We fought to keep our balance
as the island burned around us

Tears mixing with the waves
like unbottled messages
sent to speak our sorrow to other shores

Beulah gave out
Blossoms this spring
As big as sunflower heads.
They entwined the branches
Like the ribbon enclosing an expectant shower gift.
It's fragrance was the extract
Of an unbottled aroma
That is the Magnolia tree.
I rooted her in the yard
Four years ago.
She is iridescent for a brief time
Past mid Spring.
She has many Springs to go
Above the green growth below;
Many seasons beneth
The blue Summer skies above;
During the Autums ahead,
When I am dead,
And colder than Winter snows
Below her;
She will be there.
Rooted with care.

Used to use drink to get out of my head
But these days there are less conversations.

Now when I drink, it's just me and my dread;
"Out of my head" is out on vacation.

From the beginning, the lesson has always been the same
to never rest responsibilities on no brow but mine,
and this counts for movement, creation,
production, prosperity,
repercussion,
function, and gumption.

All the times I am attached,
I am blessed and protected and cured,
but by all means,
it's too easy.

After a honeymoon's worth,
like any wild thing
without a real home,
I scratch to go outside.

For one truth being the weight of my footsteps,
and with each placement a wealth of self-reliance,
surely I'm prouder than any motor.

And most of all,
to greet the night as I greet the day,
I accept my stillness,
my unbottled moment,
which dictates I may breathe
the freedom to reap my bounty.

An apple a day keeps the doctor away
The number thirteen is unlucky, they say
But what do they know as they kneel, as they pray?
Very little, or so I suspect.

To know one does not is to follow a path
Down which Socrates travelled through Plato's remarks
In a dialogue 'twixt many men playing parts
In a drama we cannot reject.

The orchid expresses a *******'s tresses
He yields to a woman's flosculous caresses
Her petals wilt down as the flower undresses
With a perfume unbottled, unkempt.

The covers they rise and the muscles they twist
The lovers meet under a treacherous tryst
Yet nothing prepared for the moment they kissed
And their eyes met with love heaven-sent.

"Loco! Loco!" they bray, wanting neatness to stay
Tidied rooms, closing doors as they're lost by the way
Through which others have carried us day after day
And they're bowing, conforming to norms.

For it's hard when you're scarred to not simply be harmed
By the things that they show you when you are unarmed
By the people you see being not formed but farmed,
Staring blankly with evident scorn.

And just like that
Like after
The snap
Of a hypnotist's fingers,
I hear a sound
That I had never
Noticed before,
The silence of her absence
A distinct sort of restless void
Not only around me
But from within
Between every pounding
Beat of my heart,
The awareness
That after her
I could never again
Be alone and happy,
Just a sort of mild
Soapy kind of sadness
Lingering between
The rustlings and creaks of nature
And my artificial attempts
To drown out my solitude
Until she comes around again
My favorite song,
All the sweetness of sound
Unbottled from her laughter...

APAD13 - 141  © okpoet

Bronze to purple to red to greenish-yellow to bronze again
Your kisses wilt into my skin
And- for one final time-
The poison seeps into my veins;
Intoxicated, entranced, and utterly alone
I lay paralyzed
A slow upward climb before inescapable decline.
I watch the rotations of the stone-
I could have sworn it was a boulder-
Rolling from the top of the hill,
Farther and farther and farther still,
Kiss me.
With your antivenom,
Let me be free
To chase it and drag it and push it back up.
But before I lean in and resign
To claw back through the mudslide,
To let each falling tear drop be dried,
To stand tall in white, the blushing bride,
And swallow 3 ounces of unbottled pride (every two to four hours, of course),
I hear my mother whisper.
I catch a glimpse of it in my periphery,
Rolling hills and tranquility,
There it is–
The other side.

And still
My jaw is clenched
And I can feel your
Precarious breath,
Hitting me.
Like
The moment you realize you’ve had one whiskey too many
after you’ve invited that uncanny man
to your apartment.
And it makes me so deranged
I’m not even quite sure
How you can possibly contain the power to make me this
Exhilarated and unsure and electrified
and unbottled.
Every single word that                                                             ­                                                                 ­                      spills out of your mouth,                                                           ­                                                                 ­           
Sounds like the soundtrack to my dreams.
and I cling onto it all, only because
I want to remember every last detail, and
The only sensible excuse I have,
Is that you were my first.

*-andrea

Not of this Earth's manufactured light
but surely of a Heavenly source
steadfastly sparkling and bright
distilled into a perfume that,
unbottled by my trembling fingers
touches my soul
for breathing in starlight
that is born from your love
gives me the oxygen I desire
makes of me a Galaxy
a world apart, eternal, and whole

You Bring Such Beauty and Joy
16 August 2021

You bring such beauty and joy, my life.
Roses your cheeks, green emerald eyes.
Quivering angels wing from your lips,
Kiss your entwining sweet fingertips.
Each day Monet, tinted pink, perfect apple,
Purple iris, lavender, clear pool spring-dappled.
They sing of your truth, the hymn of your love.
Pure white summers, soft feathered doves.
Joyous those thousand magical carpets.
Genius unbottled, impassioned sparkle.
Art of Leonard and Dali found your fine glory.
Authors of history script your sweet story.
Mozart, Chopin, Bach wrote those wined lines,
Music, opera, dance pulsed ever time.
You are each blessing of heaven’s best gifts,
The joy and beauty that my heart sure lifts.
Joy and happiness, you fill all my life.
My precious, amazing. I love you, my wife.

A fleeting yet tender brush of luck
A new face whose structure poses foreign wonder
A worldly woman,
whose frames suggest a commanding authority,
puts people in seats, her prescence priority
Squished eyes paired with your
unchained smile
Unbottled bliss, she gives me this
A butterfly that chooses to rest on your arm or
the sun streaking through select delicate leaves

Scenery suggests her horizons
are unquenched,
uncharted beats
Spin the globe watch it spinning not stopping
Your eyes mapping, beginnings developing
Conquer spirits, I say conquer them all!
Your voice echoes throughout when it's a room not a hall
I have heard your voice
Once
The remainder, blaring and popping
from a record within, the only record
The rest warped beyond comprehension

Your hollowed essence lives on
Weekend residency on my eternity's beach
where dreams shuffle and shout
Approaching me with a hand full of satiable scarlet
Archives from your vineyard or
acquisitions from my persistent parasite
He gnaws
on all reasonable forms of sense left
dizzying upstairs
in the manic untethered halls

Logic's fleet
engages in a hail of doubt and reason
Lovers meet
defined by a wandering fool of a mind
Let me cling onto this deranged dream,
romanticise this idea of
rabid romance and
give us this broad canvas
where I'll scratch and paint our
swan song, lavishly
The coda eases us into the horror
A bow to my creative endeavour and
set sail to sizzle into the pit
of two-bit death, my dear
Our time draws near
The cognitive hands strikes,
lids are now up

This woman is fake
she exists to me in pictures