I have a persistent existence

there are echoes in his shadowed clouds
thunder and rain drops falling from the sky
he says he loves me
but I dare not ask why

I share my dreams
so detailed it seems

they're made up things

he has seen me lie
so I tell the truth

until it echoes
   e c h  o   e   s
like how my eyelids open

to the sound of thunder
to the sounds of my mistakes

he shakes the wake of my existence
holds no pride in his resistance

teaches me to be true
in all that I do

even when

staying up late nights
I explain to him what it is I write
regretting nothing
forgiving fights

the words mean more than nothing
because
the confusion of our illusions
that we can't believe in
drop like rain
they drop like rain

singing pain in the untold thoughts
that mean more
than the washed up shore
that had tidal waves
(untold graves)  
seashells sea ringing
(the hells are singing)

so don't stop bringing
your music, your art
the love we have
not yet torn apart

keep playing
keep singing
love bringing

your heart
creates art

‘There’s definitely a story here’, she said that evening over the telephone. They’d been sitting in Trevelyan Square in Leeds. He’d brought a picnic lunch so they could sit in the sun. When he arrived at the station she wasn’t wearing her glasses and he thought, I only see her like this in bed or . . . and he stopped that thought immediately because she looked so very lovely and he knew he would only have a couple of hours as her companion before work and children reclaimed them both. They’d sat on a bench eating his salad confection, apricots and nectarines. They forgot about the rock buns he’d baked the night before. Just in front of them sat four hounds, four stone hounds with staring eyes and  very large paws sitting in a circle, four Talbot Hounds with water gushing from their mouths, four just larger than life-size handsome hounds commissioned by Joseph Edwards for the courtyard of his mansion at Castle Carr and, when the house was demolished in the 1940s, had disappeared. The hounds turned up in the 1970s in a stone-mason’s yard and an enterprising architect – building the Open University’s northern HQ - bought them for Trevelyan Square. As he sat there, with the water-spouting dogs, it was only her gracious, lovely self that occupied his attention. Why does she captivate me so ?, he thought. Why do I always feel with her like I did as a teenager, so unsure of myself, so overwhelmed by the female presence (he thought as he wrote this how often that word overwhelm came to mind when he wrote of her, and so checked the Thesaurus . . . hmm. Besieged, snowed-under, inundated, beleaguered, weighed down, beset? No, overwhelm was the only word he decided – she whelmed him over as a wave rises up and cresting falls and turns and rolls the swimmer beneath it.). It was, he considered, her femininity that was so particular and just embodied everything he’d ever dreamed and fantasized a woman might be, could be for him. He knew he’d thought and written of this aspect so often, and yet today, here with the sandstone dogs, there was a intensity, a vividness enlivening his senses. Without her glasses he could see the lines, indeed a shadow of fatigue, under her eyes, simply too much time with the computer perhaps. So she looked older, always wiser, and oh the joy of her freckles, the faint down on her cheek. And when, later, saying goodbye, he didn’t just kiss her gently as a good friend would do in a very public place, but brought her to him in an embrace that something outside of his usual careful manner required. He had hugged her with a passion and a joy and sadness all in one. On the train, a text, and he had suddenly to hide his tears that it could be so. He would write about those hounds . . .

When I grew up my mom would cut coupons and scrounge for change in the sofa to buy me a chicken nugget happy meal McDonalds. She would cut coupons and would only buy nectarines if they were on sale. I grew up eating bologna sandwiches with kraft cheese slices and potato chips.

I think your mom had different priorities.

The man at Starbucks, told me that opposites attract and I think that is why were together. He told me a Intuitive Innovative Feeler. Does that mean that you are oblivious and emotionless ***? I don't think so?

Lately I have been whining a lot. Whining about where we live, what we do, what we don't do, how you act, how you don't act, about how your mom wants us to water the brussels sprouts that no one likes and clean the toilets no one uses.

