Romantic Friday Writers Challenge 44

At Romantic Friday Writers Denise Covey and Donna Hole host a cool fortnightly challenge every other Friday.  This entry is for Challenge 44, read more about the challenge here.   You don’t have to be a member of RFW to participate, so go on over there and join in.

 

For the last challenge at RFW, Madeleine did a very interesting entry to illustrate the role of different POVs, which has influenced this post. My thanks to her, and to Denise, Donna and all the supportive community at RFW.

 

I.

You offered up bruised berry lips

in the morning, a small smear of latte
flicked off by a delicate fingertip
but the 8.20 to the city
was about to get away

 

I should have kissed you

taken your mouth in mine
Now a crushed frangipani moue
a quiver of lipline
nag at time

 

 

the work hours subtly cleft

peach and velvet hardly there
brush against the intercept
weird reminders everywhere
around the desk

 

I should have kissed you

brushed first the mystic
corner and then the honeydew
sucked off from bare dawn lips,
drunk in the morning musk

 

Over the city, far in the west

the sky flames coral and brick
a disgruntled sun sets
in shades of yesterday’s stale lipstick,
radiating pinpricks of regret

 

even cars parked in neat rows

streetlight glinting off high glossed
metallic pink curves and furrows
point to the moment that’s been lost
hard to forget

 

I should have kissed you

just once, breathless, slowly slipped
into that heightened oblivion...the train’s late, and anyhow
you’re working the evening shift
you’ll be gone

  

the evening is dark and chill

the house  an ominous silhouette
the shrubs in the garden are stern and still,
details grossly inadequate
and the lonely porch light battles on....   

 

 

II.

 

Skin to skin the entire night

with you as we slept
the curtain cracked with morning light
when you left
and still I ached

 

 

the smell of coffee, rumpled sheets
and men’s cologne
the faint strawberry feel of cheeks
a strong jawbone
in places nicked

 

oh, the rasp of a neatly clipped

bushy moustache
on pulsing, plump yearning lips
and the warmth, the rush....
but the door shuts on a poor bargain

 

I should have kissed you

walked up to you when you didn’t
stop; taken your mouth into
mine, breathed in the musk and mint
there and then

 

there’s still the dent on the pillows

to curl into
the memory of a sensuous, slow,
fragrant night’s languor in lieu
of the man

 

and I relive each touch of your lips

just hours before
from the left ankle to the closed eyelids.
Quiver once more
replaying angel-lace and deep electric,

 

hardly breathe

as I recall
each brush and bite, the slow seep
of fire and ice, the rise and fall
of bodies and souls totally rapt

 

I should have kissed you when I could

but now I’ll wait
till you’re back again in my arms, and it’ll be good
because I’ll have to anticipate
what’s given up in thoughtless haste.

 

WC-419
FCA

 

Chase

The noise of the rain like the rush of wind

against membranes, the landscape thinned
down to mute subdued smoky hued
rough thumbprints of colour, crude
strokes painted quick on windscreens
melting glass and chrome, new born greens
slapping their arms then flinging them wide
welcoming a rowdy day outside

 

have you left this conversation?

I can’t quite see the million
curtailed rays reflected in your crystal mind
I’ve listened for but still can’t find
the resonance of your voice in the thread
but it echoes round in the dome of my head
in mocking whisper mode quickly cut off
by other noises of pettiness that go on non-stop.

The long trumpet note of an elephantine truck

swells and ebbs trailing flash red cargo. Just my luck
to be stopped by red lights at the train lines
crowded level crossing, screaming signs -
danger, don’t walk. Don’t allow yourself to be lost
between parallel silver tracks.  Not to be crossed
on foot.  A movement of air disguised as a breeze
precedes the train’s, and most other, entries.

 

have you left this squirming post

walked through someplace not to be crossed
on foot? I’ve strained to listen but can’t hear
the slow slap of your sole anywhere near
though some bootprints mark the mud lane
strewn with the debris of mundane
leaves, of days and nights; withered, squashed
by the invisible thread of the car exhaust.

