Winters Cool Flame

-Winters Cool Flame-

Winters cool flame,
melts the frozen heart,
the effulgence of snapping tongues,
licking at the stars,
an endless swirl, a giddy dance,
suckled in the presence of our God.
For love is the whole of the law.

Inhale the fragrance,
the heady residue of pollinated musk,
slick between the petals of fire.
Red velvet in your hand;
The frozen land,
melting to the warmth of your touch.

The sallow hearth,
rekindled in the depths at last...
An incandescence of desire,
tossed, like all those past regrets,
upon the glowing embers of this pyre,
consumed within the licking flame,
the holy fire, the screaming of your name.

And out that darkened frigid womb,
the sacred seed, from heat exhumed,
an ancient glow, renewed, reborn,
a risen sun, a golden dawn.

For even in the darkened depths,
the frozen land of past regrets,
Love calls your name.

© Richard Michael Parker 2013





Photograph: Artist Unknown

-À La Carte-

-À La Carte-

Rest well your eyes,
greedily feeding and freed,
the disconsolate lies,
blindly needing,
desirously bleeding the seed.

No longer chained to the banquet table,
slipping between the sable seats;
The fabled goblet of unending wine,
suckled in the fire and the heat.
The tantalizing taste of each dread morsel,
quaffed in a bevy of lascivity.

This licentious concoction imbibed,
a boudoir buffet, the best of selections,
served À la carte, each heart filled projection,
crushed between the palette and the tongue,
far flung, upon the soulful pyre,
the solemn bell, wrung, with every lamb,
slaughtered upon the alter of desire.

Unhaltered greed,
the famished hole, the fleshly treat,
discarding the greens eating only the meat.
The sickly sweet cake of unending frosting,
churning, endlessly yearning for a substance
that will never come.

The flippant and fripperous wave,
the obsolete depths, an intimacy betrayed,
upon the wavelets of a passing shore.
What more could a dolphin crave?
Suckled upon the surface of things.

Too far this sea, this ocean deep,
that swells the fathoms bell far below me.
Too far, too fleeting it's call.

When all the world lay beneath your fingertips,
supped upon some foreign lips,
sucked into the void of thrusting hips,
this oceans swell became a puddle, a pool,
a shallow hell, born lightly, schooled,
in the absence of faith.

Even in the silent hour, I hear your voice,
the shower of your bright body, tossed,
every choice, lost, in the foment of desire,
every cost, has its price.

Rest well your eyes,
greedily feeding and freed,
the disconsolate lies,
blindly needing,
desirously bleeding the seed.

© Richard Michael Parker 2013

A New Home

-A New Home-

I have crossed the world for you...
the vast reaches of time,
only to be with you,
only to form this soul anew.
I have brushed off the darkest spaces,
thrown out the past...
the useless moments and endless stains,
cleansed and waiting only for your touch.
No spot has remained.
No shadow unmoved remains to haunt us.
Endlessly, tirelessly I have worked,
to ready this heart for the knock,
to greet you at the door,
and welcome you home.
To live together as one,
to love in this place,
the warmth and joy of the welcomed space.
Filled with the bright light of loves sweet summer,
Invading each window, a crystal sheen,
spotlessly cleaned.
The hanging frames of windows,
shining in their luminescence.
A rainbow of hope and promise,
entwined and kissed upon the threshold.
I love you with all that I am,
all that I will ever be.
Know that without you,
this space is but a barren shell, a house,
but you my love, have made this soul,
a home.

© Richard Michael Parker 2013

A Quiet River

-A Quiet River-

Could it be any deeper.
This slow eminence of my heart,
weaving between the fractured scars,
a soulful melody that rings the chiming bell,
the shadows released;
Your soft skin gently lain upon my breast,
a heartbeat easing within.
I felt the sinking feeling again,
crossed swords aching in a memory,
and still your skin above me.
The cooing dove that beckons,
'come out of your cave',
'come out into the sun my heart'.
Struck by the moon, a dampened space,
where only heartache has left it's fingerprints.
Learning to trust again can be the hardest lesson of all.
And still your softness surrounds me,
and I feel the flood of this slow love,
a quiet river, sipping at the banks of my heart.

© Richard Michael Parker 2013

A River Deep

-A River Deep-

Our love is like a river deep,
it flows from off the highest peeks,
frozen in the ice of winters chill breath.

At times we wonder where the warmth has gone,
the summer sun, suckled amidst a warm kiss,
vanishes in the mists, a silky dew of loss and remiss,
leaving only the memory of each naked breast,
teased between soft fingertips,
lain upon the frigid climbs to rest.

We doubt the fire, the passion of summers past,
in these days of coddled hibernation,
Yet, natures ways arouse even in the coldest season.

The thaw of springs first melt,
the frozen heart, felt, beneath the rapids tilt,
the chaos and the roar,
the thrusting hilt released upon the risen Tor.

All doubt consumed in the rolling hills of chaos,
a flood from off the mountain top.
We need only wait, with faith and patience,
a kinder fate, for minds locked in icy anticipation.

The river runs, a foments might,
amidst the rocks and scraggy boulders,
this love, one year older.

Widening out into summers, lark sweet meadows,
the somnolence and crush of sated flesh,
two souls reclined on sunlit bowers, no shadows,
compete with dew dropped lips, in heat, enmeshed.
The moistened fingers dipped in waters sweet.

