The Jewelled Cover Of Night

The jewelled cover of night
Defeats oppression;
The mind in sleeps' arms
Lives the subconscious,
Where "Stars shine on revolutions"
And no prophecies freeze

Such prophecies freeze
When a frosted sun
Awakes reality's silence
Time to get up
and conform.

(October 1977)

ANOTHER LOST SHOE

With two glass slippers
Cinderella feels fine,
The star of the Ball
Sipping fizzy white wine,
Waltzing with the prince
Beneath chandeliers,
Filling her future
With grand ideas.

The clock strikes twelve,
Its all too late.
She bolts, trips and limps
Through the palace gate.
Her riches turn to rags
And unrequited desire
As she hails a passing
'Pumpkin For Hire'.

A man in livery
Knocks at her door
And shatters her shoe
On the kitchen floor.
With dustpan and brush
She sweeps it clean
Of every shard
And smithereen.

Unbuttoned by Buttons,
Her purity eschewed
In lusty pursuance
Of the exotically lewd.
So happily ever after
The couple settle
And have two children
Called Hansel and Gretel.

The Fairy Godmother
Is most dumfounded
To have her magic
So confounded.
Swapping wand for cauldron
And wings for switch,
She turns herself
Into a witch.

(27th October 1999)

For She Who Never Spoke

(AN ANCESTRESS OF MINE)

April was her name
Felicity would hide
For April came
Where two selves divide.
At Felicity's birth
April manifest.
Felicity,'though christened,
Was by April possessed.
Besides this shame
Felicity was pure,
Completely at odds
With April's fissure;
A crevice, a canyon,
A rock fault so deep
Its incongruous uprush
Put the faller to sleep
And of her imposter
Unable to tell
Each time the ground opened
And Felicity fell.
Daughter of contortion,
An asphyxia begun,
Born to a parson
In eighteen-sixty-one.
A child of ringlets,
Smock and lace,
Painfully timid
and fair of face.
Dreams disallowed
She could not yearn,
Deductions forbidden
She could not learn
unless by rote
An obedience was formed
To keep imaginations
From ever being spawned.
And so came April
This folly to displace,
Igniting in Felicity
All manner of disgrace.
She tore at her clothes,
She tangled her hair,
She showed her this "Other"
Her own to declare
Had she not disappeared
Unaware she was host
To April, her "other"
Her inseperable ghost
Who stalked her childhood
Intermittently defined,
Timidity and purpose
Imperfectly aligned.
Her riddles the secrets
Of a silenced sphinx,
Her vision precise
As the famished lynx,
A hunter determined
Continually prowling
Then eerily poised
Afore the pouncing
Upon the pain
Of a disnamed child;
The true Felicity
Suspended and styled
So passed to April
Whence naught could extract
From this mute maid's
Enigma intact.
Twelve long years
The haunting occured
And then an asylum
Patiently preferred.
The noting of symptoms,
The parson's sad tale,
The arranging for residency
Should all else fail.
He wanted her out,
He could not abide,
This "other", the stranger
The daughter beside.

The demon, April,
Duly lured,
Shamefully dismembered
And Felicity Cured

Of fury.

Subdued, subtracted,
Anonymous pain.
The bland, empty life
Of the certified sane.
But truth is immortal
And April will not die
While its silent growth
Erodes the lie.

How long?

Ten thousand days
And one hundred years
She burrows her sedition
Through progeny of hers.
In daughters of daughters
April, is known,
In her great silence
These words were sown

By April, called Felicity,
An Ancestress of mine.

(November 1992)

Prayer To Gaea

Reared in ignorance
I have walked many paths
To your ruin

Hewn in arrogance
I fear the piety
Of this prayer

Possess me.

(October 1989)

True Love

Translucent liquid gold
That flows so naturally.
A richness that envelopes you
A purity that overwhelms you
A sensation so strange and revealing.
All your trouble dissolves away.
They no longer exist.
Instead there is a mystical world
Of velvet clouds that engulf you
Diamond stars that surround you.
Godlike faces smile at you
Their long, soft whispy hair
Dances in the gentle loving breeze.
It is everlasting, immortal
It is for consuming, inhaling.
How I worship you.
My passion for you will never fade
Oh "Johnnie Walker"
With your sturdy base,
Round shoulders
and crystal clear skin.
Will you ever know
How grateful I am?
For your 26 2/3 FL oz
Of pure Scotch Whisky

(Spring 1977)

'Voyages'

I looked for you in the night
like a swimmer searching for a lost diver
I glimpse your face in the dim light
like a blind fish in dark water
I reach for you and hold you
and feel the lonely throb of old sorrows
tremble from your heart

my hands
gentle as the hands of prayer
summon the cool peace of empty cathedrals
to soothe you,
stroke your face, your hair
like the whisper of a breeze at evening...
and now that you smile
we drift together
to the warm house of sleep

and it's only love moves through me
nothing less
nothing more
and it's only love that frees us
guides us on all our calm or troubled voyages
to a safe and friendly shore.

A Gypsy

A gypsy wandered
Through a distant destiny,
Far from her mystic flesh.
For this world is still a lake.
It mirrors a clear beauty
Of no substance.
So her mind travelled
Through crystal mist
To the visions glass core.
That still lake!
It took her soul,
And drowned it.

(October 1977)