Poetry
By hadley
- 4508 reads
The Hands of a Man
These are the hands of a man But I don’t know what that means. These are not the hands of a son of toil They have not worked the fields From darkness to darkness. They have not hammered out
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- 875 reads
The Lake
I have seen it all And the electric blue sparking Of dragonflies over still water As deep and as still As an unanswerable question. I saw you too, Brown and naked confidence
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- 1447 reads
A Flame into Being
A languid sigh and the luxury of motion as you rise up from stillness and silence shrugging off your redundant clothes all at once, like a cat washes off winter by a warming fire.
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- 1430 reads
A Ghost Song
Days are like wind chimes floating on the breeze. So much that is forgotten is forgotten. So much that is remembered haunts this waking dream. This is all that was ever offered
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- 2052 reads
A Moment Of Balance
Poised on the sheer edge, purposeful and tense, as though this one act could be the significant moment of a lifetime. A point of perfect balance on the fulcrum
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- 1986 reads
A Possibility of Holding
Out where there are dreams of distances and silences I dare to reach towards your nakedness with hands that can only do so little. I never learnt to make things
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- 1210 reads
A Possibility of Holding
Out where there are dreams of distances and silences I dare to reach towards your nakedness with hands that can only do so little. I never learnt to make things
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- 1486 reads
A Sign
Move slowly down to the sea. A solemn procession, silent, Dressed in black, hooded. They wait at the water's edge For some sign of recognition. The waves lap around their feet,
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- 820 reads
A Slight Delay
So talk comes to a halt again as the rail tracks curl off into the distance parallel lines curving off together like some long unresolved argument. The train we are riding on
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- 2241 reads
A Water Song
I saw your hand make shapes to catch the falling rain. I saw your hand as a cup under the weight of a waterfall. I saw your hand slice through icy waters rushing away from melting snow.
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- 1183 reads
All the Secret Moments
She walked through all the days I set out just for her. She opened all the doors I’d closed, turning the key On each new morning’s world To step out into all
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- 729 reads
Ambition
All those bodies left in fields blood seeping, soaking deep like rain into the thirsty ground. I thought I knew then. I thought, I believed I was there to wear the holy crown,
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- 2168 reads
An Apology for the Inconvenience
He will regret speaking, As he regrets so very much Of a life not really used, Except to pass slow time In timid consideration Of carefully-chosen options, With well-defined limits
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- 1002 reads
An Autumn Morning
A time will come to us When these children run away. Over the horizon and gone To the lands of their own lives. What shall we do then? Shall we wake up suddenly One autumn morning, wishing
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- 1317 reads
Another Obstacle
And distance falls, becomes another obstacle. It stands in the way, guarding against The possibility of movement. A turning becomes a kind of stillness As motion turns in on itself.
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- 997 reads
As the Tide Turns
All down along the shoreline spread, the waves are making edgy progress, while the tide advances like a cautious army crawls. But still the walls of castles crumble down
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- 876 reads
Bare Rooms
We have nothing left to show each other except empty hands that can only make these futile gestures towards the boxes that now hold so much of our once-shared lives.
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- 2446 reads
Beachcombing
Each day is a ship, sailing on the horizon. There, and then it is gone. We search the clouds for the memory of its sails. On the shoreline we seek among shells and stones
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- 2158 reads
Becalmed
This morning all my thoughts are gone. Gone to wherever thoughts go when they are lost in their own seas. No longer tossed by vindictive waves that churn and boil in useless fury.
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- 1316 reads
Beneath Arching Wings
And would you ever soar on up so high All over these forests and mountainsides While following the twists and turns below Of my own bluest river under skies
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- 767 reads
Between Words
Her hands took flight and moved to sculpt her words to give shaped elegance to all she said. She made each word a frozen moment, held beyond another wave of moving air.
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- 1268 reads
Bird Watching
Down by the stilled green water that offers no clue to depth, except that there is enough for some heartless bastard to drown six puppies in a sack, I wait, as I hear a dragonfly
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- 1417 reads
Birds
With hands that flutter like trapped birds, she sees only the bars of her slow-rusting cage each time she looks up, searching for the sky. Preferring to look down and see the birds
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- 1271 reads
Breathe a Name
The world becomes familiar an inventory of possibilities hovers near your open lips. You take each delicate moment into cupped hands to breathe a name over what you can hold.
