You follow the footprints of words
Dissolving in the tides.
Deliberately illegible.
Smirking their mystery
And age-old knowledge.
Waiting for you to stop
And see
That you don’t need to read
What you already know.
This goddess commands the winds with a breath.
I just forget to breathe occasionally in the face of your straight-jacket stare.
Creative Project
I am working on a creative project
Of sinew and bone
Delicately formed
With Frankenstein touch
A project to live
Beyond my years
And take my gaze to the future
Stitched together with love
And beautiful oddments
To create something more
Beautiful
Than anything I had to give
Beyond possession
And seeped in ancient knowledge
Eyes that see what I do not
See through to what I hide
See through to sinew and bone
And transform my soul in their image
Firing the soft clay of my clay
In their Medusa gaze.
And I freeze
My heart too full for anything else
VENICE
The milky waters come in and out, suckling the city with life
until its saturated skin can no longer contain such abundance.
Inhabitants take to the boards to perform their dumb show
of ordinary existence
in this extraordinary place.
At times I look down into the liquid dark and see only a street lamp from some other city,
submerged in history,
and a face looking back through time
that I barely recognise as my own.
I understand narcissus’ longing to see more,
swim deeper,
rediscover ancient knowledge.
I am falling
Under the spell of this promise of Atlantis.
And yet the pseudo street still throngs
with those still air- dependent,
teetering on their tightrope,
not looking down.
They do not see my hidden gills and my longing
For a life amphibious.
Splash.
Ripple.
Stillness.
And I am gone.
