Flipped in the oven sun, arched like a bow
They jumped one by one
As they found their own way through the thick foam
Of the falls of Shinn
Where the rushed and glided
Flying through the air
Like dolphins in the cool
Seas  of Firth Of Forth;
Trying to find home
As the ice broke free.

Sitting on the cold rock
I feel the slime,
I feel my face burn with stinging
Coldness from the water spray
As I watch them leap
Into freedom.
I also escape...
Drinking my souvenir whiskies
From my 1970's
Led Zeppelin satchel.

Above me people snap shots with their flash
Cameras
As they rise like the sun.
Children laughing and feeling happy
Except one who wants to go home;
My brother who wants to watch TV!

Right next to him was the most beautifulest girl
I've ever seen.
Rainbows were in her auburn hair
Burning with autumn sun,
Blossoming with winter snow drops.
Her hair was like the river itself.

Her eyes were as green as the four leaf
Clover I held in my hand.
Maybe I was lucky to be in love.

Her eyes for that very second floated into mine
As she smiled
And I smiled back.
God how much I wanted to kiss her.
She was utterly beautiful.
But in that very instant she was gone
And I was never to see her again....

In the autumn light
Showering shadows
Were starting to collect crystals
In the melted waters below
And the gold is beginning to spread
Upon the leaping salmon.

©Jack Aylward

The u-turn of uninterrupted talk
Falls short before the midnight hour
And through the remembrances
The hushed
Echoing of a printed face smiles
Among the old and new.
But only you know he has gone,
For your heart is broken
And thrown about the room
Where your old man's chair sits alone....
Where you once shared
A laugh and a joke,
A tear and a smoke,
A kiss and a hug,
A poem and a mug
Of tea,
(With a wee dram of Glenmorangie)
On a cold night
By the firelight,
Reading Frost
- 'The Grindstone'
In candlelight,
Listening to Django Reinhardt's
'Crazy Rhythm'
On the radio
As it beats out a frenetic system
Of notes that runs and parts
Into segments of your mind.
Now you are on your own,
You sit back to find
What you have lost....

©Jack Aylward,
July 2013

We made music
For the dawn birds
And watched the sunrise.

©Jack Aylward

Pink caress
Your lips
Press
Together
To kiss
Upon mine.

©Jack Aylward,
28/9/15

The willow stood flower-like as a star.

The birds were like a choir following thy
Mellowed tune
As I whistled through the light winds in the air
And the meadows were green with mint and clover.
In the center laid a carpet of buttercups
Exploding with vibrant shades
Of purple primroses.

The blue sky crawled
And dripped onto the leaves
Where the green cadmium leaves of the willow
Were lifted and bounded in my soul.

The cleavage of the hands
That sing may hold the dust
From the clouds above
But the remembered memory is left alone
As the tightening of the roots
Gathers me together;
Finding the tune that embraces him
Enfolding him into a wandering dove.

Happy thoughts I had
When I slept at night
Upon a branch
Making faces with the moon
Listening to the willow
Whistling, humming
With its harmonic beat
In G Major.
But now summer has blown away;
It is gone forever.

In deciduous opening
When leaves had fallen
Like my youth
Before it drifted away;
I had vacant memories and happy
Pictures of childhood days
Where I had been alone
And wrote swiftly with pen and paper.

©Jack Aylward

We fold together like paper.
Our hearts beating;
Breaking and twisting open
Love's ***** dome.

With flight our minds
Melt words in pools of autumn sun
As we carve our initials in wood.

Our shape flits
Like butterflies
As we lie wet and naked
Moving together in heat.
Floating like lillies,
Like rose petals
Descending down the riverbank.

©Jack Aylward

Clear like a pearl of magic,
This silver eye
That looks down at us
In a world of it's own understanding
Makes love with the sun
When they come together
To embrace.

The moon is like a globe of love;
A synagogue of peace.
God's eye watching over us,
Keeping us safe.
God's face admiring us
With our beauty
As we act on his stage.

The moon is like a woman's breast,
Her heart, her soul,
Her eye, her womb,
Her ******.

