an axe lifted high overhead
swing it down
with a power borne of imprisonment
split the icy sarcophagus underfoot
the crack opens up
and the shards falls away
spring winds, flowers and the promise of summer

I haven't written a poem on that website yet today
No words have come along for me to digitally say.
If I can't find a phrase or two for all those folks to see
This sunny day will turn to night with nothing new from me.

Surely I can find some words to mark this day that's ending
Even if not notable and unlikely to start trending
There's nothing here that with your beer you'll raise up in a toast
But if I'm not mistaken now, I've something I can post.

Take one, just one.
Take it far away.
The only thing you had left
The only thing you recognized anymore.

Take just one,
Out of all that you had
Far from everything you knew
It was your rock, your anchor.

Take only that
Which keeps you awake at night
Brings you to desperation
And leaves you feeling raw.

There alone, hanging on
To the last remnant of your life,
Only that one emotion,
When you finally let it go
The others are returned
One hundredfold.

Rainy autumn weather.
The rain drops sound cold
As they strike against the window.
Cat silhouettes seem to herald
An approaching Halloween.

What silliness is this?
This stage, long intended for strutting and fretting,
Seems now exclusively for naked emperors,
And there are so many waiting back stage.

Awakened
By a breaking light
That dissolved the inky night
Aside the bed begins a path
That leads
To everywhere in the world
And begins
With one foot
Upon
The
Floor

A fragile vessel
Created of breath
Was floated upon the wind
To sing of lives and losses.

It envelops my face
And spills into my ears
As heavy summer rains
Drain into a cracked and parched landscape.

Maybe it's the changing weather
That draws me to you
And makes us hold each other close.

Maybe it's the length of the day
Making us reflect on the passage of time
And the moments we've spent together.

Maybe the numbers on the calendar
Bring us moments of nostalgia
And spark enthusiastic plans for the future.

What ever it is,
It fills us and illuminates the air.
It comes in on fingertips and shared stories,
And goes out on eyes and arms and gestures.

But it only happens this time of year
It lasts just a brief, fleeting twelve months
Then it happens all over again.

People more creatively put words together
When they face some restrictified rules
Like not making up unemogryfied words
That they haven't been taught in their schools.

In fog
the edges soften
for the eyes
but not for the shins.

Just our clothing choices
Make the weather,
So they say.

For wont of hat or mittens thick
We'd get outside
And play.

With just a rummage thru' the drawer
We'd get outside
And wander.

Just some woollies and a knitted scarf
And get outside today.

Wrap your arms around someone.
When you do it right
You do not avoid losing them,
You instead lose yourself.

Our stairs are made of wood
The trees that they once were
Probably grew nearby
One hundred years ago
When our house was built.

Maybe they grew in a copse on a hill,
Spent decades swaying in the wind
Tasted the rain, and the soil
And the carbon dioxide
Exuded by creatures of the forest
And people who lived among them
And those that would one day come
And bring them to the ground.

And now they bring me
To my bedroom every night
Where I doze quietly off
While inhaling the cool night air from the window
And puffing out carbon dioxide dreams.

White frosted trees
Outside our glassy windows
Do you dream of electric lights
Hung upon your bows
Patterned papers
And corrugated boxes
From your distant cousins
Placed around your trunk
And your only drink
A pale tinny water from a cup
While the sweet elixir
Gathered by your roots
Becomes a distant memory

withoutshapeormeaning
withoutreasonguidenceorrules
selectanddivid­ethepiecesasyouwill
weallmustdecideforourselves
wherewewillexcise­ourmeaning
andclaimourstakeamongthebrambles
thataretheseethingcur­lsandstrokes
inaworldofhintslookstouchesandgestures

feelfinallyw­ithyourfingertips
donottrusttheeyesandears
seekthecracksandbreaks­
sensethestrengthsandsinews
butchoosewiselywheretosnap
foryoumust­keepthepiecesyouchoose
youmustbuildyourworld
withthechoicesyoumak­e

Tendrils white and yearning
Spawned from the base of the stem
Cut and immersed in water
They reach and absorb
Flooding their capillaries
A pipeline of moisture and mineral
To the chlorophyll factory upstairs.

End of the growling hunter
Freed until nine then washed away
Emptied at the sinking
Full at the peak of the hill
Echoing up the sodden gullies
To round the blistered bolder walk

Clear the sharp impact of the fall
Tumbling into the terminal glare
All along the open way
Returning to the fork
Where the vistas are foggy
And the path turns sharply
Into the humid mire

Sit on a chair
Between two people
That you do not know.
On your left,
And on your right,
You will find
Yourself.

