The hunt.

The Fair Folk watch with gleaming eyes
through shadow, through shadow
The Fair Folk quick and silent ride
through shadow, through shadow
The Fair Folk will their quarry take
through shadow, through shadow
The sleeping infant does not wake
through shadow, through shadow
The Fair Folk sound the hunting horn
through shadow, through shadow
and are fast away before the morn
ends shadow, ends shadow

The Late Escape

who has let it loose

my blacktrimmed goose

with the golden legs?

my black winged goose

that lays the golden eggs?

the latch is tight, the dog was quiet.

all night i heard no sound.

and all across the snowy yard

no tracks upon the ground.

oh footpad footloose

who stole my lovely goose?

I wish I were not so obtuse

but who did take my black winged goose?

the grey old sky gives me no clue

how did my precious bird get loose?

My blackwinged bird with the golden eye

my blackwinged bird has learned to fly

Bah humbug dreams

sheep sheep with the fluffy fur

do you ever wonder what you were

doing jumping so

in my dreams last night?

over the fence and back again

such nonsense!

if I were you I'd be incensed

such presumption on

my fluffy independence

who said that I should dance

over the wooden fence

I will not take this in silence

I must end this nonsense!

BAH!

The Lop and the Loophole

one day the farmer came

to lop off

off with their heads

and off the long legged Lop loped

he and his bride they had eloped

through the loose loophole

in the hatch behind the fence

and they were free.

Serengeti, New York.

Throw wide your iron teeth my love

let the metal arms of your rounded gates

spin backwards and back again

a thousand numbers turning from greatest to least

and from least to greatest they shall be

the smallest first

let the slowest come first

Let the world run wild

The lion, my love, is loose.

How the hunter hates to lose.

I told you that today

we should not have come

to the zoo.

Revenge of Poe.

I have slicked the lime across the stair

left the honey to glisten like a snail's track

along the center

a sunset streak on a white river

and I wonder if the sunlight poured

is as sweet and thick to my hungry skin

as this careful trap to you

Here you come with your night sky eye

and the curve in your neck that indicates

surprise and something more

the way you always do, the something more

it is why I cannot leave the nothing here

why I cannot leave without you

though you are nothing to me and I to you

So come closer closer

on your thin shadowed legs

with your curious eye and shining mouth

almost the sun is set, almost it is time

so one step more and you shall

and I shall

there.

o raven now, raven still

what shall you say

for I have caught you before the door

and you shall haunt me

nevermore

Gordian.

I found you by the turn of the stair

tied by your silken sash

to the mahogany rail

sitting with your fingers careless

knotting the ends of your hair

with your shoes double tied

and the rope of pearls twisted into

a Gordian cluster around your neck.

I told you that we were, as always,

late

and that this time you'd promised

you'd solemnly swore

that we'd get there on time

not like every time before

and what was this ridiculous mess

we had no time for silly games

but get yourself up and lets go.

and you looked at me and laughed

with your brittle bright smile

that shone even as it cut

and how my heart bled

as you laughed and laughed and said

But baby I didn't mean to make you wait.

I know, I know we can't be late

and I know you'll probably hate

me for this but you see

There was a thing or two

a mess and a scare and a bit of the dark

and I couldn't find the light and I knew

we'd probably end up fighting and

somehow everything ended up all wrong

and now I guess, well you see, it's just

I got tied up.

You laughed the whole time

I untied you

and carried you up the stair

through brushing out your hair

and taking off your shoes

until lying down in our big bed

you cried and told me

there was nothing nothing I could do

that you were all tied up inside your head.

Finale.Finally.

and she ties pearls into her curls

knots each one in its elegant loop

a silken hangman's noose

and she leaves her neck bare

but for a breath of scented air

to take your breath away

and she stands behind the light

with her skirt tied tight

by the threads of shadow

and she burns, she glows

and she knows, she knows

that this will be the end

of you her friend.

Emasculate.

It was an odd little lion

with pastel tufts of tail

and a beribboned degradation of a mane

It looked, to me, ashamed

sitting amidst these glitter coated things

in its own shining cage

and the plastic cannot stop

its glassy eyes from staring

back at me.

You sit beside me in these clean rooms

slouched across these straight back chairs

with the florescent lights bouncing

their hard beams across your face.

Your hands sprawl across the space

and your eyes wander the busy room

and there is nothing for you to see.

What is a cynic to do

with a world as hard as he?

What use a lion

When all the gazelle are caged?

Bend down bend down darling

let me tie another ribbon on

Come along my sweet my dear

I know that you are nothing to fear.

Make a Wish.

Once I caught the half bell curve

of an drifting eyelash

on the swell of my finger

It slid into the sprawl

of my rigid fingerprints

a puzzle piece slotted neatly in.

I wonder each time they fall

if there is something I missed

If like the petals of the rose they mark

the strands of time that I forgot

and mirror the coming doom.

