Dusk Till Dawn, 2020
As so much lies beneath that sun
To starlight, dusk, dawn and night
Embedded in the capsules of my beady eyes
Sets stars and moon and crystal sparks.
So heavy shall I lay my heart at night
And calmly whisper in my sweet breath
That I embrace the arms of death.
Kiss my forehead and let me rest.
Kiss my forehead and give me rest.
For I shall know in this world
That I have acted my part.
And to life I shall say.
With grateful farewell
And fortuitus delight,
With all that sunlight
And that white-lit moon
I beg to differ:
“It is not too soon”.
So, give me that kiss,
That sweet kiss of death
To which I am not immune.
Embrace me stars
Give me rest;
Sunrise to Sunset
Dawn to Dusk.
Dusk till dawn.
Do not fear me (2019)
As if life could be less about breathing
than living.
A shell of a human being
Exceeded with emotions and ticking memories
playing back on an old camera.
A snapshot of precious moments
Chaotically thrown over and dusted
Like particles breaking in the light.
Perhaps a heartbeat lasts a lifetime
Or a second.
Blinked away with spectators
taking centre stage.
Bow for the masses
Or have your talent foiled.
Plan ahead each movement
before your death.
Yet still fear the passing
As if you have ended.
But you will take your life until
the sweet finish,
The bitter line.
The heavy-handed clocks of time
Will keep you chiming.
As if your soul will fade out
Like Spring into a brisk
That will last for eternity.
In the midst,
Time will keep you folded
In the crevices, cracks, catacombs
Of nature’s flesh.
Hold onto hope as your ribs
envelope your heart.
Caress promise like eyelashes
flutter against the wind.
Drink up destiny like
The ground does the sunlight.
Do not think for a second
That your desecration
Means obliteration.
Bleed into the moonlight;
The dancing stars across a milky stretch.
Take thunder and send it through
trees and rivers and mountains;
The neurons and wires
Webbed in your brain
Can do more than death.
Turn your skin into embers;
Your bones to timber.
Go beyond the beyond.
Let the world take you
and it will gift you infinity.
Reach out to the horizon
And touch the everlasting,
And watch as your vitality
flows into the Earth.
Be that it may seem
forever
is a corner
But it is a circle
in which you must
take shape.
Panic on a Global Scale (2020)
They say the birds fly South in Winter
To prosperous greens that lay beyond
That stretch of land.
Grass like fingertips to hold their feathers.
Like hands of mothers,
to cradle their young
And protect them from that brittle breeze
That scratches at their peach-fuzz skin.
The birds that fly South in Winter.
Away from hunger; cold; neglect.
Will know nothing but the sweetness of intimacy
As they peck and crow in their flocks.
Creating and nesting in that flourishment of growth.
But how wrong these birds, that fly South in Winter,
Guessed of their salvation.
As the stretch of land had grown vacant.
Bare of all its crops and gold,
With no Summer sun to bask in
And the absence of
Mother Nature
to nurse them to health.
And soon that sunlight had scattered into night,
The remnants of that glorious blue
A thickened black.
And that warming blow of
Mother Nature’s breath
Had turned to whispers.
And screams.
And final words of death.
As the poor little birds
Could not pay their vital debt
In the deserted stretch.
As Monday grew to Thursday
The gaggle had weakened
To all a little more than a dozen.
Once plucked-up hens;
vibrant peacocks;
lilywhite doves;
finches and woodpeckers;
swallows and herons;
glorious eagles;
masterful storks;
hornbills and geese and parrots.
Farmhouse owls
And seaside seagulls,
and dainty cuckoos
And considerable cranes
Had merely become
Drawn out skin and feathers
Over bones and beaks.
No longer lifted their wings
To slumber in feathered-blankets.
But burrowed heads in plumes.
Days had now moulded to weeks;
Hit and battered like metal
In furnaces to change time’s very frame.
Food was no longer plentiful.
Seeds that had once rained down
Were now in drought.
Rations were thinning out
In perfect reflection
Of the greying feathers
That moulted like dying snow.
