Seafood
Barby
squirm in your shell
like a paua
ambushed
by the low tide of centuries
soiled and toiled
now prised crudely
by the itinerant wanderer
from a barnacled rock
tenacious clung
sliding around
in that prison so prized
once called home
black squelchy gasping
at the suffocating air
now so exposed
to the withering gaze
of the hierophant's solar eye
and salivating lips…
he invited you to his feast
and you're on the menu!
(with hundreds of other
little sea-life tasty bits!)
restless searching
for your lost moon-pearl
when all the while
you were sitting
on the whole necklace!
let it hang
pendant and resplendent
midst the papayas
bedazzle us
with your sweet ripening
spit the bitter skin before
the high tide king himself,
Varuna
who comes to marry your oceans
to the starry heavens…
Shadow Land
his ancestors roamed
this windswept place
the swan lies crumpled
and out of time
ship-wrecked by the shore
crash-landed
in the boisterous reckoning
wind fans out a forlorn wing
vainly tugging to lift aloft
the sea foam jealous rushes in
swirls bubble-white about
the long and slender neck
so black and broken
recedes and lets the wind play again
colossal cloud crevasses
plunge deeply
tottering fiery orange
in the late afternoon
rent by the abbess of the abyss
hurling her crashing light
like spear shafts
across the marbling
blue-metallic sand
momentary glint
hint of steel
in the wandering stranger
black-robed like the swan
and from out of time
alone upon sandblast dune
converges all the elements
within and around his soul
magically, madly hooded
and staunchly staffed
roars back at the torn sky
scorns the dishevelled sea
consults strange phantoms
in earnest talks
cloaks himself with tattered kelp
and off he stalks
to an arcane sea-cave
for pleiadian smugglers
and arcturian lost mariners
where stellar treasure
of antiquous beauty
piles ceiling-high
in this mysterious mind
searching
for some filigreed lost word
in an aching breast
muttering through the flimsy night
until the violet hint of dawn
then vanishing with the wind…
Trapeze
Artistes
hand-stands
nay, cartwheels
blaze across
the fiery wire
in joy
like some gambolling goat
kicking up its heels
on its gallop
up the mountain
plenty more chasms
and leaps of faith
consult the abbess
she says the abysmal
is the shadow
in the empty mirror
it doesn't fall forever
and is only two feet deep
lined with duck down!
