The one consoling beauty is
These words will fade and pass away.
The sun will dim, the moon will fall,
And everything will cease to be.
We’re one: we’re all just one alone.
The earth and sky, the walls of stone,
The foals and horses running free,
Yes, everything will cease to be.
I touch your hair, and know its flow.
There is a tear beneath the smile,
And after all, it had to come,
For everything must cease to be.
I breath the air: it reeks of pasts,
Of love which came and meant so much.
I thought I saw you come alive
The night the honeysuckle died.
So cold: it froze the moon in place.
So cold: it turned the air to ice.
Yet there you were, in rainbow scarves
And gloves as thick as bobcat paws.
You took a shovel to the snow
And dug on down, ‘til fire was found.
That glowing trace of slowing Earth,
Which – just for once – we watched as one,
Gave eyes their glints of petal stars:
The burning planet lit our soul.
It took you to its ember heart.
You lived undimmed as scent, as flame.
There is a weight to being alive,
A density of songs and claws,
A flock of beaks and broken barbs:
It clings to flight, it grips it tight.
The earth will take the sycamore.
The sky will take the sycamore.
Its bark and leaves will feed and fall,
And life will take the sycamore.
This gravity of slowing blood;
The pressure buzz within the ears;
The dissipating breath and twitch:
It gives its all, it takes its toll.
The weight will keep the moon in tow.
The weight will hold us in its flow.
The scrape, like hare, of pebble bird:
As fawn and cream as flint in church.
The jaundiced, yellow eye will blink
As mirage dews pour through the fen.
The field was first, the bird was first,
The sky reflected breck was first:
The yellow eye had snapped them shut.
The clouds of dawn turned iris bright.
The lines of earth, of dyke, of hedge,
Formed islands, merged and took the sea.
It watched it all, the yellow eye:
It watched it from its field of stone.
Beneath the dust which birthed its calls,
A wary bird ducks low to earth.
Across the steppe and mountain plain,
The hare came tumbling, carved on rock.
They spoke no language, gave no sign:
They simply were the three as one.
Along the silk route, scratched on wheels,
The traders pondered what they meant,
And made up tales and sang them songs:
The hare were lovers, mystics, gods
And on a distant, ice-cliffed, shore
The hare at last could make their peace.
They found a place of fragile walls,
Which faced the sea and all its storms.
The three were one, their journey long,
Together: water, stone and sun.
The dream let loose its chirm of birds,
Each one had words to call the world:
The verbs of night, the howling nouns,
All clichés bursting from their beaks.
And in their flock, right at its heart,
The silent bird, the mystery bird,
Swept all the others round the wood.
It led them, though it never spoke.
The birds had followed through a storm:
Bedraggled, fuddled, half alive,
For news had spread that HE would speak
And tell them all how they should be.
He opened up his awful beak
And to their horror, softly squeaked.
inspired by prompt #5 – Cliche from
http://mindlovemisery.wordpress.com/
The thunder birds could tame the sun.
They flew, although their bones were stone.
The broken parchment of their wings
Could soar them through volcanic skies.
With jade for eyes and quartz for teeth
They hunted over nightmare seas.
At night they slept upon the moon,
And hung like bats with diamond claws.
And when they roared they split the earth,
The sound would echo on for years,
The scars they ripped were canyon deep,
Whole mountains crumbled at their screech.
One day they simply disappeared.
They left this world, they left their fear.
He hears his name in robin’s songs,
The cadence calls him from the scrub.
He answers in his shaky voice:
They understand but don’t respond.
She sees the heron spell her name
In semaphore with arching wings.
She signals back, she jumps and flaps,
They catch her drift, but on they pass.
I see the clouds, I hear the trees,
I feel the rumbling through my feet.
The world is here, and I am here,
With robins, herons, clouds and breeze.
They speak to us, they know our names,
And nothing here will ever change.
Between the trees a light breeze blew,
A gentle ripple shivered leaves.
It seemed the trees had never moved,
Their roots held deep in solid ground.
It seemed the breeze was passing through:
Once here then on. It barely touched
The earth at all, it had no weight.
The trees were real, the breeze a myth.
And from the breeze the stories grew,
And from the trees the tales were true.
In time the trees and breeze would change:
The breeze grew leaves, the trees took flight.
It seemed the breeze had never moved.
It seemed the trees were passing through.
For several years the street seemed old,
The tired shopfronts never changed.
They clung nostalgic to a time
Of paint and flowers, songs and life.
The woman in the orange dress
Has sold her paintings since things changed.
Back then she couldn’t paint enough,
But now her days just pass her by.
The men – the three who barely move –
Observe the street and how it’s changed.
They raise their cups to passing girls:
They judge and drink but rarely speak
Today is sunny, tomorrow rains,
The street’s the same, the street has changed.
You sang a song I couldn’t know.
The moon had soaked the blood of life,
The words were lost beneath the rain,
The ghosts of ghosts sat at our feet.
You screamed as if the world had lungs,
The shattered glass smoothed soft by tides.
No speech could reach the pain you brought
Into the sealight roar of dawn.
You danced one evening on a lawn,
Immaculate in lunar silk.
You skipped the shadows with each step,
Your starfish heart within my heart.
You sang, you danced, you screamed, you drank,
You came alive as sunlight sank.
The dance begins at half past two.
They break us, bend us, lash us to
Their silhouettes and pirouettes,
Across the maps of fiefdoms formed.
On barricades and barbed-wire proms
They build themselves a wall of trees,
And there they prance their mountain dance
To rules set out by forest kings.
We cower beneath their dancing shoes,
Their ballroom, breath room, cold war gloom.
They chat, and rat-a-tat, and crack
Our tarantella minds with tap.
At three they leave us to our tears,
To empty moves in darkened rooms.
stream of words poem written in response to:
http://mindlovemisery.wordpress.com/2013/06/09/prompt-7-nonsensemadness/
Gavin R Jones 