They fall . . . gold ,

         bronze . . . copper . . . and brass

Jeweled like glass

         'n emerald . . . ambered . . . and rubied

The days of my life

         fall autumned . . .

               sudden . . . and fast

specifically:very:yes the gray grows
speaking slowly rainy bones
disheveled drooping vertebrae
c
ambered lovely death .a wrist bangled stupid colour's

      finely pounded grains galloping fleet ovals
the apt pupil dodders and the sky is a *****
why today?rain

There are mirrors
In all our rooms,
Passing them
Without a glance
Isn't vanity,
Isn't chance.
It's inherent in our genes,
The look is more
Than what it seems.
A survival tactic
Of our kind,
To lock our faces
In our minds.
Babies do it,
They're entranced,
The first step
Of the mirror dance.

So, I stopped,
I stared
At my glassy eye;
There I was,
Like an ambered fly
Trapped in the pupil
Of my eye.
Am I
Self-centred,
Narcissistic,
Self-absorbed,
Ego-centric:
Is it conceit,
Or human pride?
Self-doubt chides
My prying eye.

Past the disguise,
I realize,
My baby browns
Have waxed wise,
My outlook's changed
Behind those eyes.

-

four hours into a slow night with little
else to do but sip coffee. images through
the window wound me with new ways
to feel older, draping me out with all the

ribbons from New Year's past which got
ripped from those babies who later grew
up to become waiters and waitresses—

from what i can make out, some kid is
busting a table across the street wearing
a button-down shirt with a black tie,

he will likely work a couple more hours
and head out some place wearing the
reverse of this with an abundance
of youth to flaunt for all those
girls who actively seek

something
                       Better–

Ohhh !
He is looking
this way now !!!
i think..


somehow i feel this brushing of
unfamiliar shoulders as our worlds
of witnessing empties between these
panes of our circumstance, my ambered
line of sight cross–ray'd  with the beams
of his hot-white glare–

i watch dimly as he smiles at that
young lady with the red umbrella
crossing the street between us..

Yeah..

a few blinks later he will disappear
behind a partition and i will then
turn my attention inwards,

day-dreaming away the remainder
of my shift about hopeful
exchanges for

Something–
                        better...


s jones
2021


.

I don’t want to age gracefully, I want to touch the sun and feel engulfing flames. I want my bones exposed upon the plains. Every soul from my past will come to survey. Monocle and stethoscope—does a spark remain?

Only echoes now.

They reflect upon the times I laughed. Grew a garden so high the neighbors cried. Scent of cider and autumn on parade. Painted a house in sage and a deck in grey. The grass cut neatly like a landing strip. Where my skeleton is softly laid.

sitting at the old oak table
sipping on cold redemption
thinking back to when i was
not some one else, but far less than myself...

turning memories over to
discover the fossiled  id
and the ambered ego"
damaged, dismembered,
by the time of slow, low moving sadness...
that created glacial time..


now, exploring
the barren forest,
like an inquisitive tourist
hoping to find the keys
to the locks that i left behind
whyfor i will never know...

but the former self has hidden the  relics all too well....
(and we bless them to
their  hidden eternity)

and the cages remain sound
the lack of treasure, remains
unfound.

...and i .....and i....and i
can retrace my steps...back
to the days ....of serenity...
and forsake the turbulance
for  the  promise of sunnier days......

sitting at the old oak table
sipping on redemption
...warm and refined....
turning....beauty over
to see....your love reflected
...

It was a warm sunny day.
The sun like a warm breast,
Soft against my cheek.

There was a fantastic mackerel sky
painting the blue.

The mountains were golden
Like eagles wings.

I walked by the hum of the river
And thought of you and I.

As I walked, the sun made love
Through the trees.
I remembered the touch of your hand
As I held it in mine....

I remembered our kiss whilst walking
Through the whiskey ambered leaves
That made the sound of dancing lips.

The smell of steaks in passageways
Came from the graveyard of white
Caravans along the riverbank.

The sweet tobacco-like fragrance
Of peat filtered about the Old Bridge Of Tilt;
made me think of summer holidays
When I was a young lad in Orkney.

I could have written a sonnet
Of birdsong for you;
The songs of thrushes.
Timeless and always sweet
You come to my mind.

The day was wonderful but I wished
That I had spent it just one
More time with you.

©Jack Aylward,
18/4/14

One warm summer evening, early,
Resting in the cosmos weary
To kip upon a pillowed disk
Within corollas white and blue
Enfolded in one satin petal
Clutching to its gold dust revenue

A bee, black and yellow, sleeping,
Swaying on cosmo's slender stem
Dreaming, gliding with wings abuzz
Dreaming of its flowers tended
Dreaming of many more to come
Dreaming of its royal ambered home
Now so far far away

P. Suess

she slept
on my shoulder
ambered inside heart
to take note
her new wishes..

