small departures
...
Middle morning
of a day much like the many,
but nonetheless that takes the breath –
green shade bounds the blue
and the ready call of the wren is fitting here, with this:
a moment tender pressed
for what has passed …
From where to descend
down the worn and roughed step
and across a path that leads to rest.
.
Until it falls
and now frozen, caught
by a moment’s thought from whence to stare
at the dare waiting …
that you are forced to wear.
Where need wins out, reaching low
forcing you back here, with a glance –
of such weight,
in which to pause,
red-faced.
And forever to race
at me …
.
waiting, 96
...
By the 96-line waiting,
rattling steel moves the many,
where amidst tongues wagging and shifting
comes the colours –
full and charged in the waning sun
moving on and me.
.
To where, I’ll never know,
the colour of the shell like snow,
but not biting, instead burning
at something deep, forcing back
the weighted din of the madding stack
that tapers …
.
To blood orange, fall the waves
that frame the snowy shores for me.
Wherein moored pools of evergreen,
to catch my straying, passing eye
from gaze afar,
bathe my mind so sweetly.
.
Thin cherry waits not far below,
pursed ripe and tight against the air,
and suggestive of a sharpened tongue,
used for play and dare –
where I should dance and find
a boy more loud.
.
But, alas, the bell invades
drawing forth the homebound wave,
and your blackened weave with ready feet
withdraws with a glimpse fading –
at least from the iris,
everlasting the hue.
.
…
piercing
...
I would sink into this flesh,
piercing with ivory white to bare
the laced milk of beginnings –
sapling blood flowing,
immersing the all of me
with a ripeness.
.
…
i / us
...
White dashes burn,
cold and calculated on the surface,
measuring the way to what is known.
Striking out along the bitumen, at a part of me,
little markers of memory
meant to guide, divide
those moving in opposite directions.
.
It’s beautiful there
back where the green holds sway, at least for now;
though I hope it always will be so.
But there is a painful whisper in retracing,
the familiar now divided
between the ‘I’ and the ‘us’ …
A stop sign waiting.
.
Certain turns turn against me –
a patch of grass, for a minute ours
now, unwanted, devours.
Not only with black, there is certainly light
that I would hold onto,
but I was always more for night.
Which we both knew …
.
…
paradox
...
You are the centre point –
yellow star burning fierce, flooding with a fiery depth
Consuming of the dark, of others
with a fulsome light
to behold wondrous, terrible
gifted in flight
.
Light giver to orbiting souls
augmenting
searing those drifting, reaching out to immerse
ignorant to their peril
scorched and lasting marked
with verity, something hard
.
Radiant, promising
and by a power, effect uncertain
The searing paradox of you
of want, of distance
that will bathe in a frenzied instant
and retreat unto the night
.
Ever will you flame
alight untamed
the sands registering little
Until a day when history beckons
when something missing invades, threatens
and then, bright star, feel this …
.
…
park
...
a sparrow darts the grey
redolent of a then fevered heart,
the racing pulse of when
.
reaching out to the air,
invisible plays across the fingertips
with the subtle fire of your telling curve
.
where raindrops kiss, and falling
through drowsy depths to a languid hour –
each strike of wetted lips
.
shifting leaf, whispering,
calling forth the shared rhythm,
the carnal quiver of quickened breath
.
brimming with fervour,
the dampened bed shadows
the zeal-drenched sheets of singing night
.
returned through earthy scent
laced and imbued with the essence
of rise and fall upon the crest
.
where waits a primrose flower
unfolded to the warm spill of sun –
a shaft of giving light
.
…
Mt Cook
...
Powdered sugar seeks out every crack and crevasse,
unnumbered tears flow –
tumbling from a source unseen,
a mirror held to ruddy eyes,
the falls cold piercing clean.
.
Deep, swift and green-blue waters lace –
pranced and pure the lapping mile,
upon the valley a ribbon smile.
Sand gathers there now the more
to hold the deep at bay
forever more.
.
Sun ripens green and alights the river wild –
lily-white flower scores the way,
the petalled tears of passing day.
And sweetly played from pinnacle to pine,
the vestal wind
proves a giving clime.
.
Though broken glacier gathers, humbled at the bearing feet –
pieced together as an erstwhile lover.
Release it from the crown-ed peak
to break the heavens,
to rent asunder.
.
…
this nothing
...
In the fracture of sun
and drowning blue of barren sky,
the easy shift of leaf on breeze, whispering …
find rising blood:
a charge released through vein, seeping into bone;
the breath pinned,
and release a giving sigh.
.
Where a lightness comes
to rest amongst the hemispheres
and fill the self with texture –
a hand running across the weathered surface,
feeling each grain, reading every score
finds tangible the suggestion,
that this should not be questioned.
.
But drawn with breath –
neurons mad-dashing,
electrified and pregnant with spirit, with a fire
that burns at effigies,
and amidst the embers rests
a defining heat.
.
Spoken in images,
sounds, scent and touch:
the rain drop sliding slowly from a supple leaf;
the tears of a widow wept to dark.
And in each fragment can it be found,
the essence of this …
this nothing.
.
…
on a wednesday
...
Flower folds whisper,
undulating like a fabric sea
of waves that strike heavy
on that part of the mind that imagines –
gives form to want, to a fire.
.
Alight across the way,
blue discs of a colour fierce
and shape embracing, engulfing –
brimming waters deep,
pregnant rivers that elucidate …
.
