Course

Yet we the fighting pacifists

Struggle for calm in the swell
It is the way we are defined
We did not make the world
Nor induce sadness upon it
Sleep now and wonder no more
To where the river may flow
We will sail its fluid course
Sail along the gentler in hope
For see how it slows in force
The mountains are long behind us
Gone the swift streams
Waterfall tumbling to memories
And only the sea awaits us now
But ere we go to its briny vastness
Let us feel sun upon us once again
This is not yet our time to sloth
We must gaze all about us
See sunrise ascend behind us
Follow its path over blue skies
And then sink into night
For the lady of the heavens comes
And we remember everything
As we unfold along this fluid way
And we were not misled
For hope is the salve of man
And see the solace of New Year
That comes like fresh rain
To water our self-belief
And make a better river
For those to come after

Increase

Our days rise again

The clock of instance slips forward
We ascend a time of increase
While the southern globe dims
And as their days fade like spent insight
Our famine of brightness ends
Above the equator
It is a globe of two half's
One rises; one falls
Symmetry in opposition
It is perfection
And we call it a chaos
And if this is chance
I would not wager
Upon its odds
When green flames
Spring out kindling
Thinking it is spring

Shapes

And then there were none

But their shadows linger
Dance upon the corona
Of the depthless greyness  
Whispers of troubled instance
Empty souls without form
Lost to resonance and sight
But they walk among us again
Reanimate as ghastly shapes
Supernatural marching soldiers
Across the plains of existence
Searching for forgiveness
Or new battles with destiny
They come as unwelcome guests
To disturb dogs* and sleep
They watch us for weakness
From the shadowed corners
And they come only in winter
When the dark holds sway

* I wrote this last night because the dog came running upstairs, jumped on the bed and after waking me up began staring into a corner of the room whimpering. It was all a bit unsettling so I picked up my pad and jotted down my thoughts whilst calming the dog. Perhaps dogs sense things we cannot, but in the end I went downstairs and let him out. Because to a dog a call of nature is more important than any ghost. I swear if he became any cleverer he would install a bell and ring it for me to come.

Flood

We are breached; undone by abundant time

And we live so briefly we are apt to forget
Nothing pulls us back from significance
From our science we belittle point of nuance
Upon the noxious produce of our endeavours
The ice was freed from its polar servitude
It now warms its vapours with disdain
And we still call it elemental aberration
This water unleashed quenching the fire of man
But if mother earth sheds but even one tear
We are besieged for a hundred years
In soft, fluid eulogies of chance made real
And all waters drain and run to the sea
And still this is not yet accounted disaster
For this is no great flood we see here yet
Tis but hypothesis that dared speak its name
That our mother earth is no puppet in man's show
If this is chance who would wager now on its odds

Christmas

Holly wreathes and smokey fires

Carillons ring from sleeping spires
Santa's stand upon every square
Turkeys roast with meat to spare
Ivy garlands drape every wall
Mistletoe hangs within the hall  
Santa wakes and takes his sleigh
Makes the whole night bright as day
Reindeers fly upon the nights chill
While chimneys cool and houses still
Candles at windows at close of day
Everybody waits for Christmas day
For now there is a joy upon the air
Soon is Christmas; a hope we share

Winter Spider

Where are the snows?

Iced recoating of a world to white
Upon the muddy grass of solstice
Where are the greedy frosts?
That bite upon our fingers
With sharp fangs of chill
Winter spiders in white spun webs
You are late in approaching
But you will arrive nonetheless
Till the rains of spring come
With lemon tears that fizz
Upon this sugared winter

Dreams

And I take my leave of day

Close my eyes and senses
Retire to vales of languor
Where only thought prospers
Or if it does not; it ought
This is a world new as birth
Amplified nuances of perception
Swans upon water still as dawn
Gliding white guides across oceans
Images reflected in infinity mirrors
Endless and ever decreasing
Clowns and spiders in shadowy corner
Dragons that blaze upon tempests
While wizards and elves come for aid
The world of nightmares may await
Or the joy of a first love undimmed
And time is lost to sleeps command
And where do we go in our small death
This world none recall or explore
Where its duration is but a heartbeat
Or as long as the age of the world
In the static of a dreamless night

