Survivors

Survivors

Tuesday, May 29, 2012

Summer Sudden


© 2012 Steve King
All rights reserved


…then evenings
and leisured memories
of each receding day,
bright and perfect,
brilliant mirrors to our sly designs
no matter how we chose to look at them.
Slow slipping to twilight,
faces turned to painted masks,
purple in encroaching shadow,
bared limbs unweathered by the lateness.
We knew it was no longer spring
no matter what the calendar implied.

It seemed the change would never come,
sun would never leave us
to abandon and dark dreams,
whisperings and star-lit conjurings;
our silence at the last
amid the calls of crickets,
and low insect hums,
other shadowed harmonies,
gathered in dark corners
of the shrinking day.

Dense air made wet the tall iced glasses,
leaving dew on ready hands,
teasing ready lips with thoughts of quenching,
quenched lips taunting ready ears,
sighs of easy promise,
leaving for the moment
all prospect of renewal or regret.

All ready.

Rings clicked on the cold glasses,
jeweled facets in rose sunsets
glimmering like lesser stars
as hands moved through shadows
back and forth in fading light;
painted lips curled for the sipping,
tongues for languorous rolling
of all bright sensations;
heat and summer air,
all breath enfolded,
words poised for saying,
if words would even serve a purpose
in the long twilight;
if words would substitute for sensations
waiting close upon the tongue;
if words would better serve the tongue
than soft summer bites,
dark appetites there waiting to devour
the ripening fruit of lingering summer nights.

The scent of perfumed bodies
swift touching,
sudden feeling,
all unspoken accident,
that needn’t be explained,
wouldn’t be undone (how?)
by words or faint regrets
unsuited for belief
or even for remembering,
(how might it be undone?
how could they be undone?).
It was the season made us move,
could not escape the touch,
the scent
the feel;
wondering of one’s own scent
and how to touch
and what to feel
and what to say;
endless twilight fading slow
to ease all pleasure and repose.

Yes, summer indeed.
Just summer.
And the guard was down,
because by then we held nothing
not gladly surrendered.

Summer.
Just summer.
Season of long twilight
and brimming retrospect,
though briefly were the morrows
presaged in each rising moon,
light breaching that horizon,
looming ever larger,
casting our faint shades
through the blaze of magic lanterns.

I wondered of the morrow,
small dreaming of another day,
the long wait for new twilight,
new games to play.

I wondered of tomorrow…
still nothing beckoned from beyond,
save moonlight falling empty;
tired shadows fled across the vacant lawn,
while magic lanterns guttered
one
by
one…

Tuesday, May 22, 2012

Seeing


©  Steve King
All rights reserved


I thought seeing you was best,
watching as the light would change,
waiting for the night to gather us.

But dreaming holds strange vision too,
that flickers through reluctant shadows,
touching on all wanting spirits there.

Those shadows, spirits, dreams, reveal anew
and serve as well as sense
to picture you.


Tuesday, May 15, 2012

Today


© Steve King
All rights reserved


Today I will greet sunrise with a glance.
It will have to be enough, just seeing—
Empty of new words for the old things,
I’ve done the best to rid myself of them,
shaking bare the word-bins,
purging old and occult motives
with a stream of gilt verbosity.
Emptied are all ill-stocked compartments,
shuttered now, swept clean
of all compunction and desire,
leaving few the rooms that must be kept
to tend a winter season of the soul.

And I will see
what I will see.

It must be enough today
to ply the uses of proximity,
make of it a ready world,
here, where I may gather and restore.
Further words would only draw my thoughts
back to an unintelligible map
filled with strange detours and false starts,
crossroads where I’d be constrained
to choose approaches to unknown ends,
paths a fickle will might not refuse.

No loss, or not so much…
Words often either aren’t enough,
or ring of hubris.
At their simplest, just cries of the heart, I guess.
Aren’t there enough of those to go around?
And how the heart itself does change…
Who would ever trust those cries for long?

I will see…
When I’m ready, you’ll know.
I’ll pick up the phone,
bring more complication to your afternoon.
You’ll see the number flashing,
perhaps recall my voice
and what it said last time.
You may even smile as you reach,
expecting me to say—
But you would be dismayed, this day:
remembering that I was out of words,
I’d probably hang up before you spoke…

I trust there is some way you’ll be assured—
if I have given up on the old words
it’s only to divine another way.
More quickly than I might foretell from this present refuge,
within these moments of…not saying,
it’s certain some new musings will emerge
to win exemption from intemperate vows.
They will populate these shadows,
the silence and the empty space it fills;
will reach beyond old words,
beyond the weight of wearied thoughts
that lead only to this...

It remains to be seen.
I’ll relish what this solitude allows,
but just as gladly draw the curtain
on this closing day.
Old silence will beget a welcoming void,
to echo with new murmurs of its own.
All pious tribulations gone,
grim musings undone;
each ready moment
filled with whole new seasons just begun,
crowding out those tones of twilight,
calling, as a larkbird lauds the sun,
upon a waiting chorus of tomorrows,
new gathered spirits singing then as one.

Tuesday, May 1, 2012

After

© Steve King
All rights reserved


You rose like a fawn this morning,
wild eyed, yielding.

Perhaps you fear my aftermath:
Am I safe?
Am I content
with mild indecencies?
Had I keen edges
your soft senses
mistook from the first?

What vessel am I in daylight
that cannot hold your evening dreams?

You are kind to linger,
so busy in another room.
But have you morning bitters brewing even now
to curdle this confection?