Your name is a whisper
the slow serpentine hush
the almost sound of breath
like breezes or brushes
ocean breakers gushing
in a rush of water
flushing in the dry sands

it rumours in the air
like sudden awareness
or lovers unwinding
in glimmering moon-glow
their silver bodies spent

I have nothing to bring
only the dress of stars
from the far velvet night.
A moment’s blistered flare
A glimpsed winking sky
Between the curtains’ folds

I breathe these few slight words
dance on the rim of dawn
to make a stuttered prayer
in my trembling fingers

Now I wait in seconds
in slumbering minutes
on the day’s bright harbour
counting the rosary
of your voyaging sleep

A moment breathing
Waiting for tides and fair winds
The stars move, listen.

A moment broken
Voices arc in the dark dawn
The stars fade, leaving.

You wait at doorways,
Linger in the dying dream,
Silent in your stars

I feel your breathing
In chill ripples on my skin.
Will you speak of stars.

or moments

or tides

or dawn

Brittle bright iced morning
Sun screaming across a harmonic sky
Misty windows clearing.

Work clatters to a halt
You sip cantina coffee and listen
As children beg biscuits

October afternoon
The Sun, behind the mist, between the trees
Pretends to be the Moon.

The iron runs steaming
Its slow warm dance across the shirts and sheets
As quiet evening falls.

You spark words with a friend
Discuss the politics of open love
With no point to defend.

I saw you once resting
Sweeping the hair from you lips with your hand
You gave a glancing smile.

These fine thoughtless  moments
Like unexplained dreams will last forever
Are dreams but dancing dust?

Is all of this madness?
If so I cling to this insanity
Plain, Beautiful, Hopeless!

We gather them,

These stolen moments,
These orphaned seconds,
These lost dark minutes.

Stateless, Unattached,
These refugee clicks
With no form or voice
Do not belong here.

We pile them up,

These off cuts of time,
These shards of passing,
This swarf of tempo.

Shreds of interval
And dislocation
With no named event
To give them title.

And with our small words we bind them,
A suture in the wounded day,
To make a tiny poem of the scars.

In a thin misty slow the sky ghosts towards grey
And constellations of streetlamps flatter
the suburban quiet with kind shadows.

my fingers feel fertile and full of intent,
as they scratch st my butterfly activity;
while you still sleep beneath the weight of dreams.

Do not fret I will not wake you with brass
Or the soundings of tymbals thundering
But with fingers whispering at your hair.

my lisping tongues voices in soft low echoes
Against the thin filaments of your flesh,
I speak sweet sibilant kisses of sound.

I bathe you in murmurs like vague perfume.
My breath trembles penitent at your neck
summoning the grace of your awakening

I utter my quiet hallelujahs
Into the pores of your arching body
And feel tremors burn through your sheer light being.

And I will taste the Eucharist of you
In the undoing, the final writhing
That cures the heart with blessings of release.

Transactions have redundant residuals
The remnants of commerce and trade
In pockets the small dust of currency
The left over cash of price paid

The clinking froth of things purchased
The metal remains of exchange
the leavings of costs and desire
the chinking bulk of loose change

It fits in you grasp like genitals
Warm, round with a vague sense of sin
What used to be golden and silver
Is now mainly nickel and tin

We are tired of the weight in our pockets
We are shamed by the drag of its need
For if it should fall from our fingers
We forsake our grace for our greed

For there is something quite reassuring
When you empty your pockets at night
You glimpse a glance of old memories
The sixpence of childhood’s delight

If you steal my heart
There will be no stain;
No red sudden mark
Like faint tears in rain.

There will be no stain
If the breast should flood.
Like faint tears in rain
Blood will hide in blood.

If the breast should flood
In my open shirt
Blood will hide in blood
There will be no hurt.

In my open shirt
In this silent place
There will be no hurt;
Until death’s dark grace.

In this silent place
Silence will remain
Until death’s dark grace
Steals the heart again.