The Ballad of the Broken

If this is love, I don't want it.

Having to die a thousand times to live but once,

To wither away to become a husk of all I am just to feel alive

I will not belong, become, be owned, or own you.

My psyche is my fortress of solitude,

A tower of ignorance, I alone stand the vigil.

 

Love is your weapon, your venom, your poison,

A cancer I cannot escape, not with packet drug or razor blade.

Despair if you will, die if you must;

For I have felt that dark path beckon, guided by your siren's light.

A wrecker standing alone at the shoreline.

 

The Blossom of Late Spring

I saw it as soon as my waking eyes opened in dream-scape.

The old tree, silver and white birch, pink blooded blossom.

Petals fall down from on high, pearl coloured drops of sunlight,

Which flood my vision, which swirl and shift around me;

Nymph-like beings wrapping me in tiny silk embrace.

Finger of white, supple-skinned bark twist and touch,

Move forward my ethereal being of white light.

Once I wake, silently but sharply I feel that touch about me,

And again I see that supple skin, smell the musky tone of a perfumed body.

There's a space beside me, an empty hall, the door firm shut.

But a thought of her subtle, perfect beauty that still resides within me.

Twilight

And no, before you ask. Its got nothing to do with vampires. Just a beautiful friendship.

Do you remember that time? Those moments?

Of course you do.

The warm evening air, the fading twilight.

That place we say, we two.

We'd talk of our dreams, of faraway places, of lost lands.

The here, the now and the new.

Our fingers entwined, spirits dancing, our thoughts tripped over one another.

Such things we saw, such things we felt, such intrepid adventures we had.

Now, back again, on our little patch of eternity, it all floods back to me.

The heather still blooms in the cold, the pine trees shiver with the breeze, again

The night-jar whistles away.

Stars half-shine in the evening sky, your phantom besides in the gloom.

Now, we find ourselves marooned in a new world,

The past seeming a thousand miles away.

All that remains is that melancholy summer.

Those wondrous, glory days.

Fridge

A daft little haiku, passed on from a friend.

Haikus are so great.

But sometimes they don't make sense.

Refrigerator.

The Guardian

A heartfelt poem for a moment of quiet.

The old man sat back,

Hands through wispy locks of grey, fingers interlocked.

His dog lay beside, a mottled rug of an animal,

Nobly he slept at master's feet.

His ageing bones creaked and trembled at the rise and fall of breath,

The blinking of eyes, the hearth's gentle breeze of warmth.

The falling of his eyelids let him know of passing hours,

The sleep which fell upon his limbs.

As every night he leant down to fuss the ancient hound,

His aged, dear companion.

"I had a dream once" spoke the master to his fondest friend,

"To own some land which I could tend, a little space outside the city,

To have some children, maybe a wife, to live an honest, simple life."

The dog he sighed and blinked his eyes awash with firelight,

A long, thoughtful look.

His keeper raised a crinkled crescent of his lips, a flash of teeth

And knew his friend spoke the truth.

It was here where he chose to lay, to stay the hours,

For sleep to take him,

Onwards.

The Fallen

A melancholy poem in a troubled mind.

I saw her last at the shore's edge, a lost forlorn creature.

Her soul fell upon the mirrored water,

A white rose drifting downstream.

Glassy cold, she walked but I knew not where, her white feet padded silently.

Only once she gazed at me, an empty phantom behind those eyes.

Her soul it felt that rushing current, the icy water across her toes,

Her lips they parted toward the heavens, those eyes they closed on me.

I saw once more she trembled, I saw her ghostly smile.

The peace she sought was far away, yet her fate it lay below.

Down, down below, in those frozen depths.

Like crystal glass her life did shatter, upon that winter's morn

She did not scream and did not waver, but fell in bitter sleep.

The angel's peace was silent, but in my mind it keeps.

Girl 55

Of all the fates a man can suffer, a missed opportunity.

A chance to strive and seek which was yielded.

You, sweet lady, were another of mine.

In hours of solitude, she haunts my every thought.

The flash of scarlet locks, eyes an oceanic blue;

Skin white as a frosted morning,

A mind as sharp as daggers.

The smile, the laugh, the look;

Enough to melt the soul of a man,

To captivate him, to twist the heart with such beauty.

To outshine every star in his sky.

That sweet voice chimed a melody no mortal could ever create,

That I could never comprehend.

That still whispers to me in the dark.

Far from here, a million lives away,

You were all I could ever dream.

A love one man could not express.

Now, all that remains is this sorry fool,

And a memory of perfection.