Sometimes I say things to hurt your feelings. Sometimes I mean it. I word them so that they are as hurtful as can be and you never react. Is it bad to want to make you cry? You test my sanity everyday, you break me every day, and here I am still trying to chip away at the facade, the make up you cover up with.

I think living in the mountains has taught me about all the things that I don't want to be. I don't want to be cut off, I don't want to be nice, I don't want to be liberal, I don't want to be conservative, I don't want to see the same people everyday, and I definitely don't want to spend eleven dollars on heirloom tomatoes.

Nana thinks the magazine is the devil.

“THE PEOPLE WHO DREW THE BLESSED ****** MOTHER OF OUR LORD AND SAVIOR JESUS CHRIST IN A BIKINI ARE GOING TO HELL.”

Whatever you say, Nana.

When we left my Nana made us tacos and tamales. She gathered all the food in the house to send us off and took all the cash she had and stuffed it in my pocket. She purged the cupboard of all the bananas, plums, nectarines, and apricots and placed them in a bag with two bottled waters a coke, a diet coke and sprite.

She told me that she loved me and that she hated to see me go. That, “I had just gotten there” and that she would “miss me so much.”

Before we left she sent me with a card that was “very important”. It was a picture and a coin embossed with my guardian angel that she bought at the church gift shop.

My nana loves me more than anything else in the world.

My nana still calls you my friend.

thursday, late in the afternoon,
she was silently mouthing the
lines of The Sun Also Rises
as he read them out loud.
"the taxi went up the hill,
passed the lighted square, then
on into the dark, still climbing..." --
her eyes were closed; she was smiling.
he continued to read. she got
distracted -- his shirt was a deep
blue colour, she imagined her hands
undoing its buttons, her hands
softly sliding it down his back,
resting on his waist. "...and my mind
stopped jumping around and started
to go in sort of smooth waves... "
she imagined softly kissing his shoulder
or burying her head in this hair.
she opened her eyes and watched
his hands turning over the novel's
pages, wondered how those hands
would feel running through her hair,
wondered if his voice would be this ****
in the morning, and what his hair
would look like when he just got out
of the shower. "it is awfully easy to be
hard-boiled about everything in the
daytime, but at night it is another thing."
she looked outside. the sky was an
unusual shade that reminded her
of nectarines. the sun was setting.

there are some things,
that just smell so good:
corn freshly shucked, potatoes roasted in campfire coals, carrots fresh from the ground, then washed   and stovetop roasted
basted with butter
and lavender honey.

the nape of my toddlers neck,
that clean fresh hopeful little boy smell.
coffee, straight up, freshly brewed
caramel warming,

passionfruit, strawberries, citrus any type, zested. freshly planed fennel curls, mint crushed for a mojito, roast lamb and rosemary gravy.

the smell of planed wood in the palms of my man's hands as i kiss them. frangipani, coconut tanning oil,
earth newly rained upon. popcorn popping, chocolate melting,
jasmine, orange blossoms,
a grove of pine trees.
warm gingerbread and mulled wine.

salt tang on the morning breeze.
the smell that lingers after the lovin.
garlic and ginger in a hot wok.
salt tang on the evening breeze.
prawns all sea salty and
a crisp cold beer.

sandlewood and citrus aftershave lotion on your smoothed cheek.

nectarines, apricots,
a yellow juicy peach,
freshly bitten.

apple scented shampoo daphne & lilac my nana's smell,
bay *** newspaper print and palmolive soap,
my pop's study.

rose petals crushed.
earl grey tea,
toast just before burning damper and cocky's joy
crisp fresh linen warm from the sun.

so many scents, so many smells...
these are my favourites please feel free to add your's, as long as it's clean
and above board.

Eureka
My thanks to the man who tasted
cyanide and voiced his last Eureka.
“Almonds”
To the man who saw dragons
to be slayed with pen and sword
in windmills.
To the Danish Prince who said
“What a piece of work is man.”
Well, man’s a piece of work alright.