Fear not the frozen hour,
Know only that nature has her seasons,
her reasons for the silent moment.
The quiet too is a balance of divinity.
An Angels silent wings,
brushed, across the surface of things.

And all too soon again we plunge,
rush, revel in the waters crush,
even the wide shallows are embraced,
a quiescent grace, sucked into the air,
to shower down upon the mountain peaks,
the gathering drifts, cuddled snowflakes,
to rest again, and sleep beneath emotive cliffs.

This ice and glory, the fire and the frigid flame,
are but natures endless cycles, the seasons change,
but the stories the same.

Our love is like a mountain thaw,
the river runs deep,
in timeless circles, evermore,
one love, with you, complete.

© Richard Michael Parker 2013

Come As You Are...

Come As You Are...

Come as you are... My Heart;
Wrapped in the night and dressed with stars,
that we may swoon upon the whispering tails of comets,
and dance upon the silver lighted moon.

Come as you are... My Soul;
Dripping in the glow of incandescence,
the showering meteor's throw of sensual essence.
heaving upon the world, a bursting glory,
the dazzling illumination of this lovers story.

Come as you are... My Flesh;
And I shall build a tower of skin to hold you,
enfold you, in a silken supple lair,
to rock you, endlessly, in the cradle of my stare.

Come as you are... My Whole;
Until in dreams we drift upon a beach,
the lunging surf of each eternal instance,
the golden sands crushed beneath our reach.
A flood of love enjoined from out the distance.

Come as you are... My Breath;
And we shall drape our souls entwined,
drunk upon the honey and the wine,
of lips no distant that the parting of each wave,
a unity of breath, a sun from out the grave.

Come as you are... The Music and the Dance.

For all the world has heard the trumpet and the lyre,
the cymbals and the horn, the rapture of desire.
The swirling giddy grace of love triumphantly reborn,
entranced within a sweet embrace, to dance upon the dawn.

Come as you are... My Love
for as you are, Am I.
Come.

© Richard Michael Parker 2013

Paramour

Paramour


My Queen of Luminosity!

Who doth shine in my night, shrouded in the stars of a thousand wishes, who beams with recovered sunlight, who kisses the smiles and dreams of loves delight between each passing cloud...

...It is you, I have waited for, on the shore of contentment, seeking from across the bow waves of eternity the shimmering light of your glory, the dancing lip of each wind swept slip of time, the dips, the swirls of your infinite caress. Shining from out your countenance, a glimmering story, spoken in whispers, of fated lovers, entwined beneath their starlit covers, two drifters, shrouded in moonlight are we...

Long have I waited, and ever have you shone upon me there. Yet lo, the lights of dawn and dusk do mingle, the twinkled night brought before the alter of the day, a merging of two lights into a single sky reborn upon the milky way.

We wait no more, for all the world will see, in shimmering lucidity, the brilliant truth revealed, a hidden wisdom, of loves great art beneath the shroud concealed, exposed in glory, the foment of this endless story, a heart made true, one heart from two, my one immortal paramour.

© Richard Michael Parker 2013

A Lovers Call

-A Lovers Call-

Oh gentle heart!
with wings reborn on dulcet airs,
that none have seen, nor heard with care,
preened, for the dawning of the day,
a triumph of the risen soul made true.
Tentatively unpacked, nothing is missed,
no lack, nor breath of wind withheld,
the heartbeat of those first few flaps,
perilously teetering upon the edge of the nest.
What God has given, nature unfolds;
Though the soul arisen wonders at the glory,
and the frightful heart betray the moment,
still, with that risen sun,
with wing-tips greeting the light,
a jump, into faith, into space,
into a world made new,
where no stationary view ever told
of mountain peeks, or trees replete with song,
of flocks and flighted joy in sunlit clouds,
of glory born upon the sounds of dawn,
but first, those fateful steps,
perilously perched upon the edge.
To jump, and not to fall,
this is the story of every lovers call.

© Richard Michael Parker 2013

A Hymn to Love and Health

-A Hymn To Love and Health-

I wake to see your starry face,
a deft smile, an imprint of grace,
sown into the fabric of this love.

There is magic in the air,
and all around, in fairy dust and angels wings,
swims a tune, a revelry of love and hope,
that beckons light to sow in you,
a seed of blessed health and hue;

Then awoke, from pallid fright,
two lovers warmed beneath a golden bough,
delight, in loves rekindled embers,
trussed, these gentle limbs embraced,
the future faced within a kiss, remembered.

To wake, and in that dreamy place,
to taste of life between these lips,
enfolded in the balm of dancing fingertips.
The morning ray, softly banishing the shadows,
the fated death of all those darkened slings and arrows.

This salve, of bless'd mirth and joy,
divinely wrought, does employ,
the twinkled eye of love returned,
fine fettled bloom, this lesson learned.

© Richard Michael Parker 2013
 

Little by Little...

Little by Little...

Felt the distance so greatly today,
like a yawning chasm,
strung only by a thread,
threatening to suck me down
into the fathomless depths,
where no light invades.
A gossamer strand the only bridge,
shrouded in mist,
unable to see from whence to where.
Time stretching out in wisps,
the haunting of every joy dismissed.
Little by little the distance kills us.
Like a thousand paper cuts to the soul,
tiny pieces, broken from the whole.
I miss your warm body next to me.
Awakening alone, in love,
like a stone rapt around my heart,
it seems too great a sorrow to carry,
too heavy a burden on so slight a bridge,
at any moment it could give.
This distance kills us in breaths,
the song of a thousand deaths,
sung in silence, with every fateful step
upon a bridge of endless length.
Only your sun lends it's warmth,
it's bright inner ray, cooling in the grip
of winters cold fingers.
little by little, the distance kills us...