All the mother-hens had gathered to feed their young
With all that was left
and birds that fly South in Winter
Flocked to the chicks
And pecked out their eyes
(the seeds still untouched laid out on the bereft of life).
As weeks had poured by
That fatal flock had thinned to one.
A small blue Kingfisher,
That had plumped out to a
Roughly the size of a tennis ball.
Fat with the crops of his brothers.
Engorged in their flesh and feathers.
Bulky with the bread of their beaks.
He was rich and cumbersome
In gluttony.
His eyes bigger than his belly.
But
That pluck, little Kingfisher
Was rife with loneliness.
Polluted with solitude.
Plentiful in hysterical fear
Of the empty fields and unrecognisable shadows
That granted him no familiarity,
Or friendship.
Craving the caws and crows of his brothers
And the swift chime of their wings against the wind
As they fly home in Winter.
Little Ship (2019)
Little ship that sails off from shore
To splendid waves, that with buoyancy
set the wooden panels to the air.
Eroded and saturated in salt,
Find stars cast in high shadows.
Little ship that carries secrets;
Treasures stowed away in steepness
fill empty crates to the brim,
Only lit by thin stretches of sunlight
And blanketed in decay.
Little ship riding ribbons of emerald;
Cuts through melted glass
which splinters that timber body.
The sheet that flutters like wings
Takes the vessel through the sheen
And the wind in its mouth.
Little ship kisses soft sea foam
As it dances on the blue,
but will never reach the land
With its breaking banks
That will send it surely
To the bottom of the deep.
Little ship once a bold voyager
With battle bridges and mysteries.
Cascaded vibrant waters;
Fought storms with thunderous intent.
But was weighted down;
Sunk and surrendered to an eternal ruin.
Little ship bound your sailor
To stand with stature like a pole,
hands settled to steer
And send the Seven-Seas ship,
And all its jewels,
To a new world.
Little ship, the arms that pulled ropes
And in a cabin slumbered.
Readied East, West, North, South,
Now lies dormant and broken.
Flesh torn and gnawed by fish
And entrapped in shell and seaweed.
With the treasures lost and found
Polluting the underwater with greed.
There lies two gold coins
Hiding milky-silent eyes in death.
A fist-sized ruby on fleshy tendrils
Where a tongue once lay.
One-hundred consecutive pearls
Delicately denting into cold skin
To leave purple-green rosettes.
A Sovereign’s sceptre and rod
Gloriously reflected in daylight
protrudes upwardly.
Shimmering in the scarlet river
A murky cloud arises
from life’s single cavity.
Spirit, and the Cosmos (2018)
Night time awakening.
Where have you left your soul?
Away from the crowds of people
Shifting,
drifting through the streets
Like fish in currents.
Blessed be your lonely heart
Which has found lonesomeness
To be a bitter comfort.
Under the stars where you
Lay to rest
alone again but naturally inspired to dream.
Weep, if needed,
But sleep guaranteed to soften
Your aching bones.
Sway in slumber to the blow
Of nature's breath
So sweet on your weary head and limbs.
Maybe in solitude you'll find a rock
Turned over to hide the world.
But with its face away the tears do
Race into the soil, and there is life.
Life so gentle and calm it has never known
anger or pain,
Even in darkness.
Heartbreak but a distant quake
In the volcanoes under ribs.
Cages to protect and guard
ripening hearts
Not a necessity, but an obscurity.
Sadness a sea never sailed,
The horizon of uncertainty never reached.
The pleasures of such journeys some do need
But others fail to keep,
set underneath the waves by over pulls
dragging and capsizing them beneath.
But rest a shore,
your one body in sand and sky,
Rocks and shells.
So happy to be counting sheep
As you drift into
another land,
Your state of liminality
A gift for
Prosperity and imagination.
No matter how alone they say you are
There are petals and leaves,
Evergreen and growing
By your side.
Mountains and cliffs standing tall,
Soldiers of soil and chalk
More friends than the ones that walk.
Lines of trees, their whispers more a sound
Than the ones that talk.
Where is your soul but in the world.
