EI-Poetry

Just a jumble of words, images and feelings, that have come together for various reasons over the years...

What is the point of living
When all is said and done?
What is the reason we hold on to life
When we wish it had never begun?
And for what sad reason do we say
That we'll live to fight another day,
When the fight can never be won?

What is the point of remembering
When we know the past has gone?
And why do we look on to happier times
When they go just as fast as they come?
And why do we sit, like the fools that we are,
And pray to some god, or wish on some star,
When nothing can ever be done?

What is the point of living,
When it only fades away?
We know it will never go on forever,
So why do we bother to stay?
When everything we've ever done
Is nothing when we're dead and gone,
Why do we continue to play?

You turn away from the starry sky
To dive beneath the sea
Your touch is cold, your heart is stone
Your life has yet to be

Your hear no evil, think no wrong -
And yet you do no good
Your mind won't know causality
Indeed, it never should

No one knows your beauty
Nor the twisted shape within
For they can't see the form that lies
Unwaiting to begin

There is a dark and cloudy mind
That holds you in its grasp
Beneath those murky waves of thought
That drown you in their clasp

So, never knowing what's to come
Or what will one day be -
You turn away from that starry sky,
To drown beneath the sea

© C.A.L. 1985

Picture me in a billion years
Shall I be a memory, or simply dust?
Or a dream in which the years grow cold,
Or shall I be awake, and old?
Or locked inside the geometry,
Of a thousand future things to be,
Or broken in pieces on an exotic shore,
or dispersed in that void for evermore?

© C.A.L. 1995

I used to hear the wind blow, long ago
I used to watch the stars turn round
To fill the sky and fall to ground -
I used to dream of starlight too,
Long, long ago

I used to breathe the evening, long ago
As the red tongue of nightfall would swallow the sea
And I'd hang in the moonglow and think I was free -
I used to believe it once, you see,
Long, long ago

I used to brush the mountains, long ago
Through a distant eye the world was mine,
The nightmare of lives left far behind -
I used to wonder at those I might find,
Long, long ago

I used to feel the world's embrace, long ago
The doors of forever were opened wide
They drew me in and I came alive -
I used to dream…..
And then I died -
Long, long ago

© C.A.L. 1996

Shade, thought and sorrow
must you stay with me tomorrow?
in these darkened twilight years,
shall I remember, through my tears,
this love you have awakened,
this life I have forsaken
All this bitter midnight heartache
and this broken sleep from which I do not ever wish to wake?
And the memory of your touch, your smile -
Shall those assail me all this while?
In this abyssal pit of pain and pyre
Your frozen heart, my unquenched fire...

© C.A.L. 2000

Some otherwhere
If shedding skins of here and now
Parted in silver waves
As if the splitting sky of stars
Could warm this cold and weary path
There would be an otherwhere, an othertime,
Where I could lie with laughter in your arms
Where you would seek me out
And where your smile was there for me alone, and in your eyes
Some otherwhere you love me
Here, and now, and there
Where we should be,
Yet cannot reach or smell or taste or hear or see
And if these wrenching dislocated years to come
Were fires melting glacial bowls in scored blue ice
Fractured by the sea-wept tears, gently lapping arctic edges,
Could we not, through flame and snow, awaken there?
Some otherwhere
Your tensions fall and flow away
Sunk in deep, forgotten, oceanic pools
Here and now and where
I hear your music, faultless soul
Free-played and woven with your magic out of sweet and smoky air
As if your rage and tears from darker nights
Unpoken urges, unvoiced fears and loneliness
Had not awoken with you in this morning's ochre light
Some otherwhere the world stands still
Here and now, beyond
The time-clock pressing of elusive hours
Of beautiful dreams too soon devoured
Worlds and lives and loves we share
Here and now, some otherwhere

Staring,
Your otherness touches
Fractured glass
Delicate, featherlight and fragile
with sharp edges
Scattered starlight
Spilt across this sky
My absence, my endless night
Your otherwhere
Beyond, out of sight
and time -
Staring,
You reflect
Darkness
Come geometrically apart
in cataclysmic fragments
Cold fingers curl and close
Too tightly
Over broken hearts