Signs

Ancient glazed, unmoving glaciers
Glassy sheets greeting frosty mornings
But see the illustration winter paints
Watercolours of undiscovered dreams
Ice delineates of crystal ferns and flowers
Opaque and mysterious as imagination
And I see a veined story unfold intact
It is my story on my windows with my rules
And then the sun rises and they are gone
But I see the signs and then I see the world
The whole of the world that waits outside
Locked inside the thorny maze of midwinter
The robin nestles deep in the holly watching
Red breast and glad song amid scarlet berry
It sings of spring and waits in anticipation
And see the lustrous trails of auburn rainbows
Autumn leaves wind and seething rain claimed
Thrown down as leafy meanders to lie on hardness
Glimmering jewels burnished into imaginings
Aerial lawns brought low to earth in repayment
For all that has grown before this Christmas Eve
And we; we are like old logs hazing and sparking
Till they still and ember slow in the dust of change
And yet we see always our hopes reborn in the flames
Glimpsed like anticipation and renewed as a phoenix
And we may burn anew in wonder for a coming year
For Christmas is coming close and we see atonement

Believe

People can be made to believe in anything
Except themselves
Tenderness is at odds with rage
We are conquered first
And only then do we see it all divided
Fragility is the price of our compassion  
We are made well till we are undone

Story

So comes the new story
And you will write it
I lay down my pen
Its ink is now all but dry
Write for the soul
Never for the money
A body at ease flounders
Think only of other wonders
The pen is not mighty as the sword
But it is every bit as sharp
We are the wielder of a weapon
Warriors ennobled with words
Frères of the oppressed
Or guardians of dictators
And what we carve upon minds
May change the world to good
One wondrous letter at a time

Past

Why do we worry so much?
About the future
About the present
But never the past
To never learn, nor slow
We should learn to walk
Upon a slow path of peace
Then wherever we may go
We will be content
And history can sleep
Without this constant waking
From the dreams of yesterday

Climate

But the womb of mans progress

Breaks its waters upon us
Utopia labours upon our greed
And so it delivers of its progeny
And comes an infant swaddled in sorrow
The fertility of the earth is failing
By the industry of its children
This unquenchable population of man
And all the midwives panic
As they huddle around a Parisian bed
But still a concord they name it
And hope with it the earth can be saved

Present

There is one present left

It is still under the tree
And I wrapped it myself
It is a very special gift to me
I know exactly what's inside
I placed it in there with care
It is all my dreams and fears
That is lovingly boxed in there
Dreams of everlasting peace
A world where we all are free
Where only love matters, not who
That is what Christmas means to me
But for now it is only a dream
Even if I wish it to be true
I'll keep it one more year and hope
For a better world for me and you
I hope and pray it will all be ok
But life's unfair with no simple way
Some thrive on conflicts and exploitation
For them Christmas is just another day

Light

It started off first with a little tree

Then garland and wreath for all to see
Simple decorations as in days of yore
But humans; well, they always want more
So then the neighbours began a race
Now the lights are seen in outer space
A manmade object of brightest light
Strong enough to disturb the Martians night
It is a wonder they plan to visit en masse
For even they feel the power of Christmas

Outside

And I would sleep again outdoors

When night is shot into the day
The loosed arrow from sunsets bow
But where may I sleep now?
Except under a forest of bones
Sylvan bodies flayed by the wind
Stripped clean in these fading days
I would lie upon the sloughed skin
While the winter moon hides
And only the owl watches and asks
"Prince where doth thy go?"
To reply, "I go to remember summer"
Though it be halfway across the world
And under bony canopy wait its return
And thus I will dream evermore
In earnest of all the promises
A world makes to us at this eternal sleep
Even though I should not wake again

