I stroll a silvered landscape
where trees are silhouetted spears,
stabbing memories of days first walked with you . . .
ice traceries, firey strands of longing lace,
wrap the crumbling dream,
like brittle, curling tinsel from childhood holidays.
A burning stream of cold tumbles seaward,
dislodging jagged stones, desire and disgust;
wounding barren feet.
Backward . . .
I trace pink-tinged footprints
along the line of demarcation
where love once gamboled in innocence
before the moon capitulated
and collapsed into the sea.
Lovely she was, but she is no more.
Copyright August 3, 2018
Categories:
traceries, betrayal, desire, loss, memory,
Form: Free verse
Admiring Jupiter
Well named for the bolt-throwing King of the gods,
Lightnings arc in blazing traceries
Beneath your seething cloak of stormclouds
Racing like Furies around your awesome girth
As you spin, fastest of planets, in pirouettes
Pulling a small cloud of worlds about you,
Commanding all smaller bodies within reach.
King of storms,
Dressed in tempests,
Magnificent and terrible -
Lucky thing for us you stopped drawing mass together;
Didn't aspire to stardom .....
Categories:
traceries, space,
Form: Free verse
soak up the side streets of Montmartre,
Paris, Pigalle on Boulevard de Clichy
class less art combusts then drips
- street beggars & tourists cant
writer Rubbish pastes lace traceries
ala mode decoupaging decay
his cut-paper layers grace anoint
no longer anonymous walls
stencilist C215’s “simply a cat”
defies sourpusses not to smile—see
heaven art yes art with style
the banality of poverty held at bay
pureed souffléd life wolfed-down
colors synced
spray-cannoned Lothario’s like David Walker
entrance Picasso’s on the brink,
Romani-hearted paint peddlers
of the Republique
- street beggars & tourists cant
Thom Thom’s décollage rip-cuts
the billboard scene titillates the unseen
—culture-lovers—can-canned Lautrec’s
bedded with Che Guevara politics
come tilt with the masse
come play your part
in Montmartre
near Pigalle on Boulevard de Clichy
where wicked pissers defy
cliché
First Published in Clockwise Cat January 2015
Categories:
traceries, art,
Form: Free verse
The paint recalls, layered and petulant, groans
mindless in its ground, it decomposes.
Granules of hematite, pale traceries of gypsum,
the crevasses of cave wall are soot soothed.
Layered and petulant the palm of man appears
charcoal dusted, amongst the antelope and bison.
Do you hear the drum’s call, the hollow
wail of bone flute, the slap of bare feet,
the drone of chant?
Red-lead or orange crystalline roars atop
the gummy white in Pharaoh’s tombs.
See the deathly desert and the blood of power
as it paves the way; ochre, gypsum,
copper blue, groan mindless in its ground.
Do you hear the drums call, the hollow
wail of wooden flutes, the rattle of the tambourine
the clink of bell, as bare feet dance entranced?
Decomposed, composed, each grain
calls to mind pale traceries of the ages left behind.
Soot-soothed, charred coal outlines the faces
of God and man upon the walls of time.
First Published by Mused 2013
Categories:
traceries, memory, men,
Form: Free verse
Day in, and day out, from the ripe old age of five,
I’ve take to sharp objects and whittled at their sides.
Lancing pristine white paper with brazen blue veins,
it was quite impossible for me to abstain.
Day in, and day out, from the egg to the cane,
with old age beaconing and more of the same.
Lancings lingering images on pages of fading memories...
perhaps they're dreams these blue traceries,
As impossible as it seems, impossible, and often strained?
I wonder would it have been best for me to simply have abstained?
Categories:
traceries, introspection, age, old, age,
Form: Couplet