One by one, at each half-finished tale

each friend that slipped away, each

afternoon spent without thought amidst

the swollen space of the crowded world,

and they work loose and fall

and I am one step closer to the end

the inevitable moment when these

the last slender spears between me

and all the grit of truth

are gone, lost forever on the wind

and my eyes are forced open and raw

blinded by the grinding light.

So let me be careful to blink

and light with the mascara's ink

too soon this soul must sink

beyond the edge of mortal brink.

Sandman

I've built a bridge

to where the Sandman lives

I know the way

to where the Sandman is

Come along Night

take my hand and come

We will walk along the stars

back to your father's home

The Day has run away

She's played her inheritance

into the shadows beneath the trees

and the branches that dance

You and I have seen her game

We know the tricks she builds

Let us away to the Sandman's

beyond the foggy hills

I know where the Sandman lives

He keeps a room for me

I love to be where the Sandman is

in the house of my dreams.

supply and demand?

she learnt it on the plastic panels

that stuck to the back of her knees

and itched her elbows

and always smelt of bleach or glue

one day they gave a red one

even though she asked for blue

and it didn't even have the duck

with it's bright yellow feathers cracking

in a thousand ways in the corner

how was that fair?

It wasn't as though there wasn't another

sitting right there in the teetering pile

and she could just see the edge

of a yellow bill as plain as could be

but this was that and what she got

and there was nothing to be done in the face of that

so she drug it in the corner

and carefully spread her blanket across as much as she could

stretching it to conceal the fire engine

with it's yellow ladder

that was nothing at all like feathers

and curling in the center to think very hard

about justice and desire and whether she would have

apple juice or chocolate milk today.

Everything I learned

confused me in kindergarten.

The Lagoon

The moon is flooding through the upper window

filling half the room

and I wake in a silver aquarium

with the shadows sitting choppy

on the sea of light

I awake as a creature unseen

the mythical amphibian breathing

both dark and light as easily

as my long hair drifts through this new world

as my long thoughts drift, prodding

the corners and stretches of this world

and how it bends before me with a marine grace

All of this is freedom and the breath is sweet and deep

between the light and dark the mirror sprays

white caps into the shadowed ceiling

and I am the last siren singing her secret song

awash in this midnight world

a cloud sails across the moon

and I am asleep again

a mortal child with immortal dreams

to wake in morning with nothing

but a strain of song to recall

Visitation

I have seen angels before

with faces like yours

so white and still

an implacable beauty

an impervious threat

and I am as afraid

of you as them

with their wings predator tipped

and, o horror, nothing behind.

There is nothing to touch to feel

but still their long fingers grip

the cold iron swords

that burn with celestial ice

the bitterest of all wrath.

I am afraid to touch your hand

lest I find in its grip a hilt.

I am afraid to ask your name

for my fear is that I know it-

O grief how did you find me again?

Juno.

She is the sort of person that makes you believe

in war bulletins and those sorts of things

in the divine right of kings

and the absolute necessity of never

ever cutting the tags from your new bought

king size mattress no matter how they scratch

beneath the cotton sheets

suffice it to say that whatever she says

we all agree and that it was, that it is

exactly what we meant , what we mean

in every circle the center

is hers by unquestioned right

at every line she is the head

and we think of her we dream

in our cotton sheets on our king size beds

but she does not think of us

she is the sort of person to make you dare

impossible improbable things

but is herself as implacable as gravity

and so we fall over and over again

in desperate love only to land

lonely on the cotton sheets

She bears the name of Greece's bane

and with it bears its weight

She is the sort of person to set the seas aflame

and we all we all whisper her name

leaving the homely shores with the lonely beds

to sail the stormy sea and land at last

at Normandy.

Commercial Christmas.

I hate your winter coat

with its synthetic fur fluffed so high

off your thin shoulders.

It is the strangest combination

of sodden wealth and self-righteous glow

because after all

it is not really fur.

Merely some woven chemical stretched

turned and stitched by some small hand

the smaller for the small coin

for the small rice bowl

at the end of the long day.

Let the crowds count your righteousness with you

and let them imagine counting your coin

running so deep over their hungry fingers

that they could dare

with nonchalance

to walk about in that sort of thing

that has neither the grace of beauty

nor the virtue of price

but merely reekx with an obnoxious indifference

towards taste and tact.

Truly it is one of a kind.

How I wish you were.

PoL

There is something slick about who you are

(you keep it wrapped up close

in your hands in your pockets

and I cannot reach it there)

that when I try to describe it leaves you sullied

(not sly or distrustful

just that his story never fully ends

or begins or something. )

and you slip untouched through my grasp

(with a hello and how are you

and good and you and goodbye

and gone)

One day I will surrender to the mystery of your being

(leave the awkward greetings

and hall shuffling around each other

for some more open face)

but for now I am still intrigued and eager

(it is a new game with rules

which I want to learn

to build my own quiet victory)

and so again, Hello, and How are you.