© Richard Michael Parker 2013

Salt

-Salt-

If the sea lost her salt,
still she would sweep
remorselessly upon the sands,
but instead,
the earth would weep,
for all the lost passion
kissed upon the land.

Fiery tears lend more power
in a single instant,
than all the wasted hours
of silent fears
receding in the distance.

Never lose your salt.

© Richard Michael Parker 2013

Snow Upon A Secret Hill

-Snow Upon A Secret Hill-

I love long movies on winter nights,
crushed in the heat of erotic delight;
Hours of pointless tape muffling the ragged sounds,
the moans, the slapping joy of wet skin,
the howling winds beating the panes,
jealously licking the frames,
aching to get in.
I love it when it begins...
The look upon your lover,
The passing hours, kissed,
sealed within a cave of sighs,
rapt in timeless flesh,
the deep nirvana of supple thighs,
buried inside a womb, enmeshed.
Dead to the world,
outside, each plaintiff moan,
each groaning thrust,
trussed inside your lovers soul;
And all the world is oblivion!
I love it when the credits roll,
to look at one another,
with that knowing surprise,
erupting in love and laughter,
locked in the furtive glance of handcuffed eyes.
Rolling in a mass of huddled joy, to kiss,
as if only the two of you together exist.
Turning off the light to the world,
the static, drifting in the distance,
like snow upon a secret hill.

© Richard Michael Parker 2013

Pearl

Pearl

The pearl sat brightly in the slim palm of her hand, spent in droplets, a jewel of sentiment, where silence invades the cavalcade of redolent ease, all measure pleased... Teased between the fingertips of some supple touch.

How he loved her. She would never understand, the depth of his heart like distant sands slipping through the fingers of a grasping hand...

The sweeping chasms of eternity turned upon themselves, into a sky replete with fiery stars, the comets sweep, the glimmer of God's eye, beaming with delight upon the waters between them. Moonlit dappled dreams, swimming in halcyon streams of love, so silent, no brook in feathered meadow had ever run so still. A quiescence unspeakable, no word could share the shallow breath unheard, unspoken, this union in a dream unbroken.

Ever has it been the same, that ember glow doth warm the night, the silent thread in each hearth made bright by decadent fires born below, licking upon the air in the distant hollow of the darkness, tongues of desire, snapping at the clouds, as they roll beneath the heavens gathered by a crowd of stars, like watching pilgrims twinkling in earnest at the show, they rarely stay for the afterglow. But Lovers do... In silence, to slip into a timeless knot, entwined within the heart, their lot, to sink reposed, all else forgot.

He wondered whether in days to come, she might stay a while, as the silence descended, or follow a constant revelry, flitting from flower to flower in the endless search for honey. Even bees rest, and though their nest is quiet in the midnight hour, dressed only in the waxy silence of the cold tower, still they are abuzz when the Sun broaches the dawn, bathing their world in gold.

The pearl swam in her palm, a balm of luminescence, the essence of the gift, each droplet, shone with lustrous sweetness, a lift of loving tenderness.

They sank into silence, enfolded in each others hearts, and though the ember overcame desire, each soul was trussed and blessed within this art, remembrance, like a pearl, of loves first dawning fire.

© Richard Michael Parker 2013

Through The Cracks

Through The Cracks

Sometimes those battles take an awful toll... We cleave to the slim margins of victory, having waged war and worse, saying to ourselves 'we have triumphed, we are here', we have made it through the storm and finally the fine weather breaks through the dim cloud, the shroud of our making. The tumult of our breaking. And we marvel in it's glory, barely realizing that the sun drenched joy, we used to employ no longer sits in the seat it used to, dethroned in the shock and the shell, the furrowed trenches where life went all to hell.

But what of the cost? Did we ever stop to consider, the awful toll, the bitter fruit suckled in the cold, the icy winds blown into the soul. On those battle-scared frays, did we ever stop to wonder on better days, how the torment and cost would tear a scar into the heart, changing forever the part of us that sat upon those summer hills, and sang with every golden trill of the blackbird, as it ripened the season with the glory of that noonday sun. Did we ever stop to wonder then, in the midst of the call, how the battle and the war would change it all. How much is lost when we say we have won?

Some things can never be taken back. Like memories, they only cast shadows... they only cast shadows.

So we pick up the world, and walk on, perhaps if we're lucky, one or two come along; But we're never the same, and once again, we must find a way to let love in. When all the doors and windows have fallen, we must find a way, through the cracks, to let the light come back.