Wedged into the little spaces
Between a thousands things we need to do
And a hundred others we don't want to do
And a dozen others we wish we could do
And a few we're trying not to think about

In these little spaces
That stretch to be longer spaces
That are the reason our lists grow so long
That paint on a sticky glaze of regret

In there, among the detritus
The things we'll have forgotten by tomorrow
The lists that will decompose and blow away
The wall of pushing hands that drives us forward

There
In the little spaces
A few deep breaths
A few words cobbled together
A little bit of the authentic
And sometimes it's enough
To go forward

All of it a tapestry
Much expected is still unwoven
And lies in coils at our feet
Parts of it have come undone
Some of the colours and shapes are mixed up
But it hangs on the wall
And we keep on collectively weaving in spite of it all

Trying to post again
Hoping that today it works
Outside is nothing but rain
And this website has some quirks

But try again I will
To placate my poetry fervor
Fearing the bone-cutting chill
Of error 500s from the server

Come and sit there on the cushion
Our chopping and mixing and baking are done
We must just sit and talk about nothing
And enjoy all these things
That we built as the sun went down

Come and share a drink with me
So much out there is pointless and lost
But in here there is a plan and an order
This we eat first, and then we'll eat that
And when we've drunk our glasses dry
We can fill them again

Come and help me gather these things
Stacked and washed and dried
We'll put them all on a shelf
Or into a purpose-made drawer
And they will be there for us again
On another lazy ordinary evening

Until one day our hearts
Will cry for want of just one more

Come and sit there on the cushion
Our chopping and mixing and baking are done
We must just sit and talk about nothing
And enjoy all these things
That we built as the sun went down

Come and share a drink with me
So much out there is pointless and lost
But in here there is a plan and an order
This we eat first, and then we'll eat that
And when we've drunk our glasses dry
We can fill them again

Come and help me gather these things
Stacked and washed and dried
We'll put them all on a shelf
Or into a purpose-made drawer
And they will be there for us again
On another lazy ordinary evening

Until one day our hearts
Will cry for want of just one more

An entire genre of poetry
Crafted from the pondering of the page blank.
I have a mild disappointment as they
Are submitted into the stream
Of word sculptures that cross my desk
Emerging from nothing
From the art of just getting started.
And even so, here I sit
Having just pulled together one myself.

She is a flower
Rendered in black and white
I am a poem
Encoded in Morse code
He is an aria
Written upon the page
They are a chorus
Captured in a photograph

It takes a bit of imagination
And a bit of effort
But the beauty there
Comes partly from
Something from within you

"With the going down of the sun
And in the morning" go the memorable lines
And when the sun sets in my corner of the planet
It does indeed seem a good time for remembrance.

From the days when we lived among trees and grasses
The setting of the sun must have been a touch-point
For gathering one's clan members close
And with the brightening of each new day
There must have come a great but quiet relief
To have made it to the other side of the great darkness.

In a quiet twilight today
With the season's leaves all on the ground
After a blustery night yesterday
I think about the coming night ahead
Only in terms of slowing down,
Some good food
And an anticipated restful sleep.

But there are little gaps here and there in our lives
Aren't there?
The ones just away
Or whom we have lost for good.

And at the going down of the sun
And in the morning
They are with us briefly again.

On the surface of the ever-turning sphere
Corners blend with curves in the vapour
Shape is lost in currents of wind and fog
Treetops know what their trunks do not
We sit among the falling droplets
They condensed upon the needles
And get shaken loose by the breeze
This shower falls with pleasing staccato rhythm
But the sun seeks to burn away the veil
And lay bare our insecurities.

Rumours like echoes
That reverberate off ice
Memories sometimes just don't feel like playing nice

They are the textures
Of the fabric that I wear
The holes, a coldness  
Through the stitches you made there.

Still the darkening of the day
Leaves long shadows
That persist in the strangest ways
And a chilling wind blows
Until the night swallows up
All the light

I send out words for the living
Thin but bright as if of chrome
Returning echoes are the ones that make it home.

I am much taller in person
Than I am in human.

They say that the camera puts on ten pounds
But the camera in my pocket weighs a tonne.

A picture of me paints a thousand words
In a language I struggle to understand.

Absence makes the heart grow fonder
Unless you leave your heart behind.

Even in words
Rain in rivulets
To downspout deluge
Into permeable ground

Even as gestures
Sleet blown horizontal
Skiffs of snow on asphalt
Frozen edges on puddles

Even as texture
Abrasive granules of desert sand
In berms of dun, and fallow, and sepia
Soft and warm in the sun.

Blank and beckoning
But devoid of content
Into the void are thrown
Ideas and fragments
That stick together like jelly
And may not be removed.

Just a few words
Assembled in the ether
Do they drift by like electrons in the flow
Or sit leaden upon the screen
Ink-soaked pixels
Too electric to be real
Yet too dark to ignore

She is a flower
Rendered in black and white
I am a poem
Encoded in stuttered Morse