Cutting against the cold

My skin has grown so smooth

worn with the weight of light

that your finger's touch

goes straight to bone

and there rests

carving your fingerprints

into my slender palms

and how the warmth curls

from your tender hand

into the crevices it has carved

and this shaking is ceased

for a moment yet

We are still.

The cold cannot encroach.

Winter is coming with its claws

but my slender hands are safe

within yours.

Saturday.

Half asleep

beside you I watch you think

you write

as though your first love

was a typewriter

with the right hand slamming

an emphatic end

to each completed sentence.

I cannot lose the rhythm

the build till triumph

and then silence again.

This is the long hour and how it turns

and still the words come and continue

growing to crescendo across the page.

I cannot miss this ending

with the tangled thought laid smooth

across the screen

and a final resounding crash of keys.

How the pages fly before you

an inky wind rife with weight

and they shall sing whether

they choose to or not.

The keys at last are silent

but there is another page waiting

and another tomorrow.

Hao

There are worlds where we dare not tread.
Most of them inside my head.
would you like to, like to climb
the twisting stair the turning stair
I've woven it from what is left of my hair

so come up come up my quiet friend

and find where the rabbit hole begins

I built it in my cellar

and it ends on my roof

come up come up

and I will show you the proof

there is no need to show alarm

to keep your dainty hands aloof

I carry the Queen's own charm

I was once her right arm

So come up come up my small, my dear

bring your fragile eyes and have no fear

there is nothing here too terribly queer

there are worlds where we dare not dread

for they are they are inside our heads

So come and settle come and see

we shall make ourselves some tea

with arsenic biscuits

and words so sharp they cut

if not sheathed in whisper

for sound is it's own wound

wound tight around your neck

tying off your tongue in tight knot

so step in side my parlor dear

and I'll stare inside of you

are you are you up to par

do you have nightmares of me?

Don't be afraid, the light is on

the world has not wobbled yet

but soon the turn is coming

and it would be best to not forget

where to place your hands

and where to choose to stand

so come from the doorway dear

for worse may enter and worse may leave

but time is a careless sieve

grasp the moment while you can

and take a cup of tea

do not be afraid my dear

at least not afraid of me.

For there are worlds inside my head

Where others dare not tread

There is always something worse to dread

But at the least you are not yet dead.

Have a biscuit?

Collapse

Call, hills, with me

my old friends who I have known

since I could walk

could slip through the small door

and be gone.

Oh hills my beloved hills

Call with me!

Add your voice to mine!

Throw my sorrow and need

from crest to crest.

Let your long green sounds

sink down your swelling sides

and soak the valleys in it's sonorous blast.

O hills beloved hills

My beloved is gone

and I know not where.

Hills did he cross you?

Did you bend to let him by?

Have you seen my love walking?

He has escaped my wavering cry.

Hills my hills, you opened to let him free

Now close to cover me.

Persephone

The holly has strewn her green

haphazard on the path

and what a bridal bloom it is

all gloss and dark with summer's shine

saved away beneath the sudden point

that raises to prick the careless foot

and draw forth its berry red

as triumph and tribute and right

for the winter is always hungry

and will steal what summer spun.

So let the eternal green bloom.

Winter's teeth are never still.

The leaves may swell from buds.

Winter never eats its fill.

Let the bride walk her way

and suffer the prick and sting

The red bloom may smother winter

and spring may come again.

Burma

Come and I shall fold

these shattered hills around you

we will hide beneath them

and make shadow puppets

of the stars

There shall be a peace in the twilight

when the shadows have not grown

but in the dark the trees sound

like footsteps

and the long angry mouth

of the scratched and silver monster

breaks forth in its laughter

oh my child, quiet now

perhaps it was only a dream

this time is different than the times

before

when you woke to the burning glee

of those that would destroy us

this time, this time

it is just a dream

look how I have built the hills

into a home for us

we shall call this rock a wall

and this tree a room

I shall fold my shattered arms

around you and we will sing

the old songs and the old stories

and the old safety will grow

wispy at our feet

I will build a home for us

out where nothing can touch us

and the night is as empty

as ever it could be

O my child my quiet child

I shall fold the hills around us

how silent your laughing mouth

in this laughing dark.

what winter sings.

let the last languid chord roll

while we wait for the dysfunction

that is the silent point of this function

and who, and who

wears green to a funeral

but there you are

looking like spring and summer

met in a twilight somewhere

and decided to take the night off.

The longstemmed glass clings

to your hand a single rose

on it's transparent briar

The sting sits at the corner of your mouth

and it pierces us all when you smile.

So sign here, sign

here you go my longstemmed love

with your slender legs

on those slender heels

and from what bitter ground does

such a bloom weave it's way to freedom

and at last you are free.

Let us throw the rancid rice

and slip the flat champagne

Singe our fingers on the flickering fireworks

sparklers against the sullen sun

and did freedom look this strange

when you took up your golden chain?

did you see this when you stood

all slim and afraid and on fire

and did they ask you if you knew

then

they did they did

and you whispered I do.