© Richard Michael Parker 2013

The Furtive Seed

-The Furtive Seed-

Oh restive heart,
Awoken in the dark at last;
All shadows shuffle away,
As heralds alight this torpid sun,
Our bright first dawning day.
Aroused in a gentle sleep,
you came,
with only the wind to whisper your name,
and pricked my ears with a kiss,
that all the years,
from that sad absence to this,
were but an incubation,
a germination of a seed.
The blooming of a tree.
How can I express,
how deep these roots have burrowed?
I must confess,
I turned the soil each night alone,
the winding of the succulence, 
deep, down into the loam.
No shadow was wasted.
The harvest of every shattered dream,
broken in the mulch,
the rotten soil,
the airy toil of midnight worms, a hope.
To dream a tree, a sapling risen,
amongst the golden bough of autumns ruddy cheeks,
to break the crusted earth, make free,
the flaming bush that leaps upon these peaks.
Unlikely seasons do herald a frosted March.
That in the winter snows,
we two may rest a while,
an intimacy of quiet repose,
deep beneath the fleecy covers,
blessed in loves great warmth, two sated lovers.
My Heart, my home,
entice the budding blossom of this love,
that in the spring,
upon the larks sweet bough,
a rhapsody may bring a man a wife,
for you my love, are the budding symphony of life.
This, furtive seed,
we hold inside our hearts,
may spring anew in times not old,
but in the gentle gift of this loving start,
can bring a summers joy from out the cold.

© Richard Michael Parker 2013

The Kiss

-The Kiss-

How fragile this gift,
that weaves it's charms between the silence,
to heal the fractured scars, the dim lit remains.
Whence it comes, who can say,
yet who can forestall it's gentle ways,
the deft eloquence in loves glissading hallways.

Such promise, sweeps into the yielding heart,
an emollient, ripened in it's season,
plucked from off the cherished lip of love,
a succulence of spirit sipped beyond all reason.

This gentle water, flowing between the cracks,
a castle swept aside, left in the past,
succumbing to this ever loving tide.

Your delicate frame,
shivering in the constancy and the bliss,
with every echo of that sad refrain,
love calls your name, a kiss.

These hearts, awoken as of one,
knowing only the amber glow of loves bright star,
that casts the trembling hour,
into the ashen hearth,
the frozen heart devoured in the warmth at last.

© Richard Michael Parker 2013

The Wounded Heart

-The Wounded Heart-

The wounded heart,
fingernails stroked upon the scars,
and all the stars redolently fade into night,
caught in the twilight of an ancient glare,
the soulful, doleful shadows of the remnants of you there.
Trust, tossed upon the frigid flame,
frozen in the icy womb of your infinite eyes,
the sullen echo of a sad refrain. 
Waiting for the bomb to drop again.

© Richard Michael Parker 2013

Come To Me In Silence

- Come to me in Silence-

I love when you come to me in silence;
Though all the birds come with you,
to shower down a rainbow of sound,
with each kiss of opalescent hue;
A rhapsody of lark song breaking through the veil,
as I awaken to your tenderness,
your lips, a shower of feathering bliss.
How strange the absence,
when the last silent wing has flown,
your soft hair, departed from the pillow,
there, where I lay my hand,
between the crook and the hollow,
your resonant warmth summoning me still.
I awoke and looked for a moment through the window,
the last ray of summer, dashing through the cloud,
wondering whether winters cold fingers would be so proud,
or huddled in a mass of softened skin,
would this rainbow still shine,
in the crystal breath of January's frosted pane.
How blessed this kiss, that melts the frozen heart,
A shower of gentle rain,
the dappled iridescence of loves bright rainbow,
born again.

© Richard Michael Parker 2013

The End Of The World

The End Of The World

You ran so fast,
I scarcely saw the footfall,
as you sped in desperation into the past.
A declaration, the spearhead buried deep.
How quickly the numbed silence creeps,
when all those echoed ghosts scream for recognition.
A transgression of affirmation, fear that grips the heart.
There is no way to grow in the dark.
Dreams, they always seem so real when your asleep,
but when the dawn creeps from out that crepuscular light,
the fright of loves awakening, terror of the breaking,
screams into the frightened hallways of the cosseted life.
I saw the comet rise, It was dawn,
and in those nascent skies it climbed so willingly,
as if it's arc would tear a hole in heaven,
but just as the singeing light ascended,
It bent, and down into the sodden earth,
the marshland of rot and damp decay it went.
I turned to you, as you sat beside me in that light,
and in fright I saw your face,
yawning like the chasm that invades this place,
'We're fucked' yes!... that's what I said,
and yet, no fear invaded me there,
Only resignation, as I held your hand,
waiting for the fireball to swamp us in this land.
We sat and watched the eastern horizon burn,
and turned, squeezing each others hands,
as if the end had come.
But it didn't end.
Instead, in quietude, the fire burnt in the distance,
as if the past was being consumed in some wrathful judgement.
It didn't end. So we just sat there, marvelling in the glory.
Thinking this was the final chapter of our story,
Thinking how beautiful it was, in that moment of resignation,
to be sat beside someone we loved at the end of the world.
But it didn't end, and all we did, was awaken.

© Richard Michael Parker 2013

)

-The Dawn Comes-

-The Dawn Comes-

The dawn has come
and autumns ruddy fingers have drawn the curtain wide,
slipped beneath the sheets, to melt with you inside.

This glow, that sheds it's gentle ray across my pillow
comes without trumpet or lyre,
no fanfare to betray the tenderness or desire.

Incomparable, indefensible love!

No Force nor fissure in the dark of that night,
could ever overwhelm this bright dawns first light.
As a fire comes from out the coals below,
like a bursting river, that sweeps across the meadow.

