The Queen
I don’t know who she is in the real world,
but on this rare island in time she is fierce,
brazen and elemental, shining in dirt.
I don’t know what she does when she’s at home,
but here she makes her home in longing gazes,
moves the crowd around her like a throw.
I don’t know where she travelled from to be here
but she seems born from sequins and song,
from oddity and wonder not found in homeward places.
I don’t know who she loves every day of her life,
but love on this plain is like air and water –
thriving is the vine it grows to bind us all together.
I don’t know who she is in the real world,
but here and now she is a fleeting butterfly –
queen of all that can never last.
The Flowers
We were a field of young, fragrant flowers.
A deadly poppy field perhaps, we sure as hell weren’t in Kansas anymore.
An opiate vision of Tiger lilies and dandy Lions,
Tooth and claw, hear us sing.
We were fruit, forbidden to whom we forbid.
We were rose by another name, making no secret of our thorns.
Fair daffodils – read us, and weep – watch us draw together the earth
and air until our boughs hold up the sky.
We were flowers in the pouring rain, still stood.
When the sun gently lights our petal faces, let us teach you what it is to glow with life.
Is it our haughtiness that offends you?
Rooted here together, under any gaze, as we rise.
Music is the petal, exquisite lace, gilt around the lily.
Breathe it – it is Number 5, L’Air du Temps, it is sweet.
Wear it like armour.
Daisy chain mail.
The Light Show
Throw back your head, not gently like the rolling of salty eyes
But sharp, hark, as if you’ve heard a reason to believe.
Look everywhere, not just up, to see the thunder landing –
The lightening will race you to its new bed, sizzle beneath your feet.
Tread the ebb and flow, geometric depictions which fly like clouds,
And lay claim like quiet armies, heeding our fallow welcome.
Feel your limbs, not coiled in tension like world-weary prey,
But soft, rebounding with nascent hunger for all there is to eat.
And be still now, let it trace itself lazily on your face,
Tie ribbons in waif knots at your throat to fall in pieces at your feet.
See the lights, at one time making night a flooded bowl of gold,
And a single stray pearl on the ocean floor, shining from within.
The Love Song
His love is a cathedral,
Gilded tiles to worship, once they’ve known
the hallowed touch of her bare soles.
Vaulted heights to rebound the savoured peals
of her laughter.
Fresh hell, a grim fairy tale of when there might
be Her no more.
He lets us in to know the reverent passages
warmed by her touch.
To see him kneel at the apse, a pilgrim
shrugging nave and transept from his narrow shoulders –
real enough for me to see everything through stained glass
for days after hearing his songs.
Alien Buddha Press 