simonhlilly

YELLOW LEAF

Jade.
Jaded.
Used to be to make immortals of us.
Green mask, green breastplate.
Now verb, adverb.
We lack lustre, grow weak.
Taste dust.
The cloth has worn thin
on our fine designs.
Look carefully through:
something else moves beyond.

—

TOUGH AS

We become rubbed thin and fragile,
or tougher than we look –
Worn leather, finely cracked,
no longer mirroring any pride,
any care.
Its own nature
(to hold old bones together, to have some guts).
Slipping into a role,
where we become comfortably bedded in,
but invisible and fading.
A worn path.

—

HELD RELEASED

I shall trace through ways and roads of time,
The pathway between white and that of rainbow’s lustre,
Enfolding moments, met and so woven,
Cupped as hands that spill never any drop.
In the weeks of early autumn,
In golden, honey, humming days,
As trees loose the leaf’s weight,
(The burden of slow breathing days)
Throw their branches skywards,
Open out empty, like slaves set free,
And cry cool:
“We are clothed in blue
That is the kiss,
And it shall never cease.”

—

SLEEPLESS

Though I cannot twist the fire around
Where it leaps and slides.
Though sleep is elephants in chains.
Though lamps fuse the night.
Though time and shadows stutter.
Though voices still and all breath whispers.
Though your skin lies here velvet as hillsides.

—

VESSEL

This voice born from caves
This voice shaped emptiness
This voice the flavour of silences

This vessel of poetry,
Always lucid,
Empty ’til held
And warmed by palms,
Tipped towards lips –
An exchange of breath.

—

SOLACE. SPELL

Rocked, enfolded, supported.
Nurtured, swaddled, assured.
Smoothed into sweet sleep.
The birds of sunset,
The birds of dawn.
The stars of evening,
The stars of morning.
A dappled, tree shade,
A strong trunk,
A canopy of gentleness.
A rain of comfort
An opening.
A belonging, a belonging,
A belonging.
Succour, solace, ease.
Breathe, remain.

—

KEEP

Probably better roofless,
These thick-walled
Shrugging thugs of the landscape,
And green-walled, green-tombed,
A habit for thrush and snail.
The fading echoes of invader words,
Muscled in, muscled out,
Left to a bed of leaves
And nostalgic wanderings of day visitors
trailing after twittering children….

—
REMAINS OF IGNORANCE

The river’s song:
the rocks in it’s smooth mouth,
the fear lumping in its warbled throat,
the distractions from waterness, from seawards rush,
from oblivion.
What it is not, that is its name.
It’s song is what it tries to evade, to avoid.
We are our frictions,
our aches ( what angels long for, what demons envy).
We, the worn face of mountains,
frosted, bitten stand regardless of pasts,
burnt in sunrise and sunset,
pierced by starlight.
The pain of breath,
the loss of in and out,
limited is the beauty of the limitless,
how it discovers,
entangled sweetness.
—

CORE

It is the nature of the deep mind,
oceanic, vast, lying dreaming
beneath the pedantic foppery
of fashionable habits of thought.
It is the engine,
the body of sinew,
the geometry of neurons,
the long, glimmering night,
the dragon’s steady, piercing eye,
the palace with silver service laid out,
waiting for Last Supper.

—

EQUATION

Teasing apart into this and that,
glowing piles of good and bad.
The labels are not the thing,
but short circuit our emotion,
(so smart we are. )
The truth is made of lies,
and bears our name.
Is, is not. Is not, is.
Neither is nor is not, is and is not.
Truth within lies. Truth lies within.
Within, the biggest lie.
Equations in a flow.
Freeze frame missing the real.
Paradox paradiddle.
Shiva’s drum.
This way, that way.

—

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