The Nightwatchman

He walks
a lonely path,
tapping
his ritual stick.
A forlorn commotion
betraying the silence inside.

A sleepy dog
hastens her exit from the alley.
The snoring apartments
exclude him
from their sepulcher
of sleep.

Eagle-eyed guardian
of the macabre,
Spectator
to the shifting magic
of midnight dwellers,
He partakes
in their peculiar time travel,
As he continues
on his unwelcome beat.

A little above his head
A restless child in bed
taps her foot
in rhythm
with the swelling-fading
echo of his stick.

Shadows

I have cast myself out without oars,
Swallow me, O tempest.
Time has tied a knot in my throat,
And you hold the strings in your mouth.

Watching the sun tuck himself into the horizon,
I often wonder in the dipping light,
Where do our shadows
go to sleep at night?

Imagine if we cracked the night sky open
And a million shadows
came spilling out, naked -
Each hunting for their mortal twin.

Or perhaps the moon can tell us.
Look at her and
tell me you don't think
she hides the secrets of a million lovers.
She is our most faithful accomplice.

No wonder each morning
When light seeps into my bed
I feel heavier.
My shadow now carries with it
Last night's memories with you.

Xanadu

I hesitate to follow a ritual,

To touch my bare feet to the stone.

The cold seeps in through the air, 

And wetness from the skies allure.

Abandoning promised paths for wilderness,

Lights fade out into the consolation of the night.

To listen to the footfall of anxious thoughts,

Their arms wrapped around the stubborn barks of trees.

Fear walks upon this dark hour shadowed by lovers, 

And she spreads her legs for the fury of doubt.

Together they attempt a dance of seduction,

Each eating into the other, forever coupled like murder. 

To wrestle the power of their mighty poison,

To spread instead, the dark ink of faith

On the thinning sheet of patience,

One turns to certain mortals and their immortal verse.

What must have Klimt felt once he looked upon his entwined lovers 

wrapped in their yellow bliss for eternity,

and realized that every kiss henceforth would be but a pale imitation, 

a foggy dream that disappoints, 

ever cursed by his own Frankisstein. 

Such is the truth of the ever-thirsty artist,

The inked desire at once becomes a fatal Xanadu, 

And life always occurs elsewhere, on the other shore.

Art beckons her voice,

And life falls short of the echo.

Nocturnes

And again the habit of old showers
Draws one here to the grave,
Also the touch of sprinkling leaves.
A faint tune resounds down the walk of memory,
As the river gurgles
Of a circular dream, still wet from last night.

Away they float towards a common cause,
On a sheet of icy water laden with the promise of time,
With a mirror of musing clouds for company,
Sharing their first kiss and their last dance.
In murky yellows and rushing reds they spin on,
Carrying with them a trembling word from me.

Elated skies open up in further joy.
Waxing gibbous, that ancient nocturnal lover,
Raises her face, ever betrothed to her beloved earth.
If only I could witness their capricious journey,
Or fade, away, into the drowning ocean,
And sleep, sleep, my weary head upon your thirsty shores.

The grand orchestra of Nature plays on,
And I wonder how one can speak of love.
One oft finds the word too vast, too feeble,
Like a beaded thread under a mountain.
To even have lived amidst this music,
Is to have loved and died in one eternal moment.

Back home,
Chopin's nocturnes are played as if in final farewell.
And the abiding thunder in my mind
Pursues as if in a trance, its tender melody.
If one could choose a perfect moment to walk out of life,
This night would be the flower I'd pick.

Promises

Dignity is uncertain. Belief, even more so.
Hope lies floating on the sidewalk,
Whilst you ink another confession
Across the restless walls of your mind.

You are trapped inside and out,
Complicit in a habit you wish would die.
The threat of dawn is a distant knock,
This deep night is hardly diminished by streetlamps.

Faint voices from fading mirrors
Alludes to a new clarity through tears.
The hush that follows a passing car,
Has come a long way from home.

Stare, stare for too long at any word you wrote,
And it doesn't feel yours anymore.
Only a vague incomprehension remains,
And the anguish of a ticking clock.

Ember

The air is pungent, like the bite of a berry,
Frosted, thick with the dark of shuffling murmurs.
A hollow shadow follows from memory's cove,
Betraying the nebulous doors of time.

I ask for a surveying kindness,
To yield and lay upon the riverbed.
Forbearance is a mighty forest in spite of the moon,
Even the night must lose her way sometimes.

Oh to forget and be forgotten,
If only for a moment, to sit and to perish.
To dance and fall off the edge like an ashen fruit,
Or to pick up an arrow and shoot.

Oil and fumes and tide and wine,
All rise above the lidded skies in proof
Of violent sorrows and hours upon the earth.
Hence this too shall be a passing eclipse.

So an eager leash of prayer flags as tether,
Into this ocean of despite I plunge.
Kicking against the swell of darkness and death,
With a single name to the embers of my heart.

Because water is too small to tame my fire,
Because silence runs deep and my love, deeper still,
Because a poem of love needs no approval,
Because my song for you knows no ending.

Library

Sitting by the framed music of her window,
The church bells knell the evening lights.
Just as flocking wings gather in a litany,
We ferry our drooping shoulders home.

The throat is parched with the dust of time,
And the gaze returns from the inward mockery.
Far ahead glazed the sempiternal dance of the wine-drunk tide,
Mimicking the pale fires of our battering hearts.

Scratch the bottom of language,
And the flood runs out of water.
The walls breathe and shift in silence,
Blindly clock the noise, softly hold the voice.

They who dwell beyond the hour of sleep,
Of whose feather, a lightness sought,
Of whose youth, a sweetness fraught,
Buries a longing in your homeless soul.

An intruder upon this ancient covenant,
I lower my eyes to the prevailing sanity.
The insouciance involved is a pretence,
Must I continue or sigh?