Golden sunset

When did dusk’s first rays start to falter?

I dream of the time when all your delusions

were also mine, how we played like children in a

Golden sunset that; us thus observing,

could hardly bear to touch horizon.

How we wasted time, languishing in an infinity

we were sure we held asymptote. If only we knew -

Those waves licking our feet were not caresses, but rather,

trenchant reminders of a now bygone shore.

Then, words did not need much imagination to stir,

nor did your glance require evening’s softening lights

to make tender. Silently we communicated, rapt as

sea made harmonious conversations with sky.

Now I know you but through the water’s reflection.

Though every feature’s constant, my right reaches out, only,

to meet your left – and while we move still in tandem,

We move still, in opposite direction.

Sometimes the sea breeze scatters your image

and I glide a lone gull, veering across

luminescent waters so strange that I oft in my curiosity

contemplate a migratory course.

Yet always I dream of a golden sunset – though now we expect

that night must surely fall; it is still this hand I know that will

catch mine, prepare, and make patient,

For tomorrow’s golden dawn.

Through the window

Sometimes I in the window see
Muted shadows, grey yet bright to me
Sometimes I in the window hear
Conversations made, whispered yet clear
Sometimes at the window’s side
Sit those I’d past in life’s quick strides
Sometimes at the window’s end
 A love gone stale; forgotten friends.

Now; caressing her wooden frame,
My gaze upon that cognizant square -
Here flesh and bone a rhythm let
The other side, a rhythm dare?
Connected thus, each limb to limb
And every quirk and foible mine,
Reflecting all I might have been
So binds. This window of my mind.

the wing-ed life.

I will always remember how the snow fell.

Not straight down to earth; but lingering

Diaphanously ; riding the warm drafts of our

Breaths - visible automobiles of air

stonewalling the snowflake’s sojourn, though simultaneously

melting, so that each delight prolonged makes more tenuous

the existence of its host. A moth’s philosophy -

Wings beating closer to life,

Wings beating closer to death.

I thought this would be easy. After all we were

One breath. You understood my exhaling,

Iceberg psychology, undercurrents cold and

Warm. How well they mixed, these nascent upwellings of

youth made profitable. I imagined us

El Nino and La Nina; weather’s recreants and

Recreators – incommensurate with the world, though

constant with one another.

How many snowflakes, does one miss in memory?

Your words now, frozen, in the cold recesses of

Thought. Deconstructed and compartmentalized-  

Intonations, Inflections, Insouciance.

It must be rational, this love. A veritable store

Of been-theres, done that’s; well-stocked with hopes

Wished and wished for

too much. Softer words screech stalactites and

static might-have-beens. If only one could tarry to

see temporal;  it is not for winter as a season I pine

but the naked glimpse of serendipitous

emotion, incandescent in your eyes.

Maybe Time is no custodian but a jealous

Divinity, dangling contentment as its prize,

seducing us with the promise of tomorrows

not worth living for -

We turn sacrifice, you and I,

our moments made forfeit as we are raised

and razed, at eternity’s altar.

Pray - let us be as snowflakes

and in the struggle to stay afloat, and love

We will.

Jewish Memorial

they must be grey

quiet blurs of humanity, tossed randomly

by Fortune’s dice

and there entombed

the whispers of many, cloistered echoing

to others, entice.

to be a Jew,

yes god forbid – and men forbid too

your right to Life

still yet You live,

In german shame, german stories,

german sighs.

How long the stretch

from block to block, each coffin

gently sloping rests?

How long the pain

from son to son, each man

upon other men impress?

I mourn for You,

my human brethren, as the living

must surely mourn.

I grieve for You,

and all the children, snuffed out

ere their candle shone.

yet make not Vengeance

newborn to history, must babes

this shroud of shame to don?

blight not their youth

with sin and gravity, for a deed

they could have forsworn!

So rest, so rest-

for now the living, all must Rest,

before the Dawn.

Those lights

Those lights -

Ezekiel’s whirlwind, fire enfolding,
Born and bred of the sky.

Baby’s first cry, life exclaiming,
Fluorescent tears left an eternity to dry.

Dead souls, their painted faces,
Breaking at horizon’s shore.