Did you ever think about how
men wear their ovaries on the outside?
Or how you can always win arguments with yourself
in the shower?
My boyfriend traces the edge
of my chewed nails as he asks
me what I am thinking about.

I’m thinking about the consistency of jellyfish
and how it compares to human brains
and the taste of nectarines, overripened
drawing fruitflies to picnic tables.
Maybe I see colors differently
and will never know that my blues
are only a midnight shadow of what they
could be and if I’ve never truly seen the color red.

And how after nineteen years
I still can’t tell if I’m a good person
or just faking really well.
And if that Chinese Emperor
who strapped rockets to his thrown
to find dragons
ever found any.
Did the chicken getting crushed while crossing
the road get him to the other side.
If I died young, could I motivate people
to be nicer to each other?
When did my grandmother die
and when can I ask my mother without her
crying?  There was a little girls skeleton
found next to her donkey in the ancient ruins
of an earthquake. There were several
different species of human alive at the same time
and my favorite color isn’t really blue
And I’m really glad I couldn’t ****
myself when I was 13 because I tasted
my first plum last week.  AND FOR THE LOVE
OF GOD
WHAT
AM
I DOING
WITH
MY
LIFE.
My happy moments will always outweigh the bad
And are my ***** uneven because
when I look down—
What are you thinking about?
Almonds.  They
taste like cyanide.

Your hands must be soft as nectarine skins
in summer.
Old skin torn away by hardship
to reveal new beginnings,
and when I feel your fingers against my own
I know it’ll be the start of something
much more wonderful
than when we were alone.

I love to spread
my plum sauce
on your
**** nectarines,
mix it up,
sift
& fold,
then taste
the hot-combination
of our zesty ingredients.

Such bold
raw-flavors
never grow old.
I am sold on the menu
& crave your appetite,
you are a connoisseur,
demure,
soft & pretty.

Me & you
never fight the menu,
our culinary arts
are exquisite
& delicious,
so scrumptious,
they're sacred,
obviously
made in Heaven.

blueberries
raspberries
blackberries
feed me cherries
I'm feeling daring
shut out of caring
music's blaring
strawberries
peaches
nectarines
you're in my dreams
morphing right in front of me
moonlight dusted, coarse,
untrusted.
tip tap toeing
tip tap
tipping over and drizzling,
sizzling steam
let me scream
because
no one is listening

Lots of little leaves lend their thoughts through me, invasive, intricately they thwart thousands of flicking fluttering flapjacks that narrowly nest northwards in insightful intricacies.  My own correlation to the devastation of my excommunication comes circling psychotically through territory taken by thieves.  Listen to me.  Me,  the sea winding, crashing, lashing, smashing in the sand.  Shells wash shamelessly ashore.  Incoherent attitudes to the longitudes and latitudes of my bicameral mind melt biogenetically with generous gentrification and gratitude.  Knights that know nothing note notorious faults with the mechanical bull bellowing ballads of Bart Simpson's big brained battles.  Believing in a higher power that showers us with praise and rain and pain and flames is an astonishing attitude taken timelessly through history.  Histories mysteries made matching the mourning Mormons march maddeningly on netted walkways wandering wirelessly in the digital age.  Rage, sage, six billion constellations on one page, intuitive notions of nectarines and oranges that float directly through subconscious space into the place were the human race lost its face, bending backwards hopelessly heaving to find It.  Us, the story of story of stories.  Last but not least the golden fleece made by hand of the man who lost control of the audience blinking stupidly through the dim lighting in a Victorian era theater.  Money makes men mad, women whistle tunes on the rocks as the clocks tick down to our collective doom eternity falsity.  Lighting matches of the patches that reconnect the lashes lavishly lacerating loyal little people who dance dumbly and deftly as an affirmative acceleration of the Nation brings out the worst in us.  Millions marching miraculously on nation capital investment in the predicted earnings of what we can sell to the horribly under educated balding obese men with learning disabilities due to the undisclosed demonstration of lack of nutrients needed to make more mean men smart.  Lost at darts.  Joan of Arc.  Queen Diamond brings crime to silent Simon sitting on the dock of the bay.  We waste away.  Watching rivers rolling round the ******* bend that banishes blatant blasphemies of the self.  Sea me sinking seemingly shrinking in the distance of your one good eye.  Lost green waves washing worlds wary of the New Age.  But in my head it can't be said any other way than the way it repeats and relapses and redirects my attention to it when I try to sleep and eat and drink and sweat and sigh and sing and slink.  The twisting tangled thought that terrifies my tortured terrace (aka my also known as counterpart playing in the dark with lost fingers finding time to rhyme lines in the mosaic of my mind: my heart).  But I'll just tell you later.

