Her orchards I often dream,
buries of my eye,
lost in my fairy book
of beaten pages,
of sunken tears and of mind.
I kept turning the pages, racing,
racing,
looking for her,
between the lines,
now gone,
gone ... are those
lovely high hanging trees,
elegant and so berried,
swaying and smiling,
her,
her saintly smile,
haunting,
yet shadowing me forever
in my mind.
Each page turned, a sad tear falls
deep and deeper,
for the pages are blank.
Her absence ferreting out
blackness,
skeletons and silhouettes,
the pages turning,
weeping ...
my heart pains
for the book of love
unwritten and unfinished.
The wishing well of ink unspent.
Her essence forever corked
from my heart ...
I now lay arrest,
peas in a pod,
aberration and distortion,
for
lovely those high hanging trees,
elegant and so berried,
gone.
Sullenly the music plays
to a different song.
Indelible was happenstance,
our chance encounter,
a special one at that,
puzzlement lays a longer shadow
... of why she walked,
without any words.

Logan Robertson

11/09/17

There are those days best forgotten
In solemn silence all begotten
Comes fear and fire
and all that's rotten
In what seems
suddenly ..to be
my lot in life

Life is lived in cost-conscious revisions
Applied like mud poultices
Upon all daily impositions
Inclined to find
the weakest point
in the structure
Eating at you
in silent observation
Of your salient need for salvation as it ***** your
soul
Into the void
where all lost causes
Seek redemption
For all wasted time unspent
In cost - conscious
Solemn silence
When fear and fire
And all things rotten
Were what should
have been forgotten
Instead of all that
you left
unbegotten

1
We are the folly,
Of youth, of life, of desire,
Adrift in mem'ry.

2
Where are they now, those
Rebels and dashing killers,
Chameleon kids.

3
They are all but grown,
Lost in a world undesigned,
Far from the school yard.

4
Still we look behind,
Towards the hills and beaches,
To days of summer.

5
Beneath an ocean,
Of stars and passing airplanes,
And a flash of Dawn.

6
Lead me to your stream,
Let me bathe in your water,
Float among the reeds.

7
Can you recall this?
Can you return to summer,
To asphalt fire?

8
She brings me to bed,
She strokes my hair, kissed my cheek,
And falls straight to sleep.

9
Now is then, and we
Drift back to days of summer,
Loathe to come back home.

10
'Twixt fields of amber,
Desert flowers in full bloom,
You danced beside me.

11
Were we so blinded?
Were we not the chosen few,
Destined for great things?

12
Alas, who can say,
If I or you are objects
Of beauty and worth?

13
You felt sun's embrace,
You heard wind's calm minuet,
You tasted sky's rain.

14
Who are you to love,
To tremble at awkward touch,
To sigh at brief gaze.

15
We were but children,
In tall grass, 'neath broad branches,
Through days of summer.

16
Oh sea, quiet surf,
In your hands I place my trust,
Guide me to the shore.

17
Porches of old wood,
Adorned with ancient varnish,
Painted eggshell white.

18
Be still, my lover,
Go where you may in spring time,
But return to me.

19
I remember those days,
Those hours of glee, of triumph,
Those seconds of joy.

20
Are they now all gone?
Are we left to pick at bones,
Of former glory?

21
Mother and father,
Brother, sister; all are here,
All are as one, free.

22
You knew me so well,
Took my failings as virtues,
My flaws gilded bright.

23
I knew you so well,
I dreamt of light and music,
A place you might love.

24
A tree once stood here,
Steadfast, elder traveller,
Now gone to new plains.

25
We made fire at night,
We pitched tents, drew pale portraits,
We lived as blithe lords.

26
Abandoned sea shells,
Stones so round they roam the beach,
A polymer bag.

27
I kept you so close,
Cleared the brush so you may lie,
Swept hair from your smile.

28
Night comes sooner, swift,
An eager rider, employed
With grim vocation.

29
Why must we now go?
Why do you see fit to leave,
With so much unspent?

30
You may not recall,
My face, my touch, my sorrow,
Yet I recall yours.

31
Still I look behind,
Towards the hills and beaches,
To days of summer.

An unfenced field
of memories awoken ,
frozen pastel flowers
color fast ,
though fading
on borrowed time

A one-way footpath
disappears unencumbered
between the snowdrifts
leading across
the winter stilled
iced up creek bed ,
coursing a path
of least resistance
destiny unknown

Changing tawny petals
scatter like potpourri ,
fallen collateral
in the aftermath
a beautiful dream's
passing light

Pressed and dried
memories buried
under dog-eared  
tear-stained pages
black topiaries
that grow in the dark