 

 

Makeshift gates tremble open and closed
a few bars of steel keep traffic paused
on lanes that fail to hide their mud with asphalt
tyres and hearts sink a little. This halt
hasn’t been taken into account, a waste, wasted
time segments. torn oranges trailed by another thread
of black ants, unspoken words that endlessly crawl
round and round the dome and spiralling wall.

 

have you left behind the trembling gate

squirming silver tracks, the talk and debate
that froth in the veins of lanes and mud
unravelling spools of words, unheard
useless noise brimming over the rainsounds
have you altogether abandoned the grounds?
How then does the chocolate darkness of your voice
still drop over domes and walls and all petty noise.


Linked to OPL@ dVerse

The cup shakes

I carve no wooden images of your face

and neither sit with fingers poised at my ear,

yet the sound of your name in the dark

is moonlight glancing off an unlit chandelier;

it is the desert dawn, without birdsong

a silent wash of colours, gloriously austere.

No images, yet the cup shakes in my hand,

its quicksilver contents tremble with reflections here.

 

I don’t scribble the letters of your name

when I sit alone, I don’t engineer

signs that might make you feel closer,

within my countries somewhere near;

yet the skinfolds of my own knuckles

become your prints, some souvenir

that has been smudged across my hands.

No names, yet what I write is not unclear.

Tritina on the broken road

Two halves of a road rarely make a whole
I’m used by now to stick to left or right

it doesn’t matter where they split or meet

 

don’t tell me now the laws of wrong and right

the moon’s congealed, it’s too late to meet

and again make my broken things whole

 

and even all that’s perfect does not meet

each norm for being pure and whole

the moon’s full just once a month by right

 

It’s not whole, but the road's right; whether or not we meet.

 

 

For : Form for all@dVerse

Wanted to use this prompt here, but as usual got in too late. Story of my life! Borg de Nobel.

Nothing pinned

In one flick I let it go

like a knife-thrower at a circus
and it strikes home
trembling at its place
beside your face
but nothing is pinned
it leaves you free
to walk away

 

Did I tell you

my foremothers
were hewers of wood
and tillers of land?
they had nothing to do
with throws of sharp edged knives
at love or life.
Or poetry.

How then have I wandered

into this marquee
in sequinned
leotards, you and me?
distorted blood in my veins
knife in hand, between my teeth
cutting silver arcs
in the air and nothing pinned.



For OPL@dVerse

Lovers' Cove Challenge #4

 

It's that time again! Time to head on over to apd-loverscove.blogspot.com, otherwise known as Lovers' Cove and take part in this week's challenge! Please read the Guidelines and Q's & A's thoroughly before entering! In short, you must come up with a line of 15 words or less and your line must continue on in thought based on what the previous person on the linky wrote!

 

Andy

"Behold! I am renewed again, for the spirit of love has descended upon my heart!"

  

Crystal

"Years, I've wandered aimlessly through the midst of the shadows trying to elude the dark."

 

Elen

"Darkness isn’t always so dark becomes hope when our imagination wants to look for a light."

 

Radwa

"A light that has been trying to find its sight through such darkness night."

 

 

Kriti

"This darkness becomes me, I am but the light of our shadow that quivers."

 
 

Eclipse

"Yearning for a flight towards the dream, away from the claws of fear."

 

Lubaina

"And I rise, rise towards destiny till what the heart wants seems so near."

 

My line

"Yea, and  so I rise, wearing this darkness that’s also light, like sapphires beyond price."

 

Not eternal, but still sure

Whether you are here, or somewhere remote
love doesn’t spare distances a single thought
when you are here, and when you are far
I am who I am, you are who you are

 

I’ve known that somehow, without knowing anything

though days are frittered misunderstanding
the connections between us, but it’s always true
that I am still me and you are still you 

 

Love isn’t frail and it doesn’t waver

whether we’re apart or we’re together
I claim nothing about eternal, but of this I’m sure
I know who I am, and I know who you are.

 

It’s just that these eyes as they get old

well up a little quicker as you cross the threshold.