Cadence

Overexposed in a cadence of failure

Is a soft inflection I could be wrong
It creeps into this slowing wheel
Penetrates a soft serenity of a comfort
Comes the idea things are still possible
And time; unwelcome guest, now begone
Calm you temper with no brutish logic
Upon the stretched nights cast to frost
And paint me instead a picture of hope
Weak images merging light and shade
The irresolute focus of every dream
Smear oil on life's canvas into spheres
Rolling stones stopping among the moss
And see how much may cling upon us now
Once we are content with inevitability
Life is unfair; but not as unfair as death*
 
*William Goldman

Rhyme

To make our words chime
We try to write in rhyme

But please tell me why we feed
This childish, syllable need
Make end sounds match
With poetical roofs of airy thatch
For to me it seems quite absurd
Harmonising each end word

Or this Twitter version

End sound match
Crow in airy thatch
When writing rhyme
Our words chime
We feed
A infant need
But it seems quite absurd
Rhyming each end word

Explore

Always seeking fleeting rewards

For our evolutionary imperatives
We are machines of transient delights
And what we think to be a wonder
Is by the universe considered mundane
And all we may really do is explore
Why we think we may be special
Or else have to admit we are not
But we are way too arrogant for that

Endure

Across nights fair lawn
No silvered footsteps
Follow my heart home
Where there is no reply
Wait not for the day
It shall not return again
And crown in soaring sunrise
The dark is all we are given
To expend passion like beasts
Or if you must endure
This silence unequalled
Think long on this
We never said goodbye
Nor tasted again the rain
Icy pearls of hope and fortune
Swift to fall, swift to dry
Like life, fleeting and vain
Save for the memories
And may we take them
Let them water dreams
When all is stilled to loneliness
And be ever content
Or rail against all we have done
That it does not endure

Sabre

Comes the loneliness of dusk
In the greyness of certainty
Upon ice stained paths
Set hard like diamond
Silver glass sat on iron earth
Below the timber bones
Distorted to stark change
Become arching, coralesque wood
Touching sky with skeletal filigrees
And behind the labyrinthine sentinels
Moonlight waters the new night
Then is drawn nights cold sabre
To cut us deep in icy parries
Pare away the skein of summer
From our flesh and bone
And this we name winter
We temperate chattels of Earth
Waiting for sunlight renewed
Sustained by scavenged warmth
From the carbon bones of antiquity

Emily Dickinson

That it never comes again

Is what makes life so sweet
So live these honeyed days
In a great yet gentle earnest
And like the industrious bee
Visit every flower you may
And drain its sweetness dry
Drench the whole world in delight
For when comes life's account
You will settle it in full
In the tenderness you have stored

Music

There is beauty in humanity

Composures of eclectic variation
A consummate skill perfected
An enigma perhaps; but welcome
This variation upon our brutality
It hides within wooden cases
Trumpets from convoluted metals
Bellowed loud by exultant airs
If we have window to our souls
To gaze upon calm's reflectance
Music is the mirror revealing it

Words

Letters solidify across paper

Where the words should come
A script swimming in intent
Lessened by imaginations want
They stumble across punctuation
Fall upon hyphenated swords
Grammatical martyrs of lost tales
Battling to be told coherently
Our imagination should not sleep
Nor awake in a gentle wonder
Let it hunger for illumination
Rage for its understanding
Or all the words we may write
Are not worthy of the ink

Early

There are happy tunes drifting upon the air

All the retailers have put them there
Sleigh bells and Santa with food and drink
All for just profit I must confess I think
It's a world gone mad to make us acquire
To fan greedy flames of increasing desire
But from this celebration ahead of its time
The Christmas spirit has its own timeless rhyme
And for all my intelligence I have no will
For the child in me wishes for Christmas still
It seeks no presents or tree to place them under
All it desires is to recapture all the wonder
So if you are celebrating before the holidays are here
Try to remember Christmas has to last all the year

Gold

Though I am given this gold

Its currency is worthless
Watch autumn's fortune wither
Into the poverty of winter
The grey robe of sleep unfurls
And ever I wish for the sun
The fair kiss of warmth on skin
That pales in the slender days