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- 1307 reads
Broken Wing
If there is a moment you call your own. If there is a time you can hold in your hand, Soothing the broken wing that had once flown Far over these green hills where you stand
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- 1203 reads
Burst
If I had words that could burst through the dark of your night like sudden fireworks of desire, to cover you in a healing rain of gold and silver, green and red and all the possible colours
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- 1299 reads
Butterfly Fragile
Dreams are this fragile, insubstantial as a thought. Drop all these moments when they become almost real and the dreams can tear like tissues, to fall slowly as paper snowflakes
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- 1382 reads
Candle Flames And Butterflies
Would you like to see this thought start out burning like the yellow-golden flame on the white candle, skittering and stuttering in the soft breeze drifting through the open cottage window?
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- 1406 reads
Cat's Cradle
Follow the thread of history back along these corridors, contrived turnings, so many corners. We passed this way before. We followed the thread back to where all this once began.
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- 1575 reads
Chaos Theory
Words. These are words. Words, I do not need silence. Silence speaks like a sullen child. A child standing at the edge of a deep river. Rivers are like lives, we flood and drown the plains
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- 1772 reads
Circumnavigation
Can your small room take the place of a whole wide world? Can you walk the arid deserts of this threadbare carpet? Can you explore the jungles of all these dense memories,
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- 2137 reads
Closer
CLOSER Instances of motion, frozen paused by dreams we call out without sound across the wide blank spaces where time never moves. If we could only (...
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- 1544 reads
Cold
There are no embers now. Only dusty ash lying still, cold as the silent night. There is no fire left for us. We sit, each alone here wrapped inside the blankets
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- 1770 reads
Come a Time
Revealed as only what might have been there will come a time. Revealed as a whole sky burning fire red in the stark morning there will come a time. Revealed as dreams torment
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- 1389 reads
Condemned
Something moves and something turns and you will learn the shape of it. It grows out of the near darkness and out from the sounds of fear crawling through these dead streets.
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- 2040 reads
Crystal
Naked, she runs, pale as a ghost of my desire
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- 1554 reads
Cunning
A roundness of curving and taut skin stretched tight and neat round from the curved bottom between the opening thighs. A warm heartbeat of a place snuggled deep in its forest hide.
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- 1362 reads
Dance of the Spheres
Dance of the Spheres Leaning against the turning world waiting for the sky to ask for a dance, she moves and the world can only turn around her. When...
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- 1620 reads
Dark Shadows
Dreams are far more dangerous than this. All I have is a small moment still in the quiet heart of the night, woken suddenly by something strange that takes shape out of a dream
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- 2173 reads
Dawn Chorus
I too could rise up hopeful, like the dawning sun. I too could start here at the day's beginning hour. I too could burn away the shadows, hiding mists,
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- 1076 reads
Dawning
Now the dawn rises up like some new monster like some mythical beast old and new promise and threat. It begins and always will begin once again. There is nothing new.
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- 1487 reads
Dead Leaves
The trees are bare, skeletal, their leaves toyed with by the wind floating free like loose pages torn from photograph albums. Leaves are memories that fall to the ground, around our feet
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- 2119 reads
The Seas of Life
Do you still go down to that shore these days To search for something new on the horizon? Do you still dream, or do you turn to walk Away slowly, back to that same old house
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- 928 reads
Sea Horses
Now the sea horses are still, poised, ornate like delicate jewellery. What that means, I do not know. We move on, in shoals, through the depths of dark shadows
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- 2353 reads
Snow Storm
Here is a moment I found just for you. A memory of winter days. Tip it up and see slow snow falling. Take this memory that can sit fragile as a snowflake in the open palm of one hand.
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- 2535 reads
Sheets
Such easy days, and the time drips by, like rain off a leaf. We stand and laugh, sit and smile, lie and kiss. I feel the warm easy pressure of your skin on my fingertips.
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- 2153 reads
Flying
I hoped to break free soon, and learn then how to soar on up toward the bluest skies and, reaching out, forever taking handfuls from the empty air.
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- 2173 reads
Kneeling
I turn back towards a ghost of memory. On some sun-defined morning I could have found her there, kneeling by a limpid rock pool holding her long black hair back with one hand,
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- 2377 reads
The Note
The note is held, there, in the centre of the still room. It seems even breathing stopped. As though that one note holds all living pulses within its own bounds.
