The sheen of folded draperies warm resplendent curves of your bronze bright body. Your smile an ever present remembrance, suggest joyous eyes that never weep.
Through the meagre apertures of half-hid windows, blue skies burst and grow their light upon your breast, the stilled image grasping at my loins evoking half-lit fantasies
never dreamt of in your head. Your strange unnatural silence rather than offending, draws me trance-like to your wood framed world. My staring -your silence
causes the consciousness I feel to achieve in this encounter the bewilderment of knowing; you in the painting, the self twice known I in my shell. a pearl-like stone.
Many times have I sat by the water mill in the damp grass and in the dry feasting my body upon the wheel splash slaking my senses; worshipping buttercup crowns and primrose groves, my mind free to landscape and sky dream knowing that havens are hard to come by; impermanent places.
Coming here when the seasons are fair and the beech woods sing with bird talk; caressing my ear with their melodies giving soul reformation. Observing the change of winter scarred trees, knuckles of soft bark renewing torn limbs the buds of new boughs appearing; without proclamation.
It saddens me to see the mill is deserted the paddles seized by chickweed and gorse, the stream gentle and ebbing away through watercress meadows. The miller who might have been head of the stream, Keeper and Dam Builder has powdered his hand between the mill stones, the last yield of flour having long since departed.
The curious have bought the tack of cob horses, Coriander grows in the cart ruts. The gate is unhinged and the mill purse empty of men. I see green lichen eat the smooth stone oak lintels sag over moss covered frames, and I am entranced by design, composition and colour –and wonder
what plants have rooted and grown in this silent omnivorous world, that will seize on my house, empty my purse and feed on my bone?
Last night my instant mind wraith like uncoiled its luminous head and like all good mysteries left my body in bed, warm to the skin of my spouse. Unsuspected left the house, passing through walls and other substantial things seeking no byway to celebrate freedom, vision only for the ubiquitous presence of a troubled friend.
Finding the dark and humourless shell where colours are pale, and sounds deep as if heard from a well. In this house where the cry escaped and reached my ears beside my mate I see a soul in hibernation, a maelstrom of movement in which may be seen pain of intruders eschewing the Spirit, a legion of wants suppressing need the ache of a body seeking to balance in favour of peace, no matter the price or the length of the lease.
I am radiation a golden cascade a silver-winged creature, sensing soothing the troubled dark shade. Cleansing, creating, and fulfilling a vow commanding the sepulchre revive its undead. Holding the breathing unconscious sweet soul until life brightness stems from the spine and flows from the head.
United therein, harmony prevails purpose and will rebirthed she is no longer alone. I dissolve from her presence and seek my own bed. Returning to self through sickness and doubt lying awake, afraid and diminished a frantic heart upon a humourless bed, until music from the night shores comforts my head and I sleep the sleep of one who is dead.
Cold turn my putty blue and let me leave my sorry self-appointed imposition state of Senilità, this shadow of my footstep fear Frankenstein of my conceit of whom I aped in sweeter note as the satire sword when I was prentice of this night.
Tis the bruise upon my apple fallen, Brutus to my Caesar, the malformed child made conscious. And by my expertise I have the life-long-game of chess made stalemate whose colours now reveal no substance fiction belly laughing shallow truth.
All my fear is Senilità a thousand-tickling tales of doubt the smallest part of virile statement easy come by. The battery of baseless facts that made me man are the powdered leaves of a selfish summer. Now the water of my close is mixed the question of you do after death has burnt this mess of pottage and shaped me as the begging bowl.
Senilità You shame of all the Y man sought accepted scar and the weeping priest mortal made immortal bishop, Pharisee of double mean-less vision. To the monastery of children there confess with ease nonchalance of being server to the weeping priest of being Senilità.
Here by the speak of unripe fact sick the swelling puffing yeast the husk of all your learning home to Babel and name it grandeur of the Pharisee. Let your toothless cringing face be the symbolled skull cross-boned school of level thought and one horizon.
No -never I cannot as tears as negative I am the six-aged one life yes man cry wolf again, charge the greater part of me to war. I be the autumn of the shortest summer making where to start my cyclopaedic book of error.
………….. In the no start never finish real of the spark
Listen as you read!
Ah! The pain the wanting all over dilemma sober reach out sweet grape of confusion; a duchess spread out on her savage’s bed willing her blood red to the lips of her lackeying male, neither caring the speech or the stain of his whip. Taking the seventh of her seconding breaths at the weep of secretion.
Comes now the concentration; the apex of arc, the long-drawn laugh of the physical man. The peak, then the plummet of an up thrown stone; extinguishing fire. Then the cold Darkness of Earth and then the winter of a why gloom face frosting the smile of devil cares not into peaceful beginning; a child in the low of the arc, weak murmur of problem.
And yet in end it begins; in the no start never finish real of the spark, in the still heard gasp mute echo of Psi fleeing the white. In the good die young the crude soldier damning as with the devils and the un-vowed nun; the same design. All blind fisherman in the day-night casting pearls from the corporeal banks of unsettled sublimity.
It manifests as harpoon with a white heat line; the strongest plus and minus seed. All charge of the instrument cannon, Time Traveller to the state of perpetual climax; there as the spear of the deepest descent. The finder receiving the arranged and irrevocable choice the twin of sex; Satan-Father coalesced.
Cool waters imprisoned mass of colouration say fie now- sediment, syringe of my Elixir. Fie! Laugh you now the life is drawn to drinking state of Christos?
