The vanishing act

You were here,

a phantom in the moonlight.

The music stops, and you’re gone,

a familiar unsung melody.

I play the same song, over and over,

loop to loop, end to end,

just so you’ll stay.

Life’s cinema, paused, muted,

stuck within its reels

for those moments that you’re here.

Holding on to chimaera

so you don’t disappear.

But you vanish like a dream

almost like a phantom limb

and your smoke rings linger awhile.

Come home

Come home with me,
away to my moonlit island.
Let the storm wash you ashore
on to swamps of chimera
in ripples, of amaranthine visions
where we are one.

Come home with me
watch the lone tree from my windowpane
that gathers lightening shards in its boughs,
the only one on the expanse
that the tempest chose to descend
like your voice upon my ears tonight:
elegies from your throat
that often shatter my being
into a million stars at eventide.

Taste the wafture of my cold moaning wind
for it brings the Rain;
Heaven will descend
in cold orgasmic drops
on a waiting earth, so fragrant
The way your voice
with its trebles and opulence
rains on me infinite renderings.

Come home with me
see my slice of sky,
painted in your hues.
listen to the murmurs
of mango leaves and firefly wings.
Tread on my soil with naked feet
and dance to silence's overtures.

Touch me not, yet;
let us wallow in the stillness
and hold each other in gazes that overrun
while the universe unfolds
before our eyes.

and when you bid me farewell
I shall not weep
For I have your whispered lullabies
to listen to all night.
I always had you -
your voice, your thoughts,
your presence
In the breeze,
the swaying trees,
the wings of the heron
in every wave from the sea,
and every breath I breathed.

Picture: Marilyn Bouchard

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Written on the night of 29 April 2013 for Mikael Akerfeldt, the man himself.
In the hope that one day he might read it.

The Temptress

Voices by the river

and I walk down her trebles
Naked pebbles dream away
Ages eroded on her shore
sediments of lore
anticipating a footfall, lay
Oh, the slightest quiver in her slumber.

Kissed by mist
embanked by silence
sleeping streams of turbulence
whispered songs of a yearning

floating butterfly wings
fragments of her soul,
contained,
sedimented, in her solitude.

Daunting in her beauty
terrible in her torrent,
the Temptress
dances with her secrets deep
Touched by none,
but the Phantom of Time.

Her name was Dementia

Footsteps of silence
placid steps drowned in mire
not a breath, nor a sigh;
deep she descents
down the forest of Oblivion.
Her feet beseech
the fallen leaves
for trinkets lost -
and never found.

Canopies of distrust
mocks her sky beyond
remnants of the lambent
trickle down the undergrowth.

Stab the light
and it bleeds;
slithering beneath
are moonlit serpents
devouring scattered thoughts.

Death stood alone
a little further
in a travelling cloak
woven of shadow;
with open arms
he drew her close,
tenderness he breathed
with a kiss planted deep
and he wrought her soul unto his own.

The seed of love.

She asked for a gift that would be forever.
He gave her, not diamonds, nor lovebites lingering
but a pot of Earth - with a seed buried within.


"Feed it warm care, and drops of passion
a whispered caress and good clean air
Bloom it would, into valleys of flowers,
an orchard where children would play,
where by night, you and me while making love
shall dream of  esoteric shores
and fall asleep on the forest floor 
under the ardent moon aglow."




She placed it where it would gather all the sunshine. 

silhouettes

Lurid, the lamenting sky
sepia sweeps her subterfuge
prominent in their absense, colours
evade my easel, anew
drenched in perpetual hues of you
spilling over the palette
I paint my own mirage
silhouettes in your resemblance
amidst the blinking bokeh,
an obscuring foliage,
and shadows
to fill the void.