Fast Blood - A Collection.

I Am Parallax.

I am Parallax.
I incline a landscape limb into the heavens, scuff fingerpad hills against
The darker side of noon. Your wits do not perceive the mountain's
Motions, nor the scintillating flutter of eyelashes
On a soft dawn.
(I wander).
I circle, illusory, on the wisps that lacerate their winding way
Across your flagged cheek. I leave cruel, burnished streaks where a
Kiss should have been nurtured on your skin.
Roll me around in your mouth, baby.
Tastebud tender, oh, savour
The agony,
Suckle this misery.
Swallow me, sweetheart.
I am
Parallax.


Waiting For.

This betrayal bites the skin; fragility
Of culpable, fibreglass splinters and the lusts
Implanted.
The chill seeps through from lonely steel, caresses my spine. And these
Wayward, liquid patters on the corrugate tease
Of your footsteps.

We are simply bullets (to be frank with you, to be blunt-)
Swerving in the aimless eddies of
A galaxy, of no known names, endlessly
Searching for what could once have been called a target.
You have found your resting place between my ribs,
And I shall not cry.
I shall not cry.

Sunday Morning

I clutched the stereo to my forehead
Felt the thrum of you;
Through the skin,
To the soul.

I held you to my lips and murmured
Words that now cascaded, fluid as my bloodstream
A part of me.
Words that were always there. Words your silver
Tongue brought to the aching surface.
I dropped my lids, and my breath
Reflected
was your breath;
Hot on my cheeks.

Your voice shook me. I could never
Be a melody like you can hum one, and yet
You sang with me.
Pity.
Your fervour lifted me heavy, circling as
My every contour tightened against you. Never wanted
To let go.

And for a second, if I imagined -
Your face was only on the the other side of the plastic.

Stitched into my fingers and comfort, you said:
"I can see you awake, anytime, in my head."

Dizzy Blue

I can picture you now;
Clear, clear like
A green glass bottle
All laid out and pretty on
The sandbank, waiting

Beside our giddy little river,
Dizzy blue -
Oh, as blue as your dress as your eyes
As the sky is blue,
Waiting.

I sigh a note or two, tucking them
Between my fingers
For when I’ve caught the perfect, playful breeze,
To tie ‘em up and
Send along
To you.

And as I wander
Ever farther, dearest,
Dearest.
Know that I will whistle always; through the
Cigarettes, over the stereo, and
Under the influence
Of you.

(To be read in a southern American accent).

The Gas Station

The sunbeams came tumblin' and fumblin' down
The windscreen on that Saturday morning;
All excited,

Like they couldn't wait to hit the ground
Running.

I watched my baby in the rearview mirror - watched him
Hunched beside the boot, leaning his old cowboy
Hat to the back of his head. Saw the flick
Of his little finger against his thumb
That always meant he was
On an edge o' his.

He caught my stammerin' glance, and for
A moment, I thought he wasn't gonna wink.
But he did. Like he always did.
Like nothin' at all had changed...

I stared straight,
Stiff ahead after that. How could I look at him,
With his finger twitchin' an' his
Old black hat a-quiverin'?

So instead, I looked at the roadside, and the
Rows of tanks all filled up with
Gas, and the bobbing heads of cutomers
In the shop.
It all looked so grey. So bleak.
Apart from the sunbeams.
There was a sign snuggled up just outside
The door;
Like it was ashamed of itself, and tryin'
To hide behind somethin'.

An advertisement. So many o' them damn things
Around these days you wouldn't
Pick a flower if you saw one - I shook my head,
Wound down my wind-whipped window and leaned
Out, far out, so that I might just catch
A splash of hope in that Saturday morning sky.

My baby coughed, quiet as he could fit into his fist.

I glared up at God.
You ain't got no hope, I told him, You're just another advertisement.
Just another damned advert.
An' the big, blue universe shifted its eyes an' back,
Just once,
As if to say, Who me?

Yeah, you.
You all prettied up an' sparkled for my baby,
An' now you're takin' him away.
Maybe for forever.

He was payin' at the counter with them grubby,
Gentle fingertips o' his.
I did not watch as he tipped his hat an' winked.
As he jogged his lonely way back
Across the tarmac.

I did not watch.
At least not with my eyes.

His gloves were stickin' outta his jeans pocket;
Back right,
As always -
As he bowed into the car, an' reached over to touch my leg -

But not my leg.
The gearshift.

