone together have passed away...

Holiday snappers
Caress in a bus shelter:
Waiting, releasing
Into loves bitter end.

A thing, a body, a figure lies still
On the tarmac.
Warmed by love;
Burned by death.

©Jack Aylward

Your cute brown eyes shaped like angel wings
Move me, excite me with passion and desire.
I can't help
But fall in love.
The way you look deep
Into mine
Makes me want you more and more.
I enjoy looking deep
Into yours too.

- I want to lose myself
In your beauty.

©Jack Aylward
7/8/15

Beauty is in my woman's eyes.
I look, I glance,
I take in advance
To watch the sunsets rise.
Beauty are her lips
I kiss. Like a sea of red tulips,
Like a single folding wave;
Her lips seem to dance whilst they slave
Away
On a summer's day.
Beauty are my woman's *******
I touch, I caress.
Beauty is in her being -
Making love to her; whether its touching, kissing, finding, feeling.

©Jack Aylward
5th April 2004

It was a warm sunny day.
The sun like a warm breast,
Soft against my cheek.

There was a fantastic mackerel sky
painting the blue.

The mountains were golden
Like eagles wings.

I walked by the hum of the river
And thought of you and I.

As I walked, the sun made love
Through the trees.
I remembered the touch of your hand
As I held it in mine....

I remembered our kiss whilst walking
Through the whiskey ambered leaves
That made the sound of dancing lips.

The smell of steaks in passageways
Came from the graveyard of white
Caravans along the riverbank.

The sweet tobacco-like fragrance
Of peat filtered about the Old Bridge Of Tilt;
made me think of summer holidays
When I was a young lad in Orkney.

I could have written a sonnet
Of birdsong for you;
The songs of thrushes.
Timeless and always sweet
You come to my mind.

The day was wonderful but I wished
That I had spent it just one
More time with you.

©Jack Aylward,
18/4/14

You fall onto the bed
Posing like a goddess
Of dreams.
At the mirror
Your reflections
Twist and turn
Draining all the light
Into a stellar force
As your magnetic grasping
Fragrance
Breaks the silent moment.

Under the floating flirtatious thought
Your kiss softens the numbness
Of my lips
And we part....

©Jack Aylward

Drowse, sink, escape
Until free to sleep
There you will fall deep
In love while the nape
Of your neck and the shape
Of it is softened by touching with a sweep
Of my pressing lips that creep
Towards yours. There your hair will drape;
Fold with light
As the lamp finds your face
And the fire finds the night
To where the moon finds its space;
There the desire to kiss will reach its height
And fade and leave without a trace.

©Jack Aylward

Maybe we shall think at night
Now that we are old
And wish that we were young again....
In youth are lips would rise
Like the moon
And ripple like waves
Over other sugared lips;
Our lovers we embraced.
Now they too are much older
And some are gone
Left without a trace.
Maybe we shall go out
Together tonight
And make love again.

©Jack Aylward,
26th March 2004

I long to be with you
To touch your memorable lips;
To make a connection
With the synchronization
Of our heartbeats.

I long to taste
Your kisses
Of morsecode
And leave
The rosebud to open up to our love
Between the centre of your
Gorgeous mouth.

©Jack Aylward,
4/4/14

Under the silken moon
You wandered lonely
Among the trees that soon
Would only
Transpire
As leaves move in muffled flight
With light
And Fire.

©Jack Aylward

Woman who I love
Your mind is a book of poems,
Your poetry is a romantic window
To my heart.

You whose perfume is rose;
Lavender skin
Of pure naked love.

Your lips I long
To make love to
With my kiss of eclipses,
Of sonnets,
Of Chopin-noctornal
Jazz.

Your curves of sun and moon
I want to caress
With my generous body
As passionate lover.

I feel you.

Your mellifluent tongue
Weaves poetic gaelic songs
In the timbre of ****** voice.

Whose eyes like a forest
Of campanillas
My heart and gaze
Looks deep into;
Waiting for your response.

Your smiles and you're cuteness
Makes me want more.
I smile back.

Woman who I love,
I'm in awe.

©Jack Aylward,
26/1/14

Often, one young in ripened youth will fall in love
With such a glowing heart to flutter at fair
Red lips, to meet and touch another sensitively enough,
To look and dream in eyes so rare,

Turning to take the others' hands
Floating as a stream into trickling tears
Like a flower with dew on finest strands.
Their golden hair, caught by the luminous moon, appears

Now mirrored like their own reflected faces
Beaming, following each other in each other's dream,
Understanding the beauty and innocence that graces
Where they meet in a startling gleam.

Entering a non-ageing youth of whispered time
The lovers' hearts entwine to rhyme.


©Jack Aylward
(Published in the Scotia Review magazine, no.24 edition, Summer 2001).

Lights lie flashing their sirens with the opening of the dawn;
In the sun streaked streets the artists mix their
Painted faces with oiled pigments;
The dusts of the streets, the dust of the leaves that burn with
The cold and rust with the heat disperse with
The knotted storms that rope the
Blazing frosted earth that lies there forever escaping into air.

Luminous yellow and flamed coloured red are streaming like
The moon and sun reversing and crossing each
Other in a street of luminous people
Where the warmth of great passion hangs in perfumed bottles,
Where people are beautiful in their young
Youth, people arranged like flowers
Burning with ripened love, soft and delicate in innocence.

The Eiffel Tower, the pinpoint of our dreams lies open as a free
Flamed metallic torch that ferments with its iron
Emotions; an almost Romanesque
Renaissance coloured with the Millennium stars that rocket into
The sky then stay for a while turning into dust
And becoming our ashes as we
Summon on again to the fires of our morning lovers we had left.

©Jack Aylward