Home Again

Come along the wall.

Walk beneath the trees

who have stripped themselves

of their gaudy leaves

leaving them loose to drift

in casual piles about their rooted feet

and slipped on the silver moonlight

which clings like silk to their long limbs.

Come across the stumbled stones

that lay rounded over the earth.

Use them like steps-

Up up and away!

Come along and hurry,

The winter moon is waning.

O love I have been waiting

so long.

Dead of Night

Slow the saviour comes

ringing his lonely bell

but the hour is late

and we each alone

have curled into our corners

that give a shallow protection

from this sharp-edged world

and have climbed into a sort of slumber

The bell rings

again and again

with its brass voice beckoning

bending beneath the branches

of each wild-armed tree

and bringing the echoes back again

but no one stirred

I heard you in the cavern that comes

between the day and the dream

but the bell could not bring me back.

I am too deeply gone

Slow the saviour comes

and late the hour

The night is already deep

and I am deep in it

Ring on bell ring on

I dreamt I heard you ringing.

The Reveal.

Skin of mine

how easily you stretch

swelling day by day

One day I'll tell you what I mean

when I stop and stand in streets

and stare at the cracks that spread like spiders

across the sweating pavement

I always think of them like scars

small caverns carved into the skin of the city

marking painful places and stupid choices

The pavement in front of my house is so broken.

One day I'll tell you who I am

when the earthquake comes swelling

shredding the streets into slag concrete

a wave of grinding destruction

As the city stands shedding its skin

I'll scream- at last. all of the cyanide secrets

I've hidden with my silver knife

buried under these slender scars

One day you'll look at the rubble

and walk away.

O skin mine you cannot stretch forever.

City dear.

My feet searches for the curve of cobblestone

beaten by this flat concrete

laid out like so many tombstones

one against the other in the grey stretches

and I wonder whose grave I'm walking on

Oh city how hungry you have been

I hear your belly roar early in the morning

and as I slide to uneasy sleep it growls outside my window

an anxious need an eager grasp

and how you stretch and grow sending your smoke

like fingers that curl into claws

spidering their way through the scraggly foilage

wrapping each dusty strand carefully against each surface

until with one twitching pull

it tears the forest down and thrusts it thrashing into its grasping maw

and with a quick swallow stretches out for more.

O city I am lost in your grasp

and cannot break free.

Winter at the Window

I haven't seen you here for a while

on the edge of my windowsill with the wind at your heels

but tonight, tonight I was expecting you.

The small storm clouds were curling along the horizon

tinting themselves pink and red

dipping their grey fingers into the sun's hidden rouge

and making a mess of the skyline.

The tree has dropped it's last skeleton leaf

and the branches swing lonely against the shingles

tapping their own morse code out in the night

a hidden rhthym to the faraway forests

that stay green the whole solar circuit.

The stars too have been brighter

as the sun sent itself to bed they stole closer

sparkling one against each other

and throwing the darkness into disarray

laughing children with an old dog who stands

bewildered at their games but can only bark not bite.

All these things whispered to me

as I walked along the sullen streets.

the echos murmered through the halls of my home

sinking into the carpet with tired little sighs

to be roused again at the step of my slippered feet.

They whispered of secret things and shadows

and silent escapes across the starlit streets.

I haven't seen you here in a while

with your shadow stretched long against the tree

it leans so lazily across the snow

That it might never move again.

How lovingly the light falls on you

tangling itself up inside your curls

and laughing as it spills out of the dimple

that hides within your cheek like a blush

on spring's first rose before it dares to bloom.

I am not surprised by your hand

cold as it is

sliding across the long expanse of winter air

You take possession of my skin with one finger

its slight weight against my cheek

carving it's own small cradle in which to rest

I was waiting for you tonight.

Forever, is an awfully long time.

O for some rain.

The street is the same as it has been

each of the hundred days before

I would think that one day there will be a change

small cracks stretched out like girls sunbathing

swallowing up the heat with their hungry skin

and splintering away into shadow dolls

across the sand expanse

and that one day the road will be a pile

a faint path of gravel and cement dust

ground away to nothingness beneath the weight

and the sun but...

The sun was warm today as it always is

and the heat sank through the air gracefully

the spray from a continually spring

to where I don't even feel it anymore

between my fingers and under the weight of my hair

I notice its slow waves crawling down the road

the thousand undulating motions on its way

to some place still holding its cool breath

like a treasure hidden away from thieves

the sun will slide in through the window and steal it away

but not today...

Today I saw your father across the road

myself on one side and he on the other

with the lazy heat sliding along the street

and the thousand hairline cracks in the cement

drinking up the golden drops like wine

and then the rain broke down on us

I stood wet and saw him across the street

with the water running down the long lines of his face

and sinking into the seams of his shirt

and spreading its thin line like a stain across his chest

and broken came the pain pouring forth.

A thousand miles and a long farewell.

The street is not the same.

The heat sticks to my skin.

You are gone and far away.

The rain has stopped again.

Confession

oh my broken hands

how smooth the shadow falls

from the wrist into the black form

an easy softness along the ground

and my hands my hands

o my brokenness

these weak fingers with their throbbing grasp

these shattered strands of push and pull

that have fallen limp like puppet strings

cut and left to drift across the stage

my hands are broken

and yet how smooth they look in these simple shadows

how well formed in grace they glide

over obstacle above each creviced crack

and yet against the silent weight of air they scream

how silent the shadow

while the form shrieking flies

a clumsy weary path back from the cold land

and on again looking for a less weary sun

how smooth my smile lays beneath the glossy layer

how light the paper drifts from breeze to breeze

how graceful the shadow

and O - O how broken I am.