The sky is a cloudless crystal blue
with a breeze to chap your lips
I’m grateful for it, it’s heaven-sent
the dawn was a celestially stamped, angry red
sailors take warning

It’s going to get feisty cold,
I’m told
about the time we go back to school.
A polar-bear vortex with all its features
will spread its icy paws

What jumps out at me first
is how it could be worse.
if unapologetic nature
pounced sans disclaimers
with a cold worth semi-Shakespearean verse

What follows, star-crossed
is a week storm-tossed
a winter holocaust
with heaven-kissed frost
that only madness would call a judgement

We’re steered from harm
by precision alarms
stay warm
sweet friends
wrap up, stay in
.
.
Songs for this:
Come In from the Cold by Marc Broussard
World's A Changing by The Bingtones

We chose to be caught,
Swirling in this vortex,
With our crystalline eyes
Closed, or open—

innocence,
violence.

I remember clearly,
A flirt. A touch. A kiss.
I flew with my mind,
I loved it wet—

but you couldn’t love it then,
you couldn't even hate it,
you hate it now, looking back

We found ourselves
Spinning in the spiral
Of something we chose—
It was our own will,
Unbreakable by anyone,

though it had happened before:
you were torn apart like paper.

and now you are here,
gluing with gold the shattered pieces

Of the beautiful being you are,
Of the beautiful thing you swear to be,
Of the beautiful child you see,
When you look into the mirror
With your eyes wide open.

I speak not of the sun neither speak to her for the winter it has left in my care. My conversations with the cold snap and the polar vortex had gone stale.

The sun and I had our falling out and if these words should find their way to her doorstep, let her know I don’t miss her warmth. I don’t leap out of the bed to tug the curtain and let her silver light fill my room and let the motes dance in her rays like I used to.

I shudder at her supple shadow swirling, flowing and flitting about, and the halo she wears petrifies me. Her pestilential disposition burns through my walls fortified with years of heartaches. For these, we must part ways.

A spiral of light, like music to my eyes
I spun out into the golden grass
The stars shining brightly above me
Only seconds ago the vortex that seemed to knock me down
I heard a laugh, but no one was there
Maybe it was the stars
The moon was too kind to laugh
My silver feet began to work again
Daring the stars to tip me twice
The dampened earth beneath my twirling soles
A cushion when the dare was done
I laid there then, but
Only long enough to find Pegasus
Until I heard the muffled steps and swishing grass
As others wandered from the trees
Their candles sad mirrors
Of the vortex in the sky
One by one they challenged the stars
That tucked them all in to a bed of laughter and golden grass
I watched as they disappeared beneath the waving fronds
Until I could feel the hands of the stars readying the finale
Pulling me into a spiral of sweat and lazy zephyrs
They too knew that this was the last dance
But still I whispered up to their shining choir
Daring them to stop time.
Their hands were on their pocket watches
Pulling out the gears
A wish so close to granting you could hear the crickets pause
Yet soon they stirred
The spiral pushed, but laughter pushed it back
No longer harmonizing to their melodic lights
I fell again
This time over a root
My silver feet tarnished to grey
And lost their shine walking back through the woods

I venture outward
Past those devoured
Through endless hours
This adventure tower
Holds uncensored power
In higher spires
And liars' desires
Ending when I perspire
In a fire retire

I must live
When lust gives
A chance at love
I glance above
A dusty cloud
Through a crusty crowd
To see love must be found
In transcendence
And dependence
So I must trust
And ignore rust
To import thrusts
Of night's passion
Despite fashion

Time vortex
More or less
As time runs out
I must decide what it's about
Others help with that decision
They help by making incisions
And letting time bleed
My emotions they read
For their corporal greed
I tried to plant a seed
But their environment is frigid
Despite my attempts to bridge it
I become detached
From my potential catch
By days and years
And waves of tears
That stave off peers
Until I'm an old man
Feet buried in cold sand
I'll say that I tried
Once I'm used to the lies