Xylophone emerald beaming
It's supersonic lulls of scenery, my rockery

Rock salt for rockery of ice in my garden
When transcendence saw coincidence

Depravity in the xylophone emerald city garden
Where deck chairs are unperson
Where music isn't in space
Where colour is affected by

The person whom opens the backdoor
Oh my rockery, frozen in time
With death and other negative criteria.

Geopolitics.

Stepping through the rockery but going round and round
We'll know our way both there and back if told to hold this ground.
For we are on reconnaissance doing what we do,
And once we've reconnoitered here we'll push right through.

Push on through the rockery, treading vital ground.
Ripping out the undergrowth where and when it's found.
Thus any friends that we might have, no matter where or who,
Will understand our willingness to push right through.

And any garden overgrown, encroaching on our border,
With its weeds combined to infiltrate then threaten civil order,
Means friends of ours will cross the sea, yes, to me and you,
To help us **** our rockery so that we might push right through.

Thus our propagated, chosen growth,
By nurtured treaty and by oath,
Will grow to spread, o'erwhelm anew,
Enabling us to push right through.

But looking at the rockery, before they'd send us walking,
Would enable, one would like to think, all the Gardeners talking
About those plants they like to plant, their propagation too.
Nice if, once decided, we'd no need to push on through.

He wanted to know her
he wanted to touch every inch
of her imperfectly perfect skin
to know every scar
to know her tiger stripes
from growth spurts and pregnancy
the pieces of metal left in her
and the dislocated bones
all had their own stories from childhood
the day she was caught on a fence
the tom boy in lace socks
her mum had dressed her in
for Sunday school
the ripped dress as she fell in mud
breaking her right elbow which to
this day left her with a bone pointing out
he wanted to spend days
just looking at her scarred face-
her upper lip – sat in the changing rooms
after a gymnastics competition
playing catch but the bottle of water
went right at her face
her forehead – walking at ten months
trips and falls, she hits her head
on the way down face to face
with the rockery -
incidentally the rockery where the cat
is buried
poor thing was stood on many times
as she was learning to walk
he counts the freckles on her left cheekbone
which on her porcelain skin
shine like Orion’s Belt on a clear night
he loved every part of her she did not
he memorized every feature that made
her “her”
he knew the truth had always been there
right in front of him since the first
time he saw her naked –
her naked soul exposed a long time before
anything he could ever make tangible.

© Sia Jane

2007, revised May 2nd, 2013*

How neatly northerly she points her tail,
With fluffsome front paws pointing to the south;
Whiskers point west and eastwards, without fail,
Each side of her benignly-smiling mouth.

She navigates from rockery to pond
And slyly measures distances ahead,
With whiskers poised, behind a ferny frond,
Waiting to stalk fishes, with stealthy tread.

A water pistol thwarts her cunning scheme,
Fired from the door with some accuracy;
And like one rudely wakened from a dream,
She leaps into the air, and bolts to flee.

But soon her equanimity returns;
She's back smiling at fishes, through the ferns.

The jungles dense down by the fence
with daisies tall as trees,
where butterflies so softly rise
upon the morning breeze.

There's beatles too of green and blue
And ladybugs of red,
plus honey bees with hairy knees
down by the flower bed.

There by the pond beneath a frond 
There sits a mouse of white,
with pirates cap and treasure map
and compass clean and bright.

"Avast!" he cries "the treasure lies
atop mount rockery"
where legends told a land of gold
hides in the shrubbery.

So down at base he spies the face
and slowly starts to climb,
past plastic gnomes with mushroom homes
And bells that softly chime.

With well placed paws and scrabbling claws
he climbed toward the peak,
first left then right and hold on tight
his muscles tired and weak.

The summit found he kissed the ground
and checked the path ahead,
where mossy rocks and hollyhocks
marked out the flower bed.

Amongst the green the temple seen
the legends had not lied,
a few feet more he found the door
and opened it up wide.

The treasure chest lay in a nest
surrounded by eight eggs,
then at his back a shadow black
arose on spindly legs.

"Caw caw" it said it's eyes bright red
"please leave my eggs alone,
the treasure there I'll gladly share"
she spoke in softer tone.

"Nay keep it pray for here today
I've found a better prize,
a brand new friend at journeys end
was such a sweet surprise.

"Now I must go the sun is low
and night now paints the sky,"
"the path ahead is hard" she said
"why walk when you can fly"

So homeward bound he reached the ground
and headed to the shore,
setting afloat his little boat
he waved goodbye once more.

"Time now" he said "to rest my head"
rocked softly by the deep,
upon a bed of cheese and bread
he slowly fell asleep.

As I sit in the sun
surrounded by summers last flowers
in terracotta pots, my mind
fails to share the peace that surrounds it

Restlessness sits like a cloud
immovable in a changing sky
Where lies truth?
Amongst the shadows of this garden

This morning brought the first frost
like a warm blanket it lay
on the grass, on my soul
Is it so stupid to think

That at thirty five years
This chemistry with a teenager
Could indeed be real
and give birth to Felicity

Or does dark delusion
creep over lawn and rockery
To plant its own black seed
in a fertile heart.

The jungles dense down by the fence
with daisies tall as trees,
where butterflies so softly rise
upon a summers breeze.

