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UnspokenHow pure, your being.
Misfortunes like drifting snow,
And still you are warm.

When grey packs of misery
hound me, I picture your smile.

My familiar,
silence. A shadow dancer,
the partner for me.

Why bother questioning?
He dances flawlessly.

Mirror

Motionless, the pool
has trapped the vault of heaven,
spread before my feet.

On The PodiumThe art of conductivity
as the maestro explained,
is that the man with the baton

serves as a lightning rod,
earthing intuitions from god.

Hypnopompic

A key too rusted
to turn, a door once solid,
now rotting away.

As sentience stirs again,
the dream's images decay.

AfterwordFunerary goods
always include coin to pay
the ferry man's fee.

What if we had always been wrong,
If none waited by the river?

The end of the line
had ever seemed likely
to leave the traveler

abandoned in empty space,
no hope of resolution.

Air Force Revisited.

Flying fortresses,
dense enough to deflect light
yet insubstantial

Water drops suspended in
the high, thin air, wind sculpted.

(Originally:

Flying fortresses,
solid enough to impede light
yet made of nothing.

Water drops suspended in
the high, thin air, wind sculpted.)

Stranded 2

The end of the line
had ever seemed likely
to leave the traveller

abandoned in empty space,
no hope of resolution.

Mutations

Existence in flux,
on the edge of becoming
or ceasing to be.

The Ladder Of JacobJacob dreamed. Though we may know nothing about what kind of man this father of patriarchs was, the record of his dream has been preserved. We have no way of knowing if this was indeed ever a dream that a man experienced. The story has him traveling alone, so artists have portrayed him. In the ancient text he settles for the night, resting his head on a stone.
As he sleeps the vision unfolds, he sees a ladder that reaches toward heaven from the earth, a ladder by which angels are ascending and descending.

He hears the voice of god, so he believes. The god tells him how remarkable he is. We might understand this vision as an allegory of his

Pioneer

The power of flight
begins with a child's fantasy,
the world left behind.

Ladders

The rungs rise and fall,
the direction is decided
by the starting point

so the climber discovers:
The way up is the way down.

The Way

Ends and beginnings
cycle perpetually.
Yang dances with Yin.

CadenzaSuppose each one of us older than the stars,
suppose that we are other than the ragged beggars we seem,
suppose that our engulfing slumber, our inner darkness,
is constantly erupting with the vanity of dreams.

Consider those uncounted aeons swallowed in the oceans
of that virtuality, where we, the ever drowning mariners,
must cling to the absurd shapes we call reality.

Will we, unknowing captives, ever be free?
Has liberty become our cage of captivity?
Oh yes, we writhe, our nakedness become despair.
as our frenzied touching reveals that nothing's there.

Revelation

What can the child know
of an adult's despair?
Will the image remain

to darken his dreams, waking him
as he lies cocooned in night?

Storyville, Bordello Sketches1

Girls, pale skinned and nubile,
who by candle light might pass,

women who lend a joint a little class,
a suggestion of sass in the swing of the ass,

these were the gems the madams looked out for,
girls who could turn sad guys into would-be Casanovas.

Still the punters knew that the dollar was always king,
their dollars could buy them any pretty thing

in the room. They also knew that black girls
had learned what they had to do for a necklace of pearls

and stockings of silk. So the guys played make believe.
In the first light of dawn nobody was deceived.

2

The Storyville madams
hired piano players, even bands
to help the gir

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What Might Have BeenThe moment is now behind us.
Did my hesitation cost us so much,
or did it belong to you? We were sharing the last glass,
the seabirds had shrieked their way into a past
that was already closing ranks behind us.

Our fingers failed to touch. I was paralysed with longing.
blinded by you, I desired so much that eluded us.
Your eyes, illuminating your regretful smile,
no longer hid in riddles I could not have understood.

Departure 2

Empty waiting room.
She sits alone. When will he
be collecting her?

Explorer

He is wrapped in his
own imaginings. Who knows
what landscape he sees?

An elfin adventurer
explores a land of giants.

Finale1.
Final solution:
continents inundated
by great polar thaws.

Civilizations, cities,
cultures no more, all destroyed.

2.
As life's blood is drained
the tiny flame dims, flickers,
sinks into the night.

Life extinguished, nothing
but cooling flesh left behind.

The Fourth Part Of The TrilogyIt was easy to overlook it. The first three exercised
a potent fascination. His senses were intoxicated, surprised.

Cube, cylinder, sphere were no more that a beginning.
Pyramids and cones proliferated, each discovery set him grinning.

Excited beyond words, he embraced formidable negative spaces,
caves, canyons and crevasses, he relished the many traces

of lives gone by. Slowly he began to contemplate
the evidence of despair. What terrible force could devastate

so much magnificent certainty? Could so much intelligent design
have been impaled on the arrow of time?

How Was It For You? How Was It For You?

Your body and mine: we feel the press of flesh
along our presently contiguous boundaries.
Without forethought we have embraced proximity.
The choreography of passion causes our bodies to mesh.

Your body and mine: warmth conserved and hoarded,
Our kinetic entanglement guided by the moment's imperative,
the drive toward fusion. Consciousness surrenders to the instinctive
act, striving for shared consummation, by ecstasy rewarded.

Your body and mine: enfolded in the afterglow of our physical dream.
Inarticulate desire has driven us to fulfill an ancient scheme.

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A City Augustine Never Dreamed Of

by *AlecBell, Apr 30, 2012, 3:19:09 AM
Literature / Poetry / Human Nature / Free Verse

Such strangeness stalks these dream haunted alleys and lanes.
At noon the city's byways still remain submerged in subterranean shadow,

sunk in a motionless reverie. No creature stirs, Within enclosing walls
murmurs, even cries might be heard, were there any curiously listening.

The sun vanishes abruptly. The day ends, precipitating all the activity of night,
the sensual argument of the drum, flares providing erratic, dancing light,

and shadows whirling suddenly like dervishes, across the crumbling plaster
of close packed walls. The alleys seethe with the flesh of strangers,

lives that pass too close to each other, remaining unrecognised.
The city's passionate nightlife huddles beneath the moon's baleful enquiry.

A City Augustine Never Dreamed Ofby *AlecBell

Literature / Poetry / Human Nature / Free Verse

The reference in the title is to St Augustine's City Of God.

The poem is a patchwork, woven from notebook fragments. The idea of mythical cities is a theme that I've struggled with for some time.