She who perceived what dusky tones to lyric
visions and visitations drifting sea beats
her obsidian deep in bowels of rock
mermen watching neat
River spirit maidens ask freedom's turquoise
within midnight's black grimace God gleams white light
against rainfall sky her fair deploy was
Love's only employ
Sappho's obsidian dust incubating
on Earth ~ Aphrodite's coal its sound inert
no beetles can roam its aura's fast converts
implacable hurts —
Muse awaited no crown pharoah’s lips fleshy
in cosmic time concept will bell excell
grecian pudding spiced hot on cypress table
obsidian spell
Soft dew drops upon unbound black hair curling
sprinkling coloured leaves of body's flesh tree
jet night pale blossoms wrapping barefeet pitch
woman cracked stone itch …
Amidst obsidian leaking indigo
Sappho's loamy dream creating blackout moon
sleepy swoons across mossy floor encircle
legs entwine quirkle —
Hierophants composed illusion stories
she did not believe, dark related truth’s scout
as sure as fire heats every sunset closing
Sappho’s stone reigns clout ~
IN THE TANGLED WEB OF TIME
How much longer in time,
Must we victims of injustice,
Still march and sing—our feet
Grown weary as facades of justice
Quietly seek to deafen our voices?
Today, we remain footnotes of history;
Ourstory, a cocooned legacy of
A pregnant dream hanging
In the tangled web of time:-
Matrices of pseudo gains,
Continue to tease unripe minds
With bigoted scams of liberty.
Today, in due time and due season,
We will rise from the pit we’re now in—
Rise and catch the fallen dream,
And lay it in the warm nest of the bosom
Of liberation—incubating the waiting vision
Of our destined realities, singing redemption songs:
Ringing bells of freedom, dancing to the beat of liberty:-
Indeed, the flame of determination burns eternally,
And the love-journey of the unshackled continues
On to the trysting place: Where we shall, in due time,
Come together in the onederful oneness of the
Onement of the peace and love of God’s liberation:-
skin over skin
layers to peel
uncover
mysteries ~
earthbound
heavens dictated
strengthened delicacy
lacy
spirit reveals
as we peel
without zeal —-
colour
patiently waiting
soft fingertips
to harvest (...)
autumn rings pause
wounds gauzed
healing’s a sealing
essence incubating
realisations transcendent
pupils
dilate
uncoverings _______
contemplate each veil
verses to pale
accept every lifting
veins to gain
Love’s filigree e m b r a c i n g
w o r k …
___________________________
Allpoetry : Silver Placement Winner : 70 word Ekphrasis : April 26
[ interpretation of a Zanne Van Bebber Painting 2026 : Private Collection : Copyright Protection : not for Reproduction. ]
Autumn morning wakes to the winter solstice.
Shadows lengthen, hiding in lonely forests.
Naked tree limbs reach for the cold moon's brilliance.
Heavenly silence...
Season's mother patiently incubating -
Seedlings sleeping under the drifting snowfall.
Nature's blanket ~ natural incubation
Waiting for springtime...
Cozy fires flicker on frosted windows.
Prayerful voices echoing through the silence -
As tomorrow waits like a wistful wish does
Hopeful horizons...
An empty bottle of glass walls
soil beneath the carpet of moss
incubating within the effulgent cave
a floor of sand, droplets all across
sprouting little roots thin and white
gentle leaves embrace, the weeds wild
Don't open the bottle, it's filled with love...
Our tiny world, the trapped genie smiled.
16th July 2023
The town I was born into was a grit incubating slum.
It was the worst of places yet had some gruff-faced
high-headed days.
On those few times
(days that did not seek to hammer me down
into the brick and rubble strewn ground),
I would walk like a lord-ling
in my own spit-rinsed and grubby manor.
I would swagger, daring all to cut the throat
of any withering word
or to blast the staring eyes and ogle-mouthed louts
as they came at me, only to ski-daggle or sidle.
In those long hours, in those dank drenched daylights
I would fight knuckle-hardy and win
then wear a trophy cut on my chin
that ached in the stony-breathed air.
I was a tough and scrawny king atop of his small heap
and the town bowed down to me until the next day
when it sought once more
to murder my rough-hewn soul.
There are images
that seem too much,
billowing out
with menace to envelope
our meager scale
and overwhelm.
