The subtle art of time.....

Dear all,

It's been a long while, so busy have I been with my work and O.U. course that I would feel I'd lost my way were not the thread waiting for me.....

Seriously it has been five months since I updated and it has gone in a blur. The highlight of the intervening period has been a poetry reading for Slackfolk - a folk music group that meets in Colchester that very kindly guested me to read and afforded the biggest audience I've yet faced, up there, alone, just me and the mike. It's a funny feeling and yet somehow so very necessary, a chance to slough off a skin or two and face myself alone in public.....

Python and Dove

 

Side winding on a moment

The emboldened tongue
Exposes hidden form

Love uncoils

In strange new ways

Gifting pleasure storm

 

Sloughs its skin

A heartbeat missed
The  python and the dove

 

Slithering helpless

In surrender

On the forked tongued peaks of love

Now, what is interesting about that is in my last post this thought thread was called "Raven and Dove" and hopefully the new version demonstrates the writing process in action. An initial idea, growing and changing to become something else filled, in this case, with snake imagery.

Ethereal Peaks

The wildest sea resides within

A white capped storm of longing
Ethereal peaks of magnificence
Found in hopeless striving

Slow the world, too fast it turns
The moment defining all I am
Such a pale illusion cannot last
No inner grasp of time unfolding

 

Another interesting aspect of time constraint is the short poem. You don't need a long rambling discourse to say something that is on your heart

Preparation

My heart beats with an agonised lilt

Round and round the shining light
Leaving gold dust from my wings
Upon the sweet bloom of your lips
Sprinkling frankinsense
Until I can no longer fly....


One of my greatest influences is Emily Dickinson and she never wrote "long". I figure if I can  just manage five percent of her genius.....

On My Skin

I read letters from the dead

Fear traps me, fly like, in its web
I look upon the stars with dread
Knowing my earthly course

Is but a footnote to the universe

I briefly illuminate
The spreading cloak of time

Such a shrinking lot defines The worth of treasured things

 

The pale flame I lit for you

Burns against the darkness
As quietly I meditate  Your loving touch, sublime…..
But cannot feel it on my skin.

 

 

My latest "collection", in the loosest sense of the term, is currently labouring under the title "Apotheosis" or roughly the process of translating something (or someone) into a god or goddess. Perhaps this is something we all do at some point or another in our lives as we seek (or strive to fulfill our lives purpose) in finding the "magical other".

Bloom

There is a new flower in the field

A lovelier bloom than all before
She turns bright petals to the sun
Whilst her lover sings in solitude

No greater pleasure can there be

Than see her carpel opened wide
Sweet inner sanctum, holy ground
Love's fragrant altar for sacrifice

 

 

Who, or what, is the "magical other" to you? What does he or she or it look like? Do you want to write about or articulate that emotion? I would encourage you to do so.....

 

Ajar

I’m on the outside looking in
Watching as your footprints
On the shifting sands of time
Are washed away

 

Intently listening from a distance

An ear pressed to the ground
I'm like a piece of flotsam
Lost and found

 

I'm a face in the rear-view

From the place of the skull
When there was wailing
And gnashing of teeth

 

I'm still reaping the harvest

Of summers past
Inadequate encounters
All too brief

 

You tarried for a season

Passed your darkest hour
Now like a sated vixen
Gone to ground

 

Mark Harris has asserted his right underSection 77 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988
To be identified as the author of this work.