.
I know this place,
light stone avenues,
fig, pear, apricot and apple,
trees that line in rows,
cut paving with neat gutters
**** white granite buildings,
as ferns and creepers
cascade from roof gardens,
the green shining vivid
in appreciation of being alive.
And I connect across the aeons,
this place was my home,
from centuries long passed,
yet reaching out to be found.
The avenues mimic my mind,
long straight and narrow,
broad and winding,
leading to sedate squares
to sit and feel the sun,
to bathe in beautiful isolation.
And the trees sway
casually in a breeze so soft,
it caresses the branches,
enough to tickle the leaves
and cool the ripening fruit.
Here, the forest erupts,
circles around this sanctuary,
forming a natural hedge
to this garden of tranquility,
this oasis in the maelstrom,
this home in my heart.
Flowers of honeysuckle,
jasmine, of clovers and lily,
adorn walls and buildings,
bright in contrast
to the shadows of the trees,
bloom with the intensity of colour,
riotous in hue and arrangement,
yet, ordered to Nature's Law.
Paradise wrapped in image,
slicing through time and space,
my place a thousand years ago,
my place to claim forever,
and the wind carries me home,
I know this place,
because it lives inside of me,
because I made it.


© Pagan Paul (06/06/18)

She drew each suit
Of a deck of cards
On my arm with a
Black ballpoint pen
We nursed our shared glass
And took ice once
All the customers had taken
Their motorbikes into the night
We made love beneath
The fairy-lights and
Cleansed ourselves
In simple, beautiful poverty

I knew that the ink
The glass
The ice
The fairy-lights
And the ***
Would all burn out
Or wash away

I knew that the poverty
Would lift
Eventually
And expose
Our rushed
And reasonless
Foundations

We used to dream
in my father's old car

a dusty 1974 Camaro
red as a candy apple

we talked about driving to Chicago
with stratocasters in the back seat

but we each escaped the town alone
and the car never left the garage.

Watch me as I fall
without you.
I've spent years
perfecting this dark energy;
you are not the first
to leave me longing.
Watch closely.
I can build a statue
from ashes,
inhabit order
surrounded
by chaos.
Watch as I consume,
without myself,
myself.
I can fall,
but I cannot fail.
Watch.
You only scratched
the surface
of who I was
and am,
but you let loose this
agony -
my flood,
my fuel.

I watch as an older woman in a red flowery
dress holding yellow flowers looks out to the sea
Searching for the young man she fell
in love with at the ripe age of twenty three
He gave his life that day on the Normandy shore
on the sixth of June the year was forty-four
Every year this woman comes to the sea to remember
For when she said her marriage vows
she meant them to last to the end of her forever
She throws the yellow flowers out to the sea
Always grateful for the love they shared
and proud that he fell in the cause for the free