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- 2269 reads
Princess
I saw your dream, held in an open hand offered to anyone who dared even pause in that impatient busy city street. I saw the dance on the wide-open stage
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- 1997 reads
Footsteps
I remember too much and I remember nothing. So many names have danced through my longest nights. So many times have been lost between dreams and memory. I grow older and I learn
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- 1932 reads
Shoreline
But those were early younger days. So eager, waking with the dawn and old enough to walk alone on down to the deserted beach. I never searched for shells or stooped
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- 2107 reads
She Is
She is the sky. She could be a bird, she could soar so high. She is the sun. She could be the moon. She could be the stars. She is freedom. She has no limits,
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- 2244 reads
Drowning
I Under water where the deeper depths are down where breathing doesn't happen for me a slow motion is movement, like waves breaking. None of us knows motion like this, poised, delicate,
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- 2289 reads
Our Lives
I can look into her, or any woman's eyes and see our lives together. All the days have candle-lit slow dinners with soft talk. The barefoot moonlight strolls along the beach
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- 2134 reads
Images
Memory takes motion and freezes it. Each moment captured and held, there, a picture on the gallery wall. Here's where those moments will all end. Here's the last picture, where she turns
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- 2047 reads
Shadow
I shall grow out of the ground at your feet like a shadow at sunrise. I shall protect your young growing grass from the searing of the scorching sun.
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- 2068 reads
Mother Land
She grew eternal, like the sky, out of horizons and mists enclosing me like some blue cotton sheet of childhood, letting the sun shine through, while I invented new cities
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- 1386 reads
The Waters of Time
A sudden falling into water. The sharp flashing splash that echoes into falling rain, and ripples that grow outwards from disturbance, like rumours of disaster. Then silence, except slow
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- 1444 reads
Sacrifice
These are such slow days taken on a summer wing. Lazy and languid in breezes, hesitant as butterflies over the green rained grass and gentle nodding flowers. You are a flash of nudity
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- 1457 reads
Stations
Should I have forgotten the way your eyes looked away to stare along the route that would take you from me? Eyes which shone like polished metal in a face framed by the rust
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- 1779 reads
Ghosts and Shadows
We haunt this deserted landscape between all the ruins of what were once our lives. We have become mere shadows now, or ghosts. What remains of us haunts these broken buildings
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- 1718 reads
Someone's Daughter
She was someone's daughter. And now, I have daughters too. So, these days, I can understand why he hated this world and every man alive in it. Because he knew, as I know.
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- 2204 reads
Theatre
The mists draw back like curtains to reveal the theatre of morning. You appear, centre stage, and lead the children by the hand down to the sea of adventures. I sit, in the stalls,
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- 1578 reads
The Shores of Morning
I The hesitancy of waking surfacing from the depths up and through the dreaming sea out onto the surface of sleeping. The desire to remain floating here
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- 1374 reads
Procession
There is so much out there that does not chime. We only hear the muffled, muted bells as the procession passes down the street. A stately slowness through the stillness holds,
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- 1443 reads
The Dancer
She dances alone, in the still centre of the empty room. Slow turning, a poised delicacy of seamless motion. Her long white dress becomes movement shaping swirls around her legs.
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- 1425 reads
Devotions
We would kiss these holy symbols as though they're almost as sacred as the genitals of lovers.
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- 1691 reads
Mountain Stream
The shallows, clear as sudden understanding. Your bare pink foot hesitates into water, swirling mud clouds eddying upwards like an insignificant world destroyed
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- 1477 reads
Spring Morning
I can see how it will happen on some new spring morning when the day is eager to begin in sharp sunshine and birdsong. The way you rise up, naked and free to taste the sun on the bright air
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- 1925 reads
The Snow Falls
The snow falls, closes us all down. We stop and all things come to a slow halting. We stand motionless. The snow falls, hiding our tracks. Turning the world white,
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- 1534 reads
Star
There are times when it is all just an idea in the night, hanging, like a solitary star. Pick out each of those moments taking each one down out of the skies of time
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- 1481 reads
Labyrinth
Once gripped tightly in eager hands, the thread has long since unravelled. Fallen apart. Nothing more to be revealed now, except the darkness and empty spaces. It is easy to slip,
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- 1473 reads
Jewels
I have to go down to the ground and put my feet on bare earth to feel the living moment. I have each of these moments ready to become precious jewels of memory.
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- 1595 reads
Green and Roses
I saw her dream on a white pillow patterned with bright defined roses. Just like the garden she dreamed of, as she ran through the green and possible, to that place
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- 1842 reads
Downpour
The rain is always falling down so fast as though we live so deep below, submerged far underwater, never coming up for air and seeing how blue sky can be.
