Trapped Heat

   
Listen well,
for I want to tell you
of a minute's worth of empty heat.
And I want for you to feel
all
that I have need and
tender hopes for.

These are things
I would have closed doors for,
and forgotten,
some very little time past,
if only to remind myself
that I should never have asked for,
 - or deserved - ,
them better.
  
But the truth is, I'm as changeable now,
as ever,
as fickle as the weather, or the angels and these devils
that sit upon my shoulders,
and what is more, well capable, of hearing the songs
of both,
of rolling my own boulders
from the cavern's mouth,
...of letting myself out,
and promising her the world.
  

Home

   
My sunsets of pale ochre
glisten
on the waters of stolen time
that is no more
to some;
- unfathomably -
than a heathen, empty waste.
Have those who mock it
never tasted
what is true and blessed beauty,
after summer's baking heat
lays out
all grounded graces
on the surface of rain-soaked earth?
  
Have they never breathed
what mustard scent, caresses
mornings and bathes the sun's descent
on acrid, almost-August days? Have they never
begged a friend to stay and witness
a miracle
play out before their eyes? Never thrown off
feigned disguise and
laid themselves
bare
among wet grass? Never asked
to just be left there
with all that it is,
alone?
  
Tell me...
where do those,
who have not lived at all,
call home?
  
  

Let's Pretend...

  
Do you want to pretend
that the moths are fireflies?
That the areoplanes are meteorites, or shooting
stars in the dark
night sky, above our heads
as we lie on crushed glass? Do you want to ask for
a lonely wish to be granted? For a hopeless
dream to be almost answered
by these tail-lights
and beacons right now?

Or shall we not speak at all?
How about we just lie here
and stop
falling through these long days of life? Stop fighting
these sunrise-knights and their flaming torches
and the skull-aching torture
of this knowing insight...
Let's exist forever instead
inside the silence of dark
and the glow of twilight,
between the dawn and the
yawning evening plight of a sinking sun,

and we'll never endure another day, not a
single, vicious one - for we'll rise only
with moonlight and gentle stardust, to live
among the closed
and sleeping flowers,
and we'll dance away all
our beautiful hours, like ghosts,
without a care
or a worry undue...

Hush, be still...close your eyes...
take my hand...
We are there...
it is truth.
 
For a friend in need of a dream...

Lullaby on a Knife Edge

      
These empty nights,
and tedious days…
it seems he only ever
now promised
to change. And it used to be
she loved his star,
no matter what it’s shape.

It turned out
she had peeled him,
like an orange over the years,
and only then
because he’d let her take,
every last ounce of sparkling grace, and make it
pass
for life.
And her beak fell sharper now
than the edge
of the knife he slept on
when I found him.

He told me then,
I was a sacred fountain;
that I made roses of nails,
that I put wind in tattered
sails and insisted he speed
towards dreams.
But I was just me.
And I told
the truth
in his eyes, that he should
see no more
than soothing stories,
as I wound my fingers
at his temples and he gloried in my golden sighs.

“Tell me just one more
lullaby,” he pleaded, and I caressed his neck,
as I talked of never
going back,
of being here always,
together
and free;
and whispered things that barely seemed
a hair, or a breath,
out of reach or sight…

…but I sent him home, night after night,
with an aching heart and a yearning soul
in fledgling flight…

- because I had to -

and somehow,
I hoped it cushioned the slicing,
and the sharpness
of the edge
of the knife.

In Words

  
So…
put it into words, he says,
and for my life, I cannot begin
to describe such
sweet
sin, such guilt,
such pleasure as lies,
in these
stolen moments
of sublime
which perhaps
we treasure where we shouldn’t.

But surely the rest of the world
wouldn’t know
or understand,
that to walk simply,
hand in hand with
silence,
one must first
speak it aloud –
to a kindred spirit,
to a fellow wandering
cloud who longs to be free, who sees
all
unearthly beauty,
in rain walks and holy ground mist
and listens
only,
when the horses speak.

A tribute to the draw of the serenity & freedom to be found on horseback.