The sun burns with ****** desire
When the sun and moon come to kiss;
They become locked
In an eclipse of fire.

Mysterious
Like a blanket,
Like a golden fleece
The sphere of the moon sweeps across the sky
Like a quiet dream;
Floating like a ghost.
Wandering in jolting movements
As it sits in it's black watery hell.

As the moon sits
On a layer of haunting past,
Beauty, myth and adventure
It discovers the wilderness of ourselves.
It watches us making love,
It watches us when the world
Is at an end in war
And terror.
It confronts it with love and peace
And when we are in need of love,
Comfort and help
And his friends: the stars
Are at rest
He finds his own way of knowing
Where we are....

For those people who suffer the most
Are given hope,
Love and freedom.

And when the romantic moonlight spreads across
The lawn with silver shadows
It gives us pleasure of dreaming in silence....

©Jack Aylward

******* in the morning
Of the first moon;
We make harvest
For the future.

©Jack Aylward

A velvet leaf of clover; green
As vivid grass
Is blowing in an
Apricot breeze
Near a stream
Of pollinated hay.

Luck is long as a drifting current
In the water
And the clover
Is a brooch
Near a felt sky.

©Jack Aylward

Each memory
Holds your breath....

I will never forget
The touch
Of your tongue
Of many adventures
Kayaking
Down the river
Of my mouth;

The solar eclipse
Of our copulating lips.

©Jack Aylward,
20/2/14

I have settled and grown up
Here as a child where the
Garden is full of flowers and fruit
And the river is a rainbow.

The smell of peat fires in the morning
And warm crusted bread wafts
Slowly down the lane.

Wooden crates full to the top
With apples, pears
And strawberries
Are left outside the front porch
Ready to be brought
Into the cottage
Where the juices fall
Into an outstanding
Fruitfulness.

Roses hang still over the river and blossom
Into wine
Where also in the garden of light
Bullfinches, sparrows,
Chaffinches sing
And daisies and buttercups lie
In a sweltering sun
Of perfumed heat.

Over and over the green hills
I look down into the deep valleys
Where lakes are flavoured with
Pineapples and waterfalls
With damsons.

The garden of apricot jams, willows
And lily ponds open and spread
Their tasteful colour in an
Orchard of beaming texture and an
Opening of real wonder.

In our thatched white cottage
Smoked hams saturated in salt and fat
Sit above the crackling log fire
And the rooms are filled with gloominess.
A particular charm drifts through
The place from the
Warm glowing fire.

- Oh how the light passes through the
Whole house and how each window
Is a copy of glittering diamonds
That spreads
Across the musical garden of bells
And down onto the cobbled path
Where the geese
Flap their feathered gowns and fly off
Into the blue mountains
Where their
Feathers fall into the sun.

Cider is drunk by the gallon
From cider presses
And the fragrant
Ingredients are a special delight
Not to mention what it does
To the mind afterwards
As we drown happily
Upon the grass
Reading poetry
Or kissing our lovers soft lips
Under the shade of the trees
There the dove calls from the tree tops
Where our earthly hearts are scattered
And nearby a rose closely shimmers
In an azured wood.

©Jack Aylward

A single feather
Floats into the lost
Darkness.
Naked and silent;
Free in flight.

A swan
Makes way
To my opened window
Which had broken
The moon's reflection.

Snowflakes drop
Forming a standstill
Of life....

Love had melted
Its touch
As my fingers curl
Through the softness
Of the swans white feathers.

©Jack Aylward

Each molecule
In the air,
Each platonic
Kiss
Of your hair,
Of your lips,
Of the things
We once were
Like atom
To atom
Dust to dust;
Freedom to touch
As we float in the air.

©Jack Aylward,
12th June 2005

Did I ever tell you
That we all burn
Because our lives
Are all so ****** up?
Life is so *******
Meaningless!

We live our lives
Every day
On hope.
Not necessarily because
We believe in it
But because
That's all we have
To rely on.

                                               ©Jack Aylward

The night dreams
And I am locked in.

Death speaks to me
Of love
On silken wings.

The grasses hush and weep....

