The Departed

The Clouds always matched the sky,

Like the buttons on his suit,

Spreading up to the Lapel’s of the Heavens,

To the Sun.

Finally the Moon,

An old man looking on romantically

Spends his time in the patterns of the night.

Telling stories like age old myths,

To the one left behind.

Farewell

The doorknobs

Are wiped dry,

And the corners

Pressed in the rooms.

The light bulbs unscrewed,

For other homes,

No more reshuffling of matches,

Into a bigger box.

Someone’s dying

In all the windows,

As she goes

Bye.

The Child

Leafs weep when touched,

Trees bend as he walks by,

He is the black cats worry

And the golden dogs saviour.

He knows it all,

That is his right,

Youth does not betray his age.

He sleeps on ocean floors

And communes on mountain tops.

He is the world and all its secrets.

He is the suns keeper

And the moons gift.

A child by any other name.

The Sunlit Silence

It is a sunlit day,

But the sun is a liar,

And the moon is a whore,

Full of unkempt promises,

Peppering the night with stars.

They fall one by one,

While the sky is blue,

So the heart can suffer expediently,

Slowly and thoroughly in secrecy,

Under the guise of privacy,

In a paper bag called respect.

The Hot House Flower

The red clematis has flowered,

Spring has tricked me again.

The yellow daffodils and blue bells,

Are parading in the neighbours gardens,

But they will wilt like the magicians secret,

I will have learnt, as the season passes.

The white blossom has already fallen,

Gathering as words on grey stone parchment,

Where phonetics become ridiculously important,

Describing myself on the pavements I walk.

 

Egg Eyes

Holding two peeled hard boiled eggs, one in each hand, he presses them, staring into their shining reflection.

Softly puncturing and pushing his thumbs into their white flesh. They crumble like paper eyes that have been written on a thousand times, left to fall endlessly out of his sticky palms.

To Touch the Sun

The branches pierce the sun,

Like spears through a glowing ball,

I would like to move it above me,

Casting no shadow in the forest,

Its appearance in the lake is a false light,

Held by the nets of reflection,

Shown up by surface ripples,

I wish to wade in and grab the illusion,

But to what point,

As it disappears,

Sunk soon as I enter the water.

 

Blue to Red

The sky is flat, bright and blue,

Trees jump out from their smooth background,

The birds hold on for dear life,

Dear life shakes them off like spat out pomegranate seeds,

Turning the sky red, full, fleshy and forlorn,

Like the story of one among many.

 

The Empty Wall

The sky is a wall,

With the horizons trees pressed into it,

Blue has become two-dimensional,

The sky’s emptiness cannot tell of its depth.

 

From the Bowels of a Boat

From the bowels of a boat

On course for the shorelinne,

Alone he hid,

Hearing the machinery of the sea,

Its valves and pipes pumping out

Black water into the night.

Not knowing what

The cold foam would become of him.

 

A Sentence

Spelling mistakes reminded me

Where I have to go tomorrow,

Commas make me take

Deep breaths,

Full stops push me

Forward to the end,

Quotation marks bring me

Closer to you.

 

A Change of Record

I gave myself a ticket,

For every time it rained,

And exchanged it for a recording

That played the sound of sunshine.

The Slow Moon

The crescent moon

I walked beside

Fell back

As I turned the corner.

Now looking back,

My neck bent,

I worry

I might not see it again.

 

What goes up must come down

Black moths fall from the light bulb,

Like cotton candy into the mouths of  babes.

Words drop,

Like a sweet shadow

Over the wet feet of experience.

Grass is thrown up,

By hands idling the oncoming autumn,

Like rice pelting a misinformed September couple.

And the eyes that strain upwards,

Carry the sights of the sky,

To the ground where they can be weighed today.

 

Potential Arrows

Crows gather like graphite arrows,

Some on tree ends,

Others spread out territorially on the field,

All pointing straight ahead with jerked necks.

They stare waiting for me to drop dead,

I mean them no harm,

Yet I wait to see them drop,

I trust their motivation more than my own.

 

They

They come and go,

The ones that tell you what to do,

They are they and are in the know,

You follow them even though they are the few.

They smile through their bitter news,

Never knowing you,

Sometimes alone, sometimes in crews,

Still you have not paid your dues.

You follow their advice,

They say it will be good and you’ll feel nice,

But really you are to forget what you once were,

That is their device.