in the soft shallow

Evoke the forms. Where you’ve nothing else construct ceremonies out of the air and breathe upon them. – The Road – Cormack McCarthy

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Australia, Nov 2019

In the soft shallow of a place where you once dreamed of rivers that ran from cracks that spilled over your skin every night the water he offers you sustains. His warmth that you clung to when darkness found its way home to your heart remains forever.

Before the ice formed around your thoughts and broke your every dream and in that space between knowing where you had been and what you almost never did the truth outweighs your guilt. He holds you close to his tired heart and whispers sleep onto your skin.

This burden of being human is more than I can carry on this journey to myself.  I must stop and find rest between the rush of emotions mankind leaks upon this landscape of a calendar year.

But we hardly have enough days to form the tapestry we desire, the threads keep unraveling the days keep sliding by and we are left with the memories shaped from scents and photographs we imagined once stood in our bedroom. And he cradles your hopes for they are his too.

And just as abruptly it all ends and someone else writes the story we began.

 

©alifelesslived

weightless

Photo by Tsunami Green on Pexels.com

I am Liquid bone
Sieved through time
Strained against a life
Of rivers flowing
And ending in seas

I am flesh torn and rubbed raw
A collection of imprints
Unraveling like blue tattoos
Across pale moonlit skin

I am the covering of all
And of nothing, boneless
Inappropriately mentioned
Sour on your tongue

I am parts, a discard
Disembodied but full
Following no rules
I pattern at will

I am you, who sees
Beyond borders
And secrets
Quiet now, be still

©alivelesslived

i end where you begin

Delicately carve my name on your skin
Make it the place I end where you begin
If you must add colour, colour me blue
delicately make me a part of you

when you no longer love me or want me
please find a gentle way to set me free
when all of a sudden you want a change
if my familiar name now sounds so strange

visit the ink man and try not to cry
he must attempt to draw over our lie
tell him we’d said farewell in the sun
allow him to design you a new one

make it a most beautiful butterfly
make it with wings, let it have wings to fly

for my sonnet I have deviated from the traditional a little, I have written 3 quartets and a couplet like a Shakespearean’s model but chose to rhyme AABB, CCDD, EEFF and the volta is in the final 2 line rhyme GG. I have kept my “argument” part of the sonnet in the first quartet and my “solution” in the 2  latter quartets and a final “release” in the couplet.

I felt the modern day sonnet would flow better with some repetitive words and have tried to incorporate those too. It gives it more of a love song feel for me.

©alivelesslived

the music tree

Photo by Francesco Ungaro on Pexels.com

So deep inside the Forest told
a story much too sad for light
Grief grew lush within the Cold
Music kept those secrets tight

Earth pitched its icicles green
when Melody met the tune,
the hum the moss that grew
across a wide gaping wound

Solitary confine me,

I refuse to look
Stay within my prison be,

alone here in this book
Words wrap a coil,

Pages turn time

and inwards I float

as seconds chime

A child hides his tears from me
what more will bend this tree
this music has stolen my air

He inhaled the notes
for all eternity

©alifelesslived

 

maybe, just maybe

bmd
Sarawak river in Borneo

when you search for me

among the stars that fall

don’t be disappointed that

i was never there at all

i was always the dust you shook off

i was the air that you ignored

i was the forgotten ray of sunshine

before you left for the last time

in the sadness that contains

the marrow of us

i will stain the night

with a colour you can’t see

deep dark red against

the silver silhouette

of a moon’s last shadow

i call your name

but it dissolves like

an Eastern light with no

whisper or murmur

against earth’s crumpled lines

forever lost in a benign pool

of forbidden feelings

and if you still yearn for me

i will scry you a remedy

i will tell you a story

just like i had before

and maybe, just maybe

you will come to know

how much i loved you

and never wanted to let go

so you must go now

into that foreign land

filled with the snow of my

eternal delight and pick me

a blue tinged flake

and blow it into the air

and by this i will know

that maybe, just maybe

you too once loved me

©alifelesslived

 

ordinary things remind me of you

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“An old fashioned telephone on display at Singapore’s Peranakan Museum. Taken by me years ago. The museum displays many other artifacts and objects from the Peranakan culture, part of my heritage, preserved in the straits states of Melaka, Penang and Singapore.”

Ordinary things remind me of you; Dad
Like this old fashioned telephone
That sat on your desk when it first came
A thing many wanted but could not yet own

When you finally permitted me to use it
I was deliriously happy without a clue
I did not yet have a friend for me to call
You said have patience he will call you

And you were right, as with all ordinary things
I finally talked to the boy who could not see me
Happily smiled and laughed at the receiver
Which conveyed my youthful love and energy

Dad, we were proud of you, I hope you knew
Just like that telephone that once was new
Then one day you decided to take that last call
That first day of March, and we never saw you again at all

©alivelesslived

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