These azure thoughts ascend
to partner with the skies
and in these heavens highs
my daydreams know no end
with your dreams they will wend
to live behind your eyes
where they by and by
into our wakings blend.
what once were dreams are real
enlivened in company
imagined lovers’ reels
in paired society
such fragrant dreams breath true
the scent of me and you
He was haunted nightly
by the chocolate covered death masks
of comic strip gunslingers
and yellow page pirates,
though in the daylight
he thought fondly
on and off
of the adventures they shared,
but that was many ephemeral moons ago
when he was a child
and they were alive
in newsprint imaginings,
now their picture book ghosts
and a thousand denouements forgot
give only pause to restful sleep.
I look on the past
through fragments of lost moments
time’s broken window
poor passions are borne
in the sleep of sobriety
and desires be denied
by a vain quest for piety
let Bacchus awake
when your eyes close in reverie
and under his spell
may you dream with impunity.
I read from Rilke
as it rained outside
insulated from the storm,
and yet
my dreams not in summer
but in fall reside
and so I had my reveries
abet.
I dwell upon blind Cupid’s darts
and wonder if they find the hearts
to which they’re fully aimed in innocence
and should they not their bounty make
does Cupid mark well his mistake
and guide his next shot with more measured hesitance
I have no time
for rhyme
today
the fires
inspired
have burned away
and to their ashen cinders grey
the muse’s fingers no more stray.
twilight descends
quick and steel cold
as a slipped blade
upon my throat,
and with its coming
warm blood is shed
as is the passing day.
does my shadow dream as I
while dark slips over day?
and do those nightly phantoms
above mine own hold sway
for surely wraiths spawned not by sun
are blacker for their birth
and without the light’s nativity
hold not my true dream’s worth
Peeling off layers
one by one
to reveal
a journey
through time
the stories
of smiles
and tears
each pattern
every texture
exposes
the history
of the years
gone by
some painted over
to hide
a secret untold,
scribbled crayon faces
a handprint
almost neolithic
exposed
the shadow
of perhaps a former
wall lamp or sconce
a Rosetta stone
for what once was
before the final
stubborn
stuck fast
strip of anaglypta
lays like
the broken seal
of a pharaohs tomb
next to the skirting board.