There's beetles too of black and blue
and orange white and red,
plus bumble bees with hairy knees
out by the flower bed.

Then by the pond beneath a frond
a mouse of purest white,
takes from a sack his hat and mac
a sword and compass bright.

Today he seeks the jagged peaks
of old mount rockery,
where it is told a land of gold
lays in the shrubbery.

♗  ♗  ♗  ♗  ♗  ♗  ♗

Hopery, changery, stranger-than-strangery
tip the good vicar your hat—
as he sits with Obama, the global Gautama
indulging in neighborly chat.

Popery, popery, changery-hopery
grant the old Pontiff his wish.
Then summon a bishop to season and dish up
a kettle of catechized fish.

Changery, hopery—swing from the ropery,
garnish the Vatican stew.
The Cardinals compassed, the media rumpused
the Protestants joined in, too…

Fakery, changery, safety in dangery
lack of direction was lost
as it became clear that no concord was near
and the threshold of lunacy crossed.

Changery-hopery, soap-on-a-ropery,
buy the Obama a beer.
Let the Lord’s liberation enlighten our nation
as forums and quorums get queer.

Hopery, changery, babe-in-a-mangery
hail the immaculate mess;
until limbo is purged and repentance is urged
and the canonized con-men confess.

Babilo-mockery, roll with the rockery
kiss the pontificate ring;
til’ the old Argentinian wax Constantinian
causing Gods angels to sing.

Jiggery-pokery fooling the folkery
monkery second to none…
what was once sacrilegious is now a religious
conventional focus of fun.

Papacy, lunacy piping the tunacy
Father goose mothered the egg –
but it cracked in the nest while the stupefied West
lit a match to a gunpowder keg.

Yessiree/nopery—smoking the dopery
opiates dulling the masses
who bow genuflecting, with candles reflecting
the shine of their Latinate *****.

Fakery funkery, pachyderm trunkery
hierophants never forget
but the clown and his trainer cut loose the restrainer
and cancelled the circus’s debt.

Piggery, smokery, tighten the chokery
offer the refugees bacon;
their mullahs may howl with a slaughterhouse scowl
but the empire’s free for the takin’…

They collected cockles on the seashore,
Purely for their crunchy shells,
To decorate the rockery, in the flower garden,
They were washed up in abundance,

The rock pools alive with shrimp things,
And worms, that wriggled and jiggled, all twisted and turned.
The rocks round the edges were slippery and slimy,
Crabby creatures were kind of nippy, as was the water of spring time tides,
And the **** of the sea, predicted the weather,
Again, their predictions, they were never ever right.

Youngsters with nets, collected their pets,
Poor little pool fish, destined to die,
In an old preserve jar,
Left on the side in the kitchen,
The one with mid-brown melamine,
Under the cupboard, by the door,
Mummy keeps *******,
She never wants sea fish alive in her kitchen,
Mummy never made their flamboyant offspring, set them free,
The fishes day out died,
Minute silver things, skirting about,
Too small to even splash.
Kids curiosity got them, as down the loo they slipped,
Dead fish, on the sewer dash, repatriated to the sea.
(C) Livvi

The cliffs totter as they fall into the sea.
Near silent cove hides secret rock pools.
Revealed  only as tide dispersed.
Scattered pebbles rotund.
Shiny, worn into seas virtual jewels.
Find sometimes a flattened one, an oddity.
Perceived monotone stones lay silent, almost sullen.
A scrutiny of eyes close up.
Reveal cold visage.
Hard cold features, static.
The young ones come with parents in tow.
Collect a few before they go.
Discharged duty of suffering waves lash.
Shower of rain will sometimes wash.
To a rockery in the garden those precious stones are relocated.
Memories of a trip to the beach perfectly recreated.
(C) LIVVI  2014

The spell of the folding star
Fortells the line of beauty
As the unknown becomes
The hammock and the
Broken knot the post

Cloud pink above the rockery
Grey fingers of twilight too
Resolving into the nooks
Across paths as ideas seen
Not given a chance to bloom

mirage of bogus camaraderie
the chuckle of doppelgänger without a brain
as putrid pond in rancid rockery
shimmering shallow and inane

ad-lib cracks of demagogue
as soporific croaks of puffed-up frog
cheered on by gnomes struck deaf 'n dumb
stuck to rock with chewing-gum

seeking to propitiate hectoring masses
with bevy o' platitudes like banal molasses
dripping treacle-like, with facile devotion
as petroleum leaks on rotting ocean

Ode For Palestine

Where does one go to find
a peace, in place of scorn

When all the stones are
thrown, and at them sworn

Why has our rockery become,
their wall obstructing morn

What desert rose can live,
if sunlight’s not being born.

      
                          
.                 Judas Tree              

                                
     One day when the leaves of

   empire vacate its tree, skeletal

   branches and a bark-less trunk

will be wondering if it was autumn.

                    Shhhhhh

        “ Its roots were pruned "

The children are
like flowers in a rockery
climbing between the
crevices, unbleached
And wildly colorful,
made a-livened by the sun.
They wear out
toward dusk when
the sea has been
painted flat.
Then, hard wooden bowls
and their light soup.
Breaking the baked bread
with stories of their day.
They will become craftsmen
the way they weave
their tales.
They don’t worry.
Jumping from
a springboard with
eyes closed, to
spin in the air,
and enter sleep.