Its circle of vibrancy your whole,
your need,
your all.
Maybe you leave footsteps
that both never follow and
never lead.
But some haven't the need
When the Earth is the gold.
The prosperous love hardly told.
Ever yet more bold than that of human.
Maybe some prefer to stand
hand in hand
With rain and sun
Rather than in the arms of another.
Loneliness is just a chain to some,
But the wings of great flight for the few.
And in that flight you soar and glide,
Glimmering between the sapphire sheen
and radiance.
Dancing in droplets and cascading clouds,
Evermore so proud of that living air
That takes us effortlessly through our lives.
Quickness and beauty.
Elegance and divinity.
In that iridescence
your red energy flows
with all that is the world.
How to Wake a Sleeping Lion (2018)
When dozing in the sunlight,
grass quiet with blowing soft a lion sleeps,
there on that earth so still.
Its mighty chest gently rising,
with beats of heart tuned to slumber,
boom-boom, boom-boom, boom-boom
-will echo the plains that stretch for eternity.
If you watch that there creature,
so still
so quiet,
Alone in peaceful serenity
You will see no signs of stalking; preying; hunting.
Just beauty in its calmest state alive with unconsciousness,
Golden sheen of sand-coloured fur,
strands of light shimmering and shifting
In the honest breeze.
To wonder How to Wake a Sleeping Lion,
arouse the beast from waking harmony.
You scheme; you devise; you conjure up plans of
battle,
violence
and gore,
So you can delight in slaying the ruler of the natural world.
Like the Queen of the Desert, tearing her from her throne
So no more that chair of gold
To crumbled stone and rubble.
Or fire metal from a loaded limb,
stench of oil and heat,
Like you did to the King of Dreams
because he dreamt of peace.
You delight in sinister motives
to Wake that Sleeping Lion
By slicing open its chest,
Ripping tissue and muscle and bone,
Collecting that liquid value in your paper-coffee cup.
You hope to tame that mighty roar
With chains and ropes and striking whips.
Render it to forget its kingdom
To become a mockery in your own.
Convince yourself with sadistic merit
That you might be King of 'foreign ground'.
The land you call infertile, dry and lifeless
Because you don't understand its worth
In cultivation, artistry and uniqueness,
only viewing it in numbers and banknotes.
You call yourself a Prophet;
Believe you can turn water into wine,
turn eternity into a locked-gated prison.
Barbed walls of unforgiving, relentless imprisonment,
barricades of metal and wire
keeping that there lion amongst the noble grass
Now forgotten ash.
With pliers and pluckers pull out
teeth and claws.
Condemn that creature powerless
With its feline gems, diamonds and silvers
of bravery and wisdom
worn upon your neck;
calcium and brutal victory.
Shave fur to forge a carpet for your all-white castle.
Turn its mane into a ruff for your hideous gown,
its head a into a mantelpiece
For your hundred-seat table
where you will forever dine alone.
Would you go into a children's playground
With a grenade and let it splinter-off
Into their small frames?
Skin your mother, father, brother, sister alive;
smother them while they sleep
Resting on clouds to turn dreams into smokes.
Would you snap a baby's neck,
To eat from its flesh?
So why go into a lion's den armed with
knives,
binds and guns
when it rests like cherubs in a manger's hold.
Why take its roar, its fur, its pride
To govern the grasslands of yonder delicacy,
to make a replica of your artificial castle;
already spotted across the globe.
For greed, for power, for joy
To capture those you view below,
weaker than your own.
Do not come to me when you are wounded
For stirring peace into massacre.
For waking such there beauty
where it slumbered in its bed.
To expect to go into a lion's den unharmed
When you've taken its cubs; its home; its livelihood.
Lions are stronger in a pride,
faster as one.
A strength, a whole of wonder, gold, wisdom.
Man is weak together and alone with nothing
But greed at the costs of other lives.
Do not Wake a Sleeping Lion-
be gentle, protective, kind
and treat there beast with all it deserves-
with grace, admiration, with mind.
Do not walk into a lion's den
to tear it from its throne.
That lion's Kingdom is its own.
