Wednesday, January 31, 2007

melting gold



Once upon a moment
there was a sunset
dressed in all the vestaments
of evening come

She shimmered
when small children were gathered
into the arms of their mothers

She sighed
when the lovers leaned
into each other
and created a lone tree
on the horizon

She wept
when the rain came
loving the harmonies
she could create with tears
and life bringing moisture

This one particular late afternoon
as sunset was waking and preparing
to take place of day
a sound caught her attention

Curling around her feet
was a small spiggle
tail swishing this way and that

Sunset gathered the spiggle into
her arms and hugged it close
and as she did so
the spiggle was heard to whisper

I know where pure gold lies
would you follow me?

Sunset was moments away
and miles beyond
not to mention
days passed
so she threw caution to the wind
and caution was heard to complain
bitterly about such treament

and she put spiggle down
and followed it

Across the tattered remains of
the past they wandered
over the hills
under the hills
beneath the veils of the sun

until they came to a small hut

very similar to the one
sunset lived in

She tapped tentatively upon the door

and had to shield her eyes
as Sunrise appeared framed
in the opening
blazing morning
leaping from every part of him

A sillouette
in sunlight

Sunset opened her mouth
to apologise for the intrusion

But before the words could be spoken

He kissed her
touched her cheek
told her how he had always loved
the promise of night she brought

And the spiggle
danced and laughed
and leaped into the pure gold
of light they made together.


©Chris Never

Sunday, January 28, 2007

Giggleknots




A spiggle, lizardette, and many tree goblins
merry-go-round the small globe
of a microbe. Encased in safety
till spring heralds growth
and a ripe time for mischief.

Then out they'll spring from their cracker box
to bring children a measle or sniffle,
changing shadows in bedtime corners
and tricksing from storybooks.

Tingling all along the wild, child, edges of imaginings,
they wriggle a gigglesome terror,
igniting the potential of darkness
like any worthwhile nightmare.

Monday, January 22, 2007

Butterfingers

I want to bathe my face
in the pool of your belly,

sweetened by the fragrance
of spice-dusted melt.

I wouldn't trade the sumo softness
for any six-pack show off.

My smile twinkles up
for your flavours -
seven kinds of tease and tender -

like butter
we lose cohesion in the heat.

Tonight

There's a warm rain
and the smell of gum trees -
strong enough to drown even the fumes
from crowded exhausts on the streets.

It's midsummer
but the season has lost direction.
We sit beneath the southern cross
exposed to a basin of new stars
ozone depletion has revealed,

and even though I'm well known
for a love of bright flowers
and butterflies,

sometimes I love the mossy dark better.
Colour seems more intense
against black.

Monday, January 15, 2007

legend of the white tree

There once grew a tree
deep in the frozen south of the world,
blanched from root to tip,
like a symbol blazoned on a shield,
like a magic figure
at the heart of a story.

Every year a white phoenix
would alight on the lowest branch
and recite all the legends she had gathered
on her travels through distant lands
before dissolving in a cloud of fire
and crumbling to ash at the base of the trunk.

The moon inscribed the stories
on leaves with her silvery wand
and they glimmered there until the leaves
merged with the ashes of the phoenix
and the stories were absorbed
into the heartwood of the tree.

When the winds roared their raucous way north
they carried the stories and sighed them
into ears of children as they slept
giving them dreams of white wings
curved against the arc of the sky,
of branches, ashen crazing against blue,
and of ashes, resting on midnight soil.

In this way all of the stories ever told
became embedded inside any new tales
on scrolls of birch bark rolled from the white tree
over land and sea, a certain similarity,
familiarity, from country to country,
and at the heart of them all,
the mythology of trees.

Wednesday, January 10, 2007

4.30am

She thought she heard a voice
whimper in the night,
thought she heard
the gate rattle,
a window bump.

She lay awake listening
till the sun cracked the sky
like an egg,
but no robber or rapist came
to break open her body.

Only ghosts of people she had known
disturbed the smooth dark,
only the seeping crack
in her black mirror.

Sunday, January 07, 2007

Shiny Bright

We are shades of cream and caramel
rolled together in white lilac
threads of scent, dusted with
sunlight and freckles.

You have my lips
I have your tongue,
the taste exchanged
sometime in the night.

Handfuls of moans,
skin laden with tiny gasps,
we oh oh ohed
through seven layers of angel food
till we arrived in cloud-like country
where beams of delight shine
from every follicle.

maybe this ...

Live every day as though it were your last.
As though every breath was a precious gift
and breathing it well your sacred duty.
Make it your goal to live every moment
of your life this way,
and if today you don't entirely succeed,
celebrate having the opportunity to try again tomorrow.
Take your life in your hands
and make it what you would have it be.