I left your immobility with the sigh of my becoming.
Whose reason called the crack of dawn my death?
Shadow barren of my love keep the silver of that State spend it on the flowers of your grave.
Creature after calling Solomon to testify himself keep your hammer inside your sarcophagus.
I remember roses imitations of the fire reflecting on the cheeks my last winter’s face crinkled with the onward coming Retribution-
that my lazy legs were faults of not attending church saw my Book the dog-eared blotted one
but even then
the coin of sailors slang would gutter sing the spit of my petulance leave me shrunk a little more to child.
And the roses I remember from the fire were the devil shadows beckoning.
Now I see you muted shell as the illusion of my living
Lie mirror!
I, the silver of your backing leave you transparent. You cannot fix my soul or image me in time.
Bubble -you have burst Fie! Fie! I am in sight of no horizons I am the Minister
Pray hard for the men who hunt the deep sea in their cockleshell boats out of Clyde who scour the cold swims of Poseidon’s green head filling iced holds with dead alive-eyes. Where the North wind screech is God’s angered ethereal Hand, and fear is the shake of worn riveted plate and Love is a church locked up on the land.
Elemental wind do not keep them from shore They who dare open the water blue door.
Pray strong for men who haunt the cod swims Hymned only by the white garish moon and wind-snatched callings of seabirds scorning. Skins scolded eyes shrunk in the Arctic blast laughing as the pawls judder and grind heaving the trawl, engine complaining. Who love the deep sea with a savagery spit, swear, and piss in the lee.
Elemental wind do not rage for their souls their fathers have paid the fish stealing tolls.
Pray love for the sons of water and blood, patient for the calm, eager to net and ever ready to chase the white fish over mountainous crests, under the pale dark bruising wet sky. Casting net to web Gods’ octopus head clawing the fish from his shivering throat, their lives threatened by the weight of the prize.
Elemental wind, do not anger the sea Man and his mistress must ever be free.
In muddy mouthed Portsea Creek unwatched forgotten ships lay beached and breathless, dashed and smashed cut and bled, weather beaten, picked and broken by the dockside stooping crane’s bill collecting scrap.
Their final journeys over shallows dragging barnacle crusted bottoms over shingle groaned past the red flagged gunnery range, pulled and pushed by impatient tugs, aware falling tides and sucking mud claim victims.
Robbed by landsman, written out of registers, church empty bridges balefully glistening glare untold stories of once purposed lives, men who swore repeatedly like lovers on heat, trumpeting the union of engine and steel.
Now their ghosts can be heard in the small of the night blowing base horns, heaving anchors, turning their screws seaward, reliving purpose, blending rusted hulls to the sea and the never ending sky.
If you are not already aware -be warned, writing poetry is addictive. You may like me have other writing skills prose-like, non-fiction, fiction, or faction. If you get hooked on writing a poem, in your heart of hearts you know you cannot finish it until it’s a work of art -that means every word must count, they must be the right words, and the poem must be more than words alone convey.
It’s addictive because we can never be sure we have achieved, not only birthed but given long life to the piece.
In many years of ‘garret writing’ there’s one difficult lesson which must be learnt, that is -don’t file it in the pending tray, publish the damn thing, because art is an evolutionary process. Pieces do not mature into art if they remain stuck in your mind. The blank sheet of paper is only terrifying when the mind is still hosting ‘unfinished’ poems.
After you post it’s gone from your mind -later perhaps you might unpublish and rework. My experience tells me the piece gets better, and ….. and ….. it might also be unworkable -possibly a work of art!
Spume spatters night, the pickle-black stream a-tumble under moon, is whispering loud between lichen-stained stones, hissing about ruin of Man as it hastens to sea.
The clouds uncover a star mantled crescent illuminate a petrified gauntlet of stone pickle brown scars etched in yellow shape fingers grasping an invisible hilt.
All about my better body shadows dance thick-like bracken wracked by wind. I hear clattering hooves, sprays of flint shard see a thundering mass of muscle and blood,
flanks creaming red, a horse and rider a force on the run. I can feel the hurt labouring breath know her last service hastens in the dark to this musical place.
Astride her saddled brave heart, helmeted, metal shorn, steel spurred, a wounded warrior is breathing his last eyes bright and fixed on safe haven.
A mortal wound bloodies the cross of his surcoat, a lance haft splintered is sunk deep to the thigh; yet he rides as if ready to battle the Christian foe.
Left hand fists the bridle, the right grips a sword pointing to earth. It is the horse that gives way her heart bursts as she stumbles,
the stream too wide too deep too dark. The rider thrown lies broken on horns of veined rock, eyes fixed to the sky, his cape now a shred of dark shadow.
The last laboured breath of his charger is taken by the stream and moves on reborn in the song sung by the stones eternally free of saddle and rider.
Stillness has swallowed the warrior’s fire high flies his purpose, body-less at last, soul-like beyond sky bowl of stars seeking the grail of everlasting life.
And I stumble in time, unsure If my better body is the breath of life part drawn to the moon part to the stream transforming, dividing, living a dream.
Idyllic loves’ creation is imagined lilac groves air enchanting havens of scented flowers lifting to the harvest moon.
This world we may not enter until this earthen road is ended, yet we may store good efforts seed do right as God’s creators.
Unbending onward to the light holding to heart loves’ first vow, that we unseasoned Spirits shall by all intentions be tried and tested and found well.
Mine Quick Voice of Aquarius 