In silence it has crept,
and swept between the winking stars,
that shone so patiently upon this sleeping frame,
as if in hidden silence, they whispered out your name,
and spoke of joys in days to come,
the only herald in that night,
before the light, and love of this opulent sun.
 
I tried so hard to forestall it's power,
the awesome and terrible might.
yet sweet, in surrender, fear is overcome,
I ran with fright, and knelt with none.

Dawn has come, 
and spread her fiery wings beneath my window,
your face, gently kissed upon the pillow.

© Richard Michael Parker 2013

Soft Invasion

-Soft invasion-

Thin wisps of gossamer hair
threaded through the night
Awake within a dream
this trembling soper of delight.

Dark threads slip between my fingers
and all i can feel are your lips
the warm crush of your breath
my heart racing
as if awoken from some sullen death.

You rise in tides
seething upon this shore
a yielding ground, drawn into the depths
a beckoning to get wet,
to soak myself within your warm surrounds.

The tremulous terror of love
kindles within my loins
a soft invasion, we two,
enjoined.

© Richard Michael Parker 2013




Photograph: Artist Unknown

A Late Harvest

-A Late Harvest-

September
the last splay of the bellflowers are in the open field.
The bees, marking time, flitting between each blossom,
long ago made new;
Perhaps more in hope than expectation.
A half blown dandelion rests frazzled against the wild-grass.
It is as if at long last rest has come,
baked beneath the sweltering sun of yesterday.
The grass seeds have blown,
and all that is left are the thin willow husks
rocking stiffly in the wind.
They too have had their day,
and still the bees endless industry,
a golden light for the long night to come.
I saw your face again today,
transposed upon a golden field of yore
- and still the bees, gently flit from bloom to bloom,
A late harvest, the bounty and the gift,
of winters cold store.

© Richard Michael Parker 2013

Letting Go

Letting Go

I sit re-reading texts I had written when in the throws of some madness months ago, although so foreign to me now are the jumbled assemblage of words, they could have been written by another hand in some other life. It occurred to me, as I pondered them, that the intensity and truth with which they were written was rendered meaningless aside from the context within which they were torn. Perhaps this is the trick of life. To dwell within the fire, with all it's ravages and insanity, flickering but for a moment in the flame. Yet, to accept also, that in moments past, those same tongues that seemed of such importance, so all consuming as they licked upon the soul in the existential truth of their passing, are but glimpses of a fleeting eternity of being. A being that in the moment of its greatest import demands it's release, so that we, who dwell within the flame may once again rise in the dawn of our own becoming. Knowing that each moment is a lifetime unto itself, a priapic birth and death, no distant than the breath that spans it's divide. The madness of love is a fire to warm the soul, yet the memories can crush it also, quenching the flame if we do not release it, allowing it to dwell for it's moment free from the expectation of our own desirous need. I read these poems and texts, unpublished and unseen, and wonder from where they have come, like snapshots of a flame in a language rendered meaningless without the warmth of it's time.

 © Richard Michael Parker 2013

Beneath The Banyan Tree

-Beneath The Banyan Tree-

Asleep beneath a banyan tree,
my head resting upon your soft smooth belly;
I heard the warbler tell of springs to come,
of journeys to be taken, frolics in the sun.
Then, in that warm and restive age,
we drifted for a while,
and flew into the branches, hand in hand,
and with a smile,
we picked the choicest ripest fruit,
the succulence of love, full lipped,
the sweetest flesh was sipped, salaciously above.
Then filled with mellow fruit,
a golden glow swam from each face,
and down unto the ground,
we drifted once more in that place.
To settle, so it seemed, into familiar repose,
your heart beat in my ear,
a fragrant sweetness to your nose.
We turned both very slowly,
glimmered eyes one to another,
and smiled a gentle while,
each finger locked into its lover.
The birds within the branches,
sang sonorously above,
while naked down below we lay,
entwined in golden love.
The seed, it grew again in flesh,
and birthed a blessed tree,
the gift we bring to all who dream,
our love divine and free.

© Richard Michael Parker 2013

Violence

Violence

Violence comes in many shades. It saunters between the dim shadows of a turbid mind. Expressing itself in a manner best suited to the vessel of it's circumstance. In the gruff and muscular, it may play out as a raised fist. In the slight and sly, the malice leeches it's poison between the cracks of subtle device. Emotive violence, that sears the heart with wounds the years never mend, deflated ego's, the crushed confidences of intimate betrayals, are as deeply violent as any brute did bare a hand. The wounds and scars unseen, bare testament, to the mien of malicious intent...

Violence is a state of mind. A disposition of soul, a seeking to control that which has born it's greatest fear in the souls of those both far and near. It knows not sex, nor colour, creed nor faith, only the unparalleled desire to control and overwhelm the object of it's greatest fear, shattered in the mirror, reflected shadows of a broken soul. To break bones, hearts, souls and minds, that in doing so, the shattered reflection of that which lays behind the eyes of each offender, be meliorated, but for a moment. The shattered mirror, cast out in a shout, an explosion of emotion, the vented chalice broken. Violence is the mirror cracked, an extract, a tincture of tears, born from out the fear of all those broken years.

© Richard Michael Parker 2013

The Springtime of Memory

-The Springtime of Memory-

Naked thoughts,
issue a sentiment of loves revealing...
spoken through the passageways of feeling.
Hearken little flower, to the budding brook of spring,
and leave winters poor light in the past.
For the sun rises, and warms today,
what yesterday can only echo,
in the dim shadow of those long forgotten corners.

