Birthday Poem 3.14

 Before my world revolves

it's thirty third turn 

around the sun,

I hesitate, ruminate 

on skirmishes never won-

silver bullets in a wooden gun.

former amours- dusted, done.

Some were charming, alarming

with lusty gaze,

some waxed skillful in words

that aimed to betray-

some entangled in self-doubt,

miasmic, putrid haze -

some led astray

through briars and brambles

that grazed.

And others were sweet, you know, a sugar pill, effective as a placebo.

and once upon a time,

(if my memory serves me right,)

someone attempted,

(quite heroically)

to exorcize my démons-

(quite unsuccessfully) ...

But listen!

I must pause this reminiscing

(quite abruptly), 

because look!

there is

no proud rose flaying me

with inky thorns,

no righteous sunflower 

turning it's face from me,

no shrinking violet shying from responsibility,

I view a secret fern

growing steadily,

almost leisurely,

across the shadow slope of midsummer days.

And I know,

although autumn is inevitable,

regret lies heavier than the smell of bitter almonds,

and for now-  

it is summer still.

Blaze

The sky is cracked with lightning,
the roots on fire
flame into a burning tree,
What a waste!
What once was whole,
has been destroyed permanently.

Ancient as the moon,
is my love for you.
A different millennium,
A different time will see it prosper,
This lifetime couldn't do justice
For what was meant for me.

I have no qualms about my reality,
but I wish I had been born as that tree,
Spanning decades and seasons,
the essence in the bark,

 even aflame,
couldn't erase the memory
of you and me.

This is love of epic proportions.
This is what was destined.

Yes, I still firmly believe it.
I am made for love and love is made for me.

In perhaps, another age, time and space,
I will achieve what was meant for me.

Before Rain in July - chapter 2

Does the sky ever ask the land,
will you let me rain over you?
Have you prepared for my torrent?

It simply breaks open its arms
and pours forth it's grief in
large, splotchy drops,
nonchalantly, almost unapologetic
to both parched and wet earth.

Why did you think I will reign myself in?
Why did you think I must seek your permission to love or hate you?
I will not.

My clouds are burdened with the grief I have hemmed in,
accumulated across heartbreaks in rainstorms.
They cannot hold much longer.

Beware, a storm approaches.
The sky has spoken.
There is only one way this ends.

Before Rain in July

The cotton-wool clouds above seem oblivious to my dissonance.
It should have been a beautiful day.
The azure sky remains etherized with neglect and longing.

The apricot Sun above is parched, almost withered as the salted land it illuminates grudgingly.
It is too bright, too bright for comfort.

O how I long for the comfort of the pale blue moonlight
on the thorny thistle bush,
weeping with the dew for another night with you.

But the apricot Sun is desiccated, almost decimated
as my saltwept hopes
 and those rainswept thistle flowers,
for which it is too bright, too bright for comfort.

The cotton-wool clouds above seem to patronize my discordance.
It should have been a beautiful day.

Space

There's nothing wrong
with space between cities and stars.
Kilometres, lifetimes, light years,
I was sure you'd never be too far.

Sometimes space was just an
inch between your face and mine.
Sometimes it was the space between two floors,
Sometimes it was the space between two car doors.
Sometimes space was an anomaly,
 and our fingertips met.
Space Oddity,  but just sometimes.

Now you're only sitting a table away.
It's like you never went away.
But the distance in your gaze
 is difficult to fathom.
and I'm falling here,
falling through a chasm.

There's nothing wrong
with space between cities
as long as the affinities
between two hearts last.
But now it's a thing of the past.