The engine an' him coughed together like old pals as we set out
On that dusty, nowhere journey
Road.

My baby,
The astronaut.

The Musician.

"I'm a banker", he would say,
"But playing is my passion."
They met coincidentally, quite innocently
In the heart of fashionable London,
Where she asked him for some music
And he, like the gentleman he was,
Obliged.
He played her quite handsomely,
More like a harp or a violin
Than a grand piano.
Promising notes, alluring, wistful things
Like silver,
He drew from her willingly.
She was yielding. She brimmed with his
Majestic melodies, glowing with the very savour
Of his nature,
Drenched in his triumphant string symphonies,
In bright white hours of the night-time
As he lay beside her.
He was moving,
Compelling,
A catchy chorus, forever playing and re-playing
All throughout her.
Until one day, all fell silent.
The phone, silent, in the hallway.
The doorbell ceased to sing.
He was simply gone, and she, once so fine an instrument,
Was silent.
For he had played her,
And now went dancing on his way,
Feet tap-tapping to his own rhythm.
And his taps became echoes, echoes
Became whispers, and the whispers
Turned to ghostly, half-imagined things,
Things that dwindles into nothing at all.

Silverbirch.

This night the moon sails upwards into space, upwards inch by inch
Casting down on silverbirch trees
Silver on silver,
Drenched and aglow and alive
With the thriving night
Rays like purity, white-fletched arrows glancing off
Into the blue and fading,
Bare winter branches stretching, pale, soft
Or naked limbs, unabashed in the cold lighting
Of the lovers' time.
Our time that we cannot enjoy
Just yet.

I am not so tired for my bed as I am
For your's.

And though I am confined, chained, detained and flightless,
In some far place, beneath the small white moon
My naked limbs are dancing with the limbs of silver trees.
Marble skin crowned with fire, contrast the emerald of the grass
As it lies waiting for you,
Arrows glancing off the branches
Pierce my soul.

Mast And Sail.


It was a 'gee, thanks' moment.
A sigh on skin, running touch
Along the crude edges of its excess.
Memories in the palm, in the palm.

They cut my hands.

Childlike in a heartbeat, the surf stalked us
To the peak of it, syllable by syllable by assonance.
Whoosh, a mast and a sail.
Our hereto uncharted island. Can you feel
The sweat on its breath in its heat,
Columns of smoke.

Escapism has
Always been my
Fundamental nature.

You.
Your heart in my mouth at your throat somewhere
In your eyes; the spark
That claimed to come from conflagration,
The first stone on stone.

And me, me
Just biased around your thighs.

In your own time.

Untitled.


I want to touch on something tender.
(Like the fact that) I think of you too often.
Like the thrill of next summer,
Already on my tongue.

But the more I taste the sentiment,
The less I
Have to
Say.

The Prestige.

I am waiting upon a point of closure, to welcome you
Across a threshold once again.
And as my mind closes softly over,
Like a dark pool slowly folding in and around itself
In the midst of this final night
Before you,
I am not sure how to express that which
I want to be known of me.
The spirit clings foetus-like inside of me
Unwilling to take a form
As dark pools and dark places have no forms,
Simply folding invisibly and gently
Encasing itself in itself
And I am only very mildly free.

How does one reach in
And produce, like a prestige or bouquet of flowers,
That which can be called the core?
What is enough?
Swirls and dashes of ink
Or paint
All in such vivid shapes,
Unless satiated with underlying glory
Can never hope to accomplish it.
How do you express the inexpressible?
This is me, I, here I stand
And all the life in me is thundering to be heard,
To be recognised as something beyond everything.
Lingering notes and triumphant symphonies
Come close, very close, I think.

But the reality is, the truth of it is
That one soul requires another to complete
An act of beauty such as this.
Lonely art needs much more than lonely souls to speak.
Music needs an eavesdropper.
And, in short, I need you for this reason,
And the reason is this: that I can never hope to glory
In the wealth of every inch of spirit
That I own
Without first seeing it reflected in your face
Or sense it heaving in your chest.

You tie me down
To set me free again.

As Jenni has rightly said above, all of your poetry should be posted in one anthology thread and you already have one here.

I am locking this thread and you should repost all your posts from this thread into your first poetry thread as this thread will be deleted in a few days.

Any questions feel free to pm me.

Thanks
Lauri
Moderator