Do not steal, take, break, destroy
What earth has declared a home.
Space (2013)
Among the black lined sky
Twinkly stars are forever shining,
Their light is so elegant and radiant
And endlessly hypnotising.
There amoung the enticing sparkles
A cold ablaze crescent lights the sky,
Standing out among the other dazzling auroras
Its eerie glow seems almost warming.
Blackened silk entwined with constellations
Holds a secret of yonder entities,
Their identities still secluded
So seen as our illusions.
The spaces between the galaxies
Possess defined planets of contrasting characteristics;
Some hot, some brisk and some too small to exist
But with one we can call our home.
Robin Red Breast - 'Robin Gorria Bularreko' (2020)
Robin Red Breast
your chirpy sound
Bursting from your
Scarlet-Chest,
At the end of your garden
Lined with Lavenders,
Geraniums, Sunflowers.
Your bird houses
Filled with seeds
Where you go to rest.
I shall follow you,
Shortly,
But first I shall breathe.
Shall fly.
Shall live as you did;
Melodically,
With flourish,
With music,
With love.
Robin Red Breast
In that sky I shall follow suit;
With you in mind.
But first I must perch on branches
And hide in rose bushes
With buds as sweet in sap
As your rosy cheeks.
Shall visit forests and fields,
Rivers, lakes and ponds
Letting the tips of my feather wings
Reach those pools of glass;
Water-droplets that spray off
In that beautiful Spanish sun.
The touch of Pamplona heat
on my buff-brown feathers;
the crystal sunlight of Artajona
in those rich emerald mountains
and chalky Castles set in cliffs.
And although many may fear that
I am far from home
Estoy en casa.
Nuestra casa.
Where we shall always be.
Robin Red Breast
I will you watch over
By the oak tree
In that Garden of sleep.
I feel you at the olive tree
Where beautiful new roots grow,
Just as you built Wendy houses
And Windmills.
I catch you chirp and peep and sing
On the window ledge of your
Little Brown Shed,
And hear the words to Danny Boy
And the Gypsy Kings.
I will remember campfires
And dancing. Those Summers
In red and white
Covered in a coat of Rioja red wine
and feeling free as a bird.
And I will remember,
My Robin Red Breast
Senarra, aita, aitona
That no matter where you fly,
No matter where I go
We will always be together
En las pajareras de nuestros corazones.
Limbo, (2020)
To yonder beyond a beady eye
And expressions past a rearing face,
I wander across that near to ground
In search to flame out in certain place.
Chaotic as night seems with no gazing moon
There is a peering universe to spur soon.
Although I will only breathe as speckled dust
No more is my blood metal to turn to rust.
Clouds no more ceiling will be my bed
And the trickly sun shan’t warm my skin
But instead a guide for splintered soul
To carry me to where ye begin.
My energy roars as teeth shall snap and snare
To bite yet never to catch a when or where;
As to melt as gold into the crumbling soil,
then thy food will never hunger bleed or spoil.
I may as a bird spread wild and free
Or wade as fishes through waters still.
Shall crawl as insect for plant and tree
Or prance as tiger with might and will.
In truth, wherever thee ponder on vast greens
As corpse or spirit. To be in lightning beam.
I shall be and be I shall
Forever where ever lies
In that infinite cycle to seep in dreams.
Recovery, (2021)
As summer’s touch, touch summer’s day
Shall melt away winter’s thaw
And bring back strings of gold
That behind clouds lay hidden,
Hidden no more.
As the sun stretches its legs
A bird will find a place of rest
Not scarred by winds, nor
Rain droplets that seep
To rot away the wood.
Nestle it’s born to rise
to the aqua of the
Higher world, far from the
Headless trees below.
As above the ground they stride,
Beasts of stature grand and small
Venture far beyond the plains of green
To paradises stretched to fit eternity.
And all those oceans
So full of life will never be
A glass half empty.
Brimmed with scaled flesh
That wade through waters crystalline
To murky depths.
All of this shall mend the
hands of time. Bruised knuckles.
Scarred fingers; Bloodied nails.
