This Our Elemental Diary
I hold a giant shell in my hands
And listen to the whirling sea
Held against my ear,
A tune rings from the bell of it's heart
Your name rides in
on the backs of coral shrimp,
But these riptides that steal you from me
have no mercy.
They ravage my clinging,
and mock your memory.
If tomorrow was truly another day,
and if tonight was truly another night,
with you!
I could forgo all this meddling
of the elemental gods,
as they play upon my abandon.
The universe has claimed us,
and we are cast into the wandering voids.
No longer two! No longer one!
Our passion has scattered
amongst the floating petals
of nebulous roses, dried and dust.
Our diary, imprinted on the shores of yesterday
tell, that with each new tide, these entries fade.
Soon their twilight etchings will blow
with the sand on the wind.
The gulls shall lose interest,
and breaching swells will tire
of washing us clean,
for they are seers.
© Sepember 9/2001 Arlene Longson
Evening Shade
The loon beak falls silent .
Evening’s shade obscures what I know.
The night obscures this days' innocence
Its shadow stays when it goes
Though your tongue a sculptor
And your touch lay my heals to rest
Your heart was never my lover
Your kisses were given in jest.
Your ebb can no longer tease
In these harvest September nights
Their cool gails stale your ominous breeze.
My slumber drops you from sight.
© September 9/2001 Arlene Longson
Lovers Message From The Sea
She speaks to the sea,
In the evenings by a tree.
By the light of the moon,
She whispers “it’s me”.
She sends forth her song,
And it’s echo is long.
Adrift he climbs mast,
And this message he casts.
Swim to my side, oh lover of mine.
My heart beats only for your breast.
Sing to my wine, untether my line.
I promise I'll send off the rest.
Sing me one song, to keep my heart strong,
Your perfume I will not forget.
No other belongs, It’s you I have wronged.
Forever, I'll sing in your net.
© Arlene Longson August 30/2001
Distilled Sketches
Your pearl sprayed rainbow shimmers on my shoulder
Like dew stratifies rose petals
Your impaled thorn anchors visceral nights
It’s angled barb does not wane.
For it wants no other .
I have sought no honeyed inoculation .
No ready poise, No monument.
Only you and this fetal position.
It’s rotting evolution.
And vaporous embryo.
My thundered shroud does mock
Your one fateless strike,
Though stealth, and razor, by proxy.
Your careless caustic preying digestion
These slowly distilled,rolled sketches
Skeleton in the attic.
© Arlene Longson August 16/2001
Indian Paint
Your blanket of stars wraps my chilled body
You set flames to my water,and my cold stilled blood
Night draperies fall down on the earth so wantonly
And you're on the other side of my collapsed axis.
Bring forth your meadows of stones one by one.
Lay them down as soldiers beneath me.
Armed and stoic ,not breathing.
At your command ,as I, as I have always been.
The Indian paint brush knows your will
And the crushing flowers fold and dry.
They crumble with or without you.
So it matters not your infinite blight.
There is no rage that can atone or exact you.
It is I who walks this stage solo and half.
The sun lights the page where it needs to be lit.
And it’s awareness caresses the rock where I sit.
This knee shall be scathed no more.
This breath will no longer be shallow or true.
My song will no longer stumble and whore.
My poems will no longer be written for you.
© Arlene Longson August 12/2001
Ghost And Me
You are the broken glass on my sandy refuge.
Your jaggers pierce my leathery layers like buttercups.
You embed your haunt in the flesh of my ache.
And I wince at the thought of your dissipation.
Your aroma sits at my every meal.
Your taste sneaks forward to bliss my lip.
Send forth not your warning when you steal.
Your theft is the greatest adornment of your whip.
Your halo's hue lays surgically on my brow
In all it's vengance and willful reckon.
Yet you turn my corners softly when you go,
Like the diamond flecks I wish upon.
© Arlene Longson August 11/2001
Paper Boat Ballet
A rift in the curtain of dawn
opens a geometric song.
