Providence the dreadful mystery;
The impeccable dignities and places
Sweep in spirals, from the sand;
that blowed And licked at your feet
The world Conceived before those hills
Foot-fast; Look, where He strove to get at.

i picture red ugly drunks, bitter
while delirious women dance around them
Together, lathered in music,
rock symphonies trudge over their pounding headaches

Sun scorching, sweltering, sizzling beach

My hardened soles resist the heat

Sunglasses shielding my eyes

White cotton ball clouds glide

Along deep blue skies

But I’m blue too

Intensely

Missing

You

I've seen sand flooding through city streets like a torrent of hot gravy drowning sprouts and beetroots, park benches and church rooves.

Or maybe more like the final sprinkle of salt over a roast dinner, baptising the parsnips and chicken breast in some sick meal time ritual.

It bursts through stained glass windows, suffocating the streets and preserving the locals. It rains down.

They used to mix it into a paste and mould it into city scapes - arches topped with fancy statues in humble salute through holes in the clouds.

Nowadays they melt it down and make office blocks out of the stuff, 500 metres in the air propped up like a million glossy middle fingers.

We collect samples of it from the moon, then analyse it and draw loads of numbers and pie charts.

We bake it into computer chips and pluck digits from the stars in the sky. We can predict eclipses and the dances of the planets with only slightly more accuracy than Ptolemy.

The power and strength of the sand is unstoppable. It'll come again when you least expect, and drag us with it into our own graves.

There! Right there in the middle!
                 You see it? 102.91!

Goodbye starless nights,
Goodbye rainy days
I’m setting off to Rhodes
-an Island full of grace

Breath-in the sunlight,
See a windmill blowing
through the sea
The shore is out of sight,

The sun goes down
-it’s my turn now
Sings preciously the night

Symi! Hidden place of
secret gardens-
Breakfast by the sea,
A kiss of time
A fool, laughing on a tree

Will I ever reach that bee?
Or shall I sit and listen
In my tower
Laughing on my olive tree...

Symi! Will it ever get so close?
See a saw and drink a drink
seek a bee and find a templar
town, Fascio di combattimento
cause....

Rhodes! Morning starts with
croissant
Afternoon continues-
musique d'ameublement

Rhodes! Island full of windy
nights
cloudless skies,
Sands and mystic sights

Desert rose,
A kiss of time
A fool ageing on a tree

Will I ever catch that bee?
Or shall I stay and listen
to the waves
never found my home,
the home of many fates
                                the sea.....

Baking, broiling, blindingly bright, blistering sun,

super scorching, sweltering, sizzling sand

the kabob that is my body searing, skewered

Deceptively blue skies devoid of any deliverance

no cavalry of clouds coming to convey compassion

Rising balloon-like bubbles of hot air

causing distant objects to ripple and dance

shimmering in the atmospheric boil

Falling to my knees, I detect in the distance

glimmering patches of blue and green—Mirage!

A maniacal mime of molten mockery

deriding my dreadful demise




Mark Toney © 2019

Waves crash to the shore
Laughter echoes through warm sand
Children playing once again