day knows of me. of my movement.
but night. night is more familiar.
more gentle.
reaches down to wrap around
the contours of my sleeping body.
a tender lover. a protector.
cradles me in dreams.

doth roar my bursting heart

~ doth roar my bursting heart, oh sacred stone.
~ the confessor cried wolf once too many times. drunk me too fast.
~ in crafting personal mythologies i sift through the rubble to find the roots of my self.
~ it never comes easy, but are you watching?
~ i draw small circles, knowing not who to trust.
~ believing we are more than hollow bodies, i listen.
~ the bird in your hand sings so sweetly.
~ all night i listened to the wind, but still only understand fragments.
~ the stones around my neck. the possibility of fossilised memories.
~ all our other lives. scattered runes in thirty two year old skin.

"...because the cosmos is also within us.."

beneath this giant dome of midnight sky
i gather a sense of scale.
look for meaning by joining stars.
reveal the answer that fits today.
a kind of pareidolia.

the meaning is not stuck in my throat
where sentences form an orderly queue.
but where the words are proven
in the act. in the thank you,
the living of the hymn and the prayer.




(title taken fron a quote by carl sagan)

having left the cacophony of the city

breathing the scent of damp earth and dirt. lungfuls inhaled and let go. the air moves. it starts in the boney fingered trees, or so it seems. at least that's when it's heard, after the crow's warning. it wont be long before the seduction. the cool, somehow velveteen, caress. standing, eyes closed, senses alive and greedy we cross the day through dusk to night. in it's wake, half expectant. tempting the iron bird throwing shadows on the roof slates below to break free and with us soar.

i woke with the taste of blood in my mouth. broke the skin of dreams embroidered with hair onto this quilt covering my body. my body with it's heart that waxes and wanes with the moon and contemplates the notion of home. the kind built of bricks and memories with floorboards that always seem to breathe flowers through their dark gaps. growing wild under foot i braid them around your face as i imagine it in the rain as you sail these winter seas with arrows strapped across your back.

prologue

you wouldn't want to live to be one hundred and ten,
but you promised another eighty years.

who am i to protest?

i wear the smile you gave me and lie
as still as i can, failing to imagine
a million green miles stretched ahead in
a time where hours are measured in colours.

i turn to you with sleepy eyes
and you comment on the way the sun lights my hair
like you did when we were new.
when i blushed and silently said 'thank you'.

not to you, but for you.

now i press closer and marvel at the body
whose hardening edges reveal a tenderness.

savour the feeling and contradiction of loving
your skin against mine yet wanting to penetrate through.
the desire to reach deeper with indelicate
metaphorical hands and touch the core that is you.

in this tangle of bodies your eyes say it all.
the fine line between inner and outer crossed.
leaning in to kiss you i know
beneath hands like yours angels burn.

in all it's guises. language. a love. one of many..

on the longest day i ever knew
hope grew
with the swelling of desire
and i hung on words
with hands i knew as mine.

dirty hands
hold the cleanest of hearts
and she makes mine beat faster.

she made a man with words for wings.

all i can do is string them together.
wear them as jewels and ponder
the meaning of it all.
(and the reason why we need one.)

holding that picture
i love of you as a child
with your eyes of silent poetry
i fail to conjure the words...

the falling of the sky

bells ring through the fog. a deceptive silence quietening inner noise. a remembrance. how calm the wild sky can be. facts and fictions seep through the surface. hearts are caught in nets and pulled from the river. there are no palms crossed with silver today. skeletal trees resemble dendrites. form a pattern against the dove grey day. behind which the afternoon glows. rubs against me until i shine.

swinging from my collarbone the keepers of names

i'd been collecting the diamonds
you scatter through the night
with dirty fingers not knowing
how to keep them safe.
lying wrapped, chrysalis-like,
in ink stained cotton
hoping you don't loosen your grip.

i embrace the tendency towards reckless abandon as a form of denial. but turned on it's head it translates as acceptance. so dont stop. at least not yet. instead come to me crouched at the water's edge in exchanges with birds and we'll bury these lightweight bones with their secret cavities and religiously write on these crumpled bedsheets until the words resemble a mandala.