Tuesday, 29 January 2008
Dark Summer
We are among clouds
All absorbing moisture
As the sky lowers gently down.
Settling softly around us
In nebulous silver twilight
Our souls the only buffer
Between night and daytime
Between hell and higher ground.
We are subdued by it
Made solemn, dumb
A crowd of clacking footsteps
Marching muffled in the lull.
Faces eluded by mist, this
Hushed and skulking quietude
This looming slowness, this
Toneless humming; hidden sound.
We are only water
Only droplets parted by air,
Validated by shadows.
Vapours, creatures of the half-light,
Making structures that are
Watertight, pretending we are not
Permeable. Shrouded in plastic
Raincoats, afraid to be unbound.
Floating without dissolving
Swimming among the drowned.
All absorbing moisture
As the sky lowers gently down.
Settling softly around us
In nebulous silver twilight
Our souls the only buffer
Between night and daytime
Between hell and higher ground.
We are subdued by it
Made solemn, dumb
A crowd of clacking footsteps
Marching muffled in the lull.
Faces eluded by mist, this
Hushed and skulking quietude
This looming slowness, this
Toneless humming; hidden sound.
We are only water
Only droplets parted by air,
Validated by shadows.
Vapours, creatures of the half-light,
Making structures that are
Watertight, pretending we are not
Permeable. Shrouded in plastic
Raincoats, afraid to be unbound.
Floating without dissolving
Swimming among the drowned.
Labels: poetry
Saturday, 12 January 2008
Butterfly
Happiness does not last
But for the moments I am happy
They last long enough
To fill an entire life.
I'm glad I lasted long enough
To know your cheeky smile
To see you approaching from the
Corner of my eye.
But for the moments I am happy
They last long enough
To fill an entire life.
I'm glad I lasted long enough
To know your cheeky smile
To see you approaching from the
Corner of my eye.
No longer wary of pain
I realise it cannot hurt me.
I inhale and make it my own.
I embrace it, carry it, find it a home.
And then there is no pain.
Only the searing brightness
Of a joy undiluted, of an
Easy looseness; fear undermined.
And now I can leave it behind.
Drifter, built of air, my shiny
Trickster; glass butterfly.
Labels: poetry, sentimental
New York
How can one person create a sound among
a hundred million voices? Their faces betray
their desperation and their words do not ring
clear. There is no clarity, all is chaos, all is a
clattering din. No spaces, no gaps, no points
of calm to be found among all that is ablaze,
burning terribly, edging away the pathos of the
night. There is no night. There is only a rushing,
a tumble of footsteps clomping upwards, of slush
and muddy impatience, of trampling what is left
of the earth. The un-beautiful simplicity of brute
survival, of breathing the cold air still, of hooded
eyes with pupils narrowed in their sockets. They
see only one thing: what is ahead of them, and
what is ahead of them yet. They march because
they have always been marching. There are so
many stories that they become anonymous -
every plea a useless artifact to discard and forget.
a hundred million voices? Their faces betray
their desperation and their words do not ring
clear. There is no clarity, all is chaos, all is a
clattering din. No spaces, no gaps, no points
of calm to be found among all that is ablaze,
burning terribly, edging away the pathos of the
night. There is no night. There is only a rushing,
a tumble of footsteps clomping upwards, of slush
and muddy impatience, of trampling what is left
of the earth. The un-beautiful simplicity of brute
survival, of breathing the cold air still, of hooded
eyes with pupils narrowed in their sockets. They
see only one thing: what is ahead of them, and
what is ahead of them yet. They march because
they have always been marching. There are so
many stories that they become anonymous -
every plea a useless artifact to discard and forget.
Labels: poetry
Archives
August 2007 September 2007 October 2007 January 2008
Subscribe to Posts [Atom]