Take a breath,
and see each memory as a living gift,
spoken through each heartfelt rift.
Stepping lightly over sun-filled meadows,
laughing in the thrill of each present moment.
No one has passed,
nothing has gone,
and the testament,
is you, here, all along.

© Richard Michael Parker 2013

-The Face Remains The Same-

-All That is Left is Love-

-All That is Left is Love- 

Fragile the flower that springs from out the soil of compassion. Fragrant, the delicate blossom doth issue from each supple velvet bud. Yet, finespun are the petals of kindness, too easily bruised between ardent fingers, or crushed beneath the soles of determined gait. The ruined rose tenders full fragrance sweet, too late, the thorn and flesh do meet, ne'er again to brush fair loves soft silent silken cheek.

In the end.... all that is left, is Love.

© Richard Michael Parker 2013
 

As an aside... I was awoken at 4am the evening before that with a very sharp pain in my chest, and I have to say I thought then that was it...

The strangest thought came over me, in that moment. I found myself praying of sorts... Not for myself, but for everyone I had known, forgiving them all for anything they had done to me that may not have been kind or had tied them to me in some bad karmic manner... Such a strange thing to do I thought afterwards, but it just instinctively came out of me as I thought I was about to have the next big attack and that would be it. Strange what lurks in the heart of us isn't it. All that seemed important was that those I had shared this life with be freed from any burden associated with having known me.

I don't know why i did that...

Actually, I do know why I did that...

It was simply a matter of love. In that moment, everything else was stripped away and the truth of a soul in the grace of love was all that remained. With the imminent demise of my own body, the core of who I was, was suddenly thrust to the fore, and all the petty squabbles, and foolishness that had gone before, simply fell to the floor, and all I was left, was that which sits in the core of my heart.

If in that moment, I could have spared the suffering of those who had connected with me in this life, and had born upon their own souls, the heavy conscience of actions born of ignorance or blinded through some separation from love, instituted by the deceit of all that we place between ourselves and the love that resides in our inner being, I simply would have. Removing every object that casts so long a shadow between the lives we share, simply to recognize that between us there are only the objects of our own expectations, our own desires and disappointments, erected to fulfill voids constructed where love once shone.

I did not for one instant want anyone or any soul to suffer because of me, or for anything they may have done or felt because of me... and though it may sound strange, or peculiar, in that instant all that was important to me was the forgiveness I could give to others, that they be shed from the burden they may carry because of me... the walls and towers erected to forestall the dawn, for nothing else seemed important in the twilight of my own fleeting hour.

That is the truth, and in that moment, that was what I wanted for my final wish, or thought, or gift upon this earth. Meagre as my own footprint has been. I know it sounds strange, but it was purely instinctual... and came from the very core of my heart, I could no longer have stopped this overwhelming instinct than have stopped my own heart, which I believed at that moment was about to stop of it's own accord.

You just don't know until your there baby... It's pointless pretending that you do. But I will say this... All the detritus, all the shabby moth eaten cloth, or silken shimmering regalia we tout as our own, and which we shimmer in this world, simply gets stripped away, in an instant the sham of the egoistic scam vanishes in a puff air... a breath, so close, it's warm vapour is the brother of death. But then... I knew this anyway!... because this isn't the first time I have been there.

And it isn't about being this or that, a better soul or a worse one... All those judgment calls that seem so important now... Seem so ridiculous in the face of the truth. All of it seems ridiculous in the face of love.

The timeless epiphanic moment, in which you realize that things are acausally connected across eons, and that your minuscule grasp of what is really going on, and your attempt to make meaning out of your life, is simply a perspectival trick, and all the judgment calls you make, about your life and others lives are simply created and generated by a mind that is indoctrinated with a partial understanding of where it stands in the greater scheme of things. Indeed, even within its own evolution as a soul...

The entire making deals with this, or that, or pretending we have any grip on the importance of our lives, and associations with others, that have come into our lives, are simply mirages of humanistic hubris. Men and women, playing God, with our minuscule perceptions of reality... Seeing the world through the eyes of an ant, and speaking our truths as if those truths were the universal truth of all creation... vanity!... Shameful and humorous vanity!

But what in the end is not vanity, is the love that courses through your own soul, because in the end, everything else gets stripped away, everything you cling to, burnt, including everything you think you know about what is going on, and why it happened the way it happened. The world is more vast, and the associations and meaningful connections we make are more complex than we could ever comprehend.

In the end.... all that is left, is Love.

© Richard Michael Parker 2013

The Opiates of Oblivion

- The Opiates of Oblivion-

When all the world has been travailed,
what can a man refuse in the trembling hour?
The ripening bud of her gaze, the unfurling flower.
As the linchpin of his love tumbles through his heart,
unlocked by a glance, a heated lance to his soul,
What can a man do but fall?
A journey of a thousand lifetimes,
crushed beneath her wall.

How do I unhear this call?

What choice have we, but to bear it...
Or sink ourselves in the opiates of oblivion...

© Richard Michael Parker 2013

Another Mans Sorrow

-Another Mans Sorrow-

If I could have reached out to that young man, reading lines from an old mans eyes, the sorrow of passing lives, snuffed out in an instant through those bleak manifested lies. I would have taken his hand, and spoken softly with eyes fixed, a gaze unbroken, and simply said: 'Remember, it all means more than you will ever know, even if at times it may not seem so. Be careful as you go, and try to learn how not to walk in another mans sorrow.'
  
