Tag: change

Seismic Soul

To speak
Without being heard
With words like wind
Asleep in windchimes,
To be far away, breathing in a distant past dyed sepia and smelling of crushed leaves:
The aroma of time dried through the ages,
To taste a fruit away from the tongue
And let it linger in a seedless ecstasy
On each pair of lips
In every burnished breath between the lungs
To weave sunlight
In the skin of dewdrops
And bare a rainbow upon the floor
Brought home to a full circle
To smile at the madness of it all
And mean it in the mirror of mind
Grassroots enveloping
Memories I cannot find
Now leads me to believe
That life with all its thorns and petals
Is more in the act of living
Than waiting for it to settle

Pillars


I have seen Heroes
Shinning alone on the battlefield
Sword bare in bloodied hands
Hiding tears behind their shield
And the poets who wrote of courage
Knew not from those sunlit tower
That all wars are fought by them
Who has no ounce of power

I have seen Teachers
Cradling books in their velvet hand
Certain of the wisdom beneath the words
That the world fails to withstand
And the pupils who stay blind
And believe in it all
Are kept to learn the truth
Nailed as paintings upon the wall

I have seen Kings
Holding heaven in their earthly palms
Dive deep in the selfish seas
And make fist while breathing alms
And the people who praise the lord
For the health of the dear monarch
Knows not that the hand which feeds
Is the one that lays the nark

I have seen Saints
Swimming in the grey, tepid pool alone
And where hundreds had fallen
The saints could never drown
A miracle that belonged to them
Not by the blessings of the Throne
But because of the fact that the misery
Was not of their own

The Soft World Shenanigans

Dry roads humping shredded towns
Ghostlicked with cactus eyes quietly watching
Deeper dreams
For answers within answers
For silence within screams
I see, I see
Footsteps upon gravel
And red lips on ice
Dissolve
In purple chimney smoke,
Behind the farts of dust- rimmed truck,
Where the grey haired goats grazing in saltpits wonder
Why the fairies don’t give a fuck
Clippety clop, clippety clop
Horse hooves on silent sand
Burnt toast, stale butter, wooden knife in my hand
I see, I see
Tears and bright ties
Choking velvet throats
Those colouring the white lies
Like spit on anchored boats
Bell jars in cotton
Woodpecker in denim
Breathing tinfoil fantasies
Of midnight mind raining, whispers upon paper:
‘Wheatfields underwater
Ether in eclair
Cornflakes made of daylight
And tulips in dark hair’
I see, I see
Last thoughts of dying beasts
Merge with me
So that I roar and I bleat
Being eaten as I eat
My own war-torn monkhood
My altarboy retreat
So I see, So I see
Dry roads humping shredded towns
Ghostlicked with cactus eyes quietly watching
Deeper dreams
For answers within answers
For silence within screams

Of Bones Beneath the Branches

There were cypress beyond the city wall
With cones like eyes upon them
And I tended each for long until I felt
They saw far too much of me
And showed far too little of themself
(Those leaves with their whispers and those roots with their secrets)
So I did not water come the summer, I did not water come the winter;
And the leaves, they yellowed and fell,
And frost took the roots
Slipping needles of ice into their breaths
Till decades were laid silent
Like sand beneath the ocean.
I walk beyond the wall now and then
Dressed in nothing but the evening
And stand under the cypress
And watch the antler twigs sway
Hiding nothing now but melancholy motion
The sense of sleep
And I wonder at the difference, if any, between our shared nakedness