chasphrey

In the city on the firefall On the street with white houses In the third house She touches frost on a window Her fingertip draws a cross Through a morose moon. You watch her unobserved Through a half opened door A more dangerous intimacy Than your hand sliding along her thigh. In the city on the firefall On the street with white houses In the third house His breath feathers on your neck His fingertip whispers anticipation Skin tingles with fear. He retreats into a farther room Closes a half shut door A more comfortable decision Than his hand sliding along your thigh.

Ghosts in long hair’s contours Hiding her eyes. Winter arrives when he sees them Glistening in the moonlight, Howling wolves. They are climbing rock-strewn hills. He watches her move curiously intent; She begs a carelessly indifferent wind, Please whistle death from my hair. Over shadowy red-rock curves cunning Voices are flowing in dead languages. As she pushes her hair over her shoulder, She stops and listens to the cursive voices, Their left-walled labyrinthine words, And slithered serpentine sentences. He stands nervously behind her, Reaching for her as if he is mistletoe And she an oak tree unaware of his ambition. His blue-chilled fingertips brush her hair. She spins eyes wide with surprise. Aren’t you curious, she asks, Don’t you want to know what The sly whispering voices are saying? He smiles his seeming innocence, Speaking in a resurrected language, They are demanding our names, Demanding to know, If we’ve risen? If we’ve roared? If we’ve fallen? If we’ve wept? She seizes

Bird steals upon them as they sleep; He rapt in her dark eyes. She bent against his thighs. Wind whispers suspicious, Voice rising from insightful silence. Mantling bird’s more predatory silhouette, Rouses him, feathers brushing his cheek. His ancient memories refuse to Abandon their perpetual haunting, He struggles wild to untangle her eyes, Find safety in her smile. Pale moon rises behind the trees. She wakes at the moon’s Feathery hot-breath touch Untangles herself from his fear Falls … Water’s careless fall she falls Tangled in moonlight she falls Her hair falling a wild tangle; She falls … Alone falls … Wrapped in sheets of water falls …

Elastic skin of rain stretches, Arching rioting skies Delicate strokes slow lover’s fingers. Glimmers faint moon-fire behind clouds Spatters distant rain falling on wrinkled hills. Rain rushing down angled angry sky filling Cracks and hollows, filling. She stares at him unsmiling Predatory rain stalks their eyes. Its thin skin wraps them In a grave-like dampness. This battle wearies me, he says. She glares at him, grim smile saying What war rages, rages in your mind. Rain blows down a bruised sky lying In cracks and hollows, lying. Stony smile her incongruities multiply. Do you hear me, she says, I won’t repeat myself. Heart rate slows, no time to scream. He claims to care. So difficult rain drenched, Everything horizontal and overblown. She raises her flag high, High into the smoke-dark roof beams, Penetrates sadly weeping clouds, Sings her battle hymns. He waits in purgatory’s dim periphery; Cares little for flags and even less for hymns, Fears them as epitaphs. Shadows crawl

I Wearing a dreary mourning cloak, Ravens dithering, frowning on a limb. What have we done? What do we do? With yellowed eyes and curved beaks they croak, Raise up a wall; featureless and grim. What do we do? What have we done? Sun herself in worsening sorrow withdrew To weep and mourn our well-crafted yoke. What must we do? What will we do? A raven across grey-streaking sky flew Circling senseless scenes our fears provoke What can we do? What might we have done? II We chant! We chant! We chant! We roar like savage beasts! We rant like ancient priests: You must not see! You must not hear! You must not touch nor hold too dear! You must not taste! You must not feel! You must not trust nor dance a reel! We strum! We hum! We plumb! We thrum like frightened beasts: Take care, take care you do not fall! Nor follow a wild coyote’s call. Please don’t, please don’t climb that tree! What if you slip, what if you spin free? We quiver! We sliver! We shiver! Bending like wind-shaken

Beautifully terrifying incantations Wings unfolding music wails newborn sounds Within the giant tree’s tangled shade He stumbles ignorant against rough bark Red flames first names Light rises in convolutions of dreamtime Unidentified or undreamed He wanders in memory’s narcotic landscape Lotus petals blossom bloom ivory From a greenish sea a golden fish leaps Into a tiger’s topaz eye Into a lazy eye rudely awakened Falls fettered curled in her tangled hair Amongst birch trees green and white He remembers from the fracturing Three part puzzles and riddle games Unforgotten impossible images lost In fragmented memories of dreams Of entangled superimposed questions Of a world bathed in narcotic green flames Rising from a protoplasmic fault in the sea He dreams unruly promises into rumors Neither swelling sea nor desiccated desert Comprehends his clamorous ambition Wind’s rough music rasps the tree’s foliage He blindly blithely boldly uproots himself And then with defiant

meditations on a november evening no clear thoughts only fragmentary flashes darker-clouds blues-sky patches scratch on her calf dried beads of blood miniature string of rubies reflects in a cats hypnotic eye fires narcotizing heat insistent winds ragged beat feeble memory symbols too quick to be captured tree-limbs trail off into unspoken words wilderness smiles hungerful tongues lashing licking dripping with words her photograph ripped in half taped turned free boasts of imagined totality her haunted laughter longing eyes begging crying flashing with pain her face stiff with ritual carved sculpted placed on display speaks of imagined fulfillment her perpetual hands trapped in movement fingers flicking touching quick with hurt my mind more lost than not wanders circling wondering imagined philosophy wind rushes through whipping pines branches scratch brush against windows flames leap in a fireplace fierce with passion indifferent to windows staring black infinite eyes i curl in a

Time… yes time. Time transitions From Dawn’s Romping kitten To Evening’s Savage jaguar… Then devours us.

Kissa is a chaotical cataholic Loving the sounds of a feline frolic, Begging for tales of playful rollick All cats tell most non-chronologic.

Hannah glides through scrutiny On diaphanous wings Gathering attention as some Gather the squandered seconds Youth habitually wastes Or blithely tosses aside.