Leaves falling from midnight trees
Like lovers taking their lives
Silently, without a soul watching
Left decaying of the cold, wet ground

Trees then standing naked and exposed
Against the cruel touch of the elements
Victims to the exposure of their modesty
Unable to defend what nature sees

Flowers that give up to the coming Winter
To shrivel and die without a thought
As frost comes after them like a demented slayer
Stripping them of the beauty they once held

Birds come in search for scraps of food
On a frozen ground that refuses to yield
Hungry for the smallest morsel laying there
Icy breeze flows through ruffled feathers

The bruises, the thoughts and the feelings:
I can't explain.

The reasons:
your fingers through my shirt
beneath my skin,
inside my brain
wrapped around my mind.

The thought of not seeing you,
the sights that appeal to you,
all the things that disolve in you.

A bubble bath:
you and a stranger
both your hands
under water:

Something soft:
you're after,
nothing new
just skin.

Let me take you into the rains which stream into my heart
Show you the lightning flashing in my veins
You can listen to the thunder as we stand a world apart
Then I will bring you inside me
To remain

Inside of me you will find the silence of hills and valleys
Places you can wander in peaceful bliss
But you will still see that lightning flashing wildly
Hear crashing thunder in the magic
Of my kiss

You can tell me about the rains that stream into your heart
Show me the rocky mountains in your eyes
Together we will stand watching rain clouds part
As the lightening in our veins
Paints our skies

Take me inside of you so I can climb your mountains
The very thought brings me peaceful bliss
Together we will seek to fill love’s own fountain
With the rain in our hearts'
Streaming kiss

I sometimes open my eyes
And look into the darkness
Never knowing what is there

The shapes of grim reflections
Take form as I continue to watch
Unseen nightmares are looking back

All those tears that are shed in secret
From all those too afraid to speak
Shivering in the corner in the dark

All that pain in those forbidden places
Hitting me with an empathic force
I see sad eyes looking towards me

Visions that are trying to reach out
Now being expressed by these words
Of all those voices no one wants to hear

Why am I crying from what isn't there?
Is it because, somewhere it really happens?
Happening to those we feel in our heads

If only I could reach out to outstretched hands
And hold them to me, to protect and keep them safe
But the coming of dawn takes the dark away




copyright Chris Smith December 8th 2010

I know that such great longing itself alone
In the deepest shadows can lie buried
Speaking of a beauty known
Willing to be seen
And carried

In infinite forms it has always breathed
On shores in scarlet leaves
Murmuring that you should go and see
If the beauty’s time is near
To receive

I slip into its tender spray, moved by my sighs
Then fall into the deepest sleep
In the wonder of it all, I began to cry
Inhaling all the beauty
It keeps

If longing itself alone should depart from me
Would I be laid in silvery dust
Still longing for that which I cannot see
Or would I forget the beauty known
Just because I must