May the colour of your dreams be golden
May their taste be softest honey
Moments
Hangover cure
Salt strength
Honey kisses
Sleep in slanting morning sunshine.
Or so I’ve heard.
I don’t get hangovers.
Don’t wipe
Don’t wipe the condensation away from inside the bus windows. That’s where the fog lives when the sun comes out.
Time, time itself
Puny mortal! You wish to change the very parameters of Time itself? There are things in this version of your multiverse that your feeble brain could never comprehend! Time is never ending, no beginning, no finality. You cannot change the course of Time. You are no Dark Lord.
[sigh] So shall I try turning the desktop on and off again?
Yes, try that, and if that doesn’t work, just pop in a support request. Have a good day!
Morning sunlight
His eyes flickered and opened. Her eyes flickered shut. Her lips curved slightly. He settled his head on the pillow again. Morning sunlight.
Paper (paragraph 1)
Joe’s new editor tapped the lump of glass on his desk, his he-thought clever way of saying the paper could not wait. Suddenly he threw it against the wall by Joe’s shoulder, where it cracked and crashed and smashed into pieces, spilling out its soon-dulled corals. He looked at Joe’s face, the glass on the floor then leaned down and took an identical paperweight out of his drawer. It would be a long night.
Awake
Again the dreamenders arrived too soon, too early. Shapes faded through dark to a different sharpness. I’ll believe in this one now.
Awake
Again the dreamenders arrived too soon, too early. Shapes faded through dark to a different sharpness. I’ll believe in this one now.
She arrived, beautiful
He waited for her. She arrived, beautiful. But not so beautiful as the look in his eyes when he saw her.
The distances between us
The summer. The summer it all started
when I first saw your colour, hard against rocks bleached grey in the sun,
the far side of too far of water, clear water green in the light-slanted light.
The rocks tipped down to the edge and below; their shadows hid emptiness.
I thought once of swimming, of diving deep down and strong re-emerging,
hauling myself, bleeding hands and torn muscles,
hauling myself through the force of my shoulders,
hauling myself up to where you stood watching.
The thought cut my skin to the bone so, so well that I knew me,
I raised a weak hand and then covered my eyes.
But somehow it happened. By Ferragosto I knew you.
And then with the swifts you were gone.
The distance. Distance in the tele-world today has no meaning
they tell us. The kilometres between us we filled up with words.
My words described you blank pictures, wide sweeps of a charcoal,
no hatching, no shading, no colouring in.
You told me you tasted, you rolled my words on your tongue,
you felt their soft flavour, their texture, my thought.
They excite you at distance.
I sweated the words as I carefully planned them,
then wiped them away at a stroke
except the ones with the salt of the sea,
with the salt of the earth and of blood.
And somehow again the light from the lighthouse,
the light from the lighthouse that catches the stars,
across the dark sea you caught sight of a message.
And you came.
The last distance of all is the worst distance, of nearness.
Though we live in same rooms, on parallel planes
our lives slide like our thoughts.
Grey eyes show your mind elsewhere than where I am,
your life you remember and your life you imagine
have more meaning than ours.
But still, and remember, in our closeness there has to be hope.
Remembering rocks and remembering lighthouse,
I will wait here in silence. Ready to speak.
First published in itch: THE CREATIVE JOURNAL Issue 15 http://www.itch.co.za/home
