A day in the night of the Walking Sleeper

………….. 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.

I am the smoke of a Mannikin burnt

Free. Free at last

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

and I

Am the Ministry.

The Price of Fish

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.

©TonyAshenden

Ghosts in Breakers Creek

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.

© TonyAshenden

Poetry is addictive

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!

A Stumble in Time

Pickle-black stream a-tumble under moon

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.

© TonyAshenden

The Fragrant Airs of Heaven

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.