Fairies and fancies
and flippant romances
and all things bright and gay.

Cream cakes and choc flakes
and raspberry mistakes
rise up in  a spiralling fray.

Blue skies and greenflies
and warm-sugared apple pies
and the scent of freshly cut hay.

Strawberries and Ice cream’s
and mouth-watering Nectarines
succumb to the heat of the day.

Golden-crust pastries
and honey –drenched fig leaves
made in the old-fashioned way.

Piping-hot dainties
with oak-coloured bases
that refuse to come out of the tray.

A gaze up above to a snowy white dove
sees the sky go from golden to grey.

From twilight to moonlight,
from moonlight to starlight
the end of a beautiful day.

The first rule of the open door
is someone must walk through it.
Someone has to slide off that bench
and find a new seat, lean their head
against the cool glass and sleep
across time zones and hillsides,
rows of corn running alongside.

I dreamt of that place, I shouldn't
say again because I don't count myself
a liar. But the table was set, wine poured
and that dog wouldn't hunt.

The sidewalks ran with the moonlight
of one thousand doorknobs, teeth
of hungry doorways calling to be filled,
to be necessary. All the orange flowers
covered my grave that night. Branches
shuddered with the blackness of one
hundred crows, the moon just slivers
of leftover cheesecake crumbling down
into the spines of hotel bibels and ******
veins of the orchard's nectarines.
And the clouds beat their knuckles
against the coming night until their passion
bled out onto the bleached white sheets
on their chests, all purple and red and blue
and bruised.

A colossal stillness hushed its way
across the swaying seashore.

~



Of broken branch and multi-colored stone façade
the pathway steals my outward glance
Winding through the cottage hills
like kite string freed by a strong wind, it spills
Patterns shadow in abstract array
through barbed wire and solid steel
barricades, creating menacing shapes,
criss-crossing narrow wheel ruts of long ago


“I tug my trousers in defiance and set my pace”


Obstacles, of stead and stood,
branded in a wilting wood…
directions carved to empty me of all I know as good


Within my chest sits a living compass,
beating my quest in a never ending melody,
sweet as creamed corn pie and pointing
towards the sun, which sits before me
two hills above the horizon on this new day
Temptation beckons over my right shoulder,
whistling in the breeze of delicious
offerings, and I do hunger…


“Still I stand firm of my journey back to your love”


Take your glow of nectarines
Cool refreshing summer streams
For I shan’t waver, not an inch, her love calls in my dreams

Midday, as the solar glow finds my shoulders red
and sweat clings like life in dampened conclusions,
blisters form bringing the pain of decisions made before…
and I would have it no other way…for this I deserve
Mountains faced of jagged stone break my crawl,
rubble sweeps my feet, as my knees bleed,
thirst speaks in the language of a long feared enemy…
yet I do not listen…


“No challenge shall be placed that will keep me from my return to you”


State your case in hammered stone
Tear my skin of broken bone
No tethered vines of loneliness shall sway me from my home