So bloom green-willed woman

with all your wit and whimsy

sign the dotted line and be done

Remember that this too is what you have done.

Oh my slender rose, my only rose

look how the red wine spills

The longstemmed glass is shattered

and it is the least of your ills.

Golden

arrive arrive my golden love
the mirror glass has thrown you far
slanted across the floor
like some throbbing shadow
and how your skin grows tender
and your hair your hair it glows

Shall you speak my silent love

with your red lips blooming

In the center of your snowy face

come and draw the soft cheek back

like snow banks revealing spring

and your teeth they gleam they gleam

The mirrorland released you at last

and how this blood runs free

your very feet are tingling

and how your fingers fly

Spin me your tangled tale

my long lost love tell it true

I have been waiting for you for you

Lightning.

I have lost you amidst the grey

that rises wistful from the sea

and sits sullen on city streets.

It is my quietest fear

that the grey seeps from shadows

and will climb into my soul

through the soles of my shoes.

It is how you disappeared

all sticky silent with the sidewalk

still slick from your slippery shadow

and a single slipper smoking

grey bannerets of victory.

I have lost you amidst the grey

and the silence is stifling.

A shattering flash

and you arrive glowing

with every hair on end and eyes

that spark through the dark.

Love like thunder rolls.

Witness.

Bend before the breeze

My love how you look bamboo

so tall and slender

with your whispering hair

saying nothing of importance

but entrancing us all the same

So turn and turn out

The wind is coming about

and of course there's no need

to shout and raise a commotion

acquiescing is the least motion

and compliance is the quietest sin.

Patron Saint of the (runofthe) Mill.

I have been finding letters

in the long languorous lines

left by the drips of paint

performing their tragic

comet trail before the altar of gravity

as they consume their own vitality

and I wonder how much this means

that I see the letters

and how the weight of itself has made them

run

what does my own mass compel

and in compelling burn

through this wax effigy of a frame

till I cry the end the end

and am done.

Perhaps they will find these letters

and watch the wax drops run.

Swan.

They whisper she's the princess

but she wears no jewel

and how her curls fly around

her thousand golden crowns

have escaped their bonds

and the day is almost gone.

A last moment

A long look

and oh the moon

always arrives too soon.

How the silver light falls

along the whispering lake

what a solemn shadow

your long neck makes.

Nonsense.

I'm off to find the Wizard

when I find him I shall ask

What was the point of all that brick

and can I take these glasses

OFF

with her head.

He cries and off he goes.

hand in hand hand in glove.

He and the Queen have found

something like love.

and lost something like

like reality.

But how their garden grows

and it goes in rows and rows

of rowdy roses and cockleshells

while the silver bells ring out nones

and no one is faster than the Knave

to steal the strawberry ones

what a tart

surprise to meet

instead of sweets

something so stark

ly swept clean

and still poor ella sweeps

the long marble stair

along with the nightingale

while Echo throws her back

copying out her notes

and slowly reality grows

into a pumpkin orange

and we all go to the ball

behind our glittering masks

and watch the Wizard and Queen

say nothing that they mean.

mad melody.

A terrible light

To see you gnashing your round white teeth

against the uneven ivory

to see you across the long wood

with your thrashing toes

scattered across the thrumming cords

and these chords have me bound

still in the silent holding of my sanity

as if to breath now would breach the sanctity

of all that keeps us both secure

with your fingers splayed across the keys

trying them each a hundred times

against the locked doors behind your teeth

and I'll watch them light up again and again

with your pink tongue scraping a signal

in the long half light

and rejected fall on each flat note

the answers scattered in black and white

the hundred hammers at your fingers

slam their way through the thick dusk

to land heavy and bitter upon the brass

ringing bare blasts of dissonance

to scatter through the busy room

that has just the two of us in it

you are not building a thing

but tearing with your heavy handed strikes a hole

into the wall for which the door

you cannot find the key among these keys

and so perhaps the noise whill make you one

will make you whole

So you strike and strike again

battering the echoes with the sound of their own doom

So come down love from the piano

Come down, I'll carry you home

Benediction

we cry among these iron hills

the light is building bars of darkness

above us and how they stretch

how to break the last strength

in our weary necks with looking.

the night falls like a lock

grinding across the long land

turned by an invisible hand

and we are each of us undone.

o mercy mercy me

I fled the long grey walls

to find a prison all my own

and how I hate the jailer the jailer

using my own fingers against me

so tight against my throat

so we come and we sing

somewhere someone

come with your key

come with your stone hard beard

come with all your fear

and set us free

come down moses

come on come on down

bless us bless us

with your lightning eyes

break back the heavy dark

and tell us tell us

be well love

you are well loved.