Time unfurled
a single yarn from the hem of a sweater
pulling apart the fabric of it.
Light consumed all darkness
until even the word shadow
held no weight.
The heavy weights of fear,
depression, and the impenetrable bruises
of lifelong aches,
melted,
like winter snow being touched,
at last,
by the spring sun.
A room awaits, made for me:
a coffee ***,
always full and warm with welcome.
A leather bound journal,
with ever-ready pages,
and a pen with ink made from my own veins
that always knows what to say.
An old fashioned is served up promptly,
at 7pm,
when my mother greets me at my door
and curls up next to me on the couch
we talk and laugh,
for hours inside a minute.
Candles glow with ambered remembrance.
Music plays the odes to journeys taken.
My grandfather fishes by a river nearby,
teeming with bass,
and I glimpse the child he never was
smile at me.
Every morning the ocean of my backyard
kisses my feet as she waves hello,
her salt no longer bitter.
I greet the blood of my blood
and bone of my bone upon the shore.
They wear faces that, through centuries
still resemble my own.
We tell stories around bonfires
of the legends that we were in our time.
My soul is made tangible.
I touch the fringes of my warrior spirit,
caress the edges of my creativity.
I dance with the stars before dawn
upon a floor made of crystalline moonbeams,
and marvel at how green,
how delicate,
how infinitesimal,
is the Earth below.

i oft wonder    when i stare at you
(& seeing how you live like sweet morningdew)
if perhaps, you are the work of athena–
or instead, pantheons altogether
          painstakingly threaded your body together.
          i touch your skin and i feel the weather.

did they toil over parenthetical curves
in your eyelashes, so? did they, in fact,
          under faintly ambered nightglo,
paint soothing hairline melodies into your soul?
          it was they!
          who carefully composed       your ballet!
     betwixt your brows and your lips
lies the aria of your kiss,
          and your murmur: the solemn swell of viols.

call me daft and sound your drums!
i think it had to be the ones who
          mastered the craft,    endeavoured to create,
who fired in kilns the earths to bake;
          who designed the bold mackerel,
          its iridescent scale, the peach, how
                    malt can turn into ale;
the celestial potter who sculpted the stars,
        and Jupiter
                 and Saturn
                                and Venus and Mars;
the ones who spun all into creation,
          and could undo infernal damnation;
who weaved you from threads cut by the fates
from the months and years we celebrate.
          from flowers sprouted from the dirt of eden
turned into watercolour, your colour, it deepens.
          as designed how grapes
          may blossom to wine,
the specks on your skin birthed from the divine.

i oft believe    when i stare at you
(& think of how you light me anew)
that i’m a curator given an exquisite delight -
trembling in awe of your beauty and light -
          to treasure and love and care for and feather,
          i touch your skin and i feel the weather.
          i touch your skin and i feel the weather.

Where Every Kiss Becomes a Place
Let us not speak,
nor think of endings tonight.
Let our movement be silence,
our touch the language
softly,
not the empty sort,
but the sacred kind
that wraps love’s shroud around us
like golden threads of twilight light,
woven through your fingertips
and the hush between my thoughts and sighs.

A limber moon leans low above us,
its silver breath gliding soft
across crimson pale vanilla skies,
the last of the sun melting in distance
into soft violet streaks.
Even the horizon blushes
as you press your hand
against the bend of my arm
a wordless promise.

The scent of wild almond, jasmine trails us,
folding into night
with magnolia's sweetness
We walk the path before us,
unhurried,
barefoot and becoming.
Our footprints pressed in white sands
like an unspoken vow
the sea cannot erase.

Oh, this love
it tastes of amber musk and rosewoods,
a flicker in the shifting air
burning slow
with ambered warmth and playful touch,
like incense rising
to stir the heavens
and sharpen the evening stars
into thoughts,
and the sky
into longing.

Let us build our secret sanctuary
in the curl of the ocean’s sigh,
where every glance becomes a verse of a song for which we have no lyrics,
and every touch
paints love
in pastel strokes.

Your voice, low and deliberate,
threads through me
a silk ribbon tugging my name
from the silk of your voice.
I answer in skin,
in pulse,
in poetry.

There is no need to ask
where Eden lies.
It is here
in this soft constellation
we’ve made of limbs and trust,
where lips rewrite time
and our souls lie down
under the scented breath of dusk.

Hold me as if time forgets to move.
Fold me into the story
you’ve only ever told the moon.
Be the myth
and the moth to my flame .
Let me be the prayer
and the flickering candle.

Let us leave behind
not sorrow, but perfume
the memory of honeysuckle
clinging to air,
of warm skin
gilded by moonlight,
of footsteps leading forward
into forever,
where every kiss
becomes
a place we live.