of The Inn of Stormy Nights
Whosoever held the kingdom’s key, stood at the crest of the cliff, where sea meets sky. The world dropped into a palm and sat in the skin of temptation, ready ever and always, to fly up to Polaris in the shape of a wren. Cut from the same string as the pen which scratched the lettered prison and pressed the wax seal over the kingdom’s key.
This dream of ours sits on the water
buoyed by a flame of fireflies.
They dance on the edge of vision
before fading into the arms of the moon.
This dream of ours lives in legs of wood
framed in firelight. Making dawn out of darkness.
It feels smooth in a fist of hope at the edge of the lake
where we stand. Ready to walk the waves
and rise with the fireflies.
Into starlight, beyond thought.
This dream of ours. It breathes
sparks of fire light and flies into a sky.
That we touch with every hand which grasps wood
and walks on, into this dream of ours.
Calm as the Lone Rose in a Garden
When the world echoes in one ear
out the other runs a voice
swinging in a flapper dress.
You have no choice to put on a show. Offs
any notion of peace.
And when they say, just carry on, the voice
runs a marathon of laughter.
It says, in a whisper haunting each step,
You’re an ant on a boot which walks the Milky Way.
Remember that. When you think you’re okay.
You try to scream for the red stop light.
But the voice careens mind,
metallic bits of self. Scatter, clatter, fall.
Bounce once. Bounce twice.
And they say, just carry on.
We don’t see any blood.
So you carry on, because the blood’s in your head.
Always there, dripping.
but outside you aren’t slipping.
It stays in the cave of the mind.
Stalactites and stalagmites grown through.
Waiting to spear you thrice the next time
you trip in life.
When the world echoes in one ear
out the other runs a voice
swinging in a flapper dress.
Your legs are not yet chopped. Don’t be weak.
Says the voice. The lights are up, the music started.
Just carry on.
Just carry on shouting to silence.
You’re only an echo.
A rose reflected in a camera lens.