baby in the crib, turns closed eyes into dream-light
young boy at the window, eyes on the calf
woman with the cow, flies milling around the eyes


1.
every morning, with a penchant for rising before his hour
           he stands, sees the calf at the wooden-fence
           watches with the fawn-coloured beauty of sea-shell heartbeat..
                              the rising-eye
while his sister, nearly a young-woman, washes dishes with eyeballs
                              out the tiny-window
           heifer passes by and he looks straight into eyes – gentle eyes –
                              soothes calamity

2.
in the cold morning on the farmstead, the baby curls in its warm-folds
     she chases off the flies from the horns
     and cleans gummed-openings
yet deity’s crown falls from splendour this day
      as moments devoured by need eventually bear witness
to warm dripping in the sand
the bowl is filled

                                           *(high-scale horror)

and the boy has seen it, too
he holds his arms round him to stop the wholesale-shaking.. bites down hard
     as his face contorts baleful.. in impotent-anger
     his silence bought decades ago.. in another life
no price on his shock
and the bird on the branch flies off.. glint-eyes on another branch

it’s that time once again: she takes the old-cow to town
they await her before nightfall
she never does return


3.
I’m begging you
        leave it be, this is how it is
go pick up the baby, please
(the baby won’t stop crying)




your fences, I’ll rip up your fences with your very own whip
while them wolves howl on and on
I got oppressive-time to suffer your unmatched-law in the crush-of-daylight
now, kindly.. get outta my face!







S T – 22 Jan 2014

(To Sarah Bernhardt)

How vain and dull this common world must seem
To such a One as thou, who should’st have talked
At Florence with Mirandola, or walked
Through the cool olives of the Academe:
Thou should’st have gathered reeds from a green stream
For Goat-foot Pan’s shrill piping, and have played
With the white girls in that Phaeacian glade
Where grave Odysseus wakened from his dream.

Ah! surely once some urn of Attic clay
Held thy wan dust, and thou hast come again
Back to this common world so dull and vain,
For thou wert weary of the sunless day,
The heavy fields of scentless asphodel,
The loveless lips with which men kiss in Hell.

First blooming in the Western Paradise,
The lotus has delighted us for ages.
Its white petals are covered with dew,
its jade green leaves spread out over the pond,
And its pure fragrance perfumes the wind.
Cool and majestic, it raises from the murky water.
The sun sets behind the mountains
But I remain in the darkness, too captivated to leave.

From the moment we met on that eventful night,
I've felt something for her unlike I've felt for any other soul.
Her hair was curled, her makeup was neat.
She was beautiful.
She smiled at me a special smile,
And it was that smile I would become accustom to.
She was surrounded by a crowd of exceptional people.
They were a kind of wild and raunchy people I hadn't been exposed to.
Amongst them, she shined like a diamond,
As if she was God and they were all descendants of Lucifer.

I soon became aware that her and I could relate.
Sometimes outcasted by others, we bonded in our strife.
We led similar lives and connected strongly with each other in a friendly, nonromantic way.
Whilst her fellow souls were overflowing with disorder,
We held each other and comforted each other from the unsafe conditions of teenage darkness.
She was misunderstood and so was I.
We were meant to live much simpler lives,
But in our struggle to prosper in what we thought was divine,
We made our lives much more complicated.

She watched me as I drove those familiar roads,
And listened as I talked of my blues.
She empathized with me.
We always got along the best.
Faced with a plethora of teenage hardships,
We always found our way back to sanity.
We always found our way back to each other.
She was everything to me,
And to this day, she still shines like a diamond.
Now, her smile is more than just a smile.
It's a pathway to serenity.