My shadow now waits before me, long and slender,
molded by dried weathered foot prints…my foot prints,
heading a direction opposite my heart
Many years old yet still their outline remains as a warning…
When I see it, the lilac arbor, scented in old desires and
new in life, encasing a glow, melodies of  gold finch sing
as my eyes find your smile, an extended hand, a soft touch
I have found my way home…


“My sweet love, this heart begs forgiveness and longs you eternally”


*Mistakes I’ve made, my journey far
on borrowed steps of distant stars
my every waking dream desires to be right where you are

In the evening
Demands of fluttering hearts
The swaying of
Leaves
Through the dusty breeze
A priest that preaches
about the fruits of life
I guess I'm just fond of
Nectarines
In a season
Of reasonably rose peaches

She smelled like vanilla in the winter.
Smelt like flowers in the spring.
Smelt like nectarines in the summer.
Smelled in the fall like wind.
You knew all this because you loved her through it all.

I’m a plumb in a Fruit Basket that’s out of control, Two Apples ones green because the Banana forgot that he smelt see he was so old.

The Grape would always sit on its own in the corner in the cold, The Orange could never peel it’s self so the story goes.

The Kiwis always got a twin he aint really in a rush to want to go, Mangos getting weaker as they feel the muscles grow.

Crunch getting over taken by the hour glass that never grows, Sand dunes created by the sweet taste of the Tangerines we all loved to know.

Fruit salad created by the imagination our taste buds have grown to know Pears trying to mingle in this fruit basket that’s getting out of control.

See the birds all sing to the sweet taste of the Nectarines that I’m missing just thought you should know.

This fruit basket is getting heavy i can’t carry it anymore; I’m a Plumb in a fruit basket that’s gone out of control.

JidosReality 7.5.11

.

Of broken branch and multi-colored stone façade
the pathway steals my outward glance
Winding through the cottage hills
like kite string freed by a strong wind, it spills
Patterns shadow in abstract array
through barbed wire and solid steel
barricades, creating menacing shapes,
criss-crossing narrow wheel ruts of long ago

Obstacles, of stead and stood,
branded in a wilting wood
directions carved to empty me of all I know as good

Within my chest sits a living compass,
beating my quest in a never ending melody,
sweet as caramel cream pie and pointing
towards the sun, which sits before me
two hills above the horizon on this new day
Temptation beckons over my right shoulder,
whistling in the breeze of delicious
offerings, and I do hunger

Take your glow of nectarines
cool refreshing summer streams
for I shan’t waver, not an inch, her love calls in my dreams

Midday, as the solar glow finds my shoulders red
and sweat clings like life in dampened conclusions,
blisters form bringing the pain of decisions made before
and I would have it no other way, for this I deserve
Mountains faced of fractured stone break my crawl,
rubble sweeps my feet, as my knees bleed,
thirst speaks in the language of a long feared enemy,
yet I do not listen…

State your case in hammered stone
tear my skin of broken bone
no tethered vines of loneliness shall sway me from my home

My shadow now waits before me, long and slender,
molded by dried weathered foot prints, my foot prints,
once heading a direction opposite my heart
Many years old yet still their outline remains as a warning,
When I see it, the lilac arbor, scented in old desires and
new in life, encasing a glow, melodies of gold finch song
as my eyes find your smile, an extended hand, a soft touch
I have found my way home, to you

*Decisions made along the way
mistaken steps of lost array
when found my every dream it longs within your arms to stay

source of dopamine
fresh juice used for Parkinson's
zinc rich nectarines

Let us go to that market on Broad Street, the one by Little Theater
where I got mad at you and refused to scale your wrist like it were a skyline –
I did not even knot your knuckle-hair with my sweat.
I was so angry, but I want to go by there again. We can search for some
nectarines and decide which share of our bodies they appear, feel most like.
One will have to be rotting, because your cheeks are an old peach,
black fuzz on the ends of something round, enflaming –
another can be as young-looking as I was when you first touched me.
Then, you will hold the door open while we prance into the House of Pizza,
find that corner bench where painted lighthouses dawn the walls:
I have kissed you here before, once when I was sad and another with a grin.
Sometimes, I wonder how many places I have loved you
but that would be as impossible as counting every way I have known you –
sometimes you are a moon off the axis, sometimes you are a plum
sometimes you are bobby pins in my curl, sometimes not
sometimes I rest on the bench where you licked frosting from my cheek
and sometimes just going to the grocery makes me miss you enough.

