Those who've lost, or who've been lost;
The people who have nothing left.
If what that red-brick shell provides

Soothes but one of these sufferers,
It serves a purpose to us all.
A purpose it should not overstep.

.
"Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard are sweeter"
John Keats, Ode On A Grecian Urn.

.
I'm never sure how I should take his silence,
It's not by choice, that much I know.
For he is a piper painted on porcelain,
Left to inspire a dreamer in an Ode.

His immortal canopy never sheds a leaf,
But offers no shade - frozen in time -
And as it was written, he never came to life and played
His fair maiden her melodious rhyme.

It sits on his lips as they chip and crack;
A dry mouth, a pipe for melodies made.
Sadly for the piper, I don't share Keats' hope
As he said of his maiden, 'She cannot fade'.

This brave boy's riff will remain dormant,
Haunting and quiet - laid on porcelain,
As I can't help this overwhelming jealousy
Of the notes he'll never play trapped within.

How they reel through my mind but leave nothing -
Not a sound or a ripple of waves,
Whereas mine float a while and decay with little grace,
The dotted-quavers left fading on staves.

I'm never sure how I should take his silence,
It's not by choice, that much I know.
Yet I envy more than words his lifetime in a moment,
In a world in which I wait and watch things grow.

She rambles a bit when she's excited to see us.
We're brought up to speed with her goings on
In the home that was built around her

As fast as her walker will go, we scurry to the front room
Where bread is cooling on the rack, and her excitement brims
To regale us with the morning's itinerary

It's all done to bring us into her world; to make us a part of it.
It's how she holds us close, making sure we're there with her,
As she may not grasp enough to be there with us...

She doesn't hear so well anymore you see,
But she didn't hear that from us as we smile and nod intently;
Just happy to be there, to be a part of it all

I'm not sure who was more dishonest.

Me: who pretended everything was okay because it had to be,
There was no other way;
Or You: who built the person you needed to be on
A foundation of snow.

When our time came it wasn't okay
And the snow had long since melted.

Me: who ran to fall apart and begin picking up pieces as best I could -
I'm not whole, but there are things I'm learning;
Or You: who crumbled to the world, clutching at redemption -
Your fear was always your best friend.

Of all the scattered fragments,
Was it enough to salvage our own?

Me: who gets through the day by day with steady paces and guilt;
**Or You:

As you speak careful words they fan out
From your lips to soak adoring souls -
You paint their cages with a message of escape
And you reach between bars to warm the
Cold cheeks of the lowly.

As you search for the people behind
Translucent skin you spare a kiss -
Guiding them out, granting them
The freedom you pen in never-ending
Spirals on unsheathed arms.

It wasn't you who promised your crown.

We all grew to take more than we deserved.

Weaving to the pulse of a room.
The thick blend of sweat and passion is cast out to the hungry.
As the assault eases there is a moment of calm.
A deep breath before the machine gun fire.
Seconds before everything comes crashing down;
An onslaught you know well.
Heavy hits from limbs, belts, and bones as adrenaline
Allows you to give as good as you get and show that you care;
Show that you do this because you have to;
That the pulse owns all and has full control.
I salute those who can make a room implode;
Those who rip everything from you so you have to face it.
The bruises remind us that we were there
And we share the fallout,
Because we live for that ****.

An hourglass, tightly bound,
fused grain in streaks;
each one taking on a different stain
giving the illusion of a thousand horizons
stacked to make up a body - empty but aching
to be filled by waves.

From knots wound into a headstock
grows an addiction: a need to revive  
the skin left behind between grooves -
skin which serves to soften the break,
but also feed character to the swell -  
granting purpose to decay.

Through tight slits in wooden slats
I catch the three-legged wind chime
Which hangs by a thread from
An overhung roof, by the gutter.

The owl - whom keeps watch,
Double sided, double gazing
At the goings on in the garden and
Mirrored happenings on the wall -
Sits quietly at the centre of his universe
With knotted thoughts so intertwined
For years he has neglected
Or perhaps forgotten how to
Play the jingle resting on the breeze.

The legs which dangle from the
Moon with noisy knees have
Lost their tone or dulled to make
Their silent stand against my wanting ears -
A fitting punishment.

The only steps to stifle my regret are
Toward the watching eyes to
Shake the clapper;
Summoning a tempest to end an age
Of silence from the much too long
Forsaken keeper of the chime.

The story of a tiny gift, half chewed and fear-stained
Left on the alter outside the back door:

When first stunned with a slap or a precisely timed
Bite, a vigil is held -- wings twitch and flutter.
With a curious tilt, widened eyes record
Muscle spasms; calculating the
Flight risk; metering the force of the next
Outburst; prolonging the fun.

A game or performance art?
The victim's peers yell and screech
From the rooftops - do they know
The show is for them?

After few manoeuvres more it matters little
As a tiny neck snaps between missing teeth.
The audience scatters and the corpse is left behind
As an offering for those who feed the beast.

Endless steps to shifting rhythms in a haze of noise and palpable judgement.
Apologies tend not to resonate when the damage is done and the horse gets Higher, stomping to the beat of a privileged heart.
You learn quickly, and with a heavy sense of defeat, that you can never do Enough.
Expectations climb with a pace unmatched by any effort imaginable as
It's prearranged.
The waltz was always going to play out like this because you put on the grafter's Shoes; paid for with the gritty coin you caught in your teeth.

Hidden among the crowds and the polished leather, there lives another breed with A human face.
One not twisted and distorted by throwaway reproach.
It takes a surprising level of regard to pick them out as they often don the same Paint as the revilers.  
However, these are the gems that can cut through thick skin, penetrating the Mortar, to find flesh.
They pulse with you and quiet the frayed edges.
They are your rhythm and your reason for perseverance.
They see to it that your resentment doesn't have time to settle in your bones.
They are much too few and far between.

What will it be like?
What will you be like
When all of you at once rests?
Will it be a relief?
Will it be sudden or gradual and will you know?
Will you know that breath for the one to bring you into harmony with the Vibrating earth?
The one that will become the breeze and take you with it.
Will it be peaceful?
Or will it make you shudder and your knuckles turn white?
Will that breath burn
And will you try to hold it?
Or will you embrace the value of what you've done?
The people you've loved and the warmth you've given.
Will you wish for one more?
Or will you offer it all willingly?
Out of contentment or resentment?
Will you think of yourself?
Or of someone you'd give your breath to?
Will it feel like falling?
Will it stab at every nerve in your body and will you let it show?
Will it be easy?
Scary?
Clear?
Will it be how you lived?
What will it be like?
What will you be like?

She never humoured anyone,
And she never made us small.
She gave our words more meaning
Than we dared and she thanked us;
Not with a word but with the understanding
That was her nature; Born in her
And given to us freely as she felt us worthy.
Another thing taken for granted,
Or to reflect on;
To learn.

She left long before
I flicked through her life in an album;
Before we cried and before I sang to her,
Or for her.
It's not clear anymore.

Stop kindling the fire.
Wait until the embers are
Enough to forge a season;
To kiss hot skin to sleep
Or to the raggedy edge, to tease;
Not all for fun but again to feel
The glowing ashes left in the pit

Kept alight, I felt their heat
And how they dwindle --
Stifled by the chill of passing time
And the many crystalline branches
Chipped from snowflakes

"Winter must be cold for those
with no warm memories..."
The sentiment reduced to shards;
You were my winter warmth,
But it's my spring that
Carries the frost