Shadows of Light
I awoke one night to a haunted vision
Of many a glowing apparition.
They shone like beacons of ghastly light, -
Polka-dots against the canvas night, -
In numbers I could never count,
In hundreds I dared not surmount,
And merely ambled; hovered, so,
With dark expressions I dreamed not know.
Above, beyond the shadow storms
From whence the rain and thunder forms,
These haunted visions poured as legion
Down upon this wooded region
And wailed their countless, sorry woes
And flailed amidst their deathly throes,
Until I stopped and watched no more
The pangs of suffering they wore
Within their cold and sad demise, -
Within those glowing, brimstone eyes, -
And wept with horror beneath their gaze,
Knowing then what sorrow weighs.
O’ angel, o’ grief-tormented soul,
You who are lost where’re you stroll:
This surf, this land to where you chase
Is nothing more than a woeful place,
And I, the dreamer unlucky to dream you,
Who hath your countenance in view,
Know little as to why you haunt this wood
And cannot help, though wish I could.
Through The Veil
My travels led me to a distant path
Surrounded by the devil’s wrath.
It was a lonesome road with a gusty gale
Upon which sunshine had long set sail.
A path of only gloom and despair
And fear hanging in the air.
I wandered further down this route
As my thoughts clouded thick with doubt,
As shadows trailed my every move
Deep in the rocks, in every groove.
In my ears, a slither of voice
Whispered thoughts of sinful choice,
Which led me blind, far down the track
Towards a distant veil of black.
A figment or something truly real,
Corporeal enough for my flesh to feel
A velvet drape of shadows and ends,
Knowing not to what world it sends.
I ventured forth, drew very near,
Watched it ripple, watched it clear .
It led to a chasm, a cosmic Earth,
Vacant of life or human birth.
A desolate grave, a ravaged land
Marked cruelly by a devil’s brand.
Dust, decay and death abound,
Flesh and bone found all around.
Sheets of white from a haunted past
Greeted me as I arrived aghast.
These ghouls and ghosts before me shown
In shrouded forms would wail and moan,
Would pass me by most melancholy,
Old friends, now foes of most unholy,
Far from heaven and its heavenly hand
To wander eternal in a devil’s land.
Summer’s Call
Spring, come listen to the Summer’s call
that passes by on a whispered breeze,
exhaling warmth like a shallow breath
on the ebb and flow of calming seas.
In hushed tones that sing, it calls for Spring
in lullabies of breaths for it to rest
and to sleep away the quiet days,
Entrusting Summer at its behest.
A season ends, as it always does,
but Spring does languish for a while,
though it sleeps at last, content with warmth,
and disappears on Summer’s smile.
Now singing songs of Spring must end,
like a fading voice just out of reach,
and listen instead for Summer’s call
that beckons forth with quiet speech.
Shadow Puppets
Her fingers,
held high above her head,
stepped delicately between
the wan shafts of light. They
sang of dreams and thrummed
with the rapture of hope.
They danced on shadow.
She watched them pirouette
and waltz amidst the airy
specks of dust. Every
flourish and flick of
the wrist graceful and raw –
passionate and loving.
Each leapt across their shimmering
spotlights and danced like nothing
else in the world mattered,
like nothing ever had.
Only the dust that swam in
the air like starry constellations
against the dark, expansive
backdrop of the tiny closet
and the faint beams of sunlight
that traced their every move.
These shadow dancers and
their dusty stage –
her entire dusty world.
Then, all too soon,
the lights began to fade,
seeping back through the
wooden slats of the door
like the pale ghosts of
moonlight. She watched
them go as all her little
shadow dancers curled
out of sight.
The Cave
In a dream,
I wandered
to a maw of stone where my
light danced the rocks and my
feet carried deep into the
lonely dark.
Tunnels twisted in the
granite and I walked them
as a pilgrim
lost until I found the
centre of the veins and arteries
in a chamber where water
dripped from wet walls and
cried in the gravel.
A creature lay
shrivelled in the dark, its
form twisted and
bestial and it stared
into the light with eyes dead
and as white as the achromic
bones that shone through its
translucent skin.
A heart
thumped
in a bloodless chest.
A brain
throbbed
in a nerveless head.
The creature shook in the
cold and let out
a pained moan.
I asked of it:
‘will it always ache?’
It did not
hear.
It did not
speak.
It turned its sightless eyes from the light
and raised itself on wasted limbs to limp
deeper into that
lonely dark.
To Be Still
We once danced in that bandstand
by the park, not minding the chill.
Autumn leaves swept at
our feet as we stepped
here
and there
and the fog of our breaths mixed
with the incandescence of streetlights.
Your hair glowed in the dark as
it whirled and like a puppeteer
and its puppet,
you twirled from the strings of my arms
lost in the music of the moment,
and I watched the step of our shoes,
one two,
one two three,
afraid to be lost
in the pace of you.
You took hold of my face to gaze with two indigo blues and said:
’it’s okay to be lost
it’s okay to forget
it’s okay to be still’,
and I knew those words to be true.
To be gospel.
We unfurled in that bandstand
by the park and were lost.
We forgot and were still
until the rain clouds filled
and poured free. Heading home,
we ran with
the laughter that lovers laugh,
we danced on the sidewalks
the way lovers dance.
I spun you from my arms with no thread or
string to hold you and watched you
pirouette in puddles and gutters,
one two,
one two three,
the wide road a stage to be lost in.
I watched you unfurl in the chill of
the rain and in the ghostly
glow of headlights from
a passing car as they poured
over and through you and
you broke the way
a lover breaks,
and you forgot
and went
still.
Home
The pieces of a crumbling ruin
tumbling down to a field of grass.
Pebbles and rocks, a shadow of hail,
splintered wood and shattered glass.
An empty house where no one roams
the gradual collapse of weathered walls,
all fading fast like a tired dream
with memories down darkened halls.
Absent of voice or calls of home,
only decaying rocks and falling stone,
decrepit wood and blowing winds
that groan in silence all alone.
Lost, abandoned and dying slow,
its beauty mirrored by broken glass,
this wasted home now left to memory,
tumbling down to a field of grass.
Lights
A night of flickering, crystal lights,
twinkling specks from towering heights
that flutter and flirt like winking eyes;
the star-crossed lovers of weeping skies.
In and out - all glitters and glimmers,
an endless sea of splendid shimmers,
lingering lights that float in the deep,
dangling above a world fast asleep.