Aseat on the shore of bygone
we toss scripted toys one by one.
Rippling triangles bend and breathe
bouncing ballet on point to lean.
Toggling bangle stringed to the sea
pouncing on squalls ink blotted green.
rafts of streamers tails to the wind
folds of white paper wispy thin.
Plunging the depths to bouy up again
and into a sunset of razor tin.
© Arlene Longson July 22/2001
|
Valley Of Bees
Hollowed cones call to the sting
to resonate in paper walls.
Serenading gold and wing
lure drapery drops of liquid shawls.
Beating bongs of passions fly
to sip sweet vestige from vessel dry.
Dancing sonnets spawn a web
hips of dill charm dusk to miners lead.
Sticky rivers fold and dry
til falling sacs of pollen spew.
Anesthesia mutes the cry
of the feathered doves who thought it dew.
© Arlene Longson July 21/2001
|
Poetry Is Pain
Poetry is pain spilled on the floor,
mopped up into cups of flesh,
placed in old cupboards of a cerebral sunset.
Hinges rust and crumble until doors swing open.
Wind blows in,rattling cryptic whispering jars.
Bolting cracks creep through glass,
leaking memories onto moldy wood.
Lids unwind,loosening,splitting old chaff.
Falling away,rolling round on coined edges.
Gardens of decay settle on a test pallet.
Seeping petals splash rosewater stings
onto distant wafts, filling reluctant nostrils.
Music from a thousand fires twine,
leaping into solitaire gypsy flames.
Sparks spiral upward,popping smoke balloons.
Peaking,drifting down in breathing umbrellas.
Settling and weaving into hands of
moss meadow beds crawling to the horizon.
However hard I try to hide.
My heart again, a violin!
© Arlene Longson July 15/2001
This Day
Islets of rain dot my window to the sea
and magnify a vision untold to me.
Secrets of the wind unravel whispers of waves
leashing collars of foam once gone astray.
Weeds separate away from tangles of barnacle
streaming through sifts on swells in crackle.
These clustering reefs of vanishing wands
tease blustery sheets of banished gale songs.
This day is my guide to polished clean shores
where I long to find frames of long closed off doors.
I'll swim through your halls of watery moor
to find where you hide and drop you my lure.
© Arlene Longson August 3/2001
Wisdom Of The Rose
Drink not from my aromatic petals
lest you taste the transparency of my dew.
Decorate not your duality with my leaves
nor deny the place they grew.
Pluck not my thorny crown
nor bruise my fragrant way.
My beauty lives from stem to ground
not just in my bouquet.
© Arlene Longson June 28/2001
Stand Stone
Stand stonely at attention now
For it was I who unveiled your
Opaque nature to transparency.
It was I who negotiated your treachery
Fearless and staunch.
It was I who clung desperately
To my own manufactured reasons
To love you, in deliberate oblivion.
It was I who walked the joker's garden,
Followed your scent of vacant lust,
Blooming with false roses and plastic hypnotics.
It was I who crashed,but through my injury
Gently set you down in a bath of northern lights.
It was I who dreamed your dream for you
And mentored my own examples to you.
Stand stonely at attention now
For it was I who pulled you from your burning self
And smoothed you in the aloe vera of my reserve
Singeing my own strives,
As I hardened to porous charcoal
Scraping through your narrowed convolusions.
Stand stonely at attention now
With thyne own jaded mirror
Grip handle tight and in time
Thy image will show clear.
©Arlene Longson August 14/2001
Palisade
Love had a song,like the bird in a cage.
It sat waiting for it's one moment to fly.
It's beauty went unnoticed and it's heart wept.
The rains heavied it's lightness,and it died.
The world kept spinning round,
and time closed it's wings around it's limp soul.
The song's echo carried to the treetops
where it caught the wind and it's wail
fluttered softly among the leaves,
it's keeper's tune fore'remore.
© Arlene Longson August 20/2001
|
Descent
The pines crackle underfoot one after the other
like the round steel on the track
knitting knives, every board.