Night

How cold the world becomes
so quickly
Even dawn is kinder
with her cautious stretching
over the shelf of the horizon
and we are unafraid
because she has made her long magic
in our midst and we are all guilty with her.
The night does not need our guilt
to exonerate, to let her free.
She is hungry and so she eats
each of the blinking lights
from each shelflike window
and licking her lips flows down the streets
singing her hunger song
and we shiver leaning back into doorways
unsure
if we are willing to risk the walk
because when she is done
with each of the little lights
sucked dry the swinging bulbs
and crunched her way through streetlamps
then she turns and comes
for us
with our warm heavy mouths
all full of sound and song
and the scent of something strange
like fear and bravado and freedom
something so close to her hymn
and she is unsure of us
a lion stumbled upon kittens
who show her their slender claws
and scream their small wails
against the indignity of insignificance
and she lifts her giant paw for silence
or perhaps for solace.
She is the fearsome freedom
sweeping through the streets
and he who throws his fate with her
sings a song of hunger and fear
and son of night becomes free
How cold the world becomes
when standing against the night.

Till the Wind Returns

The eastern wind

clung to you

with small grasping hands

like a child suddenly afraid

I wondered what it knew

why it tied your hair so tight

across your shoulders

weaving a net knotted in ebony.

Why did it gather the dust

and scatter it to rest

along the edge of your feet

walls of temporary grace

and still it blew

O eastern wind what have you done?

What have you done with her

my careless love?

O eastern wind did you carry the song

that she listens to next to me

and I cannot hear?

She had the star light in her eyes

while I blinked against the moon

O eastern wind answer me

will she be returning soon?

My careless love with her careless eyes

and I that was so full

of all the cares of the heavy world

saw nothing of what she watched.

O eastern wind you have taken her away

in the dark of the wide night.

O eastern wind what have you done?

Lifting her aching wings

when all I've ever done

was build a path for her feet

weary day by weary day

and in a wild whirling night

she is gone.

O eastern wind my love is gone

my careless love has left

O eastern wind when she is done

will you carry her home?

A Tax and Toll

The morning has passed

easily enough

amidst the long grass and light

The river is close by but not the mud

and the breeze lifts the curl from your forehead

Hunger has not yet tapped your shoulder

and already your hands are close to full

with the thin stemmed blooms

that grow scattered among the sweet grass.

This is the wealth of spring

woven between your fingers like dripping gold

and it is sweet and right

that is is not for you but for her

that you so plunder the field spring gave graciously.

Noon is coming though and heat to soak the earth.

Homeward turned and almost to the road

but lo

Spring has grown teeth and with a wicked gust

taken a bite from your bouquet

For love is sweet and right

But she has her bite

and takes sometimes the blooms she gave away.

Lovett.

I shall build gargoyles

on the four corners of your home

with snarling teeth and eager claws.

I shall file away the steps

in raw uneven blocks

to send the spirits tumbling

dulling their teeth on the concrete.

I shall plant red flowers before the door,

hang a mirror before the lock

all these and more to keep the dark away.

And after all these things

I shall say the simple prayer

quiet and still.

Keep her safe keep her safe keep her safe

I love her.

Community

Move ahead

Move ahead

(If you move your head

you're dead.)

Form a line

A straight line.

(Don't you know

everyone's fine.)

Stay in the light.

Don't leave the light.

(They are right

We are all alright.)

We are one.

We are all one.

(We are done.

We are all done for.)

Shadowweaving

It is something I suspect

at night when the sun- with his bright reason

that burns my thoughts away

abandons his post at last.

At night he is gone tucked beyond the horizon

and only his distant cousins stand guard

over all the sensible statements

but they are sleepy sentinels and much slips by

and so do I

with my thoughts and suspicions.

They are suspicions though I am almost sure

because I cannot see any way to test it

and I cannot stretch the hypothesis out

beneath the blazing light of day.

It would surely shrivel and dry into dust

but in the night the shadows swallow it

and I can only guess with fumbling fingers

it's breadth and form.

It comes down to this:

before it drives me mad

I suspect that you are a thing

of mainly bone all stacked up on each other

and these bones are built

of honeycomb cells one against the other

edge supporting edge with it's six walled wax

and wrapped in the wax lies a small secret

all sticky and silent in its cocoon

it is their soft breathing that shifts you about

cell by cell bone by bone and suddenly

you have moved across the room

and are alone again

This is the tentative truth that I believe

about you

you with your honey gold skin that clings

to the slender bones that stiffen at my approach

are triggered by the secrets

with their breath double timed and poof

you are gone

and I am alone again.

So I suspect you with your frame riddled

with small golden glowing secrets

are beyond my touch with bones of cold calcium

and nothing more.

The sun is rising now

and another shadow stretches

next to mine.

"Where have you been?

I've been searching all night."

How the dawn loves your honeyskin

and so do I.

Climbing into the Highway

She flashed by

A slender face in a long blur

wrapped in the peeling creme

that at first glanced looked like skin

with the anxious organs beginning

to tumble forward and away

and soon all would be lost.

