past

THE MEANING OF A DREAM

The house is me.
The pool is me.
The open garage is me.
I am the driveway.
My neighbours watch.
Their house taller.
Their minds smaller.
The child in me finds fleeting memories.
My roller skates unsteady along the brick wall.
The laundry tub is me.
The bucket of water is me.
My swollen cuts and bleeding tears are also me.
My mother is me.
Her healing is me.
I am the tiny hands that trap her from leaving.
Her path is mine.
The house is mine.
This house is me.
The dream is real.

ONLY FOLLOW

This time, I will not allow Karma to hardwire
its endoscopic reign and prevail over my lives
with archaic inflection. Here, there, and
everywhere it attempts to vacillate and coerce,
but I exist to carve it free of our entanglement.

This time, I have purpose, and it is freshly made
by these hands that carry an almighty burden.
This time, I bare fruit, as the saying goes, and the
fruit holds its own seeds that bare further
fruit, and yes, Karma will follow, to be sure,
but this time, it shall no longer lead.

UNHEARD

Look at me, my pages are written in gold thread
and bound by the ancient skin of my past.
My library W-A-I-L-S in whispers of conspiracy and truths –
of desire so outcast it finds itself homeless;
a thief
carrying life upon its shelled back
turtling its way between crowds of ears
too muff’d to care or to listen.

Look at me, my story is the grand facade
of my penniless home.
My memories spill like curtains
from the sills of these eyes
into lobeless tunnels where I chase for tails;
drawstrings
that I will to capture for a moment’s audience –
a re-telling no soul might ever stay its ground to hear;
my name on this leathered spine
not enticement enough to be considered.

Look at me, my tounge-pen dribbles with needled letters.
My lips foreplay with top-stitched finery,
archiving yesterdays in self-distress like ageing wine;
time
and all its silence
slipping beneath the presser foot where it cannot be remembered;
where the archives it declines to embroider
fondle themselves alone in knots
to ravish to the last my unheard
and anonymous remains.

RELINQUISH

By and by,
the past, it passes –
date–raping purpose
through peering glasses:
pregnant pauses never lasting

Every vanished thrill
restarting futures
on a windowed sill,
shadows casting mimes
in stills
as long will live the passion
– hungry –
fuelling moments full to brim

Just as quick, another morning
dawning – time to pass
and kill; murder
just another constant,
one more loss on
sudden whim as
whereupon man solders on
to play the night another song
for day by day we carry on
to pass another past
along.