Once upon forever

I'll play Scheherezade for your soul

let me tell you the tales

of my days and dusks

i'll tie it together with magic

and we'll hold the world together

my steady voice and you

with your wide eyes and belief

we'll be safe, we'll be safe

come my love away with me

and i'll tell you a story with no ending

they'll say of us

and they live happily eternally

so come my love

let us begin

i'll play scheherzade for your soul

and we'll write a love story that never ends

Transitory love.

hello love,

do you mind if i call you that?

here in my mind all secret and quiet

like a habit that we don't even notice anymore,

and you turn your head to it

as if it were your name.

I don't know it-

your true name.

You have been Angeline,

Guinevere, and Jane as the light hits you.

I played with Marie for a day

but you have too much of a bite,

something that has consonants you can chew on.

I decided on Janette

with the extra letters to set you apart.

I picture your parents

all glowing and panting with the newness

of being fresh defined by the small screaming you-thing

rolling the name around between their teeth

stretching the vowels into a song

and then snapping their mouths shut over the final syllable

as if already fearing your escape into the wild world

away from them.

Thats what you look like to me

every time you board the bus

like a thing on the verge of escape

I wonder if you would let me run with you.

Perhaps not

I lack the courage.

Its why I'm siting here

calling you love in my head

and wondering if I'll ever know your name.

I almost asked today.

But the board flashed Suttle and you stood to exit.

Perhaps tomorrow.

Mind the gap.

home soon

today I awoke with the taste of home

on my tongue

clouding my syllables.

The world i'm looking at

glows through the stained glass

the great green slashes of rice

against the bend of mountain arm

that tucks me in at night

and through the colours through the glare

i know that it is raining here

but I am gone

long run home

to the place where the sun sinks

into the hills in coverlet of red

so softly with the last strand of colour

traced across the sky

like a sleepy kiss

here the sun crashes into the horizon

a collision of heat and rage

spills across this flat land

and everyday i taste the ash on my tongue

today I walk the concrete streets

with the drifting wish-seeds floating

about me from the lines of trees

I am drenched to the bone

and do not feel a thing.

Bird burden

what a bird burden is this

a weight to bend feathers

to breaking point

to splintering like the shards of bark

peeling back against the wick

like fingers pulling back

from a dying love

and its cold here

it is so cold against these bones

that grind like stones

their screeching grumbling hate

the wind and i were lovers once

take the long way home love

the long way home

and on the slopes we would fly

wings and words and wind

and here i am

the wind is gone

slipped away with the scent of spring

I left my feathers along the slopes

dropping them one by one.

one does not ask the Fates

without a sacrifice.

so does he?

does he love me?

or does he not?

It is cold here

with these bones against each other grown.

It is a bird burden this.

to look at life alone.

The last door of Fall.

She looked at me with her deep black eyes.

Fall fell behind her like a backdrop

a side note designed for emphasis

to be felt and then forgotten.

fall always is.

The winter comes behind it

sweeping up in its tragedy

the tipping points of colour

the moments where change began.

Winter cuts it down to essentials

leaving the what if frozen into a certainty.

It could be no other way.

Fall fits her

with her slim mouth

and the slender voice that slides from it

like red leaf stain drifting down the grass.

She looks at me like a door

and suddenly I am unsure

if I am fit to be tried, opened

or if, in my own secret winter,

I should stiffen into solidity

as locked as the sap caught in branches.

She turns her head

it feels like a key to me

with her eyes sliding inside of me

and with a sliding click

I fall open.

I reach for her.

With my hand, my stumbling voice

whistling through my mouth

like a coax, an invitation, a plea.

The tree behind her drops two more leaves.

She is looking at me with her black eyes.

With no question in her slim neck

she says,

"Earn this."

And flew away.

Inspiration given by. Josie Morway.

http://www.tinyshowcase.com/artwork.php?id=1668

On Irony.

I found a strand of your hair today

dark against the white of the wall

it was tied up against itself

an arachnid skeleton

from some forgotten age

I couldn't look away

I kept seeing your hair

looking as if it were alive

in the ocean

swimming at its own jelly rhythm

separate from the thrashing of your arms

and how it picked up the light

and the salt and the sand

and still looked beautiful

dragged out behind you like a net

with treasures caught up in it

beating to be free

i caught my hand in it that day

each finger in its own coiled chain

with one loose curl wrapped around my wrist

like a shackle of silk

I did not notice the way it hardened

stiffening into small vertebraes

like the slender spines of some fossilized creature

it cracked under the weight of my hand

sounding like gravel crunched beneath my boots

and I realized I was caught and could not get free

At that point you too were stiff

with your fingers curled up in fists

as if you fought this last indignity

to be stripped of life, in public.

my hand was tight in your mass of hair

and my voice too

strectched like some current

that dredges up all the worst in me

they say i sat there cursing

over and over again the same word

until they cut my hand loose

from your mangled net of hair

and led me away

to check for injury they said.

i wonder if they were being ironic.

i wonder things like that

and i used to say them to you

and you would roll your eyes

telling me that no one is ironic anymore

merely sarcastic, with an occasional flash of wit.

I didn't believe you

but then i knew you.

you would have found it ironic

to have died on the day

we were to have begun a new life.

i suppose we still did.

i think i like the old one better.

i washed the hair down the drain

wondering if it was fitting

that water be there at every doom

every reminding of your leaving.