The smallest touch

The air rushes past and I can see

the silhouette I’ve left in the gust.

Arms spread, in flight (if it were possible I could muster it)

reaching for the ripples that play about my fingers

as if I might grasp them and pull them in close

to feel their warmth and smell the journey they’ve taken

to get here.

After, I wonder

if they have met me before and that is why

the wind comforts me so.

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Heated

The fire warms us,

melting each wound

until the recall dies away

Rats

After a conversation between Stephen King and George R. R. Martin

 

Can you feel the paws in your throat

fur on your upper palate?

Poe with his Deus Ex Machina

gave me a rat, too.

A rat that morphed me, studious mouse, into top cat.

The dance of pipes

Bubbles drift down the side street

From the flute of reeds

Played by the boy

Busking for spare change.

Passersby see their reflections in

The rippling surface as the orbs hang

In the air before them.

Some linger, entranced

And see something more.

Futures near and far

and scenes of indeterminate time.

They slip a coin into the waiting hat

And when it jingles full

The boy smiles, sneaking off on legs

Furred with short brown fleece and

Feet of cloven hooves.

Ramble Tangle

My eyes are tired,

it’s been far too long,

examining words

I’d long thought were gone.

 

The night draws up,

a blanket to my chin,

yet the letters reel on,

I cannot give in.

 

Searching and searching,

I sew back my soul,

catching those secrets

I’d left to grow cold.

 

Time makes it clear,

the rivers flow by,

I’ll take my chance now,

speaking no lie.

 

Seed webs

Anything can spark an idea. A casual remark from a spouse, the sign for a road, the scent of a stranger’s perfume that has been applied so thoroughly it lingers in the air minutes after they’ve passed. Away to another land, a pace beyond the street, or maybe to the final land. Perhaps their perfume is not just perfume, but a way for the organisation they work for to track them, figure out the exact code that unlocks the doors from world to world. Random or systematic. Like the mind.

The fee for crossing

The oil paint stains his fingers.

Thick, congealed blood

two different shades of green.

One

for the tree,

one

for the reflection of the tree

on the wavering lake. Just

where that photograph of me

was taken.

It’s too dark to see me now,

but if you felt

around the pine needles,

you’d find cool metal coins,

two of them,

which I’d promised

to balance on my eyelids.

Ghost-touched

It travels up the cracks between floorboards like rot.

Fibres decaying more quickly that the feet

wearing them down can pick up on. The centre

bubbles and boils daily, vomiting forth rules

and regimes that make the smooth inner workings

catch in halting breaths. A solid foundation

now revealed to be wet sand, washed away

by the smallest hint of tide. Green, orange, red:

a progression of colours mirror the emotional response

of the gathering crowd. Someone offers a hand

but their fingers are blackened by frostbite.

Painting with words

When I first started this blog three months ago, I wrote very little poetry, and it wasn’t even my intention to start writing any, let alone post them. Then, after a few days of trying to find new things to write about, I stumbled across a folder of poems I’d written a few years ago. They weren’t really meaningful poems, but I liked the imagery in them, so with a few tweaks here and there I decided they were worth sharing.

To my surprise, people seemed to like them (and I say surprise because I had, and still have, no idea what makes a good poem. I can’t even tell you why I like the poems that I like, only that something in them speaks to me, and for the ones I don’t like, they’re lacking that something). So, because those poems caught readers’ eyes, I decided to write more. And the more I wrote, the more I enjoyed writing them, and the more I enjoyed writing them, the more vast and focused my ideas became. There’s something about concentrating on a certain image and taking it apart to examine it in detail that I find really therapeutic, and I’ve discovered that I can say so much in just a few short lines.

I can paint with words, and that’s a neat thing to do.