sorrow – As it Comes

Ice ~ Cinquain

Teardrops –
farewell to grief.
Irony is sorrow,
embedded in frozen trickles,
always.

Weeping

pauls willow.png

Picture: Thank you, Paul Militaru.

Oh, my weeping willow
don’t spread your tears apart,
keep count of all the strings
to your heart.

So precious – your long and tender
reaches as curiosity flourishes closer
to the impressionist vacuum, which flaunts
your ersatz beauty above its murky depths
to make you sorrowful and ponder
its reasoning while your replication
is contemplative trail.

Sleep, my weeping willow,
sobbing south to face the marsh skies;
be weary now – you’ve earned it,
when you cry.

Strange Arms

tree twisting

Picture source: Strange…tree. Thanks Paul Militaru.

wrap me in strange arms
not sinew’s calm unity of muscle to bone
but like before when molten flesh
was writhing, malleable, lasting –
not like now with intangible flame
shot from an archer’s crossbow –
with quick precision

writhe with me in twisting turns,
not rolling ambiguity’s speech of tongues,
but like before when deception unraveled
to suffocate me with a slithering hiss –
do not place your wreath
in the space where the cobra stabs
with quick precision

Blue Moon

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spread fingers are useless for grasping
inevitability and disbelief…

is it possible for a blue moon’s light
to lose its grip and slip
into master waves
to drown in a thousand fathoms deep

or for the night to thin, stretched and taught
as wretched twists and turns
of hearts once gold
turn away to sleep one thousand dreams deep

and all the love you have becomes billowing
draft swept under cold sheets;
wrinkles are bolstered by shadows, their carved
blood seeps from wounds one thousand cuts deep

spread fingers stroke contours less lifelike, touch becomes
sharp like cold air inside lungs when it runs loose.

Splitting the Atom…Bomb

Second call for Poets for Peace and my 2nd contribution – thank you to everyone who has responded with kindness so far today…to help reach another 100 and more, go here and please leave your poem in the comments section of Neha’s blog and it will be added. https://forgottenmeadows.wordpress.com/2016/07/16/calling-all-poetscreative-minds-to-a-grand-collaboration-poets-for-peace/comment-page-5/#comment-19287

dove

We have accrued
a legion of wars over
centuries that pass like wandering
soldiers in our dreams
shattered by bombs and the broken
promises of liars and tyrants,
squeezing till we scream and succumb –
hoping we toe the line,
discard our beliefs, cease disrobing
moral injustices, cease clamouring
for peace and end our search for solutions.
Violence, hate, fear and terrorism is written
in unjust profit margins and margins
of error, meted out by greed, and as human traffic
we have become a bank balance of death
in their greedy pockets.
Nothing changes.
All this time we
remain nothing but
their small
change.

Only for a while,
for a moment, I thought
that time was going to change it –
when hate might become a memory –
in a time of change,
forever?

We have scarce time,
myriad memories
and goals like pythons wind
around our dreams –
choking, crushing, till they seep
and we weep like spoilt children
when the charmer tames.
Changes are made but are
brushed aside with a sweep of an engine
flying aloft – metallic, death throes.
No change there, just death –
always at rest in someone’s
memory – all of the time, and which
will last
not only for a short time
but forever.
If we don’t change
in the times
in which we live,
these times
will never
change.

Black Narcissus

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Remnants of love
are the last breaths
of the narcissus:
lifeless, black petals,
eyes gouged red from crying,
and inked pitch stains from dying…

Flowers drift and flowers sigh, all erstwhile
emotion from wilting lies that leave signals in the thorns
below that prick at tender lesions to show wherein deceit
and disease has spread to choke a love as yet unwed.

Scattered petals bare no perfume just cluttered haste
of abandonment strewn like sadness across a waste ground’s gloom
in the clinging vines of ivy rose – your stinging charms
still suffocate and presuppose, squeezing the life from all that’s new,
leaving nothing behind but necrotic hue.

Naivety lost and innocence shed makes me the bud
whose sorrowful dread was nurtured and revitalised, but far too late
I realised; so take these dew drops cried anew to moisten
seeded ground for you, to tend, to fret to watch them grow,
and when full bloom of youthful woe is within your grasping
hand, I will return in spirit like a flame’s nebulous glow –
to fire this, Svengali’s land.