All would be lost again.

Her speed was too great to stop

and ask

Which way are you going?

Will there be someone there?

Will you be

Will you be okay?

She flashed by

a slender face behind a glass shield

a slender shape in a metal shell

a cracking metal shell to soon rebirth

and perhaps she'll emerge

A slender throat a slender song

and shining wings.

The Shoures of Aprill

I found my love

in the green green briar

with the quick green cord

wrapping him round

I found my love

in the green green briar

while the witch green wire

held him bound

I found my love

my lovely love, my only love

I found my love

in the green green briar

She had seen him

the glowing staring queen

My love was wrapped in the briar

and the colour round his heart was green

I found my love

in the green green briar

He was looking in at another scene

and his eyes, his grey eyes were turning green.

I have lost my love

in the green green briar

and hateful it is to me

that all the world is green

draft

let the light back in

with twitches of your thumb

twist the blinds away

twist the blindness into a way

to see again

and this motion reigns

with the swath of light

draping itself across your face

rendering you mythic

Atlas unchained and unsure

Confession.

I like accosting

strangers in the street

and telling them we should meet

on the corner and pass secrets

one to the other

and carry on our days with the secret

curled in the palm of our hands

and I'll meet you at the corner

meet you at the corner

where the world turns around

and everything is new again

so stranger meet me at the corner

we can fall in love again

Abduction of Alice

What a clever ambush to build

and how the fingers itch

to run away

with these thoughts and presentiments.

What a wondered world this is

where even the flowers sing

(though every rose, it's told

must have it's thorn).

I am lost with this growing self

that is this and that and the other

and suspiciously smally me.

They call her by my name

and say how she has grown,

how lovely she has become.

I am unknown

bewildered in this wilderness

by how tame it seems to be

but everything (oh everything)

has it's teeth.

And so the flowers sing

waltzing matilda, waltzing matilda

oh matilda waltzing home.

I want to wander home.

Will someone walk

with me through this land

where the flora snarl

and I am slowly sure that something

is becoming someone

somewhat like me

which leaves?

And the flowers sing

and they tell me,

It's a mad world, a mad world,

and I know, I know.

What a clever ambush

to build in these words a

wonderland...

Art Never Stops Growing

I have been blessed with beautifully gifted friends!

Miss Megan Feniak has once again taken some scrap of mine and transformed into a unbelievably lush piece of art. Turn your attention to the screen, ladies and gentleman, and prepare (after clicking all the right buttons) to be overwhelmed with gorgeous music.

http://spaceshipsandthings.blogspot.com/2010_09_01_archive.html

Tomorrow and Tomorrow

How bold a thing man is to take Fate's pen from her hand

and demand to do her weaving.

How hungry he gnaws at her coloured thread

tying anxious knots in haphazard patterns

What a thing this Delphic frenzy

and still he claims his unfettered freedom

So write the battle hymns and sing the ballads loud

(the dirges will come, will come, will come she cries)

Spite the night and mock the day

What can stand against man with sword in hand?

Here him lift the anthem cry I think therefore I am

and look and hear what is man

this standing thinking thing.

So wind the horn tell the long tale

Build the lonely road and choose the only love

Rage until you fill the empty echoes

and build your homes into the wilderness.

So spite the night and mock the day

Cry down witch drown

For I am Macbeth and unafraid!

(It is a tale

Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury
Signifying nothing.)

Freedom Drive

it's a rainy day

lets run away

there have to be stars

somewhere under all this grey

you grab the wheel and I'll find the map

we can use it to spread across our laps

we'll look at the roads like veins

and trace the thickest with our fingers

we'll follow them until they cluster

and then tumble out into a new freedom

here at the heart of the world

It can rain if it wants too

we don't have to wait for it to clear

I've got you and you've got me

and there's nothing else to fear

Is this then the Age of Men?

Spandex doesn't hide anything

with it's breath-tight grip.

That's why the heroes wear it

to show they have nothing to conceal.

No gaping wounds, no trick knees

not even the ridge of a scar

to tempt thoughts of mortality.

So here they come

flying to the rescue

without even the dust upon their feet.

Congratulations.

How great to be the Untouchables

saving the untouchables.

What happened to the knights of old

carrying their virtue like a weight

across their shoulders in iron?

They knew what a dangerous thing

it was to claim to be

anything more than human.

To come thundering instead of gliding

with the hours of travel behind them

weary and worn with armour chafing

but arrive ready for battle.

What sacrifice in defense when

your smile is kevlar thin

and if you seem to die it's only

in order to emerge alive again?

Rather ride with mortality astride

looking for the red dawn

for justice and for peace

and the fear that would freeze

the best of these

if they could ever feel it.

So here to the weary warriors

who have seen too much of dark

here to sharpened swords and dulled armour

to truth and justice and fear

all wrapped in one.

Hail.

And for the invincible, the sure

a suit of spandex with nothing to hide

and nothing inside.