© Richard Michael Parker 2013

A Living Gift

-A Living Gift-

Wandering through the cemetery yesterday, whilst I walked towards the hospital, not sure if I was going to make it there, I got to thinking about what a life means, surrounded by all those stones. Wondering if I had achieved all that I had wanted to achieve... taking a few photo's while I had the opportunity... forever the opportunistic artist.

It was cold and sunny, and my little angel shone with a dazzling lustre in the crisp sunlit air. She, and a few other things, suddenly struck my eye, and I guess a certain realization came upon me, as it so often does in such moments. The realization that the real gifts we leave are not the bridges of stone or mountains of metal that we build, or even the organizations, the rocks and stones we move about us, but rather the hearts we have inhabited, the intangible fleeting moments, where one soul has communed with another. Where one heart has spoken gently with some other, whose rhythm and rhyme has met with our own in that instant of time.

So that the earth, or the eyes that see it, barely recognize the footprints we have left behind, barely notice the coming and going of each soul as they have lived. Yet, it is the passing of the flame which is the true gift. The flickering light that passes between hearts, between souls, eyes opened to one another, so that the soul of each becomes one within the soul of the other. And though it may seem as though the tangible remnants of a life are meagre or as nothing, or even if it be mountains that we have moved, the truth, is that in the subtle communion of that moment, a moment in which we have shared of our true selves, we leave an indelible footprint upon the soulful road of another.

Lives made all the richer for the passing of that flame, the evolution of each, enriched in those heartfelt steps, moving ever forward, bolstered and encouraged by that communion. So that often the measure of our lives is completely intangible, as we effect the world in ways we could never imagine, simply by being, through the sincerity and authenticity of who we truly are.

We effect the world as a living entity, and we connect with other lives, displaced from our own by many miles or many years. Generations may pass, before the seemingly intangible meeting of hearts and minds, souls, that open to one another in an instant of time, effect each-other, though vastly removed from that initial communion. Lives, affected by our being, through the quality of our existence and intimacy of that communion.

The recognition of a shared existence, often removed from one another by generations, and vast distances in time and space, and completely intangible in material terms, unrecognized by sentient eyes. Life, this living gift, each soul offers to another, is a thread in a fabric of time, a weave upon a tapestry, so vast, that in the blessing of that gift our own lives extend themselves far beyond anything we may imagine. The meaningful associations we forge with those who enter our lives, and are themselves a part of an extended tapestry of existence, that have preceded them, progress further to touch still more lives, in ways we can scarcely conceive.

These connections would and could never have happened without us, no matter what we may conceive of our own worth and the worth of the tangible material we may leave behind. For we are part of the great panoply of existence, and because of this truth, intrinsically and irrevocably valuable. The inviolability of this truth is that our worth is not in the things we have left behind, but in the hearts we have touched, the souls with whom we have communed, and the quality with which we have existed.

Each courageous moment of sincerity, of authentic vulnerability, is more profoundly precious than we can ever comprehend. It should never be forgotten, that our legacy is first and foremost one of the soul, and it's worth is measured through the sincerity of our communion. For it is this, that is passed as a living gift, to lives, enriched, not just within the circles of those we have known, but to all who will be touched through that communion, across the vast reaches of space and time, for the gift of life, ultimately, is in the passing of that flame.

© Richard Michael Parker 2013

The Scarlet Shore

-The Scarlet Shore-

Bright scarlet,
bristled against the shore,
the sonorous whisper of the sea
languidly seeping between the green,
trees, a canopy of silence,
swimming in the breeze.
An ancient song,
a timeless air of birds and bees.

The surging rush,
the cool crush of salted flesh,
sizzling, drenched and enmeshed.
Soft moaning thighs,
wrapped around each melting sigh,
muffled amidst these yielding lips,
the soak of warm tongues,
awash in a licking tide,
these rolling hips, crushed inside.

This torpid sun,
that slowly rocks the fevered brow,
seeps between the cracks,
languid, slow, and now.
Sparkling in your florid eyes,
wavelets, teased upon the shore,
the suckled lips of soaking mouths,
quivering within this trembling roar.

An intimate repose,
caught within this moment.
The fevered sands of time.
Your fingers locked in mine,
the grip of loves fomenting rhythm and rhyme,
slips between these dripping hands.
The writhing hourglass,
dishevelled and tanned.

Sundown,
a gulls fading call,
smooth and warm against my breast,
a treasure, troved from out a pirates chest,
shot through with scarlet waves,
a timely reminder of natures ancient ways.

© Richard Michael Parker 2013 

A Still Life

-A Still Life-

What is a poet without words?
No paint upon the palette knife.
A crusty cake of stony blues.
The frozen peaks of a still life.

© Richard Michael Parker 2013

Without The Cost

-Without the Cost-

More joy,
More tears,
More fury,
More fears,
More brokenhearted rent capitulation,
Than any word could express.
The hours of anxiety,
The days of endless misery,
The forlorn degradation of resignation.
The cold sweats.
Waking in the dim twilight of your passing,
The endless nights, silently awaiting the dawn,
The furious anger wrapped up in scorn,
The melting ray of this suns mocking peace,
Hidden behind these curtains, a closeted release.
The razors edge,
The morbid dread of loss...
What meaning could there be without the cost!

