Musty Light

28.07.10

Dream-grey afternoon in the ballroom of a French colonial mansion
turned library. I sit in dim cloud-light, draped in musty silence,
feet on marble-cool floor, hemmed in by knowledge—termite-riddled,
reposing in the hall’s glooming arms; snatches of wisdom tucked into its long-frayed sleeves—

drowsing over a book, fingers slow-slipping through my hair, ‘til suddenly
a moth—and my heart—flutter up in sleepy surprise.
It had been napping in my hair, the moth. Having flickered
out of dark corners of history, of adventure perhaps, and settled,
still sleepy, in the fragrant-flowing dampness of my washed hair.

A moth in my hair? —I panic. Perpetually afraid of growing into a mouldy derelict, scarfed
with a sleepy whiff of history, perfumed with shadows of oblivion
for a ghost moth to haunt. . .
No. Perhaps it mistook the gloom for nightfall, venturing out to the sole tender light in the hall?
Glimmering insight of a youthful mind?

Light of wisdom comes to age, they say; as do moths.
Couldn’t the glow of infant wisdom draw moths and age, I wonder?
But it’s sombre here, and musty; stray thoughts too dreamy to mean.

Home

22.07.2010

Don’t you cry, love. Tomorrow
you shall rise naked and wild and strong
and fiercely brilliant
and make the world your home!
O’erspill wall-boxes, brim over into the storm.
Mould yourself to awkward spaces, flow into the unknown,
become the new, let strangeness become you,
teach your spine to fit all trees,
forget yourself to yourSelf.

What? Still clinging to an old pile of bricks? Why, ’tis but
sandy clay slapped round the Spirit and baked, hugging you,
a little too tight perhaps, leaving you frantic, gasping.
No need to lug it about as do those slumber-shelled garden gypsies.
Fly instead with the intense world-winds, led by that fine silken thread
Unravelling from within.

Pat Life on the back, prop your legs across its lap, pillow yourself upon
its breath, breathe.
Learn it consciously, casually,
like secret places of your body and cosy family smells,
the intimate taste of a lover’s drowsy breath
and your own bizarre thoughts (that see a kinship between the number nine
and your mother’s lips);
stray notions bobbling about your mind, holding water (just for you)
yet not quite sinking.

Uncork your Soul, let it foam out in a sparkling whisper
of Truth, immutably unbound, even
while all sleeps in the dreaming, teeming earth.
Turn your roots within.

Erin

10.06.10

There’s a magic isle inside o’ me,
A magic isle that’s home.
Deep, deep, deep within, yet
Not quite within reach.
’Tis an isle where rain and sunshine play
Rainbow games, as on the shell of a Nautilus—
Feel like one turned outside in;
One of those little personal treasures so well-hid,
Can’t quite remember where I put it. Or like
A pearl oyster with lockjaw.
There’s a not-quite feel to it,
Like the not-quite feel of magic yarns;
Something like the eluding earthy taste of rain-soaked earth,
The scintillatingly frustrating rhythms of unwritten poetry
Pattering a path through the twisting, snaking maze
Of the helpless brain,
The romantic scent of unopened letters, and memories…
Memories of having been there, but not quite.
And all my senses, they stretch out,
Outwards, seeking the isle within.

Sitting on the rocks before the Bay of Bengal
On a rainy day, that dreamy greyness is
Almost it. I inhale the wild sea-spray, and listen,
As I wander off, listen
For the laughing lilt of voices as I pass foreign tourists by the beach…
Catching but echoes; inebriated echoes staggering out
From within. My feet perhaps will take me there some day,
There, to the echo of the isle within.

Don’t know why, but I call it homesickness. And now,
Now, I must leave, leave all and dwell with that heavy dream
’Til we’ve drunk each other into oneness.
Something deep within, deep, deep within, sighs:
‘Here.’ But don’t want to listen. Must go, must look, must breathe,
And listen, and feel, taste, and love.
A fever, a frenzy, a burning will to soar, to seek.
Must brave the earthly seas before endeavouring
The seas within.
Something, some sort of hope says it’s out there
Somewhere—that Em’rald Isle. Perhaps not, but once there,
And if still unslaked, I might at least consider
Looking within.

From my Window: to the Nocturnal Sweepers

14.01.2010

Sweep, sweep, sweep, ye maids
’Neath streetlights glowing warm,
Sweep out the eventide which fades
Before the looming storm.

The owl is silent in the tree
That prays with knotted arm,
Keep, keep thy spirit free!
Keep the world from harm.
Feel our lives’ nocturnal plight
The cricket’s trilling—hark!
Leap, leap into the light,
Lone minstrel of the dark!