Tripping.

Something about the act of motion

these days

nauseates me.

Sitting toes curled in as far as they will go

and I can't quite close my eyes

because we might not make this turn

even though we always have

before.

It's not that I don't trust you

with your long hand on the wheel

and your mouth telling me

where we are going and where we should be.

It's the Road.

I'm afraid of closing my eyes

of losing my head

and being swept away.

I'll end up somewhere I never meant

with a stranger beside me

and you somewhere behind me

at the very tip of my shadow head.

I will never reach you there.

I have tried-

but you always stretch just a little further than I can

and slip into the dark.

It makes me sick to breathe

thinking like that

but I'm sure the Road is just waiting

for me to look away

to think of you or freedom or speed

and I'll be lost forever.

I will never find you again.

Sometimes counting the streetlights helps

or seeing how far I can push my feet

into the thin carpet between me and the pavement.

There is metal too, I suppose

and that helps because metal won't bend

but then I remember magnets

and am terrified all over again.

It is strangely quiet now.

We have stopped and you are looking at me

waiting to open the door.

Today I reached safety unstolen.

Tomorrow the Road still waits

with all the patience of the future.

If I love him

I found you feathers for years

wrapping them in tissue

and packing them away in this

shoebox from the first heels I ever wore.

(No one told me that I was supposed to check

and see if they would leave you taller than me.

How was I supposed to know?)

One winter I found a cardinal's feather.

It was the greyest day

with the pavement half-melted

and the clouds uneasy in the wind

crouching against the horizon.

I found it on a last mound of snow

half buried and I was afraid

that the bird was still there

curled beneath the cold like an ancient king

waiting in his icy barrow.

It is the only red feather I found.

There was the one from the beach

and the sparrows that built their nest

above my window left a handful as a gift.

The box is almost full.

I gather my secret treasures

from under the bed and slip outside.

It is almost time.

One by one I lift them out

and lay them along the wire frame.

The clock flips on through the minutes

and I am almost ready.

the cardinal feather at the very tip

and the time is right.

So I light each birthday candle

that I have saved from each sparkling cake

making the last wish of all as the wax drips free.

I made these wings for you.

Don't fly away from me.

Ideal (unreal)

How truth stands alone

Like I never could

Unshaken and unmoved

and here I am tottering on these stilts

clutching the tops of the trees

crying out take me take me

(I promise I could be what you need)

I'm lying.

like always.

But if I could mean it into truth

I would

leaning on the tones

adjusting the vowels

hammering the consonants

into something constant

but all I've ever built you

is a golden road to the great city

the green city of my love.

(Just put these on, put them on

they're here to protect you

from the brilliance of the light

look how the emeralds glow.)

The truth burns so bright.

I can only play with mirrors

to get this look just right.

Truth shouts aloud.

I can't even speak

only scratch these signals

into the pebbles I throw

at your window.

How truth stands alone

but I want to stand with you.

What comes of listening to whiny pop.

You're just another throwaway thought

a story I didn't bother to write

with an interesting premise

but no where to go

a plot with flat characters

that walk around saying things

like you and me 

throw in a couple words like forever 

and I've got myself the perfect comedy.

I'm done with this scene

through with these plays on words

even shiny toys get old

so sorry about that introduction

 a tantalizing prologue indeed

but today I find I'm not up for a mystery

and I've lost the taste for suspense. 

So please just walk away

I'm ready to turn the page. 

leafmeal

It looked like a brown-edged baby

curled in it's knothole coffin

so I didn't touch it.

It didn't fit the day

just on the edge of hot

with a breeze to sweep away the edge

but still my skin is tingling

with the thought of it.

Things should be alive on a day like this.

To the Valley Below.

(Suggested listening. Lazarus. Porcupine Tree.) 

I ask you. Can we follow the storm.

So we turn east 

and I watch out the far window 

the last strip of light be swallowed.

There is just a scattered streak

across our faces 

freckles cast by the headlights and the bugs.

I wonder if I rub if they will come off.

It is farther than we thought

but you keep going and I sit curled

with the seatbelt carving strips into my cheek.

You are silent and so am I 

thinking about the rain and when it comes

how clean it makes things.

One day I will probably tell you. . .

but not tonight

with your hands on the wheel and 

the long highway stretched out from your eyes

and the storm just another mile ahead.

The rain sits like a bead curtain

over the land

a rattling sparkling door

that you have to only touch to enter.

Stretching my arms out across the seat

I drum my fingers against the dash 

and you nod your head to the beat. 

Soon with all the rain and wet and roar

things will begin again.

They will be clean again. 

I think about all the dirt and stick and stain

and stretch my fingers further 

till they are pressed against the windshield.

Perhaps it will begin there and stretch

down my long arms like a mountain slope

to gather like a sea around me 

drowning my sins and shame. 

The rain streams down the glass

pooling and separating and cleansing.

