Dark and Slow

-Dark and Slow-

Departed self,
That eked out the remnants of this flame,
across the oceans of your time,
doused in the dying embers of some fornicating wine.

Where have you gone? whispered the wind,
as she laughed, and blew dim shadows of you,
across the anguish of this yawning chasm,
the silent gap, between the hope and the jaw.

Where have you gone? I asked the maw!
the leaping heart that swam the rift,
before the rising tide of this bodies burning bridge,
the lift, a fallen memory now, blown into a void, disavowed.

Oh drowning heart, that slips upon the tides,
becalmed upon a devils isle, denied,
did your flesh not ache?
With every titillated breaking wave,
that crashed upon these shores,
the aching craw of this love.

The licking flame at night,
your tongues of fire
devouring each quivering morsel of my soul,
the crack of solid  bone
slapped upon the yielding sopping swell of your tide,
consumed in soulful yelps of this hungering ride.

Where have you gone? I yelled into the earth!
a sounding board of dust and death,
a dry and treacherous still birth.
What care he for all the broken shards shattered in the dirt,
crushed beneath the gravitas in the belly of his girth.

Oh raging heart,
when all the world lay between your toes,
bowing to the splendor of wild blossom in the summer grass,
the heaven of these untouched meadows,
throbbing to the silken joy of this touch,
you never asked so much as a tear be added
to the trembling brook,
as it ran beneath each naked breast, kissed,
lest the suckling waves
that lap upon the crowning tip in slips,
dry within this sunlit kiss.

Where did you go?
caught now between the silence and the woe,
fraught with only the echoing glimpses of your soul,
the empty pieces scattered in the dust,
the dull reflections of this hearts sullen hollow.

Dark and slow,
Where did you go?

© Richard Michael Parker 2012

The Embankment

The Embankment

A sultry autumn night on the Thames,
jazz drifting from the bridge,
mingling with the garish crowds on the Southbank.
A tuneful rendition of body and soul,
melodiously drifting upon the water,
feeding upon the hum of the hungry traffic,
zipping between the bars,
spilling their patrons onto the sidewalk,
between the sips and the cars,
a jocund fraternity of the night,
a fashioned modernity painted with apocryphal light.
Heads swim in the sensate din,
a tidal wash of inebriated pandemonium,
imbibing the last warm airs of the year,
violating each ear, awash in cocktails and beer.
The final melancholic confession of that brooding saxophone,
slips across the licking waves,
gently tonguing your lilting head
as it rests upon the needle,
a thread of sensibility,
cast across a world in an ageless eternity.
The Sphinx riddles the dawn,
the silence and the scorn of winters cool death,
born upon the sidewalks of this old town, forlorn,
within the fog of another cacophonous hang over.
Slinking in the back streets, lost,
half lit denizens drifting aimlessly through the mist.
Skulking on the corners, on the edges, the rim,
shuffling worn out shoes across white hot coals,
outcasts and refugees, torn naked, clothed in despair,
eyes turned downward, they wait for you there.
The idle tick of a sentient clock,
taps in time its cane upon the cobblestones,
Big Bens bones, Boom into the dark,
A cat screams, creaks and dreams,
beyond the shadow eyes of the cold and stark.
Swift wisdom comes upon the unsuspecting,
the nonchalant swagger of innocence,
easing between the crack in the light,
the ham bone in the pea soup of our night,
the gullible gorms of the river rats delight.
This breath, this moment, silence,
between the changing of the guard,
and Old Scotland Yard, I found you once again,
upon the Embankment of that ancient rivers gory flow,
screaming as a testament to every lovers woe.
You laughed as we fell upon your banks,
ever changing, exchanging your vows,
while all the world wondered, as you plundered,
the spoils from the sacrifice of all those sacred cows.
The lilting trill of the dawns chorus,
replaced with a big red bus,
like the blood running down the back of Boadica's race,
the tar and feathers of your fallen disgrace,
risen once more upon all of us.
Gold, that glints upon the water once more,
gold, and all the flotsam that has washed upon this shore.

© Richard Michael Parker 2012