Sweep, sweep, sweep, ye maids,
Away with monstrous might;
Sweep out Desire’s dripping blades
And her hissing sister—Spite!

All human hearts have shut their doors
And Truth and Courage hide
Deep, deep on darkling floors
Where blind sea serpents glide.

Hope is now an ebbing art
But few for it do pine;
Weep, weep, weep oh heart!
On Love’s forsaken shrine.

Sweep, sweep, sweep, ye maids,
Sweep me into sleep
Sweep away these weary shades
My dreams but let me keep.

The souls that seek the light are few,
Lord, wash away their fears!
Steep, steep the night in dew –
In Sorrow’s saving tears.
’Tis time for thee to sleep, oh mind,
To sleep, and thou my heart –
Sleep, sleep, for soon thou’lt find
The soul shall play its part.

Sweep, sweep, sweep ye maids,
Sweep me off my feet,
Sweep, sweep—the midnight fades…
The dawn we soon shall meet.

Tryst in Eire (a ballad)

07.01.2010


In one year or ten, in time uncertain
She’ll follow her heart’s desire,
An Aryan maiden will leave her brethren
To find her dream-love in Eire.

As in ancient tales, she’ll set her sails,
Breasting the dangers dire
Of squalls and gales and banshees’ wails,
For the Isle of Emerald Eire.

She’ll seek him o’er hill, by brook and by rill,
At every hearth enquire,
She’ll follow with skill, with passionate will,
The dream-scented music of Eire.

At last on a rock by laughing loch
She’ll glimpse a lone lad with a lyre;
No need for talk, heart in heart they shall walk
‘Cross mysterious meadows of Eire.

In dell and in dingle, two beings made single
Will tune into Nature’s choir,
Their feelings will mingle, their hearts be a-tingle
In the song-filled swales of Eire.

In sun and in shade, in glen and in glade
They’ll burn in a breathing fire;
And in each other fade, like the rose and the jade
In the dreamlit dusk of Eire.

In one year or ten, in time uncertain
She’ll follow her heart’s desire;
But often ere then, she’ll meet in dream-ken
Her dream-love in faraway Eire.

Mermaid

19.05.09

She was drowning, they thought, with no beacon or guide
While she struggled to set herself free,
Thrashing ’mid waves of a lunatic tide
In a sea of insanity.

So they hoisted her out, all spluttering and dazed,
And thumped her and dried her and wrapped;
Did all they thought best but were sadly amazed
As her energy slowly was sapped.

“Have you swallowed a fancy too many?” they asked,
“Did we come to your rescue too late?
Or when on enchanted isles you basked
Too mildly your madness berate?”

No lungs she had to breathe as all men,
To walk amidst mortals no feet;
Her sad eyes half-smiled at her saviours and then
She whispered these words bitter-sweet:

“In a lake of mysterious stars I twirled
Where shimmering laughter teems,
Murmuring over the rim of the world
In a twinkling tumble of dreams.

The breath of life from my bosom you snatched,
My happiness could you not spare?
Breathless with bliss and passions unmatched,
I was gasping for joy – not air.”

The Muse

27.04.10

She breezes in,—a sudden gust of light,
A flash of truth in the poet’s mind—
Unsettles the drowsing dream-dust and fancy fragments
Left-over from the previous poem.
Surveys the confused state of affairs:
The waking mind, the yawning ideas;
Flirts awhile with the thirsty questions that throng about her
Groping for her bright presence, begging to be slaked;
Smiles coyly at the virgin phrases that beg their Priestess
To make them whole, to marry them at the altar of Truth;
Hears the poet’s sweet entreaties, his coaxing flattery
His vows of being forever hers;
Plays hard to get, blushes, and then
With a quick galvanic giggle that briefly shocks the teeming brain
Lets drop a magic word, as if by chance . . .
It flutters down like a bright leaf, autumn-blown
Or like the drunken flutter of butterflies;
She pretends not to see as he stretches out to receive it,
Waits ’till he thinks he has it, then whisks it away in a swift flurry
Of befuddling thoughts that cloud his vision,
Laughing in secret as she sees the frantic mind
Struggle to catch it with clumsy thought-fingers
Confused with dreams of moon-filled vales,
Of elfin tales and lilting faery warbles.
They wander awhile as nomad-snails in a sleeping glade,
Leaving myriad dream-entangled trails…
And then thrill in anticipation of a something—
Which isn’t the brilliant glimpse, the magic word.
She mocks his searching, greedy mental hands,
Shakes her smiling head at the great hunger
Of so small and crippled an intellect,
And when he shakes his fist at her in a rage
Of frustrated abandonment,
She soothes his burning brow with a balmy stillness;
Blows dream-clouds into his waiting brain,
Dream-clouds pregnant with poetic rain
That the thirsting heart draws down…
At last, in an impassioned burst, she hurls a blazing lightning-bolt
Unleashing intense volts of inspiration.
As the soul drinks in the first drops
the poet weeps mad tears
Through his pen.

