‘Swallow pearls.
trace your heart
across the sky
with your fingertip stare.
touch the moon
with tongue
scrape the hurt
from the bottom
of your shoes.
throw your coat into the river
watch yourself
drown.
sink your teeth
a little lower
down
into the bite
of
this apple
on my head.
take a shot.’
Leg tattoo, by Nico Dray, The World’s End, Channel Islands.
I love the smooth curve of a word, a line… A line of hibiscus, whiskey cherry kissed thought stitched together and pegged out to cry.
Eulogy
A snowflake falls onto the iris of our future,
A mercurial distance maps across our canvas,
plural comet trails trail a picture; we make a wish.
Our fingertips softly surface the shape
of the rare, the blue
the spilled secrets of dreams cosy behind the curtains of our sleep
Our fireplace eyes, charcoal, water away
An endless blue, starry and deep
Our barefoot sideways glances listen
We make along our own true words
We are Worley’s at this beach with a little Elvis at our feet
Waves circle and caress the rock and roll of your perfect soul
We surf across them all and hold our breath
We lose our balance and we fall
Into the deep whirlpools of your dreaming
We try to reach the bottom of your deep blue sea with the tips of our toes
We trace the night skies for your tigerstone eyes
The guitar strings you graced grieve your touch
All of the words in the universe are lost without your thoughts.
A spark of beach,
holds all of our past, our history we keep,
the soles of our feet stay close in our sleep,
the mercurial distance pyramids and steeps,
the colour of our closeness speaks.
We capture a light, a luminosity between
That separates, that closes, opens, also heals.
We keep the beaches of our dreaming safe
We keep the beaches of our feelings awake.
Snowflake trails paint and colour;
the forever, the endless, the always,
that separates, that closes, opens and falls
a thousand times over, a thousand times before.
© RoseLoisPresley 2008
“You called and shouted and burst my deafness. You flashed, shone, and scattered my blindness. You breathed odors, and I drew in breath and panted for You. I tasted, and I hunger and thirst. You touched me, and I burned for Your peace.”
(The Confessions, St Augustine)
“There’s no right or wrong
This isn’t a gesture
And I don’t use my experience.
I don’t try
To let it go by
But it’s all right
You know that it’s all right
It’s all right.”
(‘Couldn’t Cause Me Harm’, Beth Orton)
“Why is love intensified by absence?”
(The Time Traveler’s Wife, Audrey Niffenegger)
“Widow. The word consumes itself.” (Sylvia Plath)Tae
Birthday Poem (Ross McGarry 1974- 2008)
Here is a Catherine wheel lit.
We are in an old bath turned upside down
And the sea turtles have taken time out from surfing
to put on a fireworks display
to reflect in your eyes, bright lights
night-time, ocean illuminating
fireworks.
The first is like a God using flash photography,
the last, a stunt, a tortoise triangle,
they form a pyramid and surf.
And they turn, backs to us
Across their shells ‘Bon anniversaire’
A sea turtle out of formation
hands you sweet popcorn
(its coral popcorn but tastes no
different and because of the
lasting burning embers of fireworks
sparkling in the midnight time sky
you didn’t notice that its pink).
And then
The sky draws its curtains dark
And the words…
‘This is based upon a wish’
…Appear across the moon
And you are the silver screen
Your smile, your bright eyes,
deep and dreamy and cloudless.
Your words play against a
sea-turtle playing an electric,
another playing bass
(sea-turtles, when in groups,
line up biggest to smallest
to form a glockenspiel)
And a very many wonderful
of sounds
your words
begins
ends and starts all over
somewhere in the middle around
the edges of an upturned bath tub
whilst the moon is touched
by a projector
by a reel of film
About a wonder
About an amazing
About a very beautiful, magical day,
And so,
…A dragonfly in goggles and
protective wing shields
delivers a letter to you like a kiss
from an Angel.
© RoseLoisPresley, 2006
The Bardo Retreat 