BewaredirtydarkpoetryKeepawayifweakorsaint! :-)

****** me with your sensual words
Till sharp they be as centurions swords-
****** into cores of my melting minds
That always with you she revolves and rewinds
Feed me with your romances, love
Let me be drunk with you to have
Imbue me till I am imbibed with you
By a craziness for you, for you…..

Pursue my heart
To a place defeated she only opt surrenders-
Till with you she hurts and arts
Woo my solo soul
To a point she is only in wows and bewilders-
Till with you her desires sores

Hum to me like a hummingbird to flowers
Like bees strums to nectarines and nectars
Till I fall assured, my soul is for you-single songbird
That when I fall and I lie and I part, soft and hard
As butterflies butts wings as she sings to petals and sepals
I know, I am certain to be your part, your love’s neat lapels

When I give up my guarded thighs worth
I am convinced it is only for your ****’s wealth
And my ****** cheque secure I resign
To your only holy pen to safely sign
It is for you my man who truly has my love
Who I want your print and its after imprint to curve

****** me I want to lilt in your love lyrics
Like accordion I want to sweet sing ‘glory-holy-halleluiah!’
In your passions and pleasures, innocent and silent
String to beats, beats to string, band to jazz
An opera, a classical of extravaganza!

Pretty and precious play me, rhythm to rhyme
Till like the music the lyrics are long and live lilting
In my haunted head every time……
‘Yeah the drums they swing low
And the trumpets they go…..oooh-ooh!
And Boy, you're the one I want to want me
And if you want me, Boy, you got me
There's nothin' I, no, I wouldn't do, I wouldn't do
Just to get up next to you…………….

Peruse me, like a professor’s to his dear dissertations
Page by page of my soul and spirit
Word by word of my urges and desires
Hypothesis by hypothesis of my feelings and emotions
Till a chi-square of my statistical inferences
Your test sample, simple sample and right prove, I am your dote

Swing me in your strong arms like a baby girl in daddy arms
Let me forget myself in your safety and comforts
Let me only feel the world peaceful and blissful-flowing and floating away
The trees and their slapping breezes sing sweet lullabies to naps and sleeps
The earth revolve and reverse, traverse and advance, soar and sail…….slow and swift!

Cajole me, conjure the searching silence in me
The shy wish craving for you and me
The seduction induction sleeping waiting, wanting
To hold and hold you forever and ever and over
To love to art with you stumps and roots
The landmarks of our ‘we were!’ long after we are not’s
****** me, induce me, reduce the fires in my desires

© Kìùra Kabiri. All rights reserved.

a girl sits on the pavement,
lunch in hand
wondering what kind of times they were
-neither the best nor the worst of times,
but times spent at a coffee shop
watching the cars go by.

as the rain falls
-as it always falls at 2 am,
steady and calming
a world in limbo
despite all of the chaos that i so lovingly
call mine.

the birds aren’t out yet,
but the cars softly flash their lights
i shouldn’t be here
this desolate city,
mine,
this desolate life,
mine.

the plants sway softly,
ever their vibrant green and your cat meows
-the only thing along with your short hair
and scrolling habits
and off-feelings
you’ve been able to keep alive this winter.

lone figures in the winter,
at your desks -alone in class
smiling at a laptop,
the papers on your bedroom floor flutter around you
wind in my rooms,
slashes on the push floor.

slashes -also on the peaches
nectarines
fingertips (from falls)
coffee cups in empty cafes
and unthinkably
blueberries.