Decaying Tears (2)

So do not let me dry these decaying tears

The sleek, salty pearls of prejudiced memory
They are waters of life in a world of mourning
And though time will take them away one by one
Never will it seize the gentle memories of you

So do not let me dry these decaying tears

These last exchanges of bittersweet hope
Waters of recollection that never falter
For I know I will discover you again one day
Though it be one silvered, decaying, tear, at a time

So do not let me dry these decaying tears

These jagged steel pearls of icy fortunes
On the wind there is still the scent of you
It flows across the pale lawns of my darkness
But I slip a little closer to you with each one

So do not let me dry these decaying tears

The drizzle falling softly on your photograph
They drown you, but they will never cease
Until we are found again floating in summer
Together in a new night having awoke reborn

Decaying Tears

Sinuous, fluid markers of fate

They are the essence of me
I slip away a little with each tear
Yet they water my dreams
Irrigate bittersweet memory
Then dry to leave a trail of salt
But I will save all these days
With every decaying tear that drops
For each one falls because of you
Into a dappled, opaque, cascade
That pools into a shared sunrise
Where waters of recollection never falter
Nor fade, nor wither in my memory
It is sunlight through summer windows
Butterflies that alight on holding hands
And always it is the scent of you
The warm musk of conjoined bodies
That fell into nights and awoke reborn
Till life dried and stilled our beating heart
And I will discover you again
One silvered, decaying, tear, at a time

Image

Ensnared memories of the past

Condemned to a ghostly afterlife
A discord now following a joy
For we do not see all that passes
Across our tall towers of memory
On these flowing winds of tribute
Swift to fly under pale windows
They sigh now; unremarked spectres
Sentinels of recollection to haunt us
For the images we keep and treasure
Of the people we never said goodbye to

Lions

It came to earth on a fast wind

Blown through woody sentinels
The last leaf has fallen in grace
And where else could it land
This final whisper of summer
It lies upon the fallen warriors
To cover richly in gold, the fallen
So sleep lions under watery skies
Rest in our tall towers of memory
No rainbow will guide you home now
But ever will memories be kindled
To flames of bittersweet remembrance
For to forget you, is to forget ourselves
Forget the life you have made for us
By the eternal sacrifice of yours

Sun and Cobwebs

Words

And all our words repeat

Chime a timeless message
As they exponentially replicate
Birthing in multiple instances
We call new imagination
Yet these siblings of mediocrity
Weaker children of greater sires
Only become less subtle prose
In our expression of vanity
For what we may describe
Is but a mere luminance
Thoughts kindled by need
That takes its illumination
From all that was written before

Fade

A child's entertaining tableaux

And so fades Halloween
Like a dawn mist
That clears under a steady sun
And put away toys
The Wal-Mart chinoiserie
And let the imps sleep
Upon their candied hoards
Nothing sinister lingers now
Save their dreams of horror
And none ever see a real spectre
Nor vampire, nor werewolf
For evil is not so simple
Only after All Hallows Eve
Comes the greater horror
When humanity again holds sway
And then do we realise
Halloween is our one day of peace
For we are the monsters
And it is good to pretend
We are not

Someone put this glove in a tree for Halloween (funny and a little ghostlike)

Autumn

Prostrate on ruddy earthy

Crumbling withered and spent
To rustle in voiceless loss
Under wide leafless boughs
Where sky may now be seen
What may come but rain?
Descending down trees
To chime and splash
Upon fallen leaves
And silence them to sleep

Autumn

Autumn has made entrance
It moves upon the shorter orbit
Of a fleeing sun
Mist takes waking days
Weaving noble perishment
Repaints all in gold and russet
On the views we have known

Halloween

Even if we cannot see them

In every place we walk
There is a film of discontent
A visitation of past prescience
Veneered atop our waking world
Ghosts are everywhere
Spectators of unfilled instance
And we can feel their touch
Long, slow breaths of longing
For they covet another creation
Away from their shadows
Where time captures all dismay
And makes it wander the earth