The echo breaking through
the thick of it’s own walls.
The steam from my night breath
pools into vapor drops,
freezing into ice shattering
upon the rocks like mountains to islands,
melting into rattlers of winding flat diamonds,
rubbing a kiss against the grains
sleeping on the shore, alerts them to dance
to a rhythm of the pounding drumlet
of the hummingbird’s heart.
Who in the gleam of the hawk’s eye
sings to rapture at the moment of descent.
© July 14/2001 Arlene Longson
Crystal Pool
The drop of an echo pushes a lever
mansions of pearls let go tumbling balls.
Stark water rainbows fiddle on feathers
tumble down slides of rough diamond halls.
Up from the bottom of percolate bowls
frothing,then easing to shallow mirrors.
Stir again cauldrons of rotting knolls
murk from the bottom settles to clear.
©Arlene Longson July 22/2001
|
Renegade
I love you
for you bedevil my bones
cast voodoo on my eyes
waste sacrament on my home.
Clergy of my soul
invoke treason in my motive
and devotion in my clothes
and heave roses at my anger.
Accountant of my nights
violate my injury
bind saddle to my fright
bridal to my fury.
Float my ribs
in your pooling footsteps
force me to the siv
paint me on your bootstraps.
© Arlene Longson July 23/2001
Poem For A Pilot ( poetry.com anthology winner)
Here I sit in blackness,
a cold and lonely place.
I stumble through my empty void,
with flashes of your face.
My heart wanders to the time,
when I first flew with you,
you made me leave my fears behind
enough to trust in you.
Since that time I've dreamed a day,
when our hearts could be free.
And we could climb the highest winds
and soar above the trees.
I'd marry the devil himself today
If I could fill your dreams,
And singe my lips on raging flames
If your heart I could please.
My eyes are full and cannot see
for dusk and dawn are one.
Yet I'd forsake all my need
just to guide you to the sun.
© Arlene Longson June 24, 2000 1998
Storm Of The Mermaid
From inside the edge of a creamy charcoal mist
her opaque emerald hourglass fans it's display .
Sea creatures offer themselves to her halo,
luminescing in her fragrant aura.
Her pastel song echoes to ephiphany.
Delerious intoxication fills hollowed swells.
She dances to metaphors, forming lavender dust.
Elusive moonsnails abandon their shells.
Whirling currents envelop orchid tunnels,
staining every listening nostril .
Hypnotic elixirs brush every embroidery.
Drizzles of repent transform into helpless rapture.
All tapestries answer her summons.
Crystal droplets fall from her slow raising tail.
With one deliberate thunderbolt,
she forces it down behind her.
The universe unfolds in her wake.
And then, she is gone !
©Arlene Longson. June 24/2001
|
Silhouette
One moment of silence
while I close my withering eyes.
I rest them in defiance
my reprieve from stormy skies.
A letter here..a memory there
a silly golden ring.
Into the dark I will not stare
or think of you.. sweet sting.
Upon the sill of this old pane
my statue silhouettes.
You’ll see my shadow in the rain
I’ll haunt your past regrets.
When lovers walk and laughter reins
I’ll follow far behind.
And step not near that which blames
Through all the tick of time.
© Arlene Longson June 11/2001
|
Conscience Void
Ignore thine own blaring heart
and it’s unfamiliar tune.
As loud as crickets in the dark
which break the nights of June.
Blind thine eyes to those who know
no signal will you heed.
Patronize the desperate souls
before you as they bleed.
Shake the truth again to death
no words do let them say.
Their souls for you an easy bet
no cost to give away.
None disclose your wicked ways
or unmask your gleaming eye.
The hand is always yours to play
submerged in apple pie.
© Arlene Longson June 12/2001
|
Windswept Tear
One windswept droplet separates itself from gathering pools,
into the abyss,and is caught by the open-faced oyster shell at her feet. As it lay delicately cupped therein...she abandoned one foot to kneel before it. Into it’s shallows she peered.