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- 1809 reads
Refugee
Loose hands fall by her sides. She stands, expecting nothing, except more of this world's pain to fall on her narrowed shoulders. Defeated by the weight of a life of enduring, unending,
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- 1818 reads
How to Begin
There are ways of beginning. Take a handful of nothing and breathe a living breath all over it, as you shape and create a new meaning. There are ways of beginning.
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- 1778 reads
Shared Dreams
I move as you move and we will move together, joined together through the night, all night long. We follow each other across this bed as in our dreams we walk hand in hand,
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- 1513 reads
Salvation
We do not need to wait for signs these days, we’ve seen the stars are distant, further still than distance we can know and reach out for. They are no longer watchers over us
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- 1850 reads
Flowers
These flowers were forgotten left in the waterless vase until they turned brittle brown, became bare dry sticks; leaves fallen, petals long lost. Flowers in memory only.
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- 1512 reads
Seasons (Naga-Uta*)
Then, when the rain stops and you step outside, to walk once again, barefoot over the wet grass, like that long lost girl-woman of innocent summer sex, you remember how
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- 1967 reads
Dreaming of Summer
"I was fast asleep," she said. "I dreamt of summer. But all we have here are these long cold dark winters where no fire can warm our lives, to melt this ice sheet that covers it all,
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- 1432 reads
Ritual
Are these the hands that shaped these times from soil, and took each precious stone down to the sea to wash it, bring it back, arrange like shapes that will become significant and pure?
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- 1474 reads
One Such Morning
A misty early morning, barefoot run in dewy grass. You in a floating dress so thin, I can almost see right through it. And your night tumbled hair and summer smile
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- 1721 reads
Roosting
A form of words, a shape carved from discarded silences, taken from the untidy piling of thought. Used to make these dark formations taking to the still evening air
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- 1427 reads
Six O'Clock
All distance is a sweet lie now the world is mere electrons beamed from there to over here, and disaster is only a switch away where the world is always ending. And those same dark eyes stare
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- 1403 reads
How to Fall
I now understand how to fall so that I can land gracefully. I have perfected the small art of how to lose with dignity, and walk away with ease without needing to look back, not even once.
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- 1935 reads
The Open Road
The silence of the night, so quiet you can hear every tremble of your heart. And the whisper of your wheels on the rain-wet road are secrets that just have to be shared.
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- 1880 reads
Stain
You stood there, in front of me still with a desire I didn't deserve, or understand, but only shared. Your head bowed down staring hard at threadbare carpet where we had come together.
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- 1765 reads
Remembering
I remember such younger days, and how beginnings were made to grow out of what could be found nearby, left within easy reach of childhood. and what small clever hands could make
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- 1444 reads
Dropped
A day gone is a day lost. Lost and gone forever. We cannot walk back to that day, dropped only a short week ago. Pick it up, dust it off, and smile at our good fortune
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- 1565 reads
Discarded
To search for what is found, there by the edge of roads and pathways. Places where time is still against the movement taking all the world to somewhere else, just the same as they left
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- 1300 reads
Your Own Dreams
So, do you turn away, back into the night like you used to, all those years ago? Diving deep into your own dreams to swim across the night time seas in search of that one far-off land,
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- 1321 reads
Ribbon
You wore a blue ribbon, over white stockings for your wedding day. The land opened up in front of us, spread out towards the horizon. And you said, how the river could be a ribbon too.
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- 1928 reads
Lost Names
An enemy makes life simple. Drunk on heroes and legends, uniforms and marching songs. As if there were not enough ordinary tragedies for them, they marched off into history
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- 1289 reads
Hesitancies of Reason
A pause between the now, and then. Understanding, like these ancient rivers forming slowly. All the centuries of reaching desire. A need to hold. Formations carved by so many seasons
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- 1148 reads
Empty Hands
What silences can take their shape through this dull mist of morning rain? The slow black figures easing past on through the frosted grass to stand in stillness, verging on a pit
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- 1209 reads
Summoning
There's a time for gentle carving, perhaps in front of the fire during the long winters, when the possibility of spring seems as hollow as a promise no-one is expected to keep.
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- 1253 reads
Footprints
We turn and see our footsteps curving back. Our every step recorded by damp sand. This empty beach acquires a memory. But, history is never straightforward.
