~
Who can circumnavigate Avalon's depository and the palpable swoop down toward earthier terrain?

Yet, here I am.

Where is your gravity taking me, Kahn?

This building is an invitation, and I am humbled in this sense of arrival. The books are stored away from the light. So a man with a book goes to the light, the serenity of light.

And therein lies the hidden meaning.

But you won't let it become just a building; you want it to remain much a ruin; it's all somehow sinister in its celebration.

Occasional distraction is as important in reading as concentration.

And I'm reading between the lines in a corner carrel, looking out at academic crop circles; I grapple with each texture: it's this combination of imposing austerity and weathered familiarity that you seize upon to make your current landscape hospitable.

This building is an instrument, creates a sound in my head akin to music; and this music remains a glowing source of solitude, all driven by a desire to be hidden but sought after—a celebration of all things lost and unnamed.

Here I find closure by opening a book.
~

I hold myself at night,
“I do”. . .  distant echoes, awake at night at your side.
The smell of linen, your snores so distant and yet so close.
I hate myself for dreaming. . .
Of someone coming to dance with me,
Even though they hate dancing only because
it's with me and no one else.
I hate myself for dreaming. . .
Knowing it's not you,
“I do” distant echoes, young lovers. . .
Formerly in love

Trust the sun (she says)
her first rays when creation was young
and God's window opened outward
as a place of worship
born to be breathtaken
daylight imploring for companionship
and bleeding into itself
as it bleeds into the worshipper.

She notices that her own taste
in repeating patterns doesn’t mesh
with the apparently similar
patterns in Drakensberg
they obey a different logic, and the friction
between them generates
a fascinatingly ambiguous color.

Tinctured cathedral of time passing
on its first layer of stairs...

Stars to dwell in the night
Paces in the account, of a new peace
Rages, and the toll of evidential might
The cares of worlds that collect but a keeping least

Use, and the unction of void causes
Reciprocate and notice a share in the form
Flowers of justice, tree's of a unique treasure
When we spy a day reproofed, the kiss of all and norm

Wishes to run...
And bless the cold shoulders of avarice
With a requited passage of what is ours, what is fun
When a place above clouds, has a charity to give, this

Speaking of that...
The tow of mutual praise, the tongue we ask in
Is but a soul of callous salt, to understand a matter
That came, and with a loving precognition, we are the spirit to win

A hat of conscience
The truth in a lingering hope, the total of unity in a breeze
We meant, we sent to an angel, for hands of presence
And the miracle of a kindness that liberated even life's dreams

It is not the pain itself,
It is the memory of having seen the bottom of the abyss,
The pain of each cataclysm, the pain of living torture.

It is the pain of these sleepless nights,
of this vile memory multiplied.
It is the pain of remembering your scent, It is the pain of this heart which beats through my poor crying soul.
The pain of reliving my abyss , full of nothingness, regret, empty , cold, desolate without you.

These memories bring me down,
     to the void, which I now climb alone.

squelched between bodies spiralling into escalators,
my trained eye couldn't help hovering a little left

right there, coming into view at the watch store,
though never caught dead anywhere near M·A·C

but neither should my stares, blatant without restraint,
fixed on a trio chattering like keys jangling

to the beat of a million other stolen glances,
only for them to slip away for some froyo.

rather than melt into a fruity confection myself,
I steel my eyes back into the spiralling masses

blocking out three gym bags marked 'WATER POLO',
my untrained heart pulses still for their suntan

and the bleachers of yesterday, the sight and sweat,
jocks jangling for position in glistening waters —

only then did I dare scream my lungs out,
safe in the crowds of a high school roar.

It hurts to end a book,
It hurts to end our story.
To know it was just a glimpse,
Soon nothing short of an eternal memory
Embedded, anything but faded

It hurts to leave you by,
To detach myself from you
Knowing my departure’s to be now or never,
For any other encounter shall be a timeless pain.
Knowing already, with you unaware,
Your journey’s destiny,
What came to be, comes and what will come,
Perish or last.

Like a mother, or a father, or a heavenly angel,
I see you grow, I see you change
And dance and play with the dangerous and unknown fate.
Then I can’t help but notice as melancholy,
So great that sorrowful,
Starts simmering in my chest
When I finally come to my senses to, in fact, realise
That with every new difference, every new feeling, thought and day
You drift further and further away
Like the dearest ship you loved with all your might,
With me, surprisingly, sailing away,
With the sense of excitement and fear too,
Together into the Unknown

When we arrive at our last harbour,
Despite our battle with merciless time,
At the last droplets of the quill’s ink staining those rusty pages,
I acknowledge the inevitable finale.
Though my mind stands tall, my heart crumbles
Not wishing to leave,
To untie the bond with the one,
Who loved the same world of dreams,
Audacity and passion,
The one and only who knew and believed in my vision,
Ideals as I
And never returned to the chains on his knees

With sobs racking my body and fiery protests in my stomach
I give you my last kiss, bidding goodbye,
As if death was making us part.
It’s been my greatest honour and pleasure to accompany your every step.
To look back with aching heart on your glorious days,
To see every dark corner of your puzzling past...

To experience this mystery being life as truly one entity.

I mourn over this moment,
Aware of the cruel ticking of the clock that came to an end
And returning no more to us,
As every other return shall leave a bitter taste in the mouth,
Overwhelming with my conscience of your final chapter on every step:
With you already gone
Lingering in the memories of the pages,
Invincible to time yet aware of it no more,
Unaware of any other moment than “now” and “here”

It hurts to close a book.

It hurts to end a story.

Of us ceasing to be,
Of us ceasing to speak.
As no other tale shall replace soon what we bore,
I bid my “Farwell”,
Leaving another piece of my being in you
For an eternity.

With these final breaths I pay my tribute to you,
For what you were, gave, did,
Took, created and left.
To James Fry, a barefoot sailor of the seven seas.
The consort of the oceans and the seas.
The audacious, brave and challenging kid.
The man who was courageous enough to live,
On his own terms, never bent to any mortal,
Never bound to the earth nor dull reality.

Wish you favourable winds in the sails of The Morning Star.
May you end your days with the same greatness you lived and were destined for.