Reaching to clasp
Its frail palms and sweat
New life into those pores
So new life can be built
From the tendons of its
Skilled touch.
And all that is old shall
Be recycled into the bloodline
Of this fresh world
Till winter comes again.
“Dear My Love”, (2021)
When the sun-rays dance the ground;
sunflower-glows kissing each emerald strand,
I’ll remember your face in summer’s palm.
When rain droplets coat the gentle leaves,
atop the flourish of magnificent trees,
I’ll remember how I held your hand.
When ocean waves touch the golden sands;
softly blowing against Poseidon’s grain,
I’ll remember how close we would lay.
When critters crawls across the earth;
deep in the world far below,
I’ll remember with you I never felt small.
When winged beasts take the skies,
gliding across that forever blue,
I’ll remember how my heart took flight.
When the ground is thick with Winter’s coat;
crunching beneath with every step.
I’ll think on how we used to dance.
When cotton-candy blossoms bloom,
as spring commands life to grow,
I’ll think of each new adventure with you.
When autumn paints the world in reds,
and the winds blow their gentle kiss,
I’ll think on the caress of your fingertips.
When the night pitches its tent,
and blankets all to sleep,
I’ll think of you in my dreams.
When daylight breaks the dark,
and of all life is wide awake,
I’ll love you more each passing day.
Company, (2021)
To my oldest friend
I know that you have left me,
but you are not gone
for you sit in the tendons
of my full and open heart.
Stages, (2022)
I am sat staring at the wall again.
My hand clawed around an armchair
That has scuffed and frayed
Over its lifespan.
The wall used to be bright;
A daffodil-yellow paint
That has dulled to a nausea-inducing
Egg-wash. Flaking away like scabs
And ripely-picked skin.
I tell myself it does not need another coat and look away.
I saunter to the kitchen and switch on the kettle
that has rusted overtime.
Enamelled with limescale I cannot
Bring myself to clean.
The kettle roars to a boil;
Its high-pitched wails echo through the cabinets
Where unused mugs lay dormant.
I steal one from its nest;
Spindles of cobwebs have made home
On its handle and body.
With one blow they disintegrate
Into nothing.
“World’s Best Wife” it mocks
In that same daffodil yellow.
I throw the mug to the floor
Where its ceramic body scatters
Across the tiles we’d planned to change,
But never got around to.
I retrace my steps
Back to the living room where
The wall has been waiting for me,
Hungry for me to look at it’s
peeling holes and cigarette-stained teeth
that flicker without remorse.
I dig my nails into its open wounds
And tear, and tear, and tear.
Strips of pastry-like flesh
Hang from white-knuckle grips.
I look down at my hands. Eyes
Fading from red to a sombre blue.
The evidence of my crimes only
An arm’s distance away.
The flakes of paint gathered in
My palms are not the shades of
Off-coloured wheat and eggshell
I was made to believe,
But the hues of daffodils and sunflowers
I had longed to remember.
Desperation gnaws in my limbs;
Frantic to place the paint strips
Back where they belong.
I beg the wall to take my offerings
And forgive my trespasses against it
so I might see its wholeness once again
But there is no such luck. The remains
Fall to the ground like dust particles
Breaking in the slight stretch
Of sunlight through an open window.
I cry. Heaped on the floor,
Just another reminiscent of the wall
Paralysed amongst the flecks.
Cheeks and lips raw from tearstains.
Eyes blood-shot, carry no more
Droplets of my heart in their ducts.
For their emptiness, only muffled weeps
Escape the coarseness of my throat.
I glare at the wall – blotchy and bare –
A feeble finger reaches to stroke
Its pale and crumbled exterior.
I long for the daffodil-yellows;
The kiss of sunshine that made
The colours of the wall dance in summer.
But I am left only the anaemic strokes
Of egg wash and dead grass.
And I long for the daffodil-yellows
…
I’ve been here for hours now
Looking at the wall.
It does not seem so ailed
or cracked or bare.
Its patches and holes are almost
Charming;
I trace the patterns and shapes in the paint
and smile.
I see a field of yellow daffodils.