all of our photographs,
a poet said they would happen,
waiting to happen,
i think they’re right and
they’ll never happen
-it’s the kind of beauty arranged and taken down,
never enjoyed.

thus each tear i shed unto your people tribalised by a religion, unto each child of your womb a tear of mine, that i might return from the prison of islam that became a “home” as instigated by islam, and into the home i know of, as being the enemy, in judaism given respect, guardian of the tetragrammaton as the trinity of s, n, t and the hidden vowels.*

and if my prison was islam,
why have my caste resemble
agianst your beauty, brother?
you only made me biterrer
to have my ugly form moulded
against your beauty i see in god
mould you otherwise
akin to god's thought,
so why have you delved in demasking me?!
why have you attmepted to demask me
and give clothing of your nakedness
with angelic spires of the wings?
you demasked me...
and by so doing you made me more beautiful
than you could ever be...
thus i shed a tear upon listening to
the islamic call to prayer -
and i could have replaced a love music
for the wahabi doctrine of only listening to
the call of prayer...
but brother... i write this with tears in my eyes...
why did you unravel the mystery of aesthetics
that god allowed me to be a tourist among these forms
in placebo represented as their own and mortal,
thus sunsets above the wording
that did not revel in reading but in action,
and the few under pseudonym erasmus bothered
with the antonym of the former and left the latter
to idiots, which you claimed descent of from the idiocy of
a prophet that... simply... didn't bother...
he thus trading olives and nectarines
tried trading words and found himself bound to only
one paragraph expressed: and the dictionary of his eloquence
only reached the letter m from a rather than ending in z...
in that onomatopoeia of m n l o t p sung in dyslexic silence;
saddly enough genghis khan wrote more
and killed many more than the supposedly heaven sent
muhammad...
but the mongols were never destined to revel in living
under oil... they lived under camel fat all along...
and never became decadend like the saudi arabs became
with the european ******* ready to expoit youth of flesh
than subject the flesh to the forces of swan encompassing
a stature of the idea encompassing marriage;
well european ******* are cheap: you could
mistake a bulgarian ***** for a romanian one
every other day of the week, and it still wouldn't
feed the ethopian advertised by western charity companies
needing more money to feed the western bureaucrat
for digit input pin: x x x, x x x, than
that ethopian chirch adopted child eating quasi-sushi off
a maiden head of a crap dipped into the depths
the dark thus recycling endearing the construction
of mollusk protein in m.e.n.s.a.

Home made, completely all home made
I bet you cannot tell.
The label tells it all that I have designed
and looks good enough to sell.

I started tinkering around with ideas
what can I produce from my vine?
I  can grow all sorts you know so I
will see what I can make into wine.

I have fruit in all colours and every shape
to the delicate little ruby cherry
to to most sophisticated shiny grape
and every possible home grown berry.

I have trees laden with the rich sweet
bouncy good old English plums
to the good old fashioned stone in the middle
dark red and sometimes purple damsons.

I can get my hands on nectarines, peaches
apricots galore, apricots and sweet peas
Of course Mother Nature is responsible not me
and of course the clever little bumble bees.

Well they all get mashed up
and placed in my home made vat
the aroma spreads for miles
led by next doors nosy cat.

The time you leave it matters a good deal
I like to leave the wine a good length of time
Then you know you have a decent brew
and produce quite a cheeky little wine.

Of course if you want the sparkle
it is not that much work or trouble
Want a fizz to blow the cork sky high
Make you see double with the bubble?

Add extra yeast or at least that's what I do
oh yes you are left with quite a fantastic beast
spread it on toast and float on the surface
looks disgusting and it will be a frothy yeast.

But whatever the weather whatever the tide
you are sure to have sometime to decant
Whether it will make the neighbours talk
you have produced something significant.

Pour them a drop of the old plonk
bottoms up, see you soon and good old cheers
Its fantastic this home made brewing idea
the best home made brew in years.

