Notes through 2021

This will become a small page I discard notations and poems throughout the year. They are rough and unedited. (the notations, not me… well)

19.7
before a thinning June
I’ve spoken to a dusky groom
whom standing there beneath the house
is hunched over what he can’t rouse.
There we clawed apart the loam,
said some words, then set home.
-
I wore a hat that night
and in the crimson waded feeling
danced in darkening cornfields
and washed the ashen morning
in the pyre of fading minds.
-
if anyone had asked
I’m the sprite who took his heart
and left him with a single match
to watch fruitless love hatch.

16.7
I don’t go past the door, no more
watching the sea breath -
shouldering her wayward haul.
Slipping through the fractured mane
rising in twisted moonlight
wondering if I had even died at all.
Now her breath’s stitched to my lung,
the thread of fate’s been unstrung.

14.7
I’m a tearoom removalist;
like dusty breath on window panes -
futile and in-congenial.
Light bulbs and old apple frames.
-
I’ll ask the guests to roam
beyond the lock-stilled door
and in the garden grove
retrieve the buried Lord.
-
I conclude he’s weary
of earth between his teeth.
I hope they find it’s funny
all our ears we’ve changed
for grief.
-
sitting fractured in the party room
a snake’s claimed the teapot
so now it can’t be moved;
ask me tomorrow, when I’ve forgot
the Lord’s still in the gloom -
because I wanted to be alone.

12.7
slow singing sunshine
wrapped like smokey eels
circling my feet.
-
eerie disguise of summer
lies through a dead man’s teeth.
I just never thought
you’d be my killer.
-
waiting in the garden
for a boy named George
to slay his dragons.
Beneath a quiet moon
in the debris of June.

9.7
whale spoken tragedies
floating through history -
I’m not sure we’d listened
to soulless corpses broken
where the life-spun liturgy
burned in suburban streets
in flames writ by the weak.

8.7
here pray, the woods beware
where the moss has grown
over the woodland throne
hear the evening weep,
the scent of blooded fur
makes the timid curl.
-
where the shadow sinks
into your well-sprung lair.
I’ll leave a thickening dream
in the engorged space
where the sirens sing
across the moral wastes.

7.7
Our town was broken
round a quiet river.
I’d walk, hardly woken -
you’d wait in the shimmer
speaking with the spirits
in leaf-writ epiphanies.

28.6
there’s a crippled Phoenix
flying by my door.
He does so every morn.
Does he wonder what’s next?
Past disappointment every dawn.

14.6
sound has stopped sleeping -
the forest’s breath is meek,
and walking ‘neath a shaking bough
a soulless silence sounds.
-
in the shadowed ways
the fractured speech of fae’s rasied
my dreams into bloodless blades.

2.6
I sit under a half splayed column
in skies of pale duck egg blue.
Weeping into the deep mid-May -
pyres of silver cross the darkening gloom.
-
empty theaters and weightless hands
sifting through the timeless dust.
Congregations of falling light,
flotsam of a buckling moon.

30.5
The garden yearns - it’s wings are nigh
and ridden on a pumping sun.
The long afternoon; course of honey.
Yellowing pale ‘neath our feet.
The budding season’s taste is hung
along bones, whom breaking timely
veil their guise for when seasons meet.

29.5 - the first storm
It always whispers a day away,
sitting on the edge of dawn.
Tucked and tense to break,
buried deep beneath the maw
of curling watermarks
committing us to the dark.

28.5 - what good spirits expect
White Knights; stern flowing wings,
fractured fields, waves on the wind.
Fallen limbs of consiousness,
murdering impieties.
-
Swans further up the ford.
Small outlines caligraphy
eluding the stretching hands
who’ve known only masonry
weeding a mortal’s lands.
-
The ground of thawing shores
at the foot of a breaking sea.
Spirits of the brine contemplate -
storms blushed upon their cheek.
Rusty shackles echo to late.
Soon upon grey shadows meet.

27.5
There’s a maw, soft spoken.
The book of an Elderberry tree.
Down a 3/4 lane -
where the bog’s learned to speak.

24.5 - The Circus Squire
Walking the woods in tawny steps
split across the quiet of a field.
Born apart the flat and weary dew.
Crimson smile of striped censures -
vowels of molasses and honeydew.
A dire hour of mid-June
when the town begins to tremble,
the squire’s smile’s astride
turning askew spires offirelight
until a dawning taste’s arrived
and the fields are discomposed again.

