It’s a dangerous fruit;
scarlet in its ambidexterity and artfulness,
itching for something more than just the dubious existence
of concentric circles
reified as verbal constructs—here words rain over heads
stroking limbs
and rodents burrow their way into surreptitious sand;
do you see where I am going with this?
Like spiders who poise upon their prey on webs,
if I steal your innocence
I will do my best to replace it with something beautiful.
I am responsible for crafting your experience with me,
the landscape may feel as though it’s shifting underneath,
calloused fingertips tracing along smooth,
slightly unassuming contour;
they navigate the whispers of yearning, unsweetened
taste of the ocean—
sin does not nourish me nor carnality
duplicate the feeling of one having met its match,
dark like a true beginning;
I am Hades desiring you in the Underworld. I don’t compromise.

 

 

 

Photo credits: Angela Faustina “pomegranate,”  XXI, 2015

Skylover Wordlist: Scarlet, Concentric, Rodent, Surreptitious, Spider,Reify, Poised 💝

Posted for Open Link Night #285 @ dVerse Poets Pub

Blooming buds know not devastation;
their roots forever exploring the softness of mud in the midst of winter,
flooding the city with prospect—
all blackness and all sweetness, can I desert a war I haven’t joined?
Watered, this ache consumes me,
tastes like absinthe without sugar in the early hours of morn;
a duskier abalone,
like an ashen memory that curls around the edge of the brain—
my pen still speaks your name.
What is this obsession of 2 AM with Poets?
I can crave the touch of words
endlessly,
but it will not be the death of me, how can it be?
Has the night ever complained of constantly being accompanied by clouds?
Cast your fragrance upon me,
your eyes deep, dark and mysterious are as the moon
in rare moments
when time slows, that’s when grassy hillside knows to sway with the wind—
how is it that I’d never noticed before?
But oh! What a rush,
this feeling, this understanding of the world being ephemeral
as it has always been;
there is nothing in which deduction isn’t as frightening as it is
around the hour of apocalypse—
bloodied, these streets speak of bedlam,
why is it that men must turn against each other for reasons incomprehensible?
Hold me until I no longer feel the emptiness,
should I ever
be unable to gaze upon your lovelier face, deep into the earth
my conscience lies; and for good reason,
how does one say goodbye when they have yet to experience hello?
I don’t want to.

 

 

 

 

Photo credits: Pinterest

Tonight we are doing turns, shifting the perspective in our
poems with Peter at dVerse Pub. Come join us! 💝

Posted for MTB: Middles & Turns @ dVerse Poets Pub

The art of almost speaks in whispers of the waters and the wild;
every word,
every syllable as urgent as the next breath,
an enigma, so far away
and yet at times
so near sensing hours where conversation is craved
for we are designed to be shelters,
to carry pain on our shoulders,
lovely, dark and deep—
I am the mother of sorrows; I am the ender of grief;
let my hands remove the dark clouds of your day,
my heart bear the weight of your sky,
tread peacefully
through this abyss of humor and hate,
come share light
in the face of poisoned people; theirs is a sadness misguided.
I am a question in the name of humanity; I am the increase in chaos;
I have left my signature on rocky shores
marked
with hues and shades of fuchsia sin,
each one a firm reminder of the kind of person I have been—
water and wild is taught by thirst,
filling the jar with shooting stars instead of tears;
still, if you find yourself silent at their altar, needing more,
know that something or the other has changed—
I am the keeper of secrets; I am an open book waiting to be read;
what is unsaid is often louder than a volume of words,
care to venture and find out?

 

 

 

Photo credits: “Spy Bar,” by Nick Alm Oil on Canvas, 40 × 40, Pinterest

Laura hosts at dVerse and invites us to build our poems around Paradox. I chose “I am the mother of sorrows; I am the ender
of grief;” from Paul Dunbar’s The Paradox. Come join us! 💝

Posted for Poetics: Beyond Meaning or The Resolution of Opposites @ dVerse Poets Pub

We must unfetter ourselves;
go beyond many media managed meringues—
hot lemon discombobulating masses,
who knows
what’s being whipped in the name of politics?
Our world inches closer still toward its own dread,
where men violate riverbanks;
is this the inevitable order of things?

 

 

 

 

#Ladakh,
#India-China border disputes

 

Photo credits: “Citrus Time,” by Elena Klimenko, Pinterest

De is our hostess and the word is “Go.” Come join us! 🍋

Posted for Quadrille #122: Going, going, gone @ dVerse Poets Pub

The perfect excuse;
long after rays of the sun melt
and wind
in its audacity seeks to caress the skin ever so softly,
early black is sultry, salted caramel
in anticipation
for something only lovers can comprehend—
his lips are copper wire,
green sprouts that bring a desert to bloom, every word,
every phrase, every sentence— I know not
how he manages to read lines and the spaces in between;
only that
in warmer breezes his are the ones that are finer
than silk, smoother than water itself; is it so wrong
to admire from up close?

And though taste of life be bitter at times,
kiss me;
what lies beneath the shadows can’t hurt us
if we choose
to hold hands with amber sun— come,
lay your voice prints and set a record of sorts,
observe a part of me measuring sighs in both flesh
and breath;
throbbing temples
citing constantly “love them loud, love them quietly,”
there is a longing that binds us together.
Humor me;
I like to think I am more than inconsequential,
a random, forgettable moment in his electric blue existence—
a reason
good enough for him to give himself to me completely.

His fingertips, delicate and effective
as paint brushes
sift through sediments of all things unsaid; so many songs
I hear remind me of him,
knuckles gliding slowly along my cheekbone
in midst
of bare streets stripped of traffic
and noise; there must be a conspiracy in the airwaves—

Stay a little longer, comrade mine,
so that I may whisper my views to you, as we sit in separate rooms,
in different places with eyes lowered;
I am hating this wantonness,
this improbability of hands reaching gently through the walls
I have brought down— no doubt, he would look divine
in my darkness.
Go on, I love that you see my expression and cannot help but smile.
It’s infuriating,
it’s rousing,
it’s beckoning a poem from the depths that should be enough,
but isn’t.
His lips are copper wire.

 

 

 

 

Photo credits: Pinterest

Poem inspired by the title of Jean Toomer’s poetic masterpiece,“Her lips are copper wire.” 💝

Join us as Bjorn hosts yet another wonderful LIVE Event at 3PM EST. 😀

Posted for Open Link LIVE #284 @ dVerse Poets Pub

Sequestered and wild from the depths of emotion is beige;
its mouth,
a slender, cobblestone passageway that leads straight into the mind
and speaks—
rummaging through troubles
as ice in the field ruts crackles under feet
deliciously.
Could it be so that swans smudged white with winter aren’t envious?
They create ghost shapes,
magnificent
against the curdled skies, conscious of heartfelt song that pours;
beige is a morning walk around the harbour and back.
When spiced,
there is a certain resonance; muted sighs melding with storm,
it urges one to flirt at the edge of danger,
holding onto the rail knowing anything is possible—there is no concept
of right
and wrong only different outcomes.
Beige, is a splinter of logic lodged inside us like a scrying glass, a mirror
upon which we turn out stories untold.

 

 

 

Photo credits: “Ice skate rink,” by Iryna Yermolova, Pinterest

Mish hosts at dVerse and invites us to write from the perspectiveof being a colour. Come join us! 💝

Posted for Poetics: “True Colors,” @ dVerse Poets Pub