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.