of love and war

Unwillingly

I  journey, in order to survive,

through memories that summon

without consent.

There lies your winter coat

where we once lay our backs,

half buried  in the falling snow,

rotting now  among  cones  and needles.

The forest floor smells of burning pine

and silence is  the sound of pounding

hooves or soft as the moon rising

In your kingdom of stars.

 

 

Excerpt from  Gurkski’s  ” Il me faut t’abandonne”

“Come dusk is when my mind walks out

from where I fence myself in,

my dark room of nightly delights where

I encounter her,  my queen of all things blue

and we fight right from the start

To  make me love her even more.

I place the hands of my heart to gather*

my hunting spirit, follow her footprints

into our forests of  love and war.”

 

 

 

 

 

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build mansions

Throw away those pages,

that pink littered landscape.

Where is the victory in pity?

Build your mansion of bones

and sorrow so deep it can

not be contained but spills

from the fissure of your heart.

Reach inside stretched

skin whose scars  still sting.

There is no poetry

in  swallowed pain,

of  the temperate voice.

Those words are still born.

No life lives there,

no womb that has birthed

scorn and rage.

 

in need of advent

Autumn scatters her shades

in daring colors of rust and copper,

asymmetrical patterns splayed

under fledgling  wings above

silent fields of late blooming

lilac  and the  soft blush of peony

left clinging  to a bowing trellis.

A flicker of  burnished feathers

dripping  the weight of dew,

flitting  through  blowing wheat fields,

the breath of life  after  summer flew.

Dried stalks abandoned beneath crusty leaves,

their tender stems beaten to the soil

in need of assurance,  a promise of rebirth.

 

 

kabegami art

Anais

Frightened by a world she can barely hold on to,

the uncertainty of breath

where safety lives in dreams.

I like to sit in her lap

and play games as

she strokes my fur with

her gentle fingers.

Sometimes I tease and

pull away,

lick myself and pretend

I am too busy.

When the master comes home

he too likes to play,

tossing me into the flower bed

with rough paws.

I feel my bones may break so

she placates him with a smile

while I hide away in the garden

chasing lizards and winged things.

She kneels when  he yanks her hair,

slaps  dewdrops from her face.

When it’s done he washes   rust from his nail beds,

says he’s had a bad day.

I don’t understand the games my people play.

 

 

 

Photography by Heart

 

 

the lethal dose

There are days  shadows course

through me like a breeze,

pressing deep into my life line and

the air is the scent of a stale satin pillow

where I refuse to lay my head.

I don’t fear  those intrepid ghosts,

I embrace and release them with

failed  gravity or the force that once

held the cupped hand of my lover.

The sky was alive then with every shade of

blue and the clarity of Windsor eyes

where I longed for space.

Desire is a stranger,  a lethal dose,

 encountered beneath a sacred mound.

art by Laura Makabresku

Wolves

In that state between sleep and wake

traversing birth and mortality

there is the faintest hint of earthy candles,

macabre dreams interrupted by sighs

the soft strophe of sonnets and the odd

sensation of strung pearls  falling like

tiny moons through my open palm.

At the boundaries I find you

not your spirit or  rose tinged snow,

but flesh and bone and sinew.

Now  I am sleeping less

roused by the wing beats of boreal Owls

circling   ancient Cypress,

their knife edge talons entwining knotty branches.

When sleep intrudes fitful winds  erupt

feathery curtains, vibrate my hemispheres.

A  swift breeze lifts  me over  the

valley to a  moonlit hillside of sweet lea

where a silver wolf lies down  beside me.

He is the scent of golden meadows and

his eyes are the color of the eastern sky.

 

Pinterest

 

The Pale Window

The sun is still low in the sky,

it’s rays have barely begun

to pierce the chill of our pale window.

Don’t go,  we are scarcely out of dreaming.

Caress my breast with the lifeline of your palm

while my head rests in the crook of your shoulder.

With these  fingertips you kiss one by one

I will ease the furrow of your brow and

soothe your body with the twining of my own.

Let the hours pass  through us tenderly

like a shallow river of fledgling reeds.

 

Steve hanks art

 

Coalesce

These fragments  I offer

at times coalesce but  they

are defined by the spaces

between their  lines.

Short and serpentine,

they gently prod your subconcious,

I want to make you comfortable,

but feel the silence.

Please do not interrupt

my breathing or break the

momentum of fragile hands

on your neck and shoulders.

My hair is  a rope ladder  we

climb down  into  a  dream-mind

of iteration where words are

food and wine.

 

 

art by Sarah Riches

 

 

of mountains and pebbles

Hold me in soft silence,
read my heart aloud knowing
that every beat is painted in
your colors.
Let me come undone with yearning
knowing there is safety in longing.
My breath is a warm sigh against
your skin and love is the ember we
hold to our lips in winter’s unfolding.
Allow us to come undone quietly
without the thistle of war or
the bind of garland about our feet,
a tender loosening of ties,
mountains reduced to pebbles.

Olga Beliaeva

Indigenous Bird

Without end or beginning,

in white hours I wait for you.

Near night I hunger for darkness,

shadows of lilting swans

we plunge from cliffs of vertigo

into the gold dust of desire.

You are the hoarfrost of winter,

brilliant bursts of Autumn’s fire.

Solitary eagle above the mountains,

beneath your wings gentle streams

of infinity carry you to my shore.

Should you fly on to distant provinces

I will follow,

become an indigenous bird to that land.

Birds of South Asia