© C.A.L. 2000

Silver men with silver feet
walk countless silver lands
While beside them platinum rivers line
eternal silken sands

And jasper moons with garnet rings
hang up in sapphire skies
While silver eagles rise and scan
the land with silver eyes

And other suns with silver fires
burn out in endless nights
While crystal landscapes glow beneath
the brush of scarlet lights

And silver clouds like wind-filled sails
skim the stormless sky
For somewhere, there are other worlds
and elsewhere, here, am I

© C.A.L. 1996

Our hands touch
dreamer, as well they might
Our fingers meet,
but still, our thoughts are out of sight -
I've made you what you are,
I gave you being - that was my right,
Yet imagination was never enough,
To brace myself against the night
While you, unliving, unbreathing still
Granted moments of respite
Cruel dreamer, lover, dreamer, dream -
I cannot make you be...

© C.A.L 1995

10.

Grey water falls against the window pane,
Touches, briefly - reaches out and slides away,
in quiet despair, into darkness
This is my shell, of glass and rain
Beyond, faces blur and fade
and move away to lighter skies
But I no longer hear the storm -
or feel it, there is nothing left
except a crimson coldness - cold and warm
Silent and dark, there is no pain -
only tears of glass and rain...

©C.A.L. 1999

11.

Are there such dreams as this?
Of love and death, disloyalty and fear?
And will there be tomorrows,
Will you still be here?
Will stars fall, and oceans rise,
and worlds in silent universal darkness break and die?
And when my falling tears burn out upon your upturned hands,
Will you bow your head,
Will you cry?

© C.A.L. 1998.

12.

Distantly,
I speak to you
You cannot hear me,
but neither do you wish to
So, therefore
I speak to you,
Distantly

Distantly,
I cry for you
You cannot see my tears
or hear my pleas
So, because you always turn away
I cry for you,
Distantly

Distantly,
I dream of you
Pieces of warmth assembled in darkness
are taken apart with the break of day
So, because I have to wake
I dream of you,
Distantly

Distantly,
I live for you
At the cold and lonely edges of your world
Your shadow falls across my eyes
So, because I cannot cross this space
I live for you,
Distantly

13.

Glance
intangible touch
your eyes, your brain, your mind
stretch outward
and caress
softly, like a murmur
whispering fingers
across my lips
invisible
this touch of your eyes
I dare not move
still, entranced
I drink
these sweet drops
of poison
your loveless glance,
upon my parched face...

© C.A.L. 2000

14.

Too late
The rain falls
Tears rain and fill
The earth's damp embrace
Too late
Everything is still
And cold, and gone
Except a deathly space
Too late
To bring the dying embers
Back to life
Too late
The fire has gone,
Smothered by the rain
And fate
For we could only be
Too late

© C.A.L. 1999

15.

Turn your face to the setting sun
The soft red warmth of life before night comes
The brush of a twilight glow, when nothing can be done -
Gaze steadily, until the last has gone
The passing, fading, slowing down
Close your eyes,
Never to see another dawn
Now that the night has come
Now that, at last, it ends
Alone

© C.A.L. 1996

16.

There was a young man from the moon
Came down to the earth in a swoon
Says he has no regrets
'bout his strange cigarettes,
But he swears they wear off far too soon

© C.A.L. 1987

17.

Beneath this beautiful crystalline dark
The night wrenches softly apart
This is the sadness that Sylvia saw
That crushed her tormented heart
This is Keats' grape upon the tongue
The honey gall that Moore spoke of
This is the horror that haunted Poe
That rose to Rayleigh from dust and tomb
The cry of every hurt and every kiss
Of every sorrow and every bliss
Of the wonder and terror of that, and this -
This world's soul

© C.A.L. 2001

18.