Redemption unbid
and unwelcome,
earthen mineral rights
surrendered unspent ,

Natural order
decomposing
reclamation ,
chilled to the marrow

A scorned lover’s
bated breathe
bared ink unspoken,

Unbidden laments
eerily betokened
in an unseen
netherworld ,
undeniable ,  yet
bashfully remarkable

I see the frosty
fogged breath
that repents
in choral dialect ,   
speaking in known
tongue , with
the absolvable voice
of a bitter cold wind


*wind is the wind .... December 20. 2016

I can see what I need
And I can my own evil seed
But the breed I am apart of
Wants nothing to do with me

I exhale into the Autumn wind
Always trying to love and not be unkind
For the whisper in this chilled decree
Leaves me motionless in their eyes
As I try to hold my breathe to a stifle a cry

My heart is nothing but a lost bottle
Upon a sea that roams like lost cattle
Can't you see that life is the only battle?
And at midnight the last gun will be fired,
Where only the politicians will be left to tattle

They show me to an open sore
That once was beating to the core
But now there is nothing
But the hallow belief
That life was so much better before

Don't let me see you the way you truly are
There is nothing more that you can say
And our love is worth nothing that you can pay
So take me far from this place, a spot far and away
I promise to you that in this life
I'll meet your eyes, fight, and to stay

Where and when the magic magicians in their multi-colored hats
Near underneath heated brows colored in black
And blue cows take rest in their prejudiced unspoken
And unwoven lies where rebels lay dead in unspent graves
Touching the saved' on moistened foreheads memorized in their
Histories whose books beam with the light of the forgiven dead
Who still feel the weight of never truly being washed - Oh' lo' the dirt
In all its Earthly liberty that makes us human when We die for the final time

Can you see the tide?
The oceans lapping with the
Western wind in full blow?

I touch my face in the setting moon
And realize it be not mine, but a man
Or woman in another time, close to me
Like a sister or brother, but the bother
Is not within me, but in the currents of
The blind froth of an ocean that only
Has itself to bring forth; for the misery of
Man is forever in bloom and the break down
Of our song is has always stalled to come along

The bleak mud of the winter sludge
Permanent misfortunes of anything specific
Blank pavement in foreign uninterested faces
Spelling to me that every letter they ever knew
Was taught wrong and never seen with an eye
And the price to pay was with a forbidden fee
That the cost was to take a new born life
From a future that would never have the chance to dream

I touch the tip of the ice berg
In a dream from another world
Where I knew myself from another self
And the dusty shelf
Was just another part of myself

Each numbered book
With a title I could not read
Was instead a picture whose faded faces
Brought me quick
To other familiar places

I've been to this place and
I've tasted this air
And though I do not bend
In high and crooked despair
I know that I have stepped upon this Earth before
And that this surf
Is not far from where I first hurt
In previous snore

Breaking in laughter
The sun breaks through my smile
And the miles
And the trials
And million dollar piles
Of oh ' so few that makes
The rain split and fall
So the drop
Makes the crop

Watch its step
Until I finally
See that I
Need
To

Stop.

Of all the lands I've roamed till now,
I find my love in these
In the voices that I've come to know
Floating gently as the breeze

So calm and clear, the waters now
Of my restless crashing soul
To you, my friends, I give my heart
Which you all so kindly stole

For all the times we've lost ourselves
And been saved along the way
May we raise a glass for the times we've spent
Growing fonder every day

As grains of sand within that glass
Fall slowly to an end
There'll be no time I leave unspent
With the greatest of my friends

So as long as you are on my mind
I will keep you in my heart
At each journey's end there are more to come
Just waiting for their start

She was delicate- even if it was in the slightest sense of the word.

Her world was formed from torn edges of paper, hand-coated in resin to hold itself together.

And leaning in,
I can start to notice the burns fingerprinted on her where the past infringes with the present.

But any heartache seems to only create
unspent passion.
Because when she was carved it was with
too much hip and bone,
too much fire in her veins
and smooth amber in her eyes.
Too much straight-backed confidence,
too much of everything
and not enough
all at once.

Tracing the lines would be an exquisite pain;
touching her but only feeling warmth, where it should be a sun on your fingertips

As if she's just out of reach..

but god, I don't want her to be.
I’ll run myself to the ground before I let the embers of us burn out.

she smears
******
no. 1
over her scarlet lips
her fingers
catching
on the tears
of her fishnet stockings

kicking off
her high heels-
the ones the butcher
used to wear
when dealing with blood-
replacing them
with the feel
of the Earth
against her sole

hair lowered
innocence
removing the stain
of want
from her eyes
and filling
the windows of her soul
like the unspent tears
the girl with the scarlet lips
would never weep