Thunder hangs heavy

wedding bells bang their

 

clanging peal

 

The guests on scattered lawn

array in prefect shade.

 

Bride & groom align

to whisper words that’ve

 

always been

 

‘’I do, I do, & once again I do’’.

 

Through sparkling glass

the music turns its first eclipse

 

the veil of morning splits:

 

& I’m returned to memory’s

chain, I’m standing here alone

 

again, with you.

 

 

They party through the night

& break the dawn

 

I toss & turn a life where

nothing yet was broken

 

the circle still inscribed

the children at our side

 

& no one ever loved me

as you do.

 

A wedding under thunder

& a lightning sky

 

when both of us were tender

those simple words they caught us:

 

‘’I do, I do, I bind us; until we die

let nothing break asunder’’

 

& by God we tried

that other wedding morning.

 

All along the river light play’s on broken bottles

swayed by the rising of tides, the falling of hearts,

we sit sipping ice cold drinks watching the clock tick

time back to us.

 

We are mirror thin spectres of humanity

your blue eyes flecked with green

and your brain spread across the sky from opium nights.

Was I ever even in your dreams?

 

It looks like summer outside, and each time

I come close to love, a little piece of me dies:

for you walked into the evening spreading ‘if’s’ and’ buts’

as you emptied your pockets of bits of us.

 

The wind weaves her spells into the dusk

the sunset’s slashed across the elliptic like a lover’s smile,

it’s hard to place a stamp on this: the love you wouldn’t try

for you knew that I was always sure to run,

 

and you were bound to fly.

 

 

 

It’s the writing down of what I can’t say, that incubates monsters

octopus sliding from beach to veranda

 

aliens gliding across an English lawn

children turned into vampires around a Guy Fawkes fire.

 

In trying to create a mystery from your ordinariness I faltered,

 

slipped and stumbled on the pavement of your shallow  clichés

made scars that ache and welts to mirror the fragrance of your skin.

 

The perfection of outer casing left me hungover, fingers blinded by

sleepless nights of non – events, body cringing from the

 

battering to come, as I courted profanity,

 

still the blame of failure clings under nails, and all the washing,

all the washing, to no avail.

 

It’s the realization of who I can’t be, all the “can be’s’ that are expected:

blazing a trail of destruction through these middle class streets

 

leaving cindered beds and hopes binned like old newspapers,

 

the things I can’t say rise like the image of a litany, long remembered,

chiming in the brains of dead nuns, pink blancmange…..click of worry beads.

 

I was never more sure of nothing as it echoes in the cellular memory of

dying stars still visible in these orange city nights as pulsars,

 

lending some kind of eternity to this impeachable generation.

 

Wherever I look poets emerge from cracks in the fabric selling

their prophecies to the hungry emptiness like ice cream cones,

 

dripping at the extremities.

 

It’s cruelty that super glues this bright successful globule of society

where I dream my out of control scenarios……..

 

It’s the fragility of trust beyond words, words escaping like steam under pressure

it’s the movement of air from a still life breeze; the apples in a bowl I painted yesterday,

 

a sudden gesture never to be recaptured.

 

It’s the writing down of what I can’t say.

 

For courage is a minefield of prostitution which teeters on the skin fold of truth

and all that is worth the telling has never been told,

 

and you who have tried to touch me fail in the twilight.

 

For I am lost in the seduction of Angels breath rising and falling……..

I am lost in the allure of unknown galaxies, rising and falling……….

 

Yes, I am lost in the invisible metaphor of “might have been.”

 

While the world revolves in its worn out symbolism,

and it’s the writing down of what I can’t say,

 

that incubates monsters.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Deaf from night’s

hollow whispers

 

silk shawl cast aside,

bare flesh musking

 

muslin pillow,

as we let it slide.

 

like young girl’s curls

masking asking faces.

 

You rest in oblivion

stroking candied women

 

delicate filigree phantoms

breathless in their brilliance.

 

While I try to tame the tiger

hush the rush of sweetness

 

turn aside from logical explanations

see you as you want me to:

 

a summer sorbet

fresh with sun kissed satisfaction

 

that crisp wisp of magnificence

tipped to fly away:

 

& I curb my riptide words

cries that wake me from my sleep

 

why’s & how’s dulled

by ice cold wine:

 

follow your un mapped route

to a mute & foreign destination

 

where nothing more is given away

but time.

 

‘’I’ll love you forever’’

You say

 

Thanks

but I’ll just take today

 

corn shifting gold

honeysuckle curl

 

& the high wide eye

of this summer sky.

 

 

*

 

Thought unfolds

like Chinese puzzle

 

you’re in my mind’s eye

I have no solution.

 

 

*

You sent me lilies

‘’As beautiful as you’’

 

But I loved another

& the lilies kept coming

 

an epitaph to love flaring.

 

Now on my window

pink lilies sit

 

fresh & bright

as woman’s skin:

 

you crept to your lair

I’m still insane

 

remembering lilies

one brief spring.

 

*