© Richard Michael Parker 2012



Artwork: Isaiah Stephens

God Paints Between The Cracks

God Paints Between The Cracks

 'Grow your blossoms, blossom!... Don't let them wilt in an untilled field. For they were sown in your life to bring joy to all who would bathe in their aromatic wonder, and dance in the fever of their hue. Only you, can choose as to whether they blossom or wilt. For the field is your own. It has been furrowed, ploughed and sown. So that now, in these vital winds, the wild seed, swept between the gaps, settles into each weathered groove. For God paints between the cracks.'

© Richard Michael Parker 2013

Green from Sami Takieddin on Vimeo.
 

Come Be A Tree...

-Come Be A Tree-

Come be a tree...
Come sway lugubriously in the summer sun.
Come play in a zephyrs touch, at close of day,
when all the work is done.
Come drop your leaves upon my feet,
to stand, naked and replete,
proud in the winter snows,
a velveteen squirrel snugly nestled upon your nose.
Come drop your acorns into my earth.
Grow these wild sapling loves,
deep in the silent belly of my girth.
That we might flame upon this wild sky,
an iridescence of cupidity,
entwining green limbs,
enmeshed in fiery autumnal hues,
the majestic ruddy screams,
spitting upon the cool reach of those ancient blues.
Come float into a dream,
the snowy mountain pass whistling in a breeze,
the restive silent comfort of the midnight frozen tree.
Come rustle in the wind,
when the lark sits proudly upon your bough,
the golden dew sparkling in loves dawning sky;
Come fly, when springs budding blossom,
pollinates your hair in a swirling heady dance,
the supple maelstrom of this dizzy dappled trance.
Languidly creaking in a sunlit kiss.
The moon rising between each silent limb.
A nightingales song enraptured in bliss.
Come ride through the seasons in silence,
to watch the world swim in giddy motions.
The somnolent dipping cycles,
of our own deep emotions.
An ant crawling upon a limb.
Come be a tree...
The elegant timeless simplicity,
each breath, a pause,
a gentle swing upon a bough,
these cycles of eternity,
the simple truth,
of me and you,
and I in Thou.
 
© Richard Michael Parker 2013

Wrapped in the Swaddling Cloth of Innocence

-Wrapped in the swaddling cloth of innocence-

Stultified in this absurdity,
caught in the ragged ends of this storm,
branches bedraggled and naked,
the leaves tattered and torn,
scattered upon the walkway of this love.
Seated upon the old bench,
beneath the corpulent trees,
resting, I find a kind of ease,
some sinew of peace, a remnant of holiness,
left over from the fire in that breeze.
The sun, ekes its weary way,
making skeletons upon the ground,
as they cross our path in the dead of that sound.
Turn your face my love,
that I may not see the tears,
the constancy of all those faltering years,
the running game,
torn from the pages of your book,
read a thousand times in the darkness,
the silence of the shadows moving in time,
to the passage of our sun.
Come, sit a while, hold my hand,
watch the moonlight bathe our world
in her silver balm,
the restive calm of gentle limbs,
wrapped in the swaddling cloth of innocence.

© Richard Michael Parker 2012

Waves

-Waves-

True love knows no end,
nor does it know a beginning my friend,
for it was, even before you discovered it,
even before it had opened your eyes,
with it's infinite tenderness,
or the passion of it's fiery blow,
corpulently born in the belly of the world below,
had rifled your senses,
and shot you through with it's fire.
It was here before you had even acknowledged it's presence,
and will be here,
long after the remnants of your desires have faded;
The final vestige of your will, sacrificed,
burnt upon it's holy funeral pyre.

It flows through the infinite soul,
where time is not linear,
connecting it's seconds through meaning,
it's hours in associations and feelings.
Eons pass, in fragmentary breaths,
love, woven between the gaps in the stillness.
Forgotten souls,
people and events, rediscovered,
the secret thread of life uncovered...
Eternity, is but a moment,
a breath in the light of loves blessed truth.

How many lives do we live?
How many times do we meet those we have loved,
unremembered?

Eternity... Yes!
It is a beautiful word,
and the space between each sound
every syllable that has been heard,
is filled with the steeping waves of love,
washed upon a shore,
the silence and the certainty,
together, evermore.

© Richard Michael Parker 2013

The Silken Gown

The Silken Gown

No matter how splendid, travels.
There is always something wondrous about coming home.

The silken gown, strewn across the bed,
like a second skin, shed...
The drop of your delicate shoulders,
the unimaginable joy as you swept through the room,
lighting all those darkened corners,
your bright flowing hips,
the delicate slips of silken skin,
brushed, crushed from within.

To watch you sleep,
long dark curls, lingering upon the slip,
loves softened yielding bosom, your fulsome lip,
plucked in the ripeness of this mid-summers moon.
The suckling kiss, the petalled rose in bloom,
full parted...
Heaving against this alabaster shore,
rising with the swell, uncharted,
surging from the oceans pearly depths,
Je t'adore.

I have always loved these moments,
late in summer, awake within the dappled midnight hour,
swooning in the beauty and the heat,
soft emanations in the night,
doe eyes caught in the moonlit bloom of your soul,
peeking from out a forest of soft shadows,
your silken gown, The cool fall of softened fingers...

Home...

© Richard Michael Parker 2013