Whispers

Excerpt

On the night of the rains,
water was oozing out from
the sky's swollen stitches,
a rash developed across
the meaning of the heavens.

The wooden floors of my attic place
strove for a deeper tone,
a hoarse calling
grew louder as I paced
trying to see rain.

I followed the gravity of the treasure hunt
where each bounce meant a slap
across a table top of tension,
where the window basted winter black rain
and silence paid another call.

I am as much as this water flower, rain.
I am as impressionable as the city that stops for rain.
And I lack the same substance that dooms water to be
a soft pillow feather; excepting this,
I may still shatter this thing, March routine existence
by dabbling in destruction.

ISLES AND RIVULETS

On your brow, the steppes of Asia
are fetched by deep set eyes.
A colouring distict with mystery
perceives the Polos greeting the Great Khan,
the golden isle of Ciphangu, the sultry east.

I revel in the mystery
of my warm, wet flower.
A pollen bee laden with honey
squirms, embraces with me,
in the abrupt opening of our jar,
serrated edge of the known world.

The air, buoyed and elastic with pleasure, belongs to me.
Tawny, pale rose, your oriental skin
peels back
the tiny veils separating our cultures.
I peer in to find Confucian
lilac, towers of silence,
opal pheasants.

Harmony strains all dogmas.
Rain darts penetrate the gathering pools.
The tiny plastic cup
my life,
inseparable from your hand.

Whirl of patterned images,
deep seascape painting
hovering,
rustle, chokecherry
grown in
dark pigmented
stunted cove -
animal growl of pilotless sea,
metallic twinkle of sun
bright, stealing
bitter white
all bird life
rockward;
traces skimming
the intrusion
of pebbly shore,
autumnal night.

MALINGERING

Malingering,
increase drift
of censure
infrared blotted one.

No noise, just
the splashing of the sea
endless, shrill
birds
gaping a way
into the night's chill.

The mystique of the sea,
where waves act as snares,
hang boughs over wet
blackness wherever winds
die driven ashore.

Melancholy vastness-
its pleasure the
dim lights swallowed
in glutton happiness
the further I search
the sea.

CHRYSALIS

Fury of chrysalis, or crepuscular caterpillar's roosting nest,
Fidgeting cocoon dry in annoyance and the reptile caress
Of empty sound.
See it near the trestle,
Above broad November leaves,
Before winter's closing eye.

Comatose pupa, infringing
In dormancy well primed,
And charged with action
Its focus, brittle reality,
Distant life unaware around even itself.

Waiting, the syringe filled ecstasy is
Barest of autistic treasure
Satiate, 'til spilled and
Molten over toughened silken hide,
The outer dormitory
Hustles to rejoin
Compost spring
Controlling a tidy, energy world

The dangling of bells
...amid faint tingling,
the inspirational nature of their lies
between each peal.

Classical repertoire, then dryness.
Heavy swelter, the green ore
iron casting of the golden bell
clangs into the night.
Its dash against dry stone
a special brand of hideousness.

Naked madness,
the jangle of the noise
torn from the throat of night,
tucked between the rage of sightless villagers;
their torn members
toys of plastic
wedged obscene within the dash of withered bells.

THE WORLD OF DYING LOVE

The long finger of blackness is holding its head for us.
Dingy bue is its shade,
comatose in movement, hazarding a slow swiftness,
it inches toward us.

Relief comes fitfully.
The dragon alone, an upstart
crowned with drunken spending,
has horse colours as ribbons with his eyes.
It cradles a breast of trembling bone.

Misercorde, Misercorde.
I dreamt I saw skeletal slackness
dangling;
the poverty of touch is a casket with love in rumbling sockets....