The strangest things

Let us now do the strangest things
We'll grow two big beautiful wings
And then chain ourselves to the ground
With words of doom and fearful sound

We'll dream of flying and ecstasy
Of peaks unconquerable, of glorious apostasy
Then we'll wake, and fill each moment of each dying day
With thoughts undone, with dreams unmanned
With sculptures of freedom
Washed away by the ocean
For they were only built in sand.

Let's do this now, it'll be loads of fun
It's how the rest of the world gets their kicks
Growing wings is enough to get your fix
For flying could get you too close to the sun.

Midnight Muse

And what of the moon and stars
What do they do when we rendezvous
In kaleidoscopic bars
Do they go chasing each other across the sky
Winking in fright or delight
Do they commingle over made up histories
Or lie
Do they find solace in the arms of darkly attractive strangers
Or rest quiet, waiting for us to emerge
That they may light our way through the never ending remnants of the night

Burn

The world burns away
With each passing moment
Friends leave,  trudging into the darkness
Never to return
Each blade of grass,  every petal
Withers as I watch,  unblinking

This is age,  I think
When memories must be laid to rest
Given their graves
Their private ceremonies
Their periods of mourning
This is age 

Among the carcasses of my past
I tread, forlorn
Digging deeper graves
Laying loss to rest

The world burns away, but
Burdened with the scars
I remain
Still as the night that burns me.

Scarred

The blade cuts the wielder

The apprentice
Slashes and cuts

The razors edge
Marks his time
To mastery
In cicatrices

For some of us
Life is our blade

My heart is a cicatrix
My mind the blade discarded

_____, sweat, and _____

And this
Is my world
Built with the sinews and sweat
Of my body
Blood and tears intermingled
But not mine.
Oh no,  not mine.

I must be proud
Of my world
Edifices that reach the sky
Nature transformed to civilisation
By my own dirt-stained hands.
With the sweat of my efforts
I'm building mansions over my fears
On the rubble of their blood and tears.

Phantasm

Into morning mist
My breath congeals
In familiar shapes

Each cloudy tableau
Reminds me of you

And just before
My mind can grasp
The metaphor

The swirling mist
Shudders, shatters
Shaken by the shiver
Of exhaled memories
As my lips turn blue

Flowers in the Night

Like flowers in the night
That fight shy of the morning
The silent men await
The coming of stars

In the black despair
A million twinkling lights
Give us glimmers of hope
To the sound of silent screams
But when the morning arrives
There is no sign of life
The desolate plains stretch
On into nothingness
As the flowers lie stilled
Back in their buds
Or as withered petals on the wind

When the night arrives
They emerge and sing
Songs of hope
And yearn for the light

Yet not a one
Will wake in the morning
Not a one will sing
Of freedom in the light.

Cocoon

In your love
I lie
Cocooned
Against the world

You shelter me
Calm my fears
Still my restless eyes

I awake
Stretch my growing wings
With my eyelids shut now
I fly

Silvertips

Lazy red nails
Freshly blooded
Reach mindlessly;
Each finger parts
A knotted problem
In the tangled black
Caressing into obedience
Each recalcitrant lock.

Your fingers turn to puppeteers hands
My mind and body and soul
Jerk in time to your tunes
But you shall not remain
Unscathed, my love

As your fingers trail
Down to the dying ends
Where the pigments fail now
To declare their black mastery

The red blood of your nails
The alabaster lushness of your skin
Are stained by the colour of my rich revenge

Silver seeps from my sideburns
Through your fingers
Into your soul

Mirage

On the ground
The winds of change
Reach their questing fingers
Towards the black edifice
Of governance

It stands tall,
Invincible
As the people stare
The wind finds a chink
The structure quivers
And comes apart
A mass of shivers

In a slow dance
Fragments fly
Democracy's ashes
Fill the sky

As the ashes swirl
They rustle this refrain -
When the winds have died
What will remain?

Depression

On the bed
Beside me
There's a hole
In the pillow
For your head
It stays cold now
To my touch
An abyss for my eyes
And my wandering mind

And in the early morning
With barely concealed delight
When the sun streams in
To suffuse my world
With dancing rays of light

The hole stays still
As deepening
Shadows fill
The space
You left
Behind...

Betrayal

Memories
Of your mouth
Muddle my mind
They roam
South
With disdain
The fabric strains
Little signs I hide
From prying eyes

My fingers roam
The seat I'm on
The hard plastic
Is now your skin
Your tongue flickers
And skims within
Crevices hidden
By my clothes
My memories of you
Coming alive
Every moment
Of the morning after
As my face holds
Absolutely still

Or, at least,
I hope it does...

Avalanche

An avalanche of loves
Descends upon me
It catches me unawares
They catch me unprepared
And tear me into pieces
Of sudden longing

Caught up in the storm
I'm divided
As my eyes reach out, sightless,
For your lips,
My arms, questing for your fingers,
Have left my mind behind
Which hears only your name
Roaring relentlessly through
The destruction
Each bit of me, separate,
Is caught up in a panic;
Yearning for rescue
By a different part of you

But the avalanche is you
Removed from my world

Your absence is my maelstrom
I go to pieces without you.

Stars

Can you hear the stars
As they wind on slowly by
They twinkle softly overhead
I hear them through your sighs

The Kiss

I can feel your heart
A bird beating hard
Against the ribbed cages
Of your breast
Your eyes echo your need
For escape
But I must close
Up the spaces between
As I lean
Almost in a dream
Drawn in by your breath

With blood on our hands

Some of us must have
Blood on our hands
For the redness to
Bloom innocently
Upon other cheeks

Love is born out of the debris
Of wounds
Borne by strangers

Flowers bloom
In ruins
Beauty rises
Among desolate things

Shall we lay waste then
To the worlds we've built
And risk destruction
At the prospect of love?

Girl from another world

The girl from another world
She turned to look at me
Her face framed by a smile
The shock of it lingered
For a little while
Till I happened to look up
I looked into her eyes
And there I could see
The weight of a thousand lives

We stood, rooted for a while
Exchanging stories, longing, and smiles
And then, before long, I stood alone
My eyes crinkling fields of mirth
Sprouting from seeds that she had sown.

The Lovers

For in this cruel world, you see
There is no space for you and me
We build little worlds of our own
Forsake myriad lives unknown

Memories of tender touches
Of kisses, and loving clutches
Begin to take the shape of sin
With time, they become lost in
Illusions of knowing what we do
In words that negate me and you

Innocence is such a fragile thing
It does not last the thoughts we bring
The prejudice of reason kills
The tremors of love lie stilled.

Each thought that rang out clear and true
Each act of love between me and you
Is consigned to pasts we never knew
And lost in a murky moral stew

As we pretend to know, and grow
We snuff out life itself, you know
And so many lovers, so many songs
That almost lived, now lie stillborn.

Sacred

And shall we go then, you and I,
To dance upon the edge of a sigh
And let our rhythms come undone
Forgetting the worlds that go and come
In these whorls of learning and regretting
Shall we dance?
On the knife edge of the sacred
And cast useless worship to the dust.

Ephemeral

I awake with thoughts of you in my head
From the detritus of dreams upon an unmade bed
You rise
Your fingers linger
Languorously leafing
Through the tangled mess
Of my hair
And with the coming of the sun
You leave
Melting into the sudden light
Vanishing like a sprite
With just the ghost of a smile
Left behind
Playing upon my mind