23.5
Above me rests a tawny grave -
It’s leaning sump whispers
in the fermented Autumn rain.
It’s earthen floor is decomposing
it’s vowels are melting thin,
saluting the hawthorn hedges
circling my tomb in fog-lit wind.
Graves while sour are ever faithful.

22.5
Can you hear the ways windows break?
Dry mouth, ebbing in the river wake.
Ruminating on soundless waiting
until your eyes sink to drowning
in slow midden history
whose grounds begin to shake
casting off their husk-like mistakes.

21.5
I visited the broken doorway
and it’s fractured silhouette would sway
between it’s stony foot
and worlds on a different plain.
-
an echo thickening Heath
where language is left to thaw
amongst the wildest gables.
Blind uncertainties. Re-engraved
in fainting lines on hollowed skin.
-
An afterlife, flume pipes
in a hard-baked arbitrary tier
beyond the broken doorway
where the fractured silhouette would sway.

20.5
Are we akin to waning feeling?
Like blood across a fallen field
where we found your first victim.
In the throne of loved bracken
sit memories of wilderness
that rush against the tether.
Speak with ritual incision.
Along the spring, the hanging spot,
that’s where my body’s hidden.

18.5
all songs in a shaking silence
when you dock in that greying world.
the shackling of hearts has ceased,
they have all been set free.
-
ask for change of you burden’s
without omen you’ve carried them here
now their sickness has disappeared,
like swallows caught in thunderstoms.
In the turning fan of shattered blue
unwritten stars; unexhumed.
-
where the swell of ink is proved untrue.
A mast is broken, the writ’s been spent
torn and shattered off the edge.

16.5
beside me; a wild wave’s at grace.
Shapeless, unbroken and forgotten.
Until the briney tapered frill
has stretched to my shifting boot.
-
around the churning bend,
a mountain steeple’s fallen for the sea
the spasm’s of momentary sleep
have once too often betrayed me.
-
there’s a strangeness to the the breeze;
it’s particled acoustic masonry,
scattered fragments of a liturgy
we’d might once have spoken - to feel free,
a final breath, tumbling, to the deep.

16.5
I went about disguising it. Invoking it insoft church rooms or passing it into a starless gloom.
These days, clawing at the fuse of expert disobedience to grow
some emotional dissonance. I’d never seen so loud a soul. I tried to creep about the edge.
Drown somewhere in a 6th dimension. I’ve heard you knocking at the door.
Mildued obseiance is scattered across the floor. The nights are growing long again.
Please kindly shut the door.

15.5
Late May, in the auburn glow
with the birches amply dripping
into thick-plaid furrows;
loam-strung flumes of Autumn.
-
I sometimes see a drop of rain
walking, garbed like meteorite
across the stormy window pane;
an ‘emigre’ set to flight.
-
can you hear curiosity engorge
the low conductive sound of theft
as Winter’s fingers idly run;
through the debris of a season, undone.

14.5
The silence comes and goes.
In chambers of fractured glinting.
Metropolitan winnowing; phone trips,
and wheels sing, the oil’s alive to me.
I’d like to touch the grain of things.
Taste of grantite wall when it falls.
There’s a voice tapping to know
the dark hankering to pass alone.

12.5
I recall the rage, it’s barnacled face
pressed against the smallest hour of May.
Black and white acreage. The thick bitten way
the rope would sway. Diminuendo.
An evening’s orange glow; watching us drive
down the road that goes past home.

10.5
Who might have hoped we’d lived so close
beneath the whalers echo-chasers
where the future’s but a single thread.
You might have hoped that I’d forgotten;
trepanned into silken augury
and dashed through a stoup rain
into two-faced unforgotten eulogy.

9.5
I’ve seen your house down by the broken road.
Bracken-less taste. Wild window eyes.
I used to be. We’d walk, bracing the path
to the lonely shop, get change for a childhood.

6.5
it’s somewhat strange to think I know you
the way Saturday morning flowers do -
the way petals unfurl in your evening swirl
if you look closely, the taste of a memory
has been cool etched into your wrists
cause you know the way your mind forgets
the dried leaf of a whiskey smile hiding
when you promise me that you’re trying
to let go of everything penitential.

4.5
There’s flotsam of a truck in the corner
about it circles an eye-less groom.
Walking together; through nostalgia fever
along the threads of a fractured loom.
The smallest flowers can kindle power,
like electric storms in waiting rooms.
-
The hint of a megaphone call
is shattered across the evening sprawl
with tendrils square as toothless forks
lining the pathway rest would walk.

2.5
what ever happened to old hopes
those torn vanilla scented hymns
falling through microphone braziers
into dusks of slow burning still.

