listen:
celebrate the blooms
turning pure faces skyward
such dazzling beauty
has roots sunk deep in darkness
decay transformed into life
alchemy
Category: poetry
Echoes
Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.
George Santayana
listen:
The lessons of the past are clear to see
on pages dripping with blood shed in vain
and still we can’t escape our history.
When no-one questions how we come to be
repeating ancient wrongs, one truth remains;
the lessons of the past are clear to see.
A genocide becomes legal decree
some disbelieve an innocent’s refrain
and still we can’t escape our history.
When facts are fake, debased commodity
and Orwell’s warnings are chillingly plain
the lessons of the past are clear to see.
Complicit, distant, blind to misery
we turn away and shrug, not this again
and still we can’t escape our history.
It’s too easy to say it wasn’t me;
I’m not responsible for all this pain.
The lessons of the past are clear to see
yet still we can’t escape our history.
bikini body
she rises from the
water, this modern day Venus
of plastic beauty
Tell me a story
listen:
Tell me a story. Give me tales of a thousand nights, warm scented breeze on my skin, sand in my shoes. Take me to the farthest pole, blue-green fire dancing in the sky, breath clouding in crisp night air.
Tell me a story. Let me taste salt sea tang while sun beats down on wooden decks. Show me dolphins, flying fish, whales breaching white-topped waves. Let me glimpse bright eyed merpeople watching deep under the surface, waiting.
Tell me a story. Carry me on red and silver rockets to vast silent space stations where the stars never go out. Show me galaxies born from cosmic dust. Bring whispers from strange aliens and stranger, once-human creatures.
Tell me a story. Lead me up the mountain, rocks skittering away under exhausted feet, lungs screaming for oxygen. Describe that joyful promised land seen only from the summit, take me there on wings of faith.
Expand my horizons. Play my emotions. Cloak mindless chatter, soothe unthinking wounds, only with words. Let me shed this skin, be someone else, somewhere else, sometime else. Give me distance, just for a while. Let me lose and maybe find myself.
Tell me a story.
do not cross
my heart was all yours
fingerprinted with your love
now it’s a crime scene
Terminus
listen:
Here, by your side
forgotten tears were cried.
Fingertips touch, and part
do you feel my beating heart?
Emotions surge
as paths diverge.
in the fade
listen:
Only when our light is dying
there, in the fade, we’ll know at last
how bright our colours truly were
just how much we have lost.
Scales
I have forgotten what to keep
abandoned things meant for the journey
held close what should be lost
cherished dead weight
So much chaff to balance
a single grain of wheat
Living the Dream
Immigrant beauty
regards her spangled empire.
First, yet last to smile.
***
(first published 21.5.18 in Poets Unlimited on Medium)
Consumed
He tasted her mind and realised he was starving – unknown
listen:
Dancing girls twirl bright and golden, limbs lustred to slip through the hands in a whisper of scented oils. A brilliant array, spread out to tempt a prince mired in jaded expectation. Perfect sweetmeats, empty glossy promises on the lips.
Bright. Gold. Red. Gone.
She is silent, an insubstantial shadow in the light of her better favoured sisters. Eyes lowered, plain garbed, unremarkable, she vanishes behind another dream confected in jewelled feathers.
He rises, leaves the orgy of consumption behind him, seeks her in the forgotten labyrinth of the palace. His hand stays her flight. Understood.
And so to a perfumed chamber. Purple and maroon, silk and velvet, secrets and lies.
Apparently submissive, her hand slips into a pocket. But when she raises her head, fire blazes defiance from her eyes. He steps back, hand on sword.
I do not refuse my esteemed prince, asking only that I might read to him first.
She opens the small volume, gold letters glowing on its spine.
And the universe cracks open and explodes before him. Questions, answers, songs for eternal ages, ancient wisdom and otherworldly beauty. His desert heart blooms, cool rivers quench parched lips. Her voice swathes him in clouds and galaxies and everything that has not yet come to be. Time sits at her feet and listens.
The prince savours thoughts, feasts on ideas, nourishes his soul, gobbling all. The moon sets; she does not stop reading. He is drunk on limerence, enthralled by wonder.
He wakes alone, faint afterglow of her words in his ear. How could this lyrical banquet leave him so hollow with longing? He did not know true hunger till he tasted her mind.
He had not understood.
A lifetime might not be enough. He searches still, for his hidden spirit with the phoenix burning in her eyes and dragon flames dancing on her tongue.