Does it rain, or is it just the wind
softly, in the distance
A gentle menace, somewhere outside,
In the darkness, beyond the glass

I sit, tightly curled in my solitude
and, drawing inwards
I want to lock the world completely out
My fingers tremble
I laugh and cry and scream - inside

For just a moment, in this beautiful loneliness
I want none of the world's plurality
As I raise my open mouth to the sky
no sounds come out
alone, and only in that instant
I am I

19.

A gentle sunlight warms a glade
Unfurnished but for one stone chair
I passed this way but yesterday
To find a woman weeping there

The air was soft but yielded not
It was scented with a raw despair
As if her tears had crushed the grass
That bent but neither knew nor cared

I knew this clearing very well
The ephemeral moment of the unseen now
And none of us could linger there,
As she did yet, but how?

I love a man, she said, and he
Went into the darkness ahead of me
He has left me here in this silent grave
With its mocking sunlight and a blossoming tree

I could not wait and yet I said,
He did not choose nor did he go
ahead, but rather stayed behind
Unwilling, trapped; he could not follow

You know the gate seals shut too soon,
And none have found those crumbs of bread
To pick back along that winding way, and yet who knows?
If such a door there is, it lies ahead

Look for it there, since forever we
Are forced like cattle from gate to gate
While the autumn leaves mound up between,
and tomorrow never comes - nor does it wait

She made no reply but stared behind
And though she could not go back that way
Nor would she come along with me
A compelling ghost did bid her stay

I acknowledge not the power of death
she murmured then, to part us so
not now nor at any time to come
- I will force that door, I will not go

And thus drawn onward inevitably
I left her behind in that garden of now
And in the fading dim distance of yesterday saw
Two shadows as the sun set low

20.

Silver, a metallic death, a bullet or a knife -
This shadow flowing, like water from a cleft of mountains
Waiting, ironic with a gift of life
Taunting my nights on heavy wings,
And where can I go now?
My fierce angel of strength and despair -
You are the silence come to silence me,
Crushing the faltering beat of my heart,
Denying, this interminable echo of distance
Increments of the inevitable
And where can I go now?
Drunk with the sweat of this summer air,
Alive with this fever from god-knows-where
Waiting, listless, for paralysis,
Because I know only too well what is coming next -
The taste of blood, and ecstasy, and mortal pain
Of broken, unfinished, magnificent things
And where can I go now?

C.A.L. 2008

21.

Your ocean has no safe harbours
not one single restful port that anyone, adrift in you, could make for
no one seeking shelter from the weight of your storms
could ever find safe passage to your wild, wind-thrashed shores
You change as swiftly as the sky does, from brilliant searing blue to ice-cold grey,
thunder black or peerless nights where a million glistening stars
Unreachable things, shower thoughtless light to catch the curling edges
of those waves that sweep the sandy shoals of your submerged, deceptive bars
While above your depths, green water mountains dangerously conceal
Reefs and shoals of judgement, and jagged rocks of haste,
terrors and riches and treasures sunk across your life
by those whom you have wrecked and laid to waste
There come these hurricane moments when I feel my lamps
Too weak to thread the spray and gloom, to find your heart - if you have one,
rusted, perhaps, with a vengeance for all the weather has wrought
Or dried like strands of weed stretched tight beneath a sargasso sun
But I know that I can yield to flow
across the very worst your seas can do
So try to drown me if you must -
I will still be there tomorrow, somewhere at anchor, defying you

C.A.L. 2008

22.

Loving you
is
like a night where the sun won't come up
no matter how I wish for the warmth against my face

it's
Like walking through snow
So cold and so slow
though I'm numb to it now

it's
Like falling down and getting up, over and over
tear-blinded bruises again and again
this jagged disdain

it's
Like some bittersweet poison I continue to drink
in spite of knowing better
this deadly thirst I have for you

like a rare and brilliant lamp that won't ever come on
in the dark, when I'm lost and I most need it to
... this, this is loving you

C.A.L. 2009

And for anyone who is interested,

The Battlefield

Originally scheduled to be published in Drow Magazine
back in the early nineties. I think I've learnt a little about
writing since then, but probably not as much as I should...