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Andreas Peter Jun 2018
Sunrise
I've barely slept
My hours are too short and too few
and I have better things to do
Like sit
and watch my sunrise
come dancing tipsy through the door at 05:36
in all her morning splendour, sending smiling sunshafts in amongst the leaves of peacefully sleeping lilies
Laughter sparkling over the surface of a glass of water,
she settles snug and warm against my chest
Colouring now a hint of dusk and clouds
followed now by slightly furrowed rainy brows
Still her warmth seeps further in
and she holds me tight
flame flickers, and a deep breath
preparing
to tell me of the coming night
Jonathan Surname Aug 2018
In the afternoon of a Sunday evening, all painted
in the dust lingered in sunshafts, a giant
though smaller in person, entered my life.

She spoke in common prosaic, until she didn't.
And when the sunshaft lowered itself as sun did
in the evening horizon; so did her native naivety.

She met once, or more, a man who with hands,
acted as God. And in her life he swelled around
her heart a strangling deluge. Inundation of temptation.
Regret like the pirouette of dust as faltered in dusk.

By now I saw her stature as looming shadow,
and in moonlight I read her leylines.
Runed with the abuse of self and worth a penny more,
than the collection plate gathered at friend's expenses.

I watched a stumble in her walk that never molested her gait.
In her a sprezzatura, and finally, a person deserving of the word.

She woke me with a lantern, once, and pointed to the halo--
the beam encircled as accretion disk, the darkness pulled
and we were the gravity.
And so danced the dust, again.

As of many thoughts, and her my imagination, she had to leave.
A must. A certainty. And I will never be the same.
With each stitch I sew, forevermore, her will shall exist braided within.

Somewhere in the sinews of my chasm breaths beats in pace with love.
Saudade creeps into the same cavern, now darkening;
sonatas with no moon,
shafts with no dust,
art with no art.
Jonathan Surname Aug 2018
Her eyes shake in her sleep.
Is she awake or is she dreaming?
Dare I ask her and bother to interrupt?
No, I'll wait for her to naturally wake up.

It's so loud in the nighttime. The silence is deafening.
The hums of the refrigerator,
air conditioner,
the small city rurality.
Crickets chirp like frog croaks,
dogs bark at bicycle spokes.

She murmurs in her dreams, words that make no sense.
Completely static expressions leave me in wanting suspense.

I wonder where she is now.
Blurry confines of pianoforte,
soft & loud,
like our bed sheets and pillow tops.
Comfort without a sound.

Sleep for her is an ease within which she slips carefully.
She wakes with dreams and stories, descriptions bare
vividly her soul for me to sip.
She happily spends a third of her life having the plaque
of her mind scraped fresh and waking anew.
From the autumn dusk to the spring dawn,
the drying evening to the morning dew.
I sit here awake planning out a future based on days long past.
Watching as dust lingers in the first reminders of sunshafts.

Have you ever watched a loved one wake up from a gentle kiss?
Feeling guilt in the hope of having her wake with your wish?
Seeing the smile split her lips wide and her eyes linger longer
as if she had been worried in her sleep that you had forgot her.

I was always here in the nighttime making sure you were safe.
I'm sorry I fell asleep on you while you were still awake.
But I saw your eyes and they were thriving in their shake.
I assumed you were dreaming, my darling.
Now I'm left with guilt and shame.
one more month and another year lived

Summertime series
Charles Huschle Jun 2018
When I walked in the room
you were gone half an hour:
dust-motes hanging in hospital sunshafts,
the words I'd prepared tumbling in air.

IV, EKG, blood pressure cuffs
hung slack on a steel mast in the corner.  
On your white berth, you were a frigate,
unmoored from her pier.

Your hand curled in the sheet. I charted
the scape of your body: gnarled knees, wave
of hammer toes, and the pale scars
of skin grafts, oyster smooth.

The nurse had closed your eyes.
Your chin pulled the word of your mouth
to your clavicle; this was the sound
of a cave,  or your breath on rock.

You lingered in the white and silver
room the way fathers do, hesitating to
leave their children before a long journey:
the warmth of your sternum under my rocky cheek bone.

In the 4 o'clock luster of
Indian River sun
my face is black as  bog-turf,
sloppy with life.

— The End —