In sweeping moves graceful
that close the space between –
a gentle arch curves to a nervous touch,
the hollow of which is elaborate and smooth:
echoing the complexities of this …
.
This rhythm infused
with a shared energy –
a desired state –
which evocates the interweaving hour,
the dawn of something shared:
a budding flower.
…
desire
...
We are the breath
caught and born from the burning hand designed,
trailed as a chance.
Searing flesh is our clime
and the temper of our silence:
ruddy marks transmissions between,
muted stars to be divined.
.
We are the iris
glistening, a wetted convex of want converging,
lacing each gesture, action, with a meaning desired.
Aberrations radiate
with the energy of suns,
but cast no light to refract our waves,
nor the gathering tide between.
.
We are the beat
quickened, striking hard at the cage,
reaching out for a counter rhythm,
for an echo of self in the mirror waves.
Our proximity brings a race,
a ventricular rush
that masks us from the cloud.
.
We are the thought,
idyllic, conjured in the witching hour;
held as a beacon in darkest night –
a virgin flower.
The image of which may ripple on the mirror face
but in reflection remain –
such dreams eternal resonate.
.
For we are …
.
…
patriarch
...
Today I learnt of his end.
Of the notches left to make in the wood,
the boxes left to mark on the calendar –
the one with a dog somehow smiling as it plays with a favoured bone,
laughing at me it seems,
at this.
Not that he is much marked,
he that was my creation,
given the way the river has turned, twisted
that which is between us.
The way we have twisted it,
let it run its course.
It cannot be removed,
cannot be cut from his core.
Ultimately, it will claim us all:
all is cancerous,
and will give way to the hourglass without warning or design,
mere sand passing through the fingers of He.
Whoever he is …
Whatever this is …
And how will I think on him come thereafter?
It may be he measures as little there as now,
or maybe become something more, something missed.
No …
Wait …
He is already missed –
is a mist to me,
a faint feeling that falls on the iris all too briefly.
Is a husk of what I would know,
and thus am I.
The son.
…
detect my light
...
Detect my light;
wire the optics
unto your own
visual field
and neural paths.
Walk there amongst
the image bulbs;
a fading rose,
or budding bloom.
If only for
a circadian rhythm,
a fleeting glimpse
of another shore.
At best a stemma
of fractured angles,
redacted light;
a suggestive glean,
unlikely though it seems.
In truth like groping
an aberration web,
of sticky strings,
which ring familiar
but never conceive.
More Braille lines
for senseless hands,
as none divine
another’s slant.
…
tea at 10
...
Brewing with a morning sun,
aimless parries for the run.
A synthetic front,
with her and him
and him and her;
a common thing …
This stall unto the drudging march,
reflected by a steaming green –
rings of dancing crystal light
frame a dancing tongue
and punching lips,
frozen by the sun.
In something that is not ours;
there is no “us”,
nor should there be.
But for a moment she is wonder,
it is everything,
that, fleeting, life could mean.
…
emotion
...
A gentle tide lapping,
seemingly peaceful and placated,
sifts the hourglass sands with searching fingers –
working deeper against the coastline.
.
And the shoreline frays,
giving way to a gathering swell
of dormant currents and the telling tow,
thought lost in a timely fog.
.
Now driving up and over,
from gentle whisper to writhing wave,
the white water lashing with a fury;
a whip and crack of memory tide seething.
.
And on the waves broken,
the flooding tears pass out to sea
to rest upon the sands of Ceylon,
amidst illusions of reverie.
.
…
one night stand
...
Fleeting seems the bud,
the giving bloom,
the neural charge we’d hold on to.
For nectary call, once succoured sweet,
renders recollection obsolete.
The fire of flower,
a stem-curved spine,
arching back along the line
of kisses left by the whispered dawn,
is quickly gutted and forlorn.
By the inching hand,
the glare of suns,
that mark the way the days are spun.
And with the passing of waxing moon,
the moment passes, and soon will you.
…
us
...
Decayed and dry in the vase,
a shadow of the former, now insipid –
no line or curve inspires want,
no inhalation will wake the neurons
nor fire the nerve impulse,
in light of the history.
Cracked petals once strong
and vibrant yet supple in their pose,
alluring and of a sweet scent,
now bend in the reflection of tepid waters beneath –
drank deeply through root and stem,
that once fed sweetly a beauty replete.
Clouded and black,
gritted with the bilge and grist of passing
and no longer fit for the thirst;
still it is drawn and succoured
though it renders no relief,
only adds to the dearth.
Ghosting in the glass, reflexive,
a telling image remains within each pane,
the forms blurred calling to the fore a glimpse:
of the blooming time,
love budding divine;
when flowers spake of she.
…
Sombre colours of autumn leaves drifting.
A world brought to life by a whipping wind.
The glimmer of wetted leaves in the sun.
The splash of droplets on the bitumen.
Melodic call of a dancing sparrow.
A farmer’s lonely rusting barrow.
All speak unto me …
Such is this.
…
swimming
...
Wading into the shallows,
echoes drift away on the surface, spreading,
fracturing the blue and white mirrored –
sound bands wandering out
in a whisper of you
question on the shore.
Strands of auburn cascade upon the shoal,
dancing on the mirror face.
Liquid lines that morph into the waters,
aqueous curves that satiate
every sense and pulse,
and the questions cease.
…
