Two halves of a metaphor,
the two sides of the sea:
A coin that keeps rolling,
ever walking the line;
and there are heavy elements
in space above
and lighter dreams beneath
the ocean waves,
and whales toeing
the high rope bridging firmaments,
astronauts walking
the floor of long drowned caves;
and all is its own unending
in the chest of uncarved glyphs
tossed unto the crooked weighing scale
to be measured against possibilities
Whale
Otherness comes clad in a foreign colour, too full of contradictions to be described, to be painted;
it comes in alien ships under alien sail and flag, the swooshing cape of golden stars falling into a sea brimming with whale skeletons eating away at the fabric of uniform thoughts
September Magic
Stay until the first star appears
and follow home the blue hour:
September magic,
seeping into your bones,
up from the ground;
flowing out of your fingertips,
taking flight with the bats
and the reeds sing of
summer returning in its softer shape
muted, transmuted, brilliant in
apple-crisp mornings, gold and red
between the wisened green
and the deepened sky
and there is movement
and something more
alive
looking for
a wider place.
Pooling
Endless rain in endless circles
on puddles: infinite eyes
into the souls of water nymphs displaced
Otherness Is A Bird
Otherness is a bird singing
from a burnt tree
against the wind of invisible sea, desert uncrossed
it is a fire curled up in your chest
as you pretend to be be asleep
on a cold morning
but the ice is thin and breaking
and all you want is a mirror
to see your own sun
and the bird is singing a prayer;
please be there, please be there
The empty
void
is full of cats
if you stare hard enough
Mending
Cast a splint of night
around the broken figments
of trees’ imagination;
fill with velvet void the cracks
in the trunks of reality
and thread the branches
with garlands of stars
that they may bath in silver light
the wounds of daylight hours,
dress them with gentler grace,
as you bind together
the frayed branches of ideas
so none will stray to far and break;
and mend the rough, crumbling bark
with your own hands, placing them
in holes left by the missing patches,
covering the raw, bare sinews
of the universe within
and the world will make it through another night.
The Way We Don’t Rhyme
And maybe it is a foreign language, maybe I was abandoned in this spot without such tools, such conveniances stashed in my luggage
and maybe it is a strange tongue, not mine, not rolling around in my mouth to come out as polished marbles
so I pray with my lips shut
in silence deemed irreverent to the sacred space held for metre and the rise and fall of kingdoms of melodic articulation
kneeling at the altar of shards
and rising to stand as
I build myself into a tower of images, of unspoken wordy height and touching liminality in more dimensions than a tongue could squeeze between two lips and two breaths,
no rhymes to a reason hidden from
an ear to the ground,
approaching infinity in the collapse of the tower, and finally, noise
but I am long gone to another metaphor, hiding under the table on which knowdledge is served in the shape of gold-dusted fruit;
hiding I lick my fingers after touching them all and dreaming of rearranging them into
run-on sentences stacked into paragraphs, pyramids balancing tension and beauty
and yet
you ask for another tower, but with
a sounding bell and a song
and I leave in a fade of thunder
Softer
A softer turn of summer bending
around the corner of faded walls
in morning light and morning shivers
after leaving the duvet cocoon
to its memory of warmth
Run
You can run away from a place
but it will haunt you,
riding
in the hollow of your shoulder blade:
mountains, stark against
a gibbous moon
