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Abacus
One is green - the first small seed
With smiling, crying infant need.
Two is blue - a childhood tear
Falls through a night of pain and fear.
Three is yellow - ripe and full,
Here forever and yet to cull.
Four is red - the blood that falls,
The pit that beckons, the knife that calls.
Five is black - and death's bloom flowers,
Owned by none, yet still is ours.
Grubby fingers push back hair,
Bright eyes intent on counting frame.
Along the wire the small beads slide,
To either end - this way they must,
As we - to either end.
Once there, then back again.
Unsung Heroes/Heroines
Who tamed the wolf?
Who dared to reach past snapping, snarling jaws
To ruffle wild fur and claim a canine heart,
A co-hunter and a friend,
An ally against the terrors of the night?
Who first risked limb and life
Vaulting to a bucking, writhing back,
Hanging half-senseless to a knotted mane,
Deafened by squeals as loud as brazen horns,
Clinging, holding through each jolt and turn,
Whispering words of calm in spite of fear
Until the wild joyride ceased?
Who lured the cat,
With boundless patience and scraps of food,
Within reach, close enough to touch?
How many scratches, hisses and bites were endured
Before winning the prize of a purr?
Who first baked bread, brewed beer or fermented
wine?
Who lifted voice in song, made verse and story?
Who marvelled at the stars and gave them names?
And, on that far-off, ancient plain,
What ape-like, almost-human beast
Threw its head back and laughed
And set out on the path that leads to now?
To the Past
What they built is dust today
Amid our dreams and habitations.
The dreams that were theirs are dead,
Kicked and bloodstained in the gutters.
We laugh at what they stood for,
At their pitiful store of knowledge -
They thought they held the strings
That bind the Universe,
It was their own, their plaything,
They held its key -
Or so they thought.
They were the Chosen Ones - they that
Are but dirt now, unfeeling as stone,
Cold, grave - certainly they are that now
Those that once were.
And we curse the world they built for us,
Left to us.
The ideals they held so high, we still hold -
In contempt.
Love Magic
Write your name here, on my skin,
Draw a heart in blood.
Tie the witch-knots in my hair,
Pledge eternal love.
Conjure me with wine and smoke,
I will heed your call,
Bind with spell and charm and ring,
Keep my soul in thrall.
Yes, write your name here, on my skin,
And, when I'm dead,
Find it burned there - on my heart.
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Time Considered As...
Young laughter glows as bright as peridot
When kisses season evenings of delight,
Vows sealed in amethyst and wine-hazed glow,
The moon burns honeyed topaz through the night.
Years sparkle swiftly by, some sour, some sweet,
As ever-fickle opal, Fortune hides,
Casts Wisdom's pearls before our swinish feet,
Love's fire to garnet embers then subsides.
Fast falls the twilight, sky of dark sapphire,
Devoid of light, now gloomy are our ways;
Heavy with care, hearts dull as iolite,
Dreams broken, desire fled, the soul's midnight,
Funeral onyx counts our sum of days,
Time sweeps us down into the final fire.
To Hinckley Point
Take a last, lingering look at life, and
depart;
For, as surely as the sun bleeds out of the sky,
And the river surrenders to the sea,
We must reach our ultimate destiny.
We live, love and pass on
Wanderers on the ceaseless path of life
With no escape.
For we, mortal as we are, are born to die
To sink into the depths of nothingness,
Whilst what we were ceases to be,
And what we knew is as dust -
Dust on the face of the Earth.
Sleep, Children of Wisdom, sleep!
When all is done and all accomplished,
Sleep.
Riddle Song
I am the laughter and the tears -
The grubby infant smile, the adult and the child,
The houses, hobbies and pets,
The cat smiling from a sunlit window, a-thousandfold.
I am the truth within all lies,
Fiction, fancy and fact -
I am knowledge and hearsay and nonsense.
I am a broad path across an empty plain,
I am a whimsical, meandering way,
A fool's road to delight and diversity.
I am the treasures of the human heart,
The strange fruit of the human mind -
I am music and song, prose and verse
Images in motion and at rest.
I am art and beauty,
I am science and medicine
Every subject under the sun am I -
I contain everything and yet am nothing.
I am the sacred and profane -
From Vatican to whore,
And every shade and shape and slant of flesh,
Real or imagined, fake and manufactured.
I am Sodom and Gommorah, Babel and Mammon,
I am the courtyard of the Temple
Filled with tawdry wares.
I am a spirit of the air -
Blue elemental fire am I.
I exist in the spaces between here and there,
In a spin of electrons.
I am summoned at the lifting of one finger
And dismissed as easily.
I am feared by all governments -
As free and inconstant as the oceans
I cannot be chained.
I am the playground of the multi-nationals
I am one voice, alone in the dark.
wwwho am I?
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