Morning falls
from a budding
   cherry tree;

   the colour
of nightsong’s
waning blossom
   comes to be
       an echo
   only heard
   by the wind

Soundless remnants
   of an intimate
twilight odyssey
   tarry thickly,
drifting lightly
through the landscape
      of dawn

   The hushed echo
   wields the silent
         reverie
      of the night,
   gently rippling
   the rivers that run
   through the heart

The poignant taste
of passionfruit lingers
in the sensory traces
      of a warm
   passing breeze;

      penetrating
   the lonely chill
   of a naked night's
      work of art

                ~


           Jesse

At times in existence
What you feel cannot be described
The words are there ready to erupt
The circuitry laid inside
Is beyond description
You're allowed your own wants
You'll never know if they're wrong
You paint it, you say it, angry at night
You sing it til it curdles into bloodied screams
The reality is your beauty
Is so kind that it gets the knife
The tip drips with black instead of white
The pen is, it turns out, poisoned
With toxicity to life
You live hope. You live faith.
You are strength.
Yet your desire is forever ensnared
Caught in a cry

He called it ‘fire water,’
He’s smart like that
My dad,

He made me afraid,
When I was small,
Of something I’d never had.

It was grown up stuff,
Not for me,
I was just a kid,

But I got curious,
About grown up stuff,
I bet you can guess what I did.

I drank that fire water,
& it burned
Just like he said.

I drank it,
That fire water
& it went straight to my head.

But it didn’t make me a grown up,
Not really,
I’m still just a kid

But it gave me a taste for poison,
Burning stuff in which I hid,
That’s what it did.

Oh poetry, how serious,
It doesn’t have to be,
It can be light & airy,
As noon time in the spring,
No hidden plot or subtext,
No between the lines, just words.
About something simple & pretty
Like the singing of the birds.

ROSES,
So valuable, yet full of thorns
He wants it,
But can't stand the prickling.
"All my fingers keep bleeding!
Oh the scars! I can take no more!" Laments he.

LILIES,
Almost of lesser value, sits on a pond's surface.
"Yeah, that will do!" Says he.
"At least I can say I've me a flower.
It might not be worth it, but it will do just fine."

But a frog is perched on it
He's willing to unsit that cursed amphibian,
To get to that vain Lily
Which has no worth
Compared to the Rose,
Simply 'cause it stings not.

Mother nature sighs after watching awhile
"Good things never come easy."
Mutters she.
"One who's deserving of the Rose
Is surely nigh!"

And with time, blossomed did the Rose,
Whilst the Lily withered.

Jubran Khalil Jubran died in New York, New York on this day in 1931 (aged 48).
"For the first time the sun kissed my own naked face and my soul was inflamed with love for the sun, and I wanted my masks no more. And as if in a trance I cried, 'Blessed, blessed are the thieves who stole my masks.' Thus I became a madman."
--from THE MADMAN (1918) by Khalil Gibran

I began to think myself
Special in an expanse of odd,
Where nothing can stay
Only whispers in a mist....

Speak your desire,
Touch my soul to begin
Its proper growth and expose me,
I only speak of that which
Ignorant cannot fathom,

And the soul is a yo yo,
Life on a string of theories,
Swaying to the whistle
And play of God's plan.

rain is sifting through the leaves              
nests of bramble, blackberry  
ferns green and resting in
noon's shadowed face
shining drops, halcyon
washing April blue until
the moon blinks