When my father asked me what the basis of our relationship was,
I couldn’t give him an answer. Now, as the aftertaste of it -
that bitter tang of overripe mandarins -  
Sits heavy under my tongue and on my teeth,  I can say,
it’s because I love fruit.
I saw you,  
faded and frail, in early winter.
Had seen the promise of sweet giving, of tired roots aching for warmth,
waiting.
You had tried to cut yourself down,
so I became your giving tree.
I tended to you, gave you many of my firsts.
In a way, so did you. At least that’s what you told me.
You had promised me growth.
That you would tend to me
As I did you. That we would create our own harvest.
Apple orchards, cherry blossoms, bountiful vineyards.
I had taken your word to heart.
It was sweet, cloying nectar.  
I let it smother me, sink into my skin.
Let it seep into my veins.
Let it ferment.
I was drunk on your touch, worshipped
the saccharine velvet of your skin,
Like supple nectarines.
You didn’t mind the gentle scrape of teeth
or nails, of wandering lips, my curious hands teasing, testing.
Tracing the ink outlines of sacred swirls and ancient patterns
Adorning an ignorant and undeserving left arm.
Nor did you mind the growing rift, the root rot festering,
the mandarins that were left out on the counter on those hot nights,
the fruit fly that fed on them.
You could not be bothered to bat the fly away.
Worst of all, you forgot to mention
Orange never quite suited you.

the earth wrapped me in her green grape leafs, gave me nectarines for eyes, and a lightning bolt for lips,
Implanted smooth river rocks for hips,
Drift wood for thighs, and every seed known to man kind for a smile,
We are made of nature.

~

On borrowed steps of distant stars
~



Of broken branch and multi-colored stone façade
the pathway steals my outward glance
Winding through the cottage hills
like kite string freed by a strong wind, it spills
Patterns shadow in abstract array
through barbed wire and solid steel
barricades, creating menacing shapes,
criss-crossing narrow wheel ruts of long ago


“I tug my trousers in defiance and set my pace”


Obstacles, of stead and stood,
branded in a wilting wood…
directions carved to empty me of all I know as good


Within my chest sits a living compass,
beating my quest in a never ending melody,
sweet as creamed corn pie and pointing
towards the sun, which sits before me
two hills above the horizon on this new day
Temptation beckons over my right shoulder,
whistling in the breeze of delicious
offerings, and I do hunger…


“Still I stand firm of my journey back to your love”


Take your glow of nectarines
Cool refreshing summer streams
For I shan’t waver, not an inch, her love calls in my dreams

Midday, as the solar glow finds my shoulders red
and sweat clings like life in dampened conclusions,
blisters form bringing the pain of decisions made before…
and I would have it no other way…for this I deserve
Mountains faced of jagged stone break my crawl,
rubble sweeps my feet, as my knees bleed,
thirst speaks in the language of a long feared enemy…
yet I do not listen…


“No challenge shall be placed that will keep me from my return to you”


State your case in hammered stone
Tear my skin of broken bone
No tethered vines of loneliness shall sway me from my home



My shadow now waits before me, long and slender,
molded by dried weathered foot prints…my foot prints,
heading a direction opposite my heart
Many years old yet still their outline remains as a warning…
When I see it, the lilac arbor, scented in old desires and
new in life, encasing a glow, melodies of  gold finch sing
as my eyes find your smile, an extended hand, a soft touch
I have found my way home…


“My sweet love, this heart begs forgiveness and longs you eternally”


Mistakes I’ve made, my journey far
on borrowed steps of distant stars
my every waking dream desires to be right where you are

a robin came to bring spring but i stole her away.
i kept her locked inside of a cage with one small hole
and every day i sang to her.
the songs were all about you,
young and new and sweet as nectarines.

we both breathed the same air but i sneezed at her affections.

one day i laid her soft by the open window
winter's breeze fading into something new
the light caught her eyes,
and i wept as she crawled back into her cage.