The Rising Tide
We ride the oblivion bus
Rumbling, crammed with pudding heads;
Black and white,
Encrusted in nightmares.
We the baggage stowed
Back seat banter and tickets showed.
Tread lightly and do not wake the dead,
On the Rising Tide Express.
Electrified blissful frenzy
As the world rolls by.
Distant waves on silent shores.
Then the horrors…
Insect incantations, a kind of fear – Breathless fear:
Pudding heads awake:
Swivel round to face me.
Masks on sticks – vacant,
Cast bloodshot naked gazes
My quivering ignorance ignored.
The Driver speaks:
“What wretch is this?
Him sit in judgement of us all,
Him condescend to teach us love
Wid him forked tongue.
Him consort wid deadly deeds and profit only ‘im.“
The skeletal driver,
Clackety clack,
On the Rising Tide Express.
Double speak tunnels shot through
With ghosts and reflections of a world infested by blind temple mummery.
Rubber pungent faces of the profit priests
Haunt me
Taunt me in my careless act of
embarkation.
High rise circuit board civilisation sinks away
Slips beneath memory
Shoot off the rails and go smoking
through the night:
A hidden world lit by fire.
Scramble slopes where the lung lies breathing
Laced with fragrant mists.
Crystal water voices trickle on limestone concaves
Tracing silver veins.
Turn around and footfall, the land slides, trip and earth bound tumbling:
You descend through waves of vast cacophony.
The Avian Cathedral:
Dancing a tail feather fury
Heading for the hills.
Run…
Bright eyed murmurings in the undergrowth
Betray your clumsy human gait,
Tender touch of golden sun
Jagging through slender branches.
Towering boughs
Chime to the clinging aromas of
Petrichor and wild garlic,
And the dark fermentation of leaves.
Listen…
The river flows towards the sea,
Sun setting,
Softening crimson pink
Burning heavenly.
Fragile dusk turning into night;
Unveiling the dark mirror
To paint reflections of lunacy
In this conjunction of legends.
Stop…
Under the embrace of night,
Rises the resonance of a diamond sky,
You ride the waves
Of a glittering nocturnal tide.
Back on the bus.
Lost on forgotten lanes,
Trodden by muddy angels and the tousled fools of shadowlands:
You are going to The Village.
See…
With eyes of leafy sadness,
The idyllic creature is there,
Wrapped in warmth
Transposed by a magic you have yet to fathom.
Born into this world by love.
In myriads of tribal fires
In lonely masquerades
She holds me, and I am lost.
With the softness and silence of thieves,
We reach the final obscurity of dreams,
Where the cool wet circumference of moonlit water,
Marks the edge.