28.4
I’m walking my own street;
numbness arrayed neatly
in stoic standing palisade
between me and the quiet faces
whose indiligent watch places
an uncertain beat of anxiety
beside the place I’m meant to sleep;
not all children know to weep. 

28.4
there’s a silver place between life and sleep
where the world’s grey, but a flicker
against a weeping window pane
whose candle-woke speech breaks the plain
of ripened stillness with soft touched dreams.
The patient character of an hour
with a shore unbroken and unchanging
whose reflection tender-breath has taken
and etched upon the cavern of my mind. 

27.4
sojourning through your sidelong glance;
in heavy flower-drained air,
so faintly sweet, so near unbreathable
with something ‘bout a soft whisper,
with the dare to take a room.
-
I’ve seen you hold the moon together
with mist-like desire,
like a lady, or a child
born from a stranger time.
-
If I were still dandy with savage sleep;
sitting in the break of a fig tree, no
no dream of sprig or home
might have kept me from waking alone. 

26.4
I told my mum I was an Anarchist
at her bequest.
She said that I should flee
far out to sea.
That the world was not made for those
who think twice.

25.4
Your bleary-eyed anger
is a fearful tongue shaking mess
beside cold broken young soldiers
with soft foreign voices telling you to rest.
Curled beneath particular melatonin rays,
for a while we’d pretend the chain was erased
the world keeps its spinning,
while your sitting still.
While you’re breathing too hard
in the evening spill.
and wondering how long it may have been
since the grass had been green -
scream inwardly, speak politely,
and stay in your room -
they’ll let you out soon. 

24.4
the past is not lost to concern;
the way frail lights fight
through shadows ‘neath burial urns -
or pleasant thoughts we’d misconstrue,
time unplucks the fabric of rooms
as if breathing were notion to bury
the idea yesterday could not be heavy.
-
it’s but one decision to be bereft
of all the taste that life has left
in the pearly twist of cigarette smoke
at a bar not far from a dream
where the debris of history’s broke
leaving memory weeping at the seams.
-
you can hear a life of shattered fragments
if you press your ear right to the red door
concealing the person you might have been
if you’d only mustered the strength to fall. 

22.4
The letters sit there, the door is unrung -
a host of breaking silent words
are unravelling, born and unstrung -
’midst a swelling storm rests a bird
whispering what she knows I’ve known
to the core of my dove-grey bones -
if I were to stop and listen to her,
it wouldn’t be long before we’re both here.

21.4
Meet me by the church where the stone’s carved blue
on a wintery eve still south of June
and where the water’s touched by pale moonlight
I’ll tell you all the things my dream’s outlined.

15.4
How fond of life we seem
when it feels we’re striding through a dream.
I’ve ripped a golden glaive across the walls
of a citadel grown too tall -
we watched it slowly crumble down
and found me scattered ‘midst the fall -
I thought that part of me had drowned.

9.4
The sun’s speaking to a desperado
who’s lost walking south of Santiago.
He’s sold his dead bedside table
to a girl too familiar with gables
and exchanged a brief insecurity
about the height of the bridge at Montealegre.

5.4
I’m just a waking mortal child
trapped somewhere in his garden
where all the giant’s secrets keep
the golden fruit swollen and sweet.

29.3
my dearth bride, waiting across a long sea
burning letters in the speechless wake.
I’ve lost a lifetime, on my island
where for death we said we’d wait.
-
there’s writing in the spot we’d pray
while gold’s waiting in the mountain,
buried there in the early snow,
spend it slowly, don’t come rushing,
give me patience to make our home,
don’t live a lifetime in a day,
just wait for the first summer rain.
-
we lived our life, in an old Dutch painting,
we never kept mirrors up on the walls-
just a picture, of you waiting,
on some scarce foreign shore.

27.3
My old seasick childhood worn bones
they’re broken in the back of the blue car,
the one your father used to drive
through hand-stitched summer memories.
We tried to hide ‘neath quiet pews
in a rental church wild and white.
Cigarettes marking long hours.
Smell of bare ocean tradition
and insecure evening inhibition
would draft the way we’d stay away
and try to forget, until today.

24.3
We’re living with capable mercy
above the shards of fallen tombs
where silence has begun hurting
the person to leave the room.
It’s them to whom the boatman’s toll
speaks with the breath of punctured lungs.
It’s them to who the evening weeps
when funeral rites are sung,
by the lone shadow, the sole one,
whose harrowed guilt had overcome.