Brush of a fox’s tail, playful paces,
Tilting nature’s palette more

Above us, the cosmos pivot
All these stories, every tale

Surge to pry all words asunder
cast as ships the darkness sail.

Was there a time not yet bespoken
where we as ions happily danced?

On our shoulders no world beholden
Passion and youth in tandem pranced?

Those lights, and us, how we surrender!
Caught like fish in magic’s ebb.

and nature, philosopher,
Opens wide her ponderous gap -

Soon earth’s matter, around us shatter
Atoms, quarks sucked in the flush.

We stand still, in time’s sepulcher
hear the clamour turn to hush.

From your hand, a warmth beginning
Touched by light a world renew.

No past present future yearning
may this moment sublime yield -

A greater ecstasy or glee
than you and I, these lights we see.

She, Mona Lisa.

Do you smile
Or do they know?

Those very many years ago
These brushstrokes made with expert hand
Tell they your tale? Did they portend-

The hundred thousand flashing lights
Machine mutters, day and night
A life behind the polished glass
Prostitute’s cell, and sell you must.

Da Vinci’s, or so they say
A woman owned, your story clay
Shaped and molded to their taste
Da Vinci’s whore, he sold your face

A face the scientists now explore
Eighty percent, maybe more,
What joys and sorrows due to thee,
Joys and sorrows that they see?

All who come will surely trace,
The oft admired meeting place
of lips, sensuously undulate
skywards, or so we speculate:

O Mona that you lived too soon!
Were you a lover, dame or lun?
Patient of syphilis, blood and gore
Give us the dirt, and then some more.

Light the flame of our desire!
Stoke our heart’s coals, make raging fire!
Then like history let us combust
Turn from you and turn to dust.

And when the ashes gently fall,
And the crowd our lives recall,
And silence does reverberate,
Peace and rest facilitate.

In the night when drunk with sleep,
Do those corners softly creep
From their immortal fleshy throne,
Down to life, or death below?

And will you hang stiff in the dark,
The smile from your countenance plucked,
Will your eyes then smile to see
A woman, unsmiling but free?

Jönköping

She sits at the curve of Vattern’s frozen belly, while a flock of swans beat at the dark blue waters, trying to simulate their summer frolicking. She smiles. They play in vain. There is no cure for this weariness, this dreary half-waking.

She sighs, a cold breath. The lithe swans scatter as wind cuts through their ranks, a punishing executioner’s knife, covetous of the youthful and lively. She thinks of her childhood, of King Magnus, and days nearer the beginning of things. Perhaps it was as cold then, she couldn’t remember. Too many pillages and burnings, their ravages do their damage. Tighter now, she pulls her clothes over her hoary body.

Harder the wind blows. Sometimes she leaves her icy seat, go down to that part of town where more people linger, more people move. Too fast, really, for her slow eyes. Quick, ground-devouring strides, their legs like motor, a technology she still can’t quite catch. Perhaps that’s just how it is nowadays. Everything everyone is moving on, and she’s just there, waiting for something to give. Some kind of technical fault, error message, virus. Of course in the end nothing gives, nothing except her.

Sometimes she feels like the poor china that people are too embarrassed to set on the table when important guests come. Or a poor relation that people want to forget. They zoom past her with their eyes down, hands in their pockets. She likes to pretend they still think of her sometimes, on the warmer days, when the wind is kind, or when the sun shines a wee bit brighter. Those times she dons more colours, hoping to catch a glance or two, or if heavens allow, someone to stop, take a breath, take a picture.

God, it is cold. She strikes a match, looks at the flame. Such a fragile holocaust of warmth; so quickly alive, so quickly dead. She strikes another match, lights up her smoke, and watches the fumes travel out over the frozen waters. It’s been her weakness since middle age, when the machines came. The fights wore her down, but their smoke gave her comfort. Maybe she’s still paying for that betrayal, but it’s been too long past for that to matter. It’s been too long past anything really.

Now she rises, white clothes gathering about her. Her hands and heart are ice, but her eyes lukewarm as she looks out towards the lake’s horizon. Vattern is melting, yes, there is always that. Perhaps an early spring and maybe, just maybe, another chance for green.