Featured Poetry

Empty-handed Ariadne

Time has been compressed
into a knot,
which holds within it labyrinths
tangled up in spools of thought –
And where in all of this is Ariadne?
– who the Minotaur ?

Ah, she has undressed…
wise this time around,
she left behind all traces,
refusing to be sold or tricked or bought
– let Theseus gnash his teeth
and beat the ground…
(he will still go far.)

Naked and unbound,
She does not fear the monster,
nor the darkness of its many faces;
only her beating heart,
and the echoes of stale footfalls,
weighted with stony nostalgia,
which, uninvited, call….
            ….call
           ….calls….

Into the blue

Life comes on
Full of changes I never had foreseen
Like light that seemed a shadow
Of what had never been
Until – a wave of gleaming blue –
It wrenched me in its undertow
and shoved me – gasping, laughing –
To see what had been true.
And where care and love had halted
Such painful honesty upon my tongue
The salt of life unfettered equivocating fear
As air and light and water rushed wild into my lungs
and in every burning pore
Washed by the sea –
In every shaking breath
Fed by the sun –

I knew: no more
Can I lie to me,
– for that is death
and I – I am far from done.

Guntown

Welcome to Guntown,
where we tell it like it is,
where the most prominent building
    is a funeral biz.
Here the rain runs red
off each undeserving head,
but never you fear --
    for we don't see colour here...
Blinded by the bright face of Bureaucracy
      that laments and condoles,
beaming through the wrinkles of complacency,
seamlessly filling its sovereign roles.

Welcome to Guntown,
where we keep everything unlocked,
      and though infants go hungry,
the armory is fully stocked.
Just one word of warning
to those who breathe the air:
      We're told it always seems to bear
           the metallic taste of fear.

So welcome to Guntown:
      The safest place to be is here.

LOUD AS LIFE

Do not hush me now
- for I shall then only laugh the louder, later,
and you will keep yourself
from sharing in the echoes
through....what?
The fear I might
be heard
for who I am?
I should far rather share these peals with all
with no-one's fear as shade,
for I painstakingly peeled off
layer, under layer,
to let loose this laugh
into my world.

My calling I profess daily
with my lungs --
at great cost & greater effort
I learn to live
out loud.
Laugh, if you must
--- but let MINE ring free.