24.3 The Swallow & the Martin (unfinished)
A Swallow once hung beneath the eves -
each night she’d spin together dreams.
A Martin’s nest’s perched in my hedge,
I swear his silver song dissuades cold death
from pacing up the path each morning
to take tea and issue graceless warning.
-
Come yesterday, my guardian’s gone,
my traveling friend’s taken their song
and left my life deciduous -
how it might have paid to be religious.

22.3 you used to have a heart of gold…
You know what they say
about Marigold flowers,
be careful of the way it plays
when you are but a traveler
lost passing ‘midst dreams
and you come across their honey;
for it’s difficult to leave - when a vision’s this lovely.
It’s difficult to see - that life’s still running
when you’re drowning in a dream.

21.3
There was a man, lived down the lane,
he’d sway and speak with monarchs dead
until they’d leave to him their reign -
each neatly tied upon a thread,
he’d sprinkle them in pigeon’s blood
and watch the scent of war take bud -
he’d laugh, until the wind itself would know
what it’s like to be both mad and loved.

20.3
I think my garden’s playing host
to an evening party most dark
amongst them waits my thief of rest
the witch who left a branded mark
to keep the innocent away
so the devil might ride till day.

18.3
I was the quiet occupant
an open window from my room
where cold tried eyes might have went
when harrowed by the lonely moon
-
please do not ask me for a word
to rise and wreath these sickened lungs
would only cause me further hurt
where there’s no secrets to be wrung.
-
I’m but the quiet occupant
with a golden candle at dusk
to help me walk my solitude
until my memory’s naught but dust.

14.3
dear days of March and darkening wisdom
of pale eyes and lucid visions
that upon a mountain will cry
atop the loam where secrets lie
and pluck apart with ruinous tooth
the tale you’ve spun and labelled truth.

11.3
How sweetly melancholy silence sleeps
across the shore where morning weeps;
the musing path of sole-sea birds
cross only where a heart’s been hurt
-
I collect dreams, only to break
palsy waves and dive into the wake
where one might find Amphitrite
and watch the way immortals pray.

28.2
They’re still expecting your order
the way cinnamon bleeds on a Monday morning around the corner, where you’d be waiting
on an engagement I’d half forgotten
-
If God has a cauldron of memory
I hope it holds something of you and me,
the way a bird song’s selfish
as it rises above the dying green
to where it cannot here the wish
that would sue the season’s decay,
with a speech of coloured dream
to tie the seams of yesterday.
-
but now you’re gone the veins have dried
one can’t live the last how, and this,
when you occupy the corner quiet
with naught but hope as a sick gift. 

26.2
For whom do the Argives pray
when not for home
or the end of day?
Is she not the olive fields
and the thread through men’s dreams.
-
For whom do the argives pray
when the vaunt of war
has sailed away?
There is no wine to drown
the empty pride of a stolen crown
-
For whom do the Argives pray
when Leda’s daughter’s disobeyed
and left the prayers misplaced,
rousing a new word for hope
when the heart is dead and broke.

25.2
Have you seen the way silk breaths
when Autumn colours Summer’s leaves
the noose is hung but loosely bound,
circles of time surround,
the grave where cedar trees replied
where nymphs go to feel alive.

11.2 Compliment to H.E.
Nymph of the heart harrow and darkening glance
what moments lay beyond command
when you’ve told sweet Hades himself the way
does not the dawn turn pink to say
what each of us wish when we pray.
With meadow flowers and sweet cherry lips
that in sweet melody will trip
the most hard hearted deity
with such a tightening clarity
-
The silver way you step afield
claiming hearts when mornings yields.
Nymph of ceaseless twilight, merry-go-rounds,
of unconscious conversation
shortened breath and charcoal exaltation.
How gods wish they could live, like soft marble
lost somewhere in an Autumn garden;
their hearts then might never harden.

10.2
I’ve seen you pluck that lonely silken thread
the one from which hangs your golden head,
where a thousand seraphims run amok
with a loose taxidermised energy
woven through a graveyard of twisted clocks.
You’re the girl who’d write her own eulogy
with an oak laugh and honeyed scotch.
-
Green acreage and foreign tongues,
with travellers love for desert lungs.
To wish you’d already done more;
when you’ve built the Babylon walls,
watched the apples of Hesperides fall,
and fought the soul of the enemy
with no thought lost on remedy.
How deeply your heart must crave rest,
though I know to that you’ll not attest

8.2
The red sky’s never trusted me
it’s seen too many darkening fights
and wondered how a bird might fly
if its spirit were forced to die.
-
it bleeds the way you remember
the shape that verse took last December.
I’ve never liked an open sky,
I much prefer it when they cry.