Suddenly the storm is gone

and I am still dry. still dirty. 

I look at you and think of how I see you

all clumsy handed with child's eyes

with the broken bird wing across one palm

and your redstained fingers clenched

saying I didn't mean to I didn't know

I know.

I know you didn't know, didn't mean to. 

All across my skin though

I can feel the angry horrid things 

I wanted to say, that I said at night

on the phone with a stranger to you

as if it didn't count because they didn't know

who you were and that you honestly

you didn't know.

Something about this storm

gave me hope that in all of it's weight 

and wonder and striking out the moon

that the wet and dark would make me clean

erase me so far that I forgot all the things

I never meant to feel.

One day I will give it to you.

A single red feather and the word 

forgiven.

Perhaps you will give it back

and I can be clean

again. 

The lightning strikes one last time

and in the flash we glow

like angels

with perfect wings. 

on the edge of again

This is the same night before
the same darkness at the door
and it leaks through the lock
a twisted shadow growing along the walls.
This is the same old story
with the same old ending
when rosy fingered dawn chokes
the darkness down
and I stand witness to the crime
Who knows what a thing like guilt
will do to a thing like me
all pulse and shock
I am tonight a dreamthing
a knotted string swingin above the bed
spelled to catch what I may
my being growing taut with fear
the edges of who I am drip with dread.
a long knot of anticipation
and a loose strand

Anti-age.

Sometimes it scares you

that all the stretch in your skin

the changes from white to gold to the tiniest rose

at the very edge of your fingertips

is just another version of the sunset

a great swell and then darkness.

I picture it coming like a great glow from another glow

a stolen light that begins to burn

it's own internal walls

a careful looter who never spills

too far into the airy streets

but sometimes you smile and forget

and all the light goes tumbling

a great clumsy gush from an overflowing spring

and we are all awash with it.

So take a moment golden girl

with the silver slash of a smile

take a moment and glow with me

and we'll face the night together.

Songkran Sorrow.

I should have known

that it would burn would burn would burn

but all I thought was how it had

burnt the walls and roads and rice

till it was all ash

and gone away in the wind.

How I hated this house of stone

that stood so stubbornly

No windows or I too

could have drifted away in the breeze

No windows or I too

could have seen all was left

was me

But I couldn't see and I didn't think

that there was anything left

for the bright red fingers to choke to ash

the sticky grey ash comes under the door

and makes you sneeze and snarl

What a frightful thing you are

if I had anything left of fear.

So I took the silver strand

when you were deeply drunkly dead

and I stained the silver red

and I sliced off your roaring head

burn burn burn

how it burns

and when all the nights are gone

I will stay awake remembering

how you burnt and screamed

The door came undone

and I chose to run

all bare feet and air

against the layers and layers of ash

through the piles and pile of debris

and you burnt you burned you rolled

burning after me

rolling with your open face all heat and flame

and I suddenly remembered there was no one who

could have remembered your name

No one could calm you could bind you

you were a thing undone

and it was I with my silver strand

I with my red stained hand

who had opened the door

The way was becoming green

and then grey again with you behind me

and I ran I ran I ran

and the people came from their doors

their locked doors their strong doors

and they wept they wept they wept

and I ran

Thinking Good Thoughts :a warning

All the anxious thoughts crawl

across her face with some thousand stinging legs

leaving ribbon edge creases of colour

and it looks like blush

If she had taken the whole tin

and then sneezed.

The red edged mushroom cloud

has covered her face and drops

with tentative tentacles down

to stretch across her neck

like a rose trellis

that is all thorns and no bloom

till her tall tower of a neck

was nothing more than a tangled trunk

supporting some monstrous bulb

that bounced balloonishly in the night air

The trunk sends down roots

ever thickening fingers that grasped and curled

around every available edge

leaving her mottled and mauve

under the pressure.

This will not end well they think.

For once they are right.

the long strings knot around her ankles

and tie around her toes at last

and there is no color left but grey.

Gifts and Wishes

If math settled in my brain

the way words seem to

if they stuck in neat piles

Legos of Logos that on occasion

rearrange into something startling

and sensible

instead of these letters of nonsense

(What kind of word is sentimentality?

It sounds like thinking but it's not

It's more like crazy all mental

and sensed out- not thinking.)

Perhaps if my synapses and these symbols

pi and infinity

had a bit more chemistry

I could be something

someone I suppose but in numbers

it wouldn't matter

I would be x or y

the independent or dependent

I wish someone would tell me

someone for whom the numbers march

towards their inevitable equal end

which I am

Independent or dependent.

All I can do is take apart the words

and wonder which is better

to be a pendant or a pedant

I could swing along the edge of a cord

a sparkling something for someone's decoration

but I fear that by thinking of it I have sold my chance

a pedant it shall be.

Chances - I feel i would win the game

If I only knew the rules

could crunch the numbers as they run

I could come out lucky in this lottery of love.

But as I cannot I will write of it.