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- 1155 reads
Sub Rosa
You keep the real shape of you safe inside your secluded world, where you no longer need compose a public face to face the world. You open your cupboard of secrets
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- 1225 reads
She Was The One
She was the one who didn't let the day go. She was the one who held time so tightly. She was the one who wouldn't let the weeks go by. She was the one who saved up, stored,
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- 1600 reads
Haunted
The house will haunt you long after you leave it. Opening the doors of all your dreams, to take possession, never let you go. The night, once more, will find you there,
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- 1753 reads
I Did Not Fly Back From Mumbai
I too have wasted my life. I did not fly back from Mumbai early this morning, as you slept deep between expensive sheets, to bring you gifts and warm romance.
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- 1204 reads
The Bride
She was there and dressed in white I thought, for a time, she could be a bride, my bride. But she is not there for weddings she is no-one's bride. She will not be tamed.
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- 1317 reads
Something about Flowers
Down there in the dawning light she stands like a frozen gesture: a shadow frozen on the ground until she recalls the necessary motion and turns towards the morning.
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- 1305 reads
Distant lands
I knew you then, you had secrets and such dark hair that kept you hidden like some eastern veiled bride-to-be floating though our more ordinary days with the scent of exotic unguents
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- 1163 reads
Eternal
Down here, we let the dust run through our fingers as we wait for rain to fall. We hear voices on the wind and see stern faces in the beards of the clouds. We search for reasons
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- 1298 reads
Promises
I do not want to search the night's dark skies just for the possibility of stars when I can watch as you undress again at this, another ending weary day.
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- 1717 reads
Fogbound
The years fall behind me And I grow too old to hope For dreams that are not regrets. I invent new memories Of what life ought to have been. I should have been someone else
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- 1096 reads
Low Tide
These are the shores of my mind And today is low tide And all I have is this beach Littered with small evaporating pools And the flotsam and jetsam of a normal life
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- 1155 reads
Fireworks
(A Bonfire Night Poem) These times take the shape Of beginnings for you. But I've lived a life Like this before. The sharp sudden colours Of fireworks exploding Into instances of creation
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- 1031 reads
Infestation
I warned you about the danger of letting poems into the house. Now we have verse everywhere, sonnets asleep in the kitchen and bawdy ballads in the bedrooms.
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- 2362 reads
In The Name Of Blood
We speak of this blood As though it has some property beyond The sheer magic of its redness. We give names to these dreams and call them true, Expecting the world to conform.
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- 1076 reads
The Sculpture
The rusted tank by the roadside, grass, even a few flowers, growing around and up through the turret. Its broken-backed gun barrel reaches like a pleading, dying hand.
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- 1267 reads
The Beach
The sea sighs like yet another lonely night. These are dry dull days when even the sand Seems dead and bare of flotsam, Not even having the energy For some wind-blown shapes
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- 1130 reads
Windows
I look from the outside Through careless windows Left uncurtained And note that life goes on. A different kind of life Behind each window. A new created world Behind each clear pane.
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- 1167 reads
Sleeping Beauty
Each day it is a new gift Waiting to be opened. Boxed, neatly ready For the kiss, it waits Patiently behind beauty's Entangled brambles, Sleeping with parted lips. A cunning disguise.
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- 914 reads
Headstones
The headstone fallen, broken and then lost In high forgotten grass, the brighter weeds Where only busy insects and the occasional fox Wanders by. There is only distant birdsong
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- 1569 reads
Old Monsters
There were stars out there once for us. Standing on these cold hillsides, We could see only the covering sky. Not satisfied with the limits of ordinary sight
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- 839 reads
We Had Times
We had times for dancing under starry skies, But I never wanted to dance. We had times for moonlit sea swimming, But I cannot swim too well. We had all the young days, But I wasted them
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- 889 reads
Something Could Happen
But, all days can start like this Here is nothing to be found, Except when walking the beaches For what the tide leaves behind. We expect a treasure, But find only stones, shells,
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- 889 reads
Ordinary Dreaming
No springtime will come back to us, not now, Our day is gone, our chances are all missed. The train has left our station without us. We never did get to that special place
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- 1096 reads
What Lies Beyond
Distance grows like the space between times When we learnt how to hold onto those moments That can so easily slip by, and be lost forever. Silence grows around us and fills those spaces
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- 1308 reads
The Hand Of Day
The coloured skies of dawn that hold The promised day there in the palm Of morning. Close enough for you To take the hand of day and walk On down these paths, between the gorse
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- 1032 reads
Sand Through Fingers
Cupped hands hold dreams That sand through fingers Like clouds across your night time skies. Turning, you reach out To hold onto a single cloud That will blanket you
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- 1127 reads
Some Secret Too Big
These are the stars that hold us here as green is filled with living worlds to turn around and all around again, until we grow alone, and feeling lost, are pushed up close
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- 924 reads
To Dust
I fall slowly down To lie on dead ground And be forgotten. I turn to dust And am spread out Everywhere on dry dead winds. Then, that young woman daydream walking Of her marriage dread
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- 853 reads
Entanglement
It burns and purges deep the hollowness That lies inside the pain of your recall. To turn away and leave all your distress Between these shadows haunting every room
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- 982 reads
Time And The Sky Revolve Around Us
The stars beyond the distance, everywhere Too far away and nothing close to touch, Beyond our grasp, and reach. We only stare And long for hands that hold and comfort us.