The Ghost Galleon

15.08.07

Upon a fathomless thought-filled sea,
Removed from rational coasts,
In a mind run wild with fantasy
Arises the galleon of ghosts.

Unreal and pale on the wide world’s rim
By poets’ souls pursued;
She sails the seas that dreamers swim
And by haunted winds is wooed.

Sad but proud is her ancient mast,
Weathered with thwarted love,
And over the vessel a gloom is cast
Enchanted by the sorrows above.

Woven with moonbeams and twilights bygone
Shimmer her age-old sails,
Mended with mist of eyes lovelorn,
’Broidered with lost fairytales.

Time-swept, dream-drenched, fancy-sprayed,
Her deck in the starlight gleams,
While by the moon to sleep she is laid
On a sea of forgotten dreams.

Wandering in a world of ghost reveries,
Followed by phantom shoals;
Steeped in the music of sad memories,
On the silver swell she rolls.

And now my woes must fast embark
Ere she sails for vistas new ---
A shadow gliding in the dark,
Carrying her eerie crew.

Thus soon they slip to stranger spheres ---
That hull, those hoary sails;
No more the ghosts and the spectral fears,
No more their silent wails.

No more the deck that the starlight pales,
The whispering hopes no more,
Gone is the phantom ship that sails
From shore to dream-lapped shore.

No more her prow, no more her mast,
No more her sighing elves;
Forever drowned in the depths of the past
Where only the dreamer delves.

The Stallion Storm

29.03.06

….On the hushed page of sound, ignored by men,
A low shuddering rumble was sketched, and then-
From some world beyond where the sun doth set
Out leaped a handsome equine silhouette:
A sable stallion- and a thousand behind,
Up from the melting horizon’s sigh
Arose, foreboding, into frowning sky.

Tempestuous, snorting foggy flame,
Row after row, raging they came.
Then downward, through the darkness sped.
Hoofs resounding upon thunderhead
Sparked purple flares of jagged light:
Night- the world’s eyelid- unfurled,
Flaunting a fleeting and spectral world.

Down with the rushing winds they roared,
Down from the sombre clouds they poured
Into the sea with the thundering rains,
Tossing their streaming, foam-flecked manes.
Black like the funereal firmament,
Black in the night; with the heaving swell-
Black as the sea, they rose and fell.

Hour after stormy hour the stallions raved,
Until, aweary, they could rave no more.
Then slow and silent, into mist dissolved,
Leaving faint hoofprints upon the shore…
And ere the herald of the coming morn,
A shimmer of tails- and they were gone.
 

Fireflies

04.01.2005

All is still in the stygian night
The welkin above is dark
When midst the stars that burn so bright
I glimpse an emerald spark.

Then another glimmer, another glint
Till at last a shimmering show
Lights the air with an eerie hint,
A mysterious and ghostly glow.

In a winking waltz, in a silent song
They swirl, all silvery green,
Among the slumbering leaves they throng
Betwixt the trees they’re seen.

Through the woodland and over the lake
They sail in glittering streams,
Pulsating lights, they leave in their wake
A world immersed in dreams.

So oft when fades the light of day
And a crescent moon does rise,
I quietly sit and await the play
Of the flickering fireflies.

The Indomitable Dreamer

24.08.06

I dwelt in worlds of fantasy,
On dewy webs I danced,
I drank the air of ecstasy,
By fairy realms entranced.

No mortal company kept I,
No being of blood and bone,
But magic spirits of the sky
And eidolons that moan.

My lofty thoughts were treasures rare,
My solitude - a jewel;
Those glistening glades, those visions fair
Were flames on rainbow fuel.

But they that question reveries
And aerial spheres disdain,
My fancies frail and dear did seize:
My heart --- it cried in vain!

A soul in sordid snares was trapped
That had sailed the starlit clouds,
And thus my pinioned dreams were wrapped
In squalid earthly shrouds.

They bound my breast with fatal ropes
Of prejudice and ire,
Choked with lies my cherished hopes,
Smothered my spirit's fire.

I bled; stabbed by their enmity,
Spurred by their spiteful sneers,
I bled to dead conformity,
I, who knew no fears.

Yet have I dared defy the norm
And broken free today,
I shall ride the winds and steer the storm,
I shall swim the Milky Way.

Some day another pair of eyes
Will to boundless seas resort
And seek like me immortal skies,
Inspiration as escort.

Now tattered wings I spread alone,
Restored with silver seams,
Alone amidst the men of stone
I shall live my opal dreams.