7.2 let’s keep pretending this didn’t happen
There’s a memory of softer times
of newspapers and warm cinnamon lies
of children out, to run and hide
whilst we dozed ‘neath Spring willow trees
where gold fields ran ceaselessly.

6.2
I’d hear you laughing each morning downstairs
with brighter airs on rainy days.
Puddles broken with overtred boots;
you’d dash my coat in evening soot
and say “let’s go to church again
but smoke alone to well past 10 -
with swollen dream-baited eyes
you’d roam cross lamp-lit skies
and say “I know we’re both a mess,
but we agreed it’s for the best”

6.2 - “Hey it’s your * redacted * this month”
I think about you every year
when I stop by the bridge not far from here
and spy upon the pearly plain
a leaf untethered ‘midst the rain
-
When I sit down to think it through
I wonder how far I’ve strayed from you
and if the words themselves could pray
I could discard this gilded frame,
run down unto the riverside
and into cold easeful sleep slide.
-
I’m not sure when I awake
I’ll recall these thoughts again.
Wait by the bridge not far from home
and watch the leaves call out the year.

5.2 - Compliment to J.
How heavy roses grow
with nothing but your breath
each morn to help them grow
-
the taste of almond milk remembers
the empty vase and piano stools
until the world itself recalls
the liturgy it’s lost to you.
-
I wonder if you kept the ashtray
or trace my wayward thoughts
to a cigarette case, that dress
or laughter just beyond the door.

4.1 dos anos
They hang like listless pearls of gold
in the shaking musk of airy ways
where our young men spent countless days
beneath the feet of clouds grown cold
-
Bury what’s left of me deep,
deep inside the evergreen sleep
where mirrors have no games left to play
beyond the way my life once swayed.
-
Let us muster one lasting dance
and sit amidst the loam entranced
waiting upon a waking sky
so He might watch our souls fly.

29.1
There are mirrors that hold verses
like white scars on Trojan ramparts
for too long they’ve been kept hidden
lest they slay fractured Illium
-
If we could pronounce reflections
claw them off their glassy tensions
we’d stitch them to the violent ways
we dreamt we’d spend our younger days
-
Then perhaps time would have spoken
and unrequited anger broken
amidst the bones and falling walls -
we could watch a Seraphin fall.

27.1 - I thought you might be Fae
You would sway by the mantle
holding a book as a lullaby
pouring me just enough liquor
for us to dance later that night
-
The scent of rosemary’s on your wrists
behind the glassy summer rains
we’re all waiting to hear you laugh
like it marks the time of day.
-
I often wonder how you do,
love life the way you choose.
The scent of burning paper
still lingers in the garden
off toward the lonely palm
where you’d sit each day and pray.
-
we would sway by the mantle,
writing that book as our lullaby.

23.1
What’s more senseless come evening?
When the sun has left my arms
and the lilac’s are grieving
for the summer’s gone.
-
Put a candle beside the moon -
let it dance amidst the clouds
like dreams of a waking groom
left unspun on the mountainsides.
-
I’m writing in melancholy colors
all the words I should have spoken
or plucked free from the squalor
of a mind half-stoked and broken.

22.1 - Ruminations on an Evening
Lost property and cinnamon cream
’midst quiet blankets of the night -
frantically unplucking the seams
of perfect reasons for delight.

18.1
Hunched and loathed,
like we want to be bruised
by a falling throne
-
what little earnings folded death makes
on our cold shed weekends,
how little the angels must rest.
-
If only we could reach and touch
the hatred spent in love -
and hold it in our shaking palms
throughout the funeral march.

13.1 - Wednesday - Compliment to E.M.
We were whispering in the back seat,
”This is where they hang the gentlest birds”
by the soft-backed black sands, we’d meet
and speak of the infected herds
drifting out to sea.
-
You’d say, “If I could tame the sky”
we’d bring it quaking down
and hope our souls couldn’t fly.
Perhaps then we might have found
enough love to make it tragic,
enough love to make it worth it.

8.1
Season of hollow chairs,
whose memories of yesteryear
are clear as they are rare.
When times were less austere,
when you could hear the Swallow’s song
and not wonder where they’d gone.

3.1
In waning poets; do not lament,
their stories have no end.
When their mortal blood is wrung
their spirits swell in ceaseless song
and paling time shall crease
space where words and time meet
in sombre lamentation.

2.1
The monotone of summer’s stitched
through the dawns falling relapse
where dreams are thick and rich.
-
The moon is caught blushing
above waves the sea has run
to wake her fractured love.
-
Your face is growing quiet
your heart’s far out at sea
all between is Summer rain.
it will die with the week.