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- 1608 reads
This is like Forgetting
In the darkness, we form shapes Of lovers with our hands reaching Out for the comfort of closeness. Outside, the clouds grow darker Heavy under the weight Of all we have left behind.
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- 1037 reads
We Want It Now
The stars are out beyond, too far to touch. We are here, too close together for words To separate or destroy as we clutch This too brief moment before the night turns
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- 1169 reads
Sunday Dinner (With Grandmother)
These formal situations. We sit like disapproval, Our backs straight as hard chairs. Hands, an unnecessary indulgence, Lie defeated and limp in laps Like the vegetables set out
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- 845 reads
The Day Is Slow - [Terza Rima]
The day is slow and waiting for the time When stillness falls away, and motion turns This life towards a newer paradigm. To take up all that only waits and yearns,
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- 1 comment
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- 1074 reads
The Wind is a Child
The wind is a child Wanting to play with all it finds; Leaves, rubbish, hats and umbrellas. The wind is a child With a child's tantrums destroying easily,
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- 1280 reads
I Am Not The Sun
I am not the sun Even if you are the moon. My meagre light is not enough To illuminate the face You show to the world. I am not the sun So, this one simple flame
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- 852 reads
Heatwave
She pours the coldest waters over heat, Her head of summer, heavy, languid thought, A cooling of all desire, bittersweet. The weight of summer’s long and hot onslaught
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- 1189 reads
Rain
The rain will fall, we will forget The sun and all its burning light, Forget these long days of regret. The too hot nights are unpaid debts Against our time spent there, so slight.
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- 1005 reads
Wreckage
Your storms churned Tossed the ship of my life To lie wrecked On the rocks of your reef. Your island, distant Bare and unfriendly Unredeemed by human habitation Just the sea-teased flotsam.
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- 1177 reads
Mists
The days will pass in misty silences As we go walking through these landscapes made So suddenly into substantial dreams, Where anything that looms abruptly out
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- 765 reads
The Shells And Stones (Villanelle)
The waves will wash the shells and stones As flotsam tumbles over shores And leaves the bodies and the bones Of creatures water now disowns. Despite the secret hordes it stores
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- 4 comments
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- 1474 reads
Spring
These are the bad days. Cold and dark, they perch On the chest, pushing down And the only hiding Is to hide inside and wait For green spring to take you By the hand, ready
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- 972 reads
Twelve Small Dreams
Twelve small dreams take hold and take you down to the sea. Floating over the dunes like soft summer breezes That caresses every blade of grass. You are free,
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- 716 reads
This is How
These are our hands, And this is how we use them To make shapes of our lives. We carve meaning into moments That shape us and give us names To take through into the distance.
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- 897 reads
Out of Reach
So, we are left behind Alone on this cold shoreline And staring far away To the horizon’s end While telling all those tales We can recall too well. We know his story ended
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- 725 reads
Working World
Now I watch from this one window As the ordinary world passes by. It doesn’t seem to need me now, Managing quite well on its own. Its days can start and dress themselves
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- 1130 reads
Heroes
When your heroes are those Who lack the courage To live the life of an ordinary day. Talking only of horizons And what lies beyond. You know you will awake Alone again.
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- 960 reads
Nameless
It comes out of the darkness. It comes out of the silence Stretched like wings Of pure blackness. Enveloping. Suffocating. There are so many things That need to be said,
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- 1074 reads
Petulant Goddess
I should have used the silence held between Each sleeping breath to take these scattered blocks All spread across your bedroom floor. A scene From a disaster film, or TV news shocks.
