Lick

Artist: James Jean

My face is peeling-
Can't you see it?- In an act
of discordance,
formerly known as 'despair'.

I tug at the edge and pull down
slowly
as it passes the glasses
with which I hide, and stare.

And over my lips comes a sharp, liquidy
sting
Porous, weak are those things we suck

And licking, slip-- slide-- slip
where within our tongues may dip;
I tenderly touch them once more

as, blindly, I board the breathless ship. 

Illumination, or, a Fumigation.

I promised myself I would not let them in

Follow the light, you say; well it was dark there.

You put the lamp over the words

Now all I am is bare bones.

16 September: I Haven't Written Proper Poems in Almost A Year

You might crave your nicotine
hit; provides comforting
But I am dancing solitarily through
a dust cloud,
Reaching for that impostor horizon.

A kiss on this kisser
Would band-aid the misser.

A blue streak appears, cutting and
Slicing like a serrated blade through baguette
Dissapating the dust's transient cover. 

Now I Really Am a Branch

There’s a place inside me that’s curling up

A little piece from a willow tree

The leaves are strewn among the grass blades, decaying

And the wick is drying up and shrunk.

There are pieces like it but they’re still on the tree

My piece looks up only for it to see

The others are alive but they can only see the ground

Is it better in my place or theirs? I want to be found,

  Taken away and woven ever beautiful

 Into a wedding crown, and always regarded with a honey-warm eye

I can’t believe their compliments and kind words

Because I’m promised, instead, happiness from the biggest big guy.

Homework Not Unpleasant

There is little more so ordinarily

Satisfying 

Than typing one’s notes for a talk about that 

sensual figure of men’s dreamings

as an autumnal breeze rustles the curtain 

and light; 

with tea at hand to slowly sip.

Oh That Shitty Bridge.

How is it made possible? The bridge that we built with broken hands

The wood I gathered in the days you were gone, polished with the sad

Sad spirit that took leave of me when you showed your face again

The bridge now is broken…We took too many steps over it, we jumped-

Our calculations were insufficient for the force
which gave power to our fall.

Woolies Receipt

One thousand fresh stings from a bee!

But he was dying.

"Be blessed!" she said.

My soul (inside of me) starts crying.

Creaking sounds like wicker

The stone in my chest growing thicker

Puffing breaths, like

Billy in the Winter. 

Knock Knees

He strums guitar to her, amongst the trees
As gently blows the warm Spring breeze.

In a romantic kind of way, they knock knees.

Also In Their Heartbreak. October 18, 2012

A cacaphony of grief, made
by all those who desperately cry
and in the darkness they feel alone
but each is, invisibly, so close to another

Also in their heartbreak.

The day we were told that she would pass.
Fear, guilt, deadness, torment, in his eyes
Their advice for help came too late

In silence I cried out to Being.
An anxious, feverish, yet inaudible
pleading.

They said death has been conquered
Confident of peace in passing, I
could yet not convey!

My essence reaches to clasp his own
What use, though? Kisses, loving arms
Wrapped round like scarves on exposed necks

Words become tattered and flavourless.

Trust in the essence of now. Let go
Embrace my own stillness
Clasp in emptiness for his own, wait

For the blue-green storms of grief to be at peace.

Pumpkin Pie, March 2010

An adventure in the moonlight.
We arrive at a tea party.
But we are the waiters.

Jack and I steal glances
as we serve the pumpkin pie
Long-lost grandmother locks me in an embrace.

"Tell your mother Granny won't LET you leave!

"Stay for tea."

Another: "At least you two are in love."

A secret run across the green
The lights just miss our shadows. 

He Had the Prettiest Eyes

Thereupon I glimpsed his soul
Soft green
Pearl blue
And flecked with gold.

Hearts Can Hurt

Play on, old heartache
Hidden weeping from your call
Clenched teeth
and heaving breaths.

Feigned Foreign Feelings Flesh.

Like an invader of my own biovehicle
A foreigner traipsing in the land in my borrowed skin

An imposter is I, with a grimacey grin.

A scuff on my new green sandals, possessing no grip

The pus increases under my ring finger

And recall this no-breath from a mere tickle.

I Dreamt a Dream Most Inappropriate! April 2013.

Last night
all alone, in the dark and silence, there-
not even a chirping.

You and Anna entered
in a bright luminescence

Five little darlings at your feet. I smiled
Were it a longer while ago, I would have
wept.

The youngest, in my arms
kept.

Blue green twinkling
Near deep enough to cast out into,
and search, or wait

Little freckles
Ginger tufts in tiny twirls

Darling little Autumn-leaf girl.

Vanilla Smoke. Hot Nights.

On this day of sunbeams endless
We chanced in different directions, on the same path,
and you simply followed me home.

When I asked you again, "Who do you love?" Once again, you replied, "You, of course,"
and so gingerly, I smiled.

And like breathing out vanilla smoke on those hot summer nights of two years ago,
I forgot you'd said such a thing. Carefully.

We sat in the grass under the threatening clouds.

You moved so close to me
I was waiting to see what I would do if you would try
Run? Return?

My voice announced strange deaths
love of brothers and couples and friends
as you gave me old news of your loss.

I sighed and exclaimed
and made my clover chain.
Like the ones we made as children.

Taking it, placing it on my head;

hating me

loving me

telling me I was faery-like

Once again your undefinitive advances left me so unsure
And now the ground we tread is rocking
and creaking and threatening
to break. 

Tell me, just for once
Is this reality or a dream
from which to wake?

Double Bass Bible Man- January 2012.

I remember being in the flurry of people that heaves through the New York City subway, one afternoon in October.

We were like fish in a crowded sea, everyone pushing and rushing and with a goal in mind.

We all knew where we were going. No one didn't know what they were doing.

And down the hallway I heard a deep voice, like a double bass being plucked with a gentle hand.

There was a man standing in the middle of all the oncoming people, holding his ground against the rushing flood, in a suit.

In his right hand he held a bible, in his left, a briefcase.

He boomed to the oncoming commuters, with deepest conviction and no detectable doubt:

"We need to come home to God." Slowly, with all the patience of time eternal.

"We have forgotten him, forsaken him. We must return home to God."

And I never forgot that man, the man who would otherwise have been ridiculed; but instead, he chose to speak and be ignored.

As long as someone heard him.

Personal Pain is Necessary.

My age is the page and
I'm up to my knees in the water
Pours down on the starlit city
Too busy for personal pain
is necessary, they say, to gain
weight, but I don't want to go to
Chicago! Chicago! There's a tomorrow
we'll sip coffee and laugh with
no one because I'm in an empty
house is dead air and the incense
is fair on the nose and don't
you suppose? It's time I went to
sleep is for the weak but I don't
believe that, for it's when in
dream-states that the imagination grows...

Wednesday, 29 February 2012

Today I bought a sausage
McMuffin, as well as my own breakfast
To give to the man begging outside.
It is Lent, after all, I told myself.

It was a bit hypocritical, or maybe not.
He had walked away when I got outside with it.

My random act of kindness ended up in the bin.