Magenta Rising

Honesty intrudes the unadorned hour

An unexpected breakfast in magenta shadows of wolves

-Love on a platter

pureed

creamed

frozen

melted

pulverized

molded 

sculpted

-And presented

Garnishing with laces of parsley and grenadine

She slumbered for hours, centuries

Awakened by a disheveled scream

Stirring the smell of cranberries

While other women dine on crumbs of their idolatry

You starve yourself

Nay, you’ll not find her ravenous curls

In the chocolaty abysses of Hell

Bring out the hammock and mirrors

We’re going to watch the sun rise with our backs to it.

-Kore Gleason

On the other side of stately morning;

You’re undressing into more comfortable attire

Of cranberry kisses

and slumber sweetly

Simmering in the heat of unventured love

Smoke filled

dryly chilled

finely willed

mercy killed

waters still

honey spills

Over her body

over her pristine bedsheets

And splashing to the floorboards to feed a monster

beneath it all

As I searched the world for precious things;

olive oil, a perfect circle and two identical snowflakes

She merely dreams with her mind so sharp

the nature of the beast is not slain

but cleanly rearranged under her instruments

Her night is my rising hour

To which I rearrange the words of my cobalt haiku

And slip between the strings of her magenta morning.

-a.s. barnabe

Ink

May ink connect us in all ways
and sew together our souls skin tight.
On these pages and on our flesh
we'll spill ink all over the night.
Ink will write sacred rites
which can never be undone.
Ink will mark us yours and mine
and bend the moon and sun.
Ink will draw the plans
of a future building empires.
We'll be safe behind the fine face
of a phoenix straight from pyre.

Perfection

We lay down our weight

buried in sleep and cotton sheets.

Our hold is perfection,

two shapes made for each other.

Press down on the bedsprings

press down on my heart

and the fine winding tendrils

that have been there from the start.

I have been chasing sidewalk

as the street rolls up behind me.

The beggar man sits hand open to change,

all I have for him is "everything is strange".

Devils and angels followed me to the Tavern

and suddenly life's not what I'd arranged.

So live, lay, and love in our perfection,

in benediction and bed sheets

in dragons and belfries,

your construction in me grows.

Shake the earth and quake the seas

because in all reality 

it's just you and me.

Tigers

I never felt from such shame
but we wanted what we wanted,
I held your mind I knew your game.
You need what you need
but I will always be haunted.

There was a dance for me
but that's all it was;
no celestial alignment from above.
All deeds and word
are beyond good and evil,
if they are an act of love.

Maybe I could have loved your soul more,
maybe I was in love with your name;
our tantric pose
our untimely snow,
we cracked the innocence
of the soulmate game.

Wreckage

You are my most compelling vice.
The round tips of you fingers
whose touch no longer lingers
through my affections,
nor across the fiber of my compassion.
You had the blueprints of my heart
and piece by piece you dismantled it.
I built a flying machine
from the wreckage of your chaos.

Bonfire

There’s something calling

from the blue moon ascending,

and the light of the bonfire

sweeps over your skin.

I light a smoke and don’t think twice

about how I hadn’t in six months.

The past doesn’t count,

when night is falling.

When night is falling the joker’s wild.

It’s dare or double dare;

no room for the falsehoods of truth.

Graveyard statues see the night time

breathing freely in the fog,

Repentance burns away the day

and small creatures come to life.

Slow song from the Ovation guitar

and the lake is a mirror.

In perfect formation the birds dive low,

low tides and lowlands,

this place is a willow;

strong in a storm but gentle as the lamb.

On Paper Wings

You fall again from the sky

like a letter in the wind,
floating close but out of reach...
the torment starts again

I hear you sighing in the photographs.

It slips into my ears
filling me up with starry skies,
twisting sharply into fear.

Devils and angels rage on all night.
The madness screams into the dark.
I'm of sound mind and body,
but insanity's racing through my heart.

Everyone hides a secret
embedded deep behind the scars.
Tell my why my scars still bleed,
like the weeping light of dying stars.

My darkest hour will never end
feverishly haunted with a ghost.
I was fortune's fool in fleeting time.
I gambled with the one I loved the most.

Crimson and clover fall under the black
but the tempest has yet to subside.
Once it's gone you can never go back,
the desert is the other side.

Fate is cruel and time is mean.
Exile makes sanity collapse.
Never fall prey to regrets,
because you can't change the past

Again you're drifting out of sight
as my soul begins to sleep.
Tomorrow you'll be gone again
and I can barely breathe.

I search the sky but there's no stars,
just a desolate moon and city light.
Winter's chill runs through my veins,
for everyday there's another night.