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- 1395 reads
Sun Worship
This sand churned by the mysterious Precise rituals of the beach By the rites of holy holiday. The offerings of anointed flesh Stretched out in eager sacrifice
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- 692 reads
Room
A slow movement and thoughtful gestures Towards making some sort of difference. Possibilities arise, but are left unstated As silence grows up all around us Like ivy over these ancient walls.
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- 731 reads
Naked Under Foreign Skies (Sestina)
I She sat there, naked under foreign skies On that high balcony and looking down To see the beach so far below her feet As naked and as empty as she felt
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- 5 comments
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- 1683 reads
Summer Butterflies
“But words,” she said. “They Don’t mean anything at all. They flutter around And weave patterns through our days, Like the too brief lives Of bright summer butterflies.
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- 857 reads
Surface Tension
Skimming out across the surface, Leaving it unmarked, unchanging. Letting time slip right by, floating On the surface as my steps can Only dent the meniscus of Every moment like that summer
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- 722 reads
The Taste of Silence
I know the taste of silence, It is here, soft and metallic. You know the taste of disappointment Its bitter sharp sourness. We have tasted life And both turned away To face each other
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- 730 reads
Fingerprints
We stand and then we will see how this world Begins to form the shape of a new day Against the far horizon of our lives. We’ve seen the sun come rising from the dawn
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- 731 reads
Seasons of Time
Anyway the world moves, But it’s only the one way. There is no past here To cling to as the world turns Its old face to face Into the unknown future. While we are stuck here
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- 654 reads
Matriarch
All the days of returning when you are shocked By the strangeness of the familiar, and how Life goes on in the same constantly changing way That is so well-known in the way everything becomes
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- 729 reads
Those Darker Nights
We do not see such things as signs. We do not look up to see the sky, to choose foretellings of catastrophe from the movements within the spheres. In our heavens, we see only distances
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- 641 reads
Secret Keys
She has so many keys, collecting them All since she was such a very young girl To lock her secrets deep inside her dreams Where no one could rip them away from her
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- 930 reads
Nothing Else But Stillness
The world will grow so green around us soon While we wait for time to begin again. At night, still there are stars against the sky, And there is sound and there is silence too.
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- 782 reads
Falling Out Of Darkness
We have seen so many new days fall out Of the darkness into the dawning light. We have taken these paths down to the sea And stood on the shore, watched the changing tides.
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- 854 reads
Through Glass
She is walking through the door Stepping over cracked floorboards To her place near the window, To watch a world through glass Passing by, safe on the other side.
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- 2 comments
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- 973 reads
Still Dancing
Dancing through days that fall At your feet like bright petals, You see all your tomorrows Spreading out towards the horizon. You have lived a life like this before,
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- 700 reads
Our Father
He had confident safe hands. I wanted hands like that. The knowing hands of a man Who knows how the world works, And how to fix it, when it doesn't. For he is the one to fix things,
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- 865 reads
Dreams Will Grow From Turning Time
As night arrives to take your hands and go To places dreams will grow from turning time Around and twisting memory and hope Across the pillow held beneath your head
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- 696 reads
Forgotten Dreams
These beautiful things, delicate and small Are made for turning to catch the light and eye These are like dreams, and dropped so easily On the still warm pillow as you awake,
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- 928 reads
She Knows
She moves as she understands Easily, with a grace of knowing Light, like the breezes of spring Blowing headlong into summer. She flows like the slow stream Long after the snows are gone.
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- 868 reads
It Echoes Back
It echoes back from the heart of not knowing, This is a place where we must always stand As it is not always so easy to find a way Through to the hidden centre of these times
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- 713 reads
Found and Lost Again
And then the motion takes us further on To places found and lost again, as time Is turning on, far past those times long gone We lost or left behind, almost a crime
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- 2 comments
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- 798 reads
To Escape Again
I tried forgetting, but that never really works. I tried walking away, but still have shoulders To look back over and the distance always Makes these things seem more attractive
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- 650 reads
I Go With Regret
I go with weary reluctance And I go slowly – with regret. I hope not to look back with longing Leaving all we allowed ourselves behind. I have good...
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- 1 comment
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- 800 reads
Sifting Through
Sifting Through Can we form new days out of the ghosts Of memory? Or is it all lost, forgotten Left covered in dust blown in over it By these cold...
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- 939 reads