Rapture

 

...so I stand here staring,

at a savage moon,
with an angel
on my shoulder, a reminder
of you in my pocket,
a devil’s mask,
taken and drawn
from a lonesome vat of
heaven and silk-light,
flown
like a kite,
in the moment I notice,
that I miss you
tonight, as a grounded yacht
misses
the ocean, and I drive
through the waves to a door
that is open on both sides;
a looking glass;
where I take your hand,
and pull you down
in the grass, to blanket
a stream with tales of the
past and the present and the
yet to come,
with the flames of fever
still red as the sun’s last
passion on a summer’s eve
and I climb to the mountain’s
summit, too lost
in rapture
ever to leave.

The Rosebud

You told me once,

something in you
was sleeping…and that I
had awoken
some depth of meaning in days
you had forgotten
was there…
 
Not so, darling,
I simply
set you off dreaming
again,
and helped you remember
how it felt to remain in the freedom of more
open than shut,
to possibility…
 
…and the more you showed me
all your frailties,
and the deepest scars of your wars,
the more I wanted
just to claw all the bad things off.
I gave you the beauty that you longed
to roll in; and the more I witnessed
something holy,
and beckoning,
grow fertile in your eyes…
 
So you see,
I didn’t wake you…
only came along,
and pulled off your disguise,
to show the world
the most exquisite truth…
 
Credit me none, my phoenix,
for what rose (already in bloom)
was all and only
precious,
and beautiful
you.   

Invisible Cracks

Inspired by a Writers' Group Task for the Leeds Savage Club

We try to pretend

it is just the same;
that we look at each other, still,
in that way…
…how we used to,
when we couldn’t
get enough.

We whisper in corners now,
I sigh,
and you huff, and I’m sure
we never did that
before…

But we close our eyes
and draw the curtains,
on things uncertain, untrue,
or exposed;
we wrinkle up our delicate noses,
and ignore the smell of frustration…

for where once we were
love-doctors to all,
in denial,
somehow, we became
the patients.

Rotation

So I find myself in love

with these open fields
and distant thoughts of the
beautiful steel I’ll ride through them,
some day;
with ever-increasing
open space, emptied,
and evenings filled,
with fire and sevens, and a boneyard of nines,
and all the dove-tailed, gentle time in the world
just to be.
 
Will you share them with me?
Those nights? Still?
On summer days when the filtered light will fade
more slowly to its rightful place
in your embered eyes.
 
And will you sit by me then, and smile?
Hold out your hand as you do tonight?
When I am no longer neat,
and tight, and frozen in bloom?
Will my name yet resound
through
the glittering, gaping
chambers of you and our country mile?
 
When a full rotation of the world has gone by,
and all the stars have lost their shine; like beetles,
on their backs, in the mud,
I wonder,
would you,
will you,
still, make me yours?
Still fight for me through griffins’ claws, and I for you?
 
I rub the glass now,
fairytale mirror…
show the future; what of
we two?