ArtPlatform and Inspiration Speaks

ArtPlatform has just released it's innovative book of art and word in support of colaLife. International artists and poets have come together to create a beautiful marriage of talent and I am delighted and excited to be a small part of it. Please visit and consider ordering your own copy either in paperback or ebook. Enjoy!

ArtPlatform

The Clock

I have a clock
next to by my bed.

Every night

it keeps me awake.

unceasing stilettos on slate

It reminds me
of you

and my last trip

to the top

of  

those

narrow

stairs

to your matchbox room,

warm enough to hatch chicks.

You wanted water

or maybe another blanket

or maybe just to know what time it was,

because I looked at that clock,

and I hated it.

taunting tapping on tiny legs

No need to say,

no clock was ever so melancholy

or so succinctly reminded one

of the measured, meticulous march of the minutes,

the hours,

the days,

the months.

It ticked and clicked  

more loudly than ever need be

and haunted my creaking climb to you

punctuating pain with perfect precision

And there you lay,

unmoving,

a crepe-paper doll,

cold,

cocooned within the quiet of quilts.

I could never understand why you kept that clock,

how in that cloistered room

time could have any meaning .

The silence between the seconds was life
         holding its breath,

the narrative of a house dying.         

It had been a home

that made up the mystery of my mother’s life.

And now it was an old house

with a clock,

and a death,

that took more time than ever need be.

I was twelve years old,

yet at the top of the stair,

I wished I were younger

and could creep, courageous,

into the camphor rooms as I once did

and slide my fingers across
the forbidden bric -o- brac of your life.

The secrecy of knick-knacks and dust.

But I was afraid

that if I lingered a little longer

the clock would stop.

I wanted to tell you I loved you.

But I did not.

Trees Weeping

Dreamed of phantom thoughts and rocks
A perfume pallet of broken clocks
Smokey desert's sun ablaze
With midnight birds lost in the days
And I could not tell light from down
Gem mountains floating all around
Trees weeping for their lost starfish
On falling waves, I made my wish
That rubies would all still be blue
And I could sing like opals do
The sapphire sky would drop its net
And capture all that I'd forget.

Half-Spooned

Pushed away
my good-sleep nights

Guardian
at the Gate of Dreams

Holder of the wide-awakes
Holder of me

Uncurled
Unfurled

Half-spooned
Draft-spooned
cold at my back

Wrapped in his nothing

Now they crawl in bold
between awakes and asleeps and heat

Dropping
Danger
and
Dead things

I do not trust the Night
that leaves rendered sheets Unholy

and Dreams not fit for Dreamers

like me.

Still, Dover Beach

The ebb and flow of love,

smooth pebbles tossed

against the shore,

leaves unbelievers lost,

rough tumbled in its roar.

Pale specter of the world,

its shadows fall

on darkling plain;

White cliffs will still loom tall

ere crumbling once again.

And melancholy night

in timeless paths

across the sky,

are stilled by lovers' words

though long centuries pass them by.

For rivers of our time

still interweave
with currents past;
Covenants conceived,
collected like sea-glass.

One note hangs in the air:

the channel's cry

at end of day,

voluminous with life

before its sweet decay.

And there still hangs the moon,                                 
on Dover's tide,

its plaintive song;                                               
Eternal notes abide.

Sea of faith still moves as strong.

Old Sophocles could hear

the voice of time

within the spray;

And now the voice is mine,

lest my words be washed away.

The ebb and flow of time,

a love sea- tossed

against the strand,

retreat and then return,

back to the moon-blanched land.