Take those
of an age born
in a blinding ball
of heat, a city laid waste
beneath a fiery sun,
the seared skin
and featureless faces
of people wandering
aimlessly through the frames
of a black and white film.
And two generations on,
more lethal offspring
of that age are still
incubating in silos
waiting to be born.
The image has escaped
into the absurd, immensity,
born in the confines
of the human brain,
has been let loose,
rolling down a hill
like an ever growing ball
chased by children.
Summer morning,
warm with no wind.
The bay waters are calm.
Small boats settle like ducks
incubating their own reflections.
Yet everything is just a thin
membrane of order
pulled tight over a seething
chaos that boils just below the still.
Something is hidden, kept
from sight by a lull
smeared across the gentle float
and lap of lazy thoughts.
A trip wire is stretched
somewhere in the shadows
of a familiar path waiting
for a foot.
Integrity
pursues a sacred polytheistic journey
conjoining interdependent life
While integrity's sacred potential
remains a still emergent re-memory
health-wealth salvific optimizing
transcendent engoddessing
EarthTribal progressive
nonpaternal process
Of wombs incubating
co-passionate
eternally timeless
momentary being
becoming united
through humble-theistic
multi-regenerational co-relationship,
Both sacred We divine
co-passioning secular Me humane.
The sunlight beams down on a warm spring day
and the blues abate on a warm spring day.
March snowflakes morph into April showers;
and shoots start sprouting, on a warm spring day.
A cacophony of birds can be heard
chirping for a mate, on a warm spring day.
And yellow daffodils pop from the ground;
at a frantic rate, on a warm spring day.
Nesting birds take turns sitting on their brood
incubating eggs on a warm spring day.
Butterflies emerge from their chrysalis
and try out their wings on a warm spring day.
Dandelion seeds, rigged to parachutes;
gently float aloft, on a warm spring day.
And the crack of a bat hitting a ball;
rings out from home plate, on a warm spring day.
Zom zon zombie gonna get you
Cull your body and eat your insides
Turn you into one of them
Monster of the night
Demon of the flesh
Not of the Christian world
Belonging to the night
All from the ***********
It was different from other viruses
The incubating zombie virus
He was airlifted to another place.
The heath, the dales,
the ridges, the high moors,
they all began to slip away
under throbbing wings.
Occasionally a woman would approach,
a silk moth in the semi-gloom
of a night flight;
he was tucked semi-consciously
into a droning life-support system.
When you are unearthed,
green roots tug,
mud and twigs come with you.
Pools and sediment
make their way as seeds and marsh
traveling with your incubating soul.
Places you have slept on,
waded across,
had breezy sex over,
they tether you to tillage and turf,
to your life,
even as you fly far from it.
He began to plant bits of himself
into the soil of his new home.
He hid mossy stones amid plastic rocks’
left lichen trails
on the marble floors of shopping malls.
He recreated his own clay
from the sand-shifting soil he found
in an alien loam.
Slowly the land began to own him.
He dug himself into the past
of this remodeled wilderness.
Became a native of rooted and uprooted things.
When he was asked:
To which country he belonged?
He would show the dirt
under his fingernails.
Sometimes
When I sleep
I incubate
A dream question I want
Answered.
Answers
Arrive and
Dream will ask me
Another question, I
Incubate!
A difference between co-dependent feel-good rallies
and interdependent revolutions
is also the difference
between Negative LoseLose bipolarity
and Positive WinWin Energy,
dipolar co-arising.
CoDependency is a double-binding
tolerance of addictive mendacity
sharing common grounds of fear and anger and, eventually, hate
with corresponding lack of freedom's non-violent gratitude
further imprisoning future LoseLose lack of love relationship,
co-listening
co-empathy
eco-listening
golden rule hearing
golden invitation speaking
WinWin fullness of integrity,
multicultural interdependency,
our own secular and sacred Original Intent
as we each continue to emerge
from healthy-wealth
of matriarchal co-operative incubating wombs
mentoring interdependent democratic maturity.
A codependent rally
is not the advertised interdependent revolution.
A mother that hears the cry of her baby
does not turn deaf ears to show indifference.
A woman prepared for a culinary task,
by all means, gathers the condiments required.
A barricadoed road, however restrictive,
suffices not to keep an incubating hen off her eggs.
A nocturnal darkness does not stand to disorientate
a hand to miss its way to the mouth.
Scavenging any available heaps in sight
reflects the missing of a valuable.
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