Ocean’s granite edge, sky-clock ticking 

When I Grow Up

Vampire’s Lament

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SAD EYES AND SHADOWS

 Your eyes are sad and shadowy,

Red-rimmed with tears, but stoically

You set the laughter lines for me,

And knowing that you’ve been set free,

You falter at the door.

 

And you falter from our history,

Yet past is past and present too,

And your days have been far too few

To let the blisters form a queue.

Time now to try another shoe

GLASS SLIPPERS CRACKED AND THINGS WHOSE TIME IS FINISHED

Your eyes are sad and wide I see,

Vaguely trimmed with tears, but stoically

Are set the laughter lines as if agreed,

But now that frowns have been set free

They falter ambivalent history,

Back and forth like swaying wind-breathed leaves

Which are the extremities of deep-rooted, ancient tree

 

That past is past and present too

And future’s vacant canvas new,

Our days in time are far too few

For blisters to form a calloused queue,

 

Of slippers’ glass there are just a few,

Time now to try another shoe

 

But yet our days have been too many

That weaved no fabric like a cotton jenny,

A wasted coin, a single-sided penny

Which for half the price still would not buy any

Time for time to be replenished

What was the point of all the hope,

No net to catch, too thin the rope,

And getting to the other side

No circus walker attempts that ride,

A ride whose lonely fate’s soon finished

The Narrator

“In part, a paradoxical severe depression may result from actions that despite apparent sound reasoning, lead to a self-contradictory, illogical and opposite conclusions or reactions to those intended”

The Participant

Step right up to the Sideshow tent 

The Ringperson said about this event

The Show is over but the Players aren’t dead

So I paid my dues and in I went

With brightest eyes and sincere intent.

The Interlude

I’m a Saint, I’m a sinner,

Not sure which one’s the winner

Perhaps one day I’ll know

But it’s your move to shape the show

So dim the lights, fly the kites, bring in the clowns, cacophonous sounds, paper crowns on painted heads

The Show is over but the Players aren’t dead.

The Story

An each-way bet through the sliding door 

I hadn’t been told was there before

I didn’t notice which way you stepped

Perhaps you went right when I went left

But can what’s changed, change again for the worse

It seems it can and there is no nurse

To heal the wound of dreams now cursed

The chorus was broken, but now so’s the verse.

So can I close the sliding door

To repair the Players with the game a draw

But no, you’re buying one thing, not the other,

You’re in one shop, me another

I am a shadow born of Sun’s eclipse

As you pour flim flam from your truth parched lips

The Stars won’t align in your grand design

Your eyes are closed to roles re-assigned.

But can what’s changed, change again for the worse

It seems it can and there is no nurse

To heal the wound of dreams now cursed

The chorus was broken, but now so’s the verse.

 

I know I’m weak and I know I’m strong

Sometimes I’m right, and sometimes wrong

I’m on a train no end in sight

And there’s no tunnel at the end with light

 

How do I feel when I hear your voice

A perfect beginning, but you made your choice

I wonder why breaking news brings a breaking heart

When the ending was broken right from the start

 

But can what’s changed, change again for the worse

It seems it can and there is no nurse

To heal the wound of dreams now cursed

The chorus was broken, but now so’s the verse.

 

So a waste of energy this whole event

Time’s warming breath now frosted, fractured,  asunder rent

With life through the sliding door, the choices,

You can see the faces, but not hear the voices

 

I’m a Saint, I’m a sinner,

not sure which ones the winner

Neither one thing nor the other,

I’m in one shop, you’re in another.

 

But can what’s changed, change again for the worse

It seems it can and there is no nurse

To heal the wound of dreams now cursed

The chorus was broken, but now so’s the verse.

So step right up to the Sideshow tent                          The Ringperson said about this event

And back to the muddied Alley after the show          With bloodied eyes no synapses firing

Like a Teddy Bear crying

Who has no legs

It’s a long walk to horizon’s home

Perhaps the Ringperson can reverse the poem.

 

Wild-treed wind whips boisterously

below fast flying sky,

Hula dancing leaves whose gyrating hips leap left then right,

like seafull-fish in schools running from the shark’s attack,

Suicidal boughs

Threaten to crack and loudly cry,

Clouds run, riotously, coughing wet white mists

across rainforested canopy,

like sails atop violent masts, enraged in threatened tack.

And I lay inside a woodshined cabin, on lofted, mezzanine bed,

Gentle, soft sounds of tapdropped water easing from the kitchen below,

contradicting the weatherbeaten world outside,

and keep arm’s length the clatter and clutter of cold damp waiting day,

I am warm in fire fueled air,

And listen to the hisskissing bacon, and barely eggboiled water,

But watch through full wall window glass as the raging outside swirls, fighting to enter my temperate envelope

and wood floored bungalow

As breakfast cooks.

Is to become a Presbyterian
To live in the delirium
Of what’s happening from here on in

Is this a long term stay we’re in
Or just motel oblivion
When does the sanity begin
Or should we just survive?

And speaking of survive, I strive
To shake the trees and be alive
Stand on the cliff and take the dive
Into the water colder

Each nanosecond we grow older
Each cliffdive fugue becomes much bolder
But standing on that cliff grows mould
Though flying through the air is cold
Why should the chorus end?

