Tag: thoughts
-
Coal Town
Birds don’t stop in this town. I see them fly past, black peppering blue, going someplace. I’ve given up dreaming wings. This town will know my bones. Condoms sell well in Joe’s corner store – boredom breeds but breeding’s a trap, a twitch in the smile of those steel-eyed shrews who linger late after church.…
-
Days
Sometimes she’s wildfire, burning through the night; some days she’s a winter storm, ice and fury unleashed. Sometimes she’s a shadow, neither fully here or really there; some days she’s untamable, wild as rolling seas. Sometimes I hold her close, as the world starts coming undone; some days we fit together and I feel that…
-
Self-portrait
And these are my failings: a wild smile always leads my mind to the kiss hiding behind it and sometimes to plot the shortest route there. Did I say sometimes? I lie a bit, too. And I tend to zone out to small-talk – there are enough idle words in the world. And I can’t…
-
The Weight
One drunken night, he lay on the coach road and she lay beside him. He pictured a truck descending–wobbling around corners, gaining momentum. They spoke about crushes, first kisses. He told her of an older woman who’d stolen a thing he couldn’t replace. He tried to describe the weight of lost things. She listened until…
-
I’ll not tread lightly
Remember school days and how we would play like there was no tomorrow? Now the castles we made are the price we must pay or flounder in oceans of sorrow. Roaming wild and free, building houses in trees as worlds waltzed to discordant tunes– like a zephyr through grass, gilded summer days passed, left us…
-
En Passant
It wasn’t a spectacular leaf: rather drab, too long from tree. Yet, the life it clutched in its five trembling points turned my strides into steps into stasis. I watched as it danced, sucking more from a gust than nearby leaves better suited to flying. It spiraled away to a lazuline sky while I remained…
-
The Sculptor
On Sunset Strip the lights have dimmed And silent now their siren’s call. A fading starlet’s eyes are brimmed With tears–one more forgotten thrall Who keeps her locks of platinum trimmed, Awaits her call to glory, Lays bare her soul to cheat decay And rewrite her life’s story. He sculpts her in immortal clay, In…
-
Irish Fire
My grandmother called it Irish fire, said it raged through my father hotter than Beli Mawr’s bum. She was long dead when it finally flared fiercer than he could contain. The embers of his eyes scorched childhood’s last leaves to ash, left them smoldering. Ryan Stone
-
Breaking Point
Pa, I see you in your shed– unaware of dusk settling over your garden, painting your pink crabapple blossoms grey. I see you bend, to squint at some small imperfection marring the wooden soldier you’ve spent the whole day carving, hands slow-dancing to a tune no-one else can hear. Later Ma will shake her head,…
-
