I know it wasn’t fair
to those who dance below:
Between our creaky stair
Descends our nightly ghost.
I’ve come to see my girl
Her sister plays alone.
Here in her deathly world
Her grievance sings her song.
What does she want from me?
A willingness to die?
Like Jesus on the tree,
A needle through the eye?
I sacrifice my bliss
For you my little sis.
This first one is in iambic tetrameter with the structure of an English Sonnet:
I lost you to Arabian nights:
The god Apollo’s basketball.
You had that day Queen Isis eyes..
Unfolding reddened fall leaves song.
It does mean something here in snow.
The Mārga flames the Firebird’s beak.
Somehow it made me let you go,
So silent beings now can speak.
I reach across the earth for you.
Across the universe I fly.
You’re under spellbound mountain dew.
Asleep by mirrors’ watchful eye.
Then something shakes the arch’s gate.
The colors open again Finn’s wake.
This second one is a straight English Sonnet, having the structure and the 5 iambic feet per line, iambic pentameter:
It’s thought itself that’s separating us.
My little molecules are calling you.
So Jesus told the mountain, “Part to dust!”
And said let go, that you could do it too.
Transparent eyes that cover Western skies.
I hook the trailer hilt that pulls the sun.
I search for you each night on moonlight drives:
Some feeling in the heart that you’re the one.
You pulled me out of the beach’s seahorse sand.
And ponied up the soul for Daphne’s bed.
With wildest sleep we wake this magic land
Sing witches stirring lives from worlds we’ve banned.
The tea room veils the river’s bride in frost.
All calling for the princess who’s been lost.
Cross of Lorraine
I wanted down the cotton pine below.
It seemed the dream was calling from their root.
I had escaped the cocktail party show:
The empty voices blocking nature’s tune.
The recent summons in the field of time:
Our river’s bridge was rotting but still there.
Perhaps it was just merely warmth from wine,
I melted down that rickety old stair.
I wondered would your eyes still have that glow
If I could somehow reach across our lives;
And swim the river down our muddy soul
Where love forever dances in the night?
Our little eyes that swim the river’s floor:
Their secret depths open new love’s door.
© 2013 Stephen Pickering
————–
I swim the river wide
Hoping to find you inside
This new life.
by Stephen Pickering
You are my tree.
because you have set me free.
An orchard garden grows
on land that once only snowed.
I’m under a spell
Only Ishtar can undo
Down, down her Roman well
I’m falling too.
I am the bird.
My life is the worm.
I see her cold, dark eye
bury me in the blood red sky.
There’s a tick.
The doors unlock.
I’m just a hick,
but I know when angels knock.
I don’t deserve this.
But here I am:
An Italian mist
Where Dante swam.
There’s a nickel sky,
and a lone star.
Gray clouds cry
wondering where you are.
That girl will come.
I feel her blinking again.
A bouncing little Sun.
She knows exactly where I am.
These beings inside
If you climb their stare
Feed the stillness of the night,
the castle that’s always been there.
I cannot breathe.
Your eyes are the hidden stone.
The gateless gate to the golden stream.
Unfold the night no man’s known.
©2013 Stephen K. Pickering
Something’s going on that wants to be known, a presence.
It wants you to make your connection.
What do you think is really underneath the veil?
Something very deep.
Deeper than history, deeper than tomorrow, deeper than now.
That’s the secret, secret, secret voice
that never comes out during the day.
I’m with you: I don’t want it to ever go away.
I think I’m wrong about the song.
I didn’t feel that you would come.
Please tell the notes that don’t belong
That winter’s bone remains unsung.
I feel it on the inside grow.
So, could a man become a god?
Don’t let this meditation go.
Just follow it no matter what.
This isn’t where I want to be.
My heart is feeling very sore.
You know the site I want to see?
Three graces dancing at my door.
What is it that I’m running from?
Those angels say to let it come.