Skin and Paint

The skin and paint
Cover rock and metal
Conceal fire
Quench need
Subdue desire
Colours distract your eye
Soft smothers covet
Volume turned down
Voice left shouting to the wind
Competition conquers
Leaving you alone to win
Claim lands foreign
Enforce your name and colours
Company enforces
Standards and rules
Public worn
Private dominion
Hostile ground
Conceals voices
Strong and true
They carry on the wind

Breath taken

Breath taken in
and pushed back out
Forming clouds
as the sun rises
above the benches
and all the people not there
Feet falling
punching frozen ground
The footprints running
and fading
Barely sound
Body bursting
and fighting against
Body reaching, trying
to find more

Breath taken
Footprints running
Sun rising
Anger fuelled
Striving
For the line

There is

There is a moment
Where time hangs still
Trapped without air
In a place where life hangs musty
And true

There is a place
Left behind
Where the flowers
Lay frozen and cold
Without warmth
Hope broken apart

There is a body
Crossed with ink and scar
In a world set apart
That no language pervades
Shadows fall in wake
Footprints fade
Racing forward once more

Wooden Shell

With wooden shell
and hollow centre
it inches forward by night.
Stripped of flesh
now running lighter,
knowing nothing
save empty and abandon.

The space inside,
Once beating,
Once feeling.
Lies dormant,
A wasteland deep within.

Eyes of glass look on
scrub ground, reeling
from footprint marked out clearly.
Movement echoes
through air of stillness,
never broken by sound.
The doors around
lie closed and battered
from times past and future feared.
In silent standoff
stand wood and walls
neither bending to the task
to join together
fixed and changing.
One hollow.
One within.

The time will pass
without word or action,
each waiting for the one,
when time will change
the wall of silence,
the knowing disregard.

The wood will perish.
The walls will crumble.
Time wears down what will.
Stand apart
And all alone
They all become the same.

in silence

With the house empty
the door open
invitation extended.
The wind howled
walls shook
thoughts and actions expanded.
The heart of me outside
the welcome directed
trouble within unleased.
Companion forgotten
civility intended
thoughts in silence absorbed.

On a body

The words fell on a body
That vanished years past
They fell clear and true
Wiped of times pain
Fluid and eloquent
They came from within
Without reason or motive
Strength with peace
They reached out
And touched me
I fell to the ground
Conquered

Written Inside

A white flag is waving
in a country long forgotten.
She is sitting beneath, wondering
For how many miles the vision carries
If it flies across the border to your palace
Your Ivory Tower
Your prison
She wonders whether you can see it
through the bars on your window
through your clouded vision.
Can you see the way it blows,
the way it moves
Bloodied
A shroud long cherished
A rag torn from time
A fragment of honesty
From an epic
In a war of mirrors and lies
Stained with life and tears
and splinters of her heart
She is hoping
You will look beyond
You will look outside
And look through the dirt and ruin
and read what’s written inside

for you

Under the cloth
Lies a reason
to close my eyes
and imagine

Beneath the name
Hides a person
Worth the fight
And deception

Behind the story
Was the place
I was looking
For you

Promise

It’s not the words I told you
Or the way I sat on your couch
It wasn’t the offer
I refuted
Or how I turned away

It was the way I kissed her
Today on the bridge
Five years too late
Ten minutes too soon

It was the story
I interrupted
by the river
and the eyes
that watched
as I finished a promise

The Words

The words I write
Belie my broken pen
Twisted fingers
And broken body

The words I write
Dance around
Truth
And story

The words I write
Hide between
The lines
Both written and spoken

The things I write
Are my exorcism
And confession
Today and tomorrow