RFW Challenge 43: Romantic Picnic

 

The night’s starry and fine

Let’s not waste our hours indoors
I’ll lift your mood with mine

 

Wouldn’t you prefer to dine

On the leaf-layered forest floor?
The night’s starry and fine

 

Bread and a bottle of wine

Under canopies of sycamore
I’ll lift your mood with mine

 

The learned poets opine

True lovers need nothing more
The night’s starry and fine

 

There’ll be firefly designs

And moon-shadows to explore
I’ll lift your mood with mine

 

Let our laughter combine

And forget your troubles sore
The night’s starry and fine
I’ll lift your mood with mine



This is my first submission to Romantic Friday Writers.

The back lanes of grief

Let us go back then, along the footbridge from stranger,

wider roads where the dented single-decker buses
sag with the weight of droopy passengers
breathe out a long sigh and move on. A street urchin washes
some indeterminate materials at the tube well
maybe they were once clothes, no-one can tell
what they are now, sudden onrushes
of winds? exhausts? makes them swell
out in grey and khaki. Messy romances
start and end by the wayside in sudden flashes.

Let us see if we can somehow recover

the same tracks of miracles and mistakes
though a million feet have trampled them over –
the tea-beakers shattered into terracotta flakes
mixed in now with the muddy rainmade brooks
flowing fast and surreptitious in the nooks
of the kerb and the road. But retakes
are rare.  All loving is messy if one looks
close enough, and associated heartaches
need not end though there are gaps and breaks.

The evening closes over the city and us

like the parted waters of the sea come together and close
after the gods have churned them for poisonous
swills and immortality elixirs.  The wind blows
a streamer of scorched smells from the welding workshop
over our heads. We are compelled to stop
at all the places of our past waiting in rows
to be made over into the future. The stars drop
into their spaces overhead, a bus comes and goes
without us dangling from its bony elbows. 

We’ve spent the first mists before darkness

in walking fairgrounds beside the strangely wide road -
the grasses creep up, the clots of people get less
the odd jobber wraps up his mask and electrode
the lampposts switch their lights on in one sweep.
Come now my love, along the back lanes of grief
stories may get messy but must be given what is owed -
an ending, a disclosure, and an unshaken belief
that mistakes too are precious, equally hallowed;
that its gold may be thin but will not corrode.


Linked to : Blog hop Saturday

Missing you

Where are you? I sorely miss the poetry

of your presence, though it’s nothing iambic
and I miss the flick
and flash of your tools, the free
flow words, the offhand trick
of slow turning thoughts, the silence slick
with them, flooding into me.

My days are the vast bare plains

when the bright small spots of the tourist balloons
have floated above them and then left, afternoons
of ancient tombs, honeycombed terrains,
exhausted birdcalls losing their tunes
and a lone heron pacing out flamingo lagoons
among flocks of indifferent standstill cranes.

Closet

The shutter creaks open, peeled paint

flakes into a crude mask of a grimace

brows knitted together in some faint

puzzlement, at any rate a close enough likeness

Why should it take so long to clear cupboards

of diaries and dresses and shoes someone wore

of post-it scraps, scrawled numbers and words

stuck on the back of a wooden door

Why does it take so long to return?

Why do hands pause at the drawer?

before making a bent key finally turn

this last time and then no more, no more

the shutter creaks shut, the sound high and thin

the flakes of paint fall gently. Clods on coffins.

Missing things

I miss the nuggets the earth once threw at me

coarse and greased with its intimate fluids
I wish I hadn’t frittered them, pushed free

the broken hollows of the darkwood tree

limbs frozen in sky-battle, wearied
I miss the nuggets the earth once threw at me

the prods and blades, the spikes of weaponry

the paws and claws of scrubs that look timid
I wish I hadn’t frittered them, pushed free

heartsongs of deserts carried as winds’ confetti

grains within grains singing soft but lucid
I miss the nuggets the earth once threw at me

dove-grey afternoons, monsoons, the galaxy

of starspined raindrops and pierced eyelids
I wish I hadn’t frittered them, pushed free

the clean cleft coasts by the salt fringed sea

the lethal cuts on lands minced by liquids
I miss the nuggets the earth once threw at me
I wish I hadn’t frittered them, pushed free.