I am terrified
To come out
Of my bedroom;
To open the door,
To go downstairs.

Shouting and arguing for hours
Is all I hear.

So instead I lie in bed reading
Or writing poetry,
Listening to Jimi Hendrix records.

- I lie there dreaming
Of happier times
That will never come.

©Jack Aylward,
16/4/12

Love unknown
Time to walk away.

I seem to collect
The loners and the losers
And they are all my lovers.

But this one I seem to want to forget
I don't know her
She doesn't know me.

Because of her
We walk the streets
Day and night
Like tramps
Unhinged with drink and drugs
And strange ***.

Unconnected
We drag
Ourselves
To our own mausoleum.

©Jack Aylward

I'll
Take
All
Loves
Yearning.

                                  ­         Jack Aylward,
                              2/10/16

As I sit upon my wooden pine bench
Cool air escapes
Across the lawn into the mists of dawn.
Perfumes
Are blown from the apple trees
As the fragrance reminded me of when I was a boy...

I would sit and play
With an old wooden toy
Soldier I named Troy....
But now the petals have faded away
And Troy, well he is gone too.
You can still smell the sweet perfumes
Like roses
From the sweet apples;
- That if you lay one of them in your hands;
Were as big as your fists.

The thick running juices as you bite
Into one
Brought happiness
To me and my father
Over the years
- Who has sadly passed away now.
I buried him beneath the willow tree
Upon a small hill
Looking down towards
The waterfall
- And above him the stars.

When it rained
In the morning
The water would rush into the waterfall
Where the vast amounts of water
Would deafen our ears
Like a non-stop avalanche
And the pink and white petals
From the apple blossom tree
Would glide and float through the small wind
Falling like a shower of confetti,
Covering the gigantic salmon that leapt.

Swallows scuttled
Through the leaning sky
Being free in their dreams
As the climbed through the painted sky.

The meadows mellow as could be
Stretched like never-ending green
Sacks of dreams in which such memories
Continued to echo throughout my youth.

And at night the nestled stars
Melted like running water
And would pour into the waterfall
From the hand that stretched out
To touch and hold them
And let them escape
To be free at last.

The fragrant pine trees
Left a scent of sweet oranges
And the roses:
A fragrance of strawberries
Rushed and fled into the air.....

How often is a breeze full of
Memories, perfumes, sometimes silence and
Sweet tunes?

- A swallow swiftly sings in freedom,
A lark let's out a wonderous sound of bells,
A swift bends in the wind,
A thrush proudly sings the mourning alarm.

©Jack Aylward

The song thrush burns its tongue
With poems.
Words shimmer and fall like leaves.
Bob Dylan's Shakespeareanesq
Words flows,
Miles Davis' trumpet blows
And then....

©Jack Aylward

The sea washes our feet clean.
Our minds washed by the flooding stars.

You skim the stone
You shaped
The night before.
It skims across
The mirrored lake
Like skaters on ice
Or like the moon
Gliding through
The air
After which it collapses and dies
Into the frozen underworld.

©Jack Aylward

Your sweet love
I caressed:
Lip to lip
We pressed
Under the nakedness
Of the moon.
Your beauty undressed;
Curved and
Lined
With breast
And mind,
Eyes,
Nose and
Lip.

©Jack Aylward,
22nd November 2003

Emptiness rang me again:
The slow pitfalls of exhaustion
Slashed the hard roughness of my lungs
As I lay there escaping, trying
To think, trying to speak.

I was wordless, unable to move
I thought how ashamed I was, how cold
The world could be to see the
Trembling words from my mouth turn
Into blood....I was actually
Coughing up blood....
Blood that turned a blackey red
When the air dried and my
Throat burned like
The claws of a thistle.

My gut felt as though it had wrapped itself
Around my heart, letting
The muscles tighten with *****
As they pushed and pushed
Harder and harder
Gripping onto the walls of my stomach;
Churning and tossing as at sea.

Steam from my sweat rose from my flesh
And dripped onto me from the roof
As I became massacred by
Feeling, as though I had to mutilate myself,
When the acidic horrors of my
Nightmares began burning off.


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