Madding Monday

(This one's my 'Boiler Poetry' at the moment!)
  
as the sky crept silver
above the battle
they glanced along a vale
of shining diamonds
their faces twinkling with love's golden ghosts
all was silent
hearts afloat
as a secret host of
memory and disaster,
that most remembered
after the glitter
did eat their puzzled souls away,
fell down upon
the spirit of laughter
and they recalled
their beautiful smiles
the other side
of Madding Monday.

The Contents of the Box

written for a Leeds Savage Club Writers' Group task of the same title:

We stood together on Saturday morning,
while you drank coffee in my kitchen,
and we unpacked the contents of the box...
I reached in first, past the day-jobs, and the name-tags
and the novelty socks,
and I pulled out that curve in your back,
(the one that someone should tell you about...)
...and I explained its beauty.

We examined it together, its gentle line,
and I counted the notches in your graceful spine,
before you reached in again,
and pulled out my hair and my eyes.
You held them up and showed them to me,
the way that you see them;
you told me to watch the fire dancing;
and to breathe the heaven...

So I pulled out all your points of pleasure,
each line, and scar, without hesitation,
and we unpacked all our blemishes,
with joy and admiration...
You revered the parts that no one sees,
and marvelled at them only as pieces of me, while I worshipped
the damage that makes you, you...
...cuts, and roughness...and dust-dry hands...
all the things that make you a man and ensure you fulfil,
and we agreed, together:
the contents of the box were beautiful.

Hope

  
With the world hewed down
to this room
and you,
I can tell you
there is nothing
more beautiful,
than scent
and taste
and familiar grace;
to sit in the firelight and admire
the face of your glory, and
the depth of your smile,
to lean my forehead on yours,
in silence,
...just to hold you a while.

The Broken

  
The heart has its reasons,
of which reason
knows nothing...it knows only
that where there is something
to soothe
it cannot be denied...and I confess
I see that something
sometimes
when I look
in your eyes in the evening's
fading dusk-light,
or observe my lion
of the mornings...and I want to caress
and kiss away
the yearnings
of my grounded kite of pink skies,
and catch your every
fluttering emotion like a tender
butterfly held in a net,
or a moth
with wet, and damaged, but
beautiful, wings
that beat the air like a wild
thing unable to break free...
and to tell you that we
can touch, and talk, and be
together
until the dawn...
but still all I will have to give as release
is my heart that answers your silent call...
...and my soul...
and all
that is left...
of me.

The Child in the Tree View Room

  

The problem child

had a sky to contend with
outside the window of her tree-view room…mostly
it was a pale
and moonlit view she’d been slowly growing into.
The trees were blue on a harvest night, white
with a star-frost in June,
and the problem child
asked the starlings to save her
drops of the morning’s
frothy dew. More so in May when
the cuckoo’s spit
marked the day break
on the grass;
and then the problem child
would ask
for the sun
to rise a little slower;
she was always the first to know
of a snow shower
that would keep her from school
and to this day
she is still the morning sky’s
fool; from the window of the tree-view room
for a wish
or a dream to keep…
See, the problem child
was rarely asleep; she’d have
missed too much –
the chance to be born
of nature’s
invisible lust
for glory, and counselled by fairies
at the dawn of the world,
to watch a golden-orange rust
creep across her curls, the leaves and seasons;
and the privilege to learn a thousand
early morning reasons
to forget

she should not be up.

Pious

You should have someone

who feels heaven in your arms,
who calms your spirit
like waves caress sand, who hears only angels
when you growl in pleasure; who measures time
when you wander from her,
who longs,
without rest,
to worship at your altar; to fall on her knees,
to revere,
and adore, to venerate perfection against
the kitchen door…you should have
someone who cannot say ‘no’
who struggles to go and keep mind
on their day, you should fill thoughts
and a heart
in a way no other could dream of…
You should be honoured
and prayers whispered
to your soul,
tasted and bitten and eaten
whole and writhing
‘til you can barely breathe…
…you should go home to a temple and someone
as pious
and holy
as me.