Poetry Anthology

Former Teacher

Your pale eyes are questing
Seek answers from silence
From motionless students
Lost in translation
Their minds turned elsewhere.

I long to raise my voice
To ease your discomfort
To provide the answer
To all of your questions
Laid down for our class.

But my mind is stunned
My tongue like lead
As my mind traces over
The wave and lap of
Your unruly hair.

And the set of your jaw
Taut with frustration
Blurred slightly in shadow
From a night’s marking
And a rushed morning.

Your long-fingered hands
Tighten with stress, as
Awaiting the answer
From your heedless class
The silence grows louder.

My heart fills my throat
Resounds in my ears
Not only from pity but
Reluctance to show
The depths of my mind.

But I cannot abandon
An unresolved lesson
And unanswered questions
Will needle my thoughts
And prickle my soul.

With a life of its own
My hand raises high
Eyes turning my way
But I look only for yours
Force my own to meet them.
13.11.06

Light, Shade

I am the Night to your Day
I am the hope to your despair
I am the parasol to your sunshine
I am the angel to your demon
I am concealment to your prying
I am a cheerful smile to your frown
I am the nightingale to your lark
I am the dawning to your dusk
I eclipse your brazen sun
I am the Heaven to your Hell
I am Gothic to your Romance
I am the light in your darkness.

The Legend of Eya Ti

Snow on the land falling, choking the ground,
Frost rimes the eyes, with the breath rising white;
As desolate trees quake in silent despair
The bright Northern lights cut deep in the soul.

The moon waxes whiteness on silver, its face
An impassive presence on this barren land;
Like steel-plated glass, the ground lies transfixed
In a stupor of Winters’ creation, asleep.

The berries are brittle with ice, yet the heart
That beats out a cadence of dark desire
Is harder by far; its bitterness grows
With each passing hour, in savage resolve.

From the turbulent West, where the ground and the sky
Together are mingled in cascades of fire,
The Frost-Eye has gazed and come North, in conquest
To a stronghold of honour and magic combined.

Where bloodlines are pure as the winters’ first snow
And blue roses glisten with sapphire eyes
Surrounding the walls carved from ancient dark stone
Defying the bleakness of leaden grey skies.

To the stronghold of life, of antiquity pure,
Creeps the scourge of free lands, a murderous horde
Of blood-darkened souls, at his lightest command;
Their eyes shining, turned to their blades.

Assured in their valour, their noble descent
The stronghold breathes peace, detached in repose
None heeding the omens denoting the malice
And poisonous shadows, alive at their door.

No warnings given, for no ear would listen -
Now Death visits swiftly, with savage intent;
Lives split asunder in an absence of mercy,
Extinguished forever in rasping last breaths.

Raw throats collide as screams die into sighs
And the keening wind bears in its arms a nest
Of shivering souls, dispersed to the land;
The hoary frost withers the flames of the heart.

The air is blood-bitter; the ravening hoard
And the frost-rimed Eye, retreat with the night
As the quivering dawn wakens, breathless from sleep
Tinting grey faces, now closed to its light.

The silence feels endless, the flurries of snow
Lay shrouds of white lace on the motionless forms
Contorted in memory of last moments spent
In agonized torment, in endless regret.

Yet an iris of beryl, reborn to the world,
Will capture the land, this canvas of ice;
A rhythm of pulsing beats flows in the stillness
Regaining control and reclaiming each breath.

The blood is a river to flow through the palm
To capture the motion, to quicken the heart;
The soul is a temple, invoking the morning
Denying the silence that borders on sleep.

Her stronghold delivered to blankness and shade
The maiden could lay down her life to the stars;
But blue roses, twining round turret and wall,
Are stronger, relentless, in spite of the cold.

Defiantly stretching their arms to the skies
They cradle a girl-child’s resolve in the dawn;
Blue flames to ignite steely vengeance unbound,
In the heart of the morning - a destiny born.
08.07.07

Shadows, Light

To echo the footsteps on well-trodden roads
To witness a sunset cascading beyond
To capture a feeling once cursed, now desired
All shift in my heart and shatter my mind.

I once was a child who would pause in the night
Not fearful of strangers or unnatural life
Now my soul, it is quaking at these restless times,
With the sorrow of days past, and passing yet.

The fade-out of light in that far-distant line
(As natural as sleep and as silent as Death)
As night follows day in a tide of colour,
Is achingly subtle and perfectly made.