Fell

I fell into you through long cold paces of the servitude that love requires. Fell down into that small quiet place where love roars its name and makes all else obsolete. And my chains confined me, bliss devoured and obtained and scored its mark into my soul. And I, as a solitary figure was no more. I became we and you became us and these separate entities of one became a mold that could not be broken, a solid mass that shifted into a snug, tightly-pressed fixture of what the world calls love. And we wrapped ourselves into each other and fell, fell down into a space where we burned against each other and the embers lit the world, burned it up, left it smouldering ash till there was nothing left but possibility.

Against

The moon cannot be contained by the sky tonight. 
It stretches out, beating back, against the inky mass of blackened blues, against indigo, against a purple haze, against a slither of violet in the distance where the sun still sits on the horizon. 
No it is the moons glory tonight. 
It's full belly, round in golden hues, casts a halo of light that streaks out, silver orbs shimmer and soak the edges of the surrounding clouds, lace of light and shadow.

Lightening pours itself out in giant sheets and cracks the face of the sky in sharp, disjointed cuts, 
like a knife in unskilled hands. 
These crooked bolts, ripping into the blue and the black of the night, slicing it from sky to sea, tearing against that oppressive darkness as though it could fight it off. 
The skies ache with the sound of applause, erupting in brash pleasure with every streak of light that coats its surface. It rumbles against the pressure, against unseen constraints and finds its path.

The moon rises higher and the slices of dusk fall away so it is only moon and stars and lightening that paint the sky

Shards of silver that blot against the black so that even the night must know that it is light that remains, that it will beat back against the black and forge a way

this moonlight cannot be housed

and the dark cannot be kept;

at least not there in the air

The moon licks at the sea but she is like a barren woman; the light dies at her surface.It seeks her out, pushing through salt and spray but there is nothing for the light to lay claim to. 
This mass which mirrors the sky in day, now mirrors the sky in night. In the sun, it embraces the light like a lover, and in the dark it pushes against it, against the cool caress of the hard light of the moon. 
She takes and reflects nothing back, this impenetrable liquid fortress, this mistress to no man and master to all. Under the moons watch she becomes a sullen place of sunken pleasure, a comfort that only darkness finds soothing. 
But tonight, the moon will not abandon the effort. 
Tonight, the moon drips with blood and honey and is heralded across the sky by the blaze of a lightening tongue.

The Earth Bled Red

25 April- ANZAC day. A day we recognize our servicemen (and women) for the sacrifices they made, the lives invested and lost for those of us fortunate enough to call Freedom a reality. This is a strain of thought regarding the sacrifice- not just of sons and brothers, fathers and uncles, but of a generation of young men who never got the chance to come home. They didn't make it beyond those front lines, and the dreams they might have had were never realized. Perhaps we owe our lives, our very existence, to these brave warriors who stood in the face of fear and certain death and found the courage to go anyway. May they never be forgotten though I know not who they were.

The Earth Bled Red

Courage did not come lightly to the men who searched it out
It did not stand at the ready, its fists clenched
It wore no smile on its face
Did not breathe easy
No courage did not come lightly
But it did come
It rose up within the gaping terror of what lay before them
rose up against the night and the dawn of an impossible hope
rose because it had to, a requirement of nature
rose to move lead feet forward towards fate and foe
this sea of men, our bright, young men
Young men, ruddy and fresh faced, with lives that stretched before them
who brokered the swollen shore and were no more
Lives cut short
down in their prime
before their time
and the earth bled red

Foreign soil embraced the fallen
swallowed their innocence as the world went mad
Their battle bruised bodies lay scattered in the shallows
and hugged the ground like rejected lovers
the cold earth offering a final kiss
and their dreams ran out with tears and sweat and blood
dreams of home and comfort forsaken, and distant shores never to be seen again
dreams of lives lived only in the realm of imagination
never to be realized
never to go home
to make their bed in an unfamiliar landscape of blood and bone
to lose themselves, brothers, strangers, and find a unity in death
Lives cut short
down in their prime
before their time
and the earth bled red

Men stood shoulder to soldier
brothers for a cause
estranged from their past, they forge a marriage of circumstance
their fear a raw ribbon vein
their courage stirred by necessity
these boys, in whose absence a mothers heart breaks
and a generation of possibility is stolen
they advanced through the mud and the mire
clambered over the fallen
their fear welling
courage at their throat
and gave away their lives
sacrificial lambs for the freedom of we- who were yet to be
Lives cut short
down in their prime
before their time
and the earth bled red

Let Us Go Down

“Let us go down to the bottom of the well” she said “and sit in the cooling waters”

But I didn’t want to follow her down to the place where the edges meet and reason is left behind

“Come dip your toes” she soothed in tones beguiling

And led me towards that place of desolation

Where sea meets sky…unattainable horizon

She urged me forward, a burden around my neck

Heavy she clung to me

Till my shoulders shook under the weight

And my knees gave way

And I stumbled into the hole she had made for me

A graveyard of fantasy

Where hope had laid waste the years

And the liquid rose

Black waves that dipped and surged and pulled me under

And the sunlight peeked through like a pinhole…insignificant light

And it wasn’t enough to keep me afloat

And she sat on my chest and beat against my breast

Till my heart failed

And I sunk beneath the surface

Became entrenched

And the light shifted ever further away… A distant spark

Light collapsed into the dark and fell into itself till no speck remained visible to the naked eye

And still she hung around my neck

“Come let us glide beneath the surface” she said

And smothered me with a brutal kiss

Till I gave way to the impossibility of my dream

Sunk my feet into the depths of the cooling waters

And let the water wash me away