.
She appears in the dawn mists of Autumn,
in yellows and gold, in reds and in browns,
painting shades and hues, Nature's decorum,
blushing the trees in her fine harvest gowns.

Dispensing her bounty for all to reap,
walking so confident through woodland scenes,
she prepares the trees for their Winter sleep
with distant thought of leaves and shoots new green.

Come Spring she wears riotous colour dress
in purple and mauve, a spectrum of blues,
showing reds and yellows, pinks to impress,
attracting the eyes to see as they choose.

In summer she arrives in hazy days
basking in new warmth, eager to be shown,
naked to the Sun, exposed to its rays,
Nature's beautiful daughter now full grown.


© Pagan Paul (09/02/20)

.
The goods trains roll on by,
passing my window at night
and I wonder, wonder,
where are you going to?
May I come?
May I lay back slowly
and let you take me somewhere?
Anywhere.
Anywhere but now.
For here I lay
counting the rhythmic pulses
of iron wheels on iron rails.
As goods trains roll on by.

I need to feel in my bones
these rhythmic pulses
like temperate rain on tin roofs
soothing the beat of a heart.
I want to go and to expand,
to flow through the world
at an even metronomic pace,
to find a place of balance.

And my inner eye like a clipper
sails into the void of dreams,
yet, somehow, more real to me
as I watch myself explore.
Teasing out the dark corners,
bringing light to their inherent terrors
and exposing myself to fears.
But who's fears?

Individual pieces or the whole puzzle?
Pieces missing, the puzzle incomplete.
Its hidden away in my mind
disjointedly interlocking around holes.

I wrote about my sanctuary.
A special garden in a special forest,
providing me with safety
for when the holes become to large.
To this retreat I speed
when the sensory input overloads,
blows a fuse or severs a link
to the circuit of attachment
and fractures the edges of the puzzle,
scattering the composite pieces.
The further dislocation of logic
as I sit in my sanctuary and weep.

And through tears I can see
light flooding in to me,
the blush of morning sky
as goods trains roll on by.


© Pagan Paul (30/01/20)

.
A door opens with creaking sounds,
inwards to a dark and cool room,
untouched for many hundreds of years,
barely a flicker lights the gloom.

Peeling decoration whispers
at a past richly bottled in wealth,
now nearly empty except for
a curious book upon a shelf.

Bound and covered in lizard skin,
with words that swim on the pages,
shades and shadows cross together,
spells cast by the ancient sages.

A long bony index finger
tracing symbols down an old spine,
pre-history condensed in leafs,
that unfold through space and time...



© Pagan Paul (09/11/19)

.
So the smoke coils
surrounding a stray thought
clinging to the vine
as it weaves threads
into a tapestry
of fermented grape wrath.
His pen crawls
across the pages of life
and ignores the punctuation,
a plague infected word flow,
his stream of catharsis.
But the babble
intrudes and sounds irk,
sending resentment forward
like an advance guard
to meet the violence
and deflect the onslaught.
And the wave dies
as the aggressor retreats
before motley defence.
But the mood
has been tainted, spoiled,
despite a flirtatious distraction.
And the flame flickers
as the smoke coils,
and tired eyes avert their gaze
from the perceived ***** page,
the excrement of misery
smeared to make nostrils flare,
and the entry is left
incomplete …



© Pagan Paul (06/05/19)

.
Impenetrable silence greets
as disappointment inside sweeps,
prey to another false start,
a fire needle to the heart.

And the secret twitch of an eye muscle
reveals the depth of pain in rejection,
the shame of being considered disposable
or a stop on the road to perfection.



© Pagan Paul (22/04/19)

In me, the flames
of conflict has me in pain
Mind, body and soul

I look to the sky
And I see your helping hands
That now calms my storms