Yet there is no chorus to this song
No one is here to sing along
Just switch the lights off as you leave
I have my candle, please do not grieve

So look up
Do you know why?
It’s a bird, it’s a plane, it’s a human high
It’s superman flying in the sky

Faster than a speeding bullet
But he’s getting older
and he may not still have it
It’s time to get the kryptonite
No not the green, he’ll lose the fight

More powerful than a locomotive
But if Lois decides to get emotive
Try to leap tall buildings with a single bound
But with focus lost might hit the falling ground

And scream the pain in movie surround sound

So that’s the chorus we’re not having
A lifetime’s opportunity worth grabbing
Not giving up’s the heart of the matter

Don’t think about what might shatter, just scatterlike the bull in that China shop, don’t stop, break chains loose, snap, crackle, pop
When you don’t use it, you’ll probably will lose it, but why not then just choose it, refuse it

to let time just shrink your life, So keep your cape and fly, and be there in the sky

When they look up above manmade towers

No reason to lose your Superpowers

 Don’t let your evolution bring disillusion or dilution,

it’s a New Year’s Revolution, and you’re leading in the charge.

Insanity’s a choice you make, if realities a thread you make, and break,

don’t wait to take a chance and raise the stakes

your chance to be that speeding bullet, fill it like

a rocket that is launched to stars, don’t settle just for nearby Mars

It’s close enough to drive by car, and living’s no more a bridge too far

Look you’ll see it’s around the corner

 

So now we know what’s here on in, no need for Presbyterians

Your fate is yours, the fate within

And let your music free, begin

to play that music loud

And don’t hold back and just be proud,

No need to be part of a brain-dead crowd,

Or hide behind a Holy shroud

And like I said, play music loud

 

So there is no chorus to this song
You need no one to sing along
But if you have a two part harmony, so much less the need for alarm in me

Remember don’t switch lights off as you leave
There are now two candles, please do not grieve.

 

Ocean’s granite edge, sky-clock ticking 

Earth languidly spinning

The Testament says it took a week to make

Then some house-proud God cleaned with his mop, spade and rake

 

Sundragon’s fire shyly to its western bed dimming,

Wearying beachcrowd homewardly thinning

Wave after wave on rock after rock

Like diamond tipped drills the water is winning

I want to see underwater images defined

But wind rustled surface reflects my eyes’ squinting

 

White topped arms of waves swim from the right

Sprayed mists off the tops breezily drift a flowing spume of white

 

I want to immerse, find evolutionary skills

Effortlessly breathing through newly found gills

To swim and to drift in the current below

And explore as a dolphin this seaside seashow

Clouds’ silent drift into the mattress of night

No symmetry in surf’s frenzied water fight

 

Beyond the white lines, the swell of elation,

My gills withered at birth, evolution’s frustration

I’m sitting on my wave drilled rock

Watching nature’s sometimes swirling confrontation,

 

Just able to see, laughing, spouting,

a symphony of dolphins in ragged formation,

and surfing, though yet nor gills have they for breathing

So why can’t I join them permanently swimming?

 

Evening surfers paddling last waves, the dolphins stampede and play,

This ongoing game and endless unstructured melee,

As water erupts in an unending demand

of hollow shapes that challenge and crush the sand

 

I wait to see who lasts the longer

Are the surfers above or dolphins stronger?

Both breathing air but which belongs here

No matter now, I know what and where demands –

To be a dolphin on earth-bound land?

Or a surfer forever paddling in salty water across the sand?

 

I know as surfers strive to shore,

awaiting tomorrow’s ultra-violet lotion,

that through the night they must rest from wave filled motion

That these streamlined dolphins belong in the ocean.

And we firmly footed on gill-less land.

When does a kiss begin?

 

Does it begin with the warmth of a jumbled-crunched blanket

Between two smiling, lightly touching bodies

Caressed with good morning eyes and slowly waking limbs knowing

that they are in the right place?

Or does it begin at a greeting door, with a question,

A brief touch, hope and curiosity? Or soon after at a meal eaten table, lights dancing off empty wine glasses, with softening lips and firming optimism, when hope becomes raucous laughter and a knowing comfort that each lip, plate and glass is in the right place?

Or is it before that? Is it every step before? The understanding that the fifty-eight facets of a brilliant cut diamond, side by side, dance differently with each jeweler’s craft. Reflections that understand each is perfect and in the right place?

Whenever it is, I am glad that kisses begin.

The sun’s a thief

Light-fingered master

Who calmly stole the night.

 

Cars careen blearily, blaringly, boastfully by

Slightly awake passengers’ yawning distantly inside

Are madly spinning asteroids riotously driving

Uncontrolled round city’s crazily chaotic flight.

The passengers listen for a pulse that shows direction for the day

Slavishly seeking reassurance of monthly well-earned drone-like pay

The time clocks keep on ticking but can’t keep time or life at bay

It’s nine o’clock they must be there

Or buildings disintegrate and tumble like depreciating clay,

Or so it seems as I walk along, watching faces uncaring, wearing frowns

And jumbled, pained and painted faces like scary circus clowns.