As her tear began to evaporate, she panicked, and thought to herself; if you leave me here this way, I will have only an empty shell, and I will have to cry another tear to replace you. If you stay, I can get to know you, and cherish you.
Her tear asked, “why would you want to know me , for I have caused you much pain?” She answered her tear and said,"to know you is to love you, and to love you is to cherish you. If I cherish you I can have you at my side, and if I have you at my side, I will never drop you again."
© Arlene Longson June 8/2001
Corridors
A heart drifts down this passage
and haunts at every turn.
a voice without a message
leaves ashes from the burn.
The echo of a longing
reverberates to dust.
a ghostly breaking smoke screen.
finally turns to rust.
A shroud of wind surrounds me
gathering my sheen.
glazing it with chained dreams
lost inside a scream.
I stare at your hypnotics
from inside my abyss.
and realize the caustics
of our last frozen kiss.
© Arlene Longson June 13/2000
Resting River
Now my life has ticked full circle. As the clock rides on the backs of sherpas, and the bird disappears into the corona of the sun of the squinting eye.
Like grains of sand falling from my salty skin after toil and play, and the cracking whip at the end of a wound. The sting burns deep into my palms.
My rivers run green and cool from the ascented mountains of my heart.They meet me in my plexus, where my blue blood merges with my red.
As a boy I stood in my fathers gaze.Through the eye of a needle, he slipped away. As did the dove’s silk from my evening bed. And the lush of her blooms after she left me moist and alone.
To these headwaters of my final river, I bring the distance of my father, and the wrath of my mother,the embryo of my infancy, the tooth of my child. I bring with me the zoom of my dreams, the drama of my sorrows, and the wind of my wings. Oh my wings, my wings. To keep them aloft I breathed devil and angel, fire and fuel. The orchid singed herself and I stole her breath. I bring with me the spent aromatics from her ashes. Some for the river, some for my tongue, some for my pocket,and some for the wind. Her sounds are in the voice of the currents as they hurl into whirlpools of confusion. They escape from the beak of the blue and golds of the foam of her anger. They are born from the haunt of her songs of the sea. Her forms exist in daggers of rain on my tin roof, and in the solitude of my last hour. My last hour. This my last hour on this boulder, on the shores of me.
Still, she tempts me !
© Arlene Longson July 01/2001
Hyacinth Abyss
Fathomless hyacinth, with your collateral orchids,bring me your fragile pearl. I will wrap it in the clarity of sea jellies and succulent emolients of lotus.I will shelter you in night draperies and unfold your dew to the morning ray.
When my froth washes you clean and you stand alone to shine,I know you will be vulnerable to wandering dogs and winged ferocity. I will not stray so far as not to intervene. Always watching, poised, and strong.I will order the sun not to burn your edges dry. If it does not heed, I will command the rains, until vigilante torrents carry you to my depths. I will catch your drifting, and gently set you down on my softest bed. My nurturous vigil will cradle your endangered soul, and my hollowed self will cup your trembling heart.
© Arlene Longson June 30/2001
Wordy Stew
Come In And Wander Thru A Wordy Stew
Simmering With Essence And Aroma For You.
The Scent Of The Rose Is Heaven And Divine
But The Toss Of The Garlic Suits Us Just Fine.
Drop A Sash Of Lavender On Your Way Out
To Lessen The Bitters, Prevent Writer's Gout.
And Leave Us A Poem Or Two Before You Go
Knock Someone Off A Metaphorical Throne.
We Do Love To Analyze And Criticize,
We'll Do It To You Cuz "We" Want The Prize.
©Arlene Longson. June 10/2001
Sweet Stern
Wherever Our Winds Blow
However Long Our Streams
I'll Have The Strength To Row
With You,To Claim Our Dreams.
However Steep The Sails
However Wide The Turns
My Love I Will Not Fail
My Compass At Your Stern.
© Arlene Longson May/2001
|
Click On Shell To Email Arlene