Enticement aside,
It’s a terrible game
When the throes of a lifetime
Dwindle to flame,
When the ague of long living
Denudes as it wears,
Where the beauty of youth
Simply mottles and tears.
The effort required
To gamble instead
Realistically questions…
Better off dead?

Standing *****
On a spire of stone
With the world all around
Yet completely alone,
Cold wind caresses
The knowledge of how
Old friends abandon me
Frequently now….
In dying like flies
With unseemly haste,
With a disregard
For my feelings, chaste,
The hollowness
Of last things said,
The bitterness
Of love, lost dead.

Recalling times,
With a cup of tea,
When you and I
Laughed happily.
When sunshine bled
Rich colours sang,
Bluebirds flew
And hot dice ran.
How those days
Caroused with joy
Lost to chance then,
Girl and boy.

Hurrying,
With you on my arm,
Dressed to the nines
Bustling charm
Off to roll
The dice with flair
Chortling both,
Without a care..
So simple
Were those days of fun
Where time stood still….

Yet dice still run!

Those running dice
Across the floor
Now, don’t matter
Anymore.
Dimness
In the morning light
Preempts temptation
To take sight,
For gone the gloss
Tomorrow brings….

Outside, a joyous
Blackbird sings.

M.
13 August 2022
Mists of time, once so vivid, now 5 minutes later, just fade to an inconspicuous fog. But, somewhere, the dice roll on.

Fickle the temperament
Fickle the change
In the far South land
Where wild West winds rage.
One minute quiescence
The next falling snow
Then hot melting asphalt
Burning toes as you go.
Fickle the changes
Best that you plan
For four seasons per day
As well as you can.

Easterly is blowing hard
Raking over land
Flattening the Western waves
As only East wind can,
Shoreline denuded
Black rock exposed
Sea foam extruded
On windlanes, imposed.
Kinda feels unnatural,
Kinda feels unreal,
Suspect the **** solstice
Encroaches to steal.

Late sun’s reflection
Mirrored off sea
From elevated viewpoint’s
Glare blinding me
Brass hard refraction
Now blacking out light
Reminded lock chickens
Securely for night.
For East turns to South East
Surmounting to gale,
Destruction of forestry’s
Shredding with hail.

Such are the ways
Of this far South land
Where climatic moods
Impose, as they can.
Where the flavors extreme
Sweep enticement aside
As the promise of youth
Swops a hag for a bride.
Such are the ways
Of this ****** South land
Where you savor each moment
Indeed, whilst you can.

M.
11 August 2022
Mid winter New Zealand.

Hollow feeling in the pit of my stomach.
******* surround me and send me into a rage.
Lonesome soul sinking in the mire.
Too tired to fight, I might need a drink.

They’d had him dead to rights for poisoning the well,
Least wise as far as they reckoned,
His fingerprints all over the pail
(Not the only set, but there in a goodly number nonetheless)
And footprints more-or-less conforming
To his boots in size and tread
And perhaps all that wasn’t stitched up as tight
As the sheriff’s boys would have liked it,
But there were other factors,
Things inferred and whispered
It being a place and time where truth
Was a sufficiently malleable thing
(There was also the testimony of one woman,
A lover, perhaps, or at least in her own visions,
Whose sworn statement was punctuated
With wild gesticulations and shrieking denunciations
As to how the accused had shredded all vows holy and otherwise,
The whole thing close enough to madness
That it was surreptitiously removed from the record)
And the trial was a brief, perfunctory affair
The defense attorney literally in shock
From the cavalier manner by his objections were waved away,
His motions for mistrial and subsequent appeal
Disappearing into some void of bored court clerks and paralegals,
The upshot of which was one man
Fitted with an unappealing cravat
Paraded before a sufficient gathering of onlookers
(But a quieter affair than such things normally were,
The harsh cacophony of the cicadas,
String section tuning for some discordant symphony,
Rising above the hum of the attendant mass)
And as the proceedings rambled onward
Towards its unwelcome conclusion,
The guest of honor grimly mused
As to how restoring of the water table and its potability
Would do little to put things to right.