Toreador

Toreador

Are these the things that you wanted to leave?...
are these the things that you wanted to say?
Now that the earth has swollen around your naked feet,
and the bull has taken you to ground.

I heard your name screamed across the court yard,
by the old toreador with the jumbled white hair and the mad stare, he walked amongst the crowd and bellowed:
'Serge has left us today, Serge has gone!'
They stood agape, aghast in the horror of the jape.
A hushed silence swept amongst the throng,
gathered by the stalls, bleached and broken,
beneath those shattered concrete walls.
The Bull, your Bull, your mad wild Bull,
strutting with the gore upon his horn,
the one that had torn a hole through your soul,
a wild fire burning in his eyes. 

Was this what you wanted said?
Was this what you wanted left?

When we spoke, the terror in your eyes fixing me to the spot,
firming my soul with those white hot coals,
the resolve exuding through those weathered lines,
I knew, as you, those lines would never crease again.
And still you did not say it, you did not say it!
Could you not say it?
or were you supposing there would be another instant,
anchored to the dirt, the weight of your tome,
dragging your eyes to the floor,
as all must meet their own, before the mirror or the door.

I recall your final turn, labored and shallow,
the tossed comment, a biscuit to the bull,
as younger men leapt those fiery horns.
What was it your broken face could not betray
in the darkening of that moment?
To read between the lines, the folded words unspoken.
The silence between the spaces, the folds of wrinkled letters,
written upon those worn out faces, spread across your own.

I saw him charge, as if all time had stopped,
and you, frozen in mid sentence, jailed by the moment,
your pen, like the silent tongue,
trapped within those jaws of steel,
what did you feel in that final thrusting rush?
tied up and trussed in the chute of the sticking throat,
That fence could never hold such a frenzied death,
that gargantuan storm upon whose horns you were born.

I watched in slow motion the dust rise to greet you,
to welcome you home again, to open the door,
my long suffering ancient toreador.
You who tore upon the page with wisp and wit,
humbling many a wild charge, full of snot and venom,
a plenum of monstrous muscle stopped in its tracks.
In your prime... yes!, in your prime!...
garlands and music, girls wound around your pen.
whirling even then, and then...

'Serge has left us today, Serge has gone!'
Gone to where the silence rules the day,
and the moon, the dawn. Serge has left us, down, and gone.
 
Are these the things you wanted to leave?
Are these the things you wanted to say?

'Speak the truth in your heart to those that matter!
while you can old friend.
For the ground is hard of hearing, and speaks in stones.
The dead carry the silence with them in the heavy earth,
and they are quiet enough, for us all.'

© Richard Michael Parker 2012

Kind of Blue

Kind of Blue

I had a great love of beautiful things. I saw them as something outside of myself, for the longest time. Broken, one day, i looked into a very dark place and found a jewel covered by a dark shroud. It had been hidden from me, until such time as i was forced to enter its realm. When i lifted that shroud, the space in which i found myself was no longer dark, and i was bathed in the beauty i had long sought, and thought belonged to others. It was then, that i recognized that all the beauty i had seen and gathered, as if in someone else's dream, had been shrouded within my own heart all along. I looked once again into the darkness, and saw you there. I saw inside your heart, what you yourself could not see, and having seen the beauty that resided there, how could i not hope to lift the veil of its own secrecy, and restore to you, what had been hidden from view for so long. You are more beautiful than you might ever suspect, and though you be in darkness still, beauty dwells within you.

© Richard Michael Parker 2012 

- Old and New -

-Old and New-

I want to grow old with you,
stay young with you,
watch the dark turn to gray,
and play with you!
day after day,
as we laugh at our wrinkles
and gather our girth,
dissolving into senescence with mirth.
Old faces weathered and aged,
lines that have turned every page,
eyes, that sparkle, still,
spell bound in the vision and thrill,
staring across the pillow, across the years,
across the bridge we forged between us.
The long years we journeyed,
searching, playing, learning,
so that all we had become,
could be brought before the alter of our love,
an offering of ripened tumescence,
to bless each fine aged ripple,
that laps upon these full weathered shores.
I want to grow old with you,
stay young with you,
giggle as we fall apart, together,
hand in hand, two old hearts,
kissing, as we slip into forever. 

© Richard Michael Parker 2012



Artwork by Susi Richardson

42

42

...And if I had died,
and were gone and dead,
what was it you could not say,
that you wish you might have said?

© Richard Michael Parker 2012

Little Bird

Little Bird

Betwixt the flame, and juniper,
the spritely dance so bright,
the may bells chime, the piper,
from darkness into light.

Did the rain douse the embers in the dawn?
When the fires raged, upon the hill,
your poignant heart tossed into the flame,
rising through the darkness, once again,
into the hallowed silence, and beyond,
did you feel the sallow crush of my own,
sweep across the moorland and the brush,
dressed in these sodden rags,
without a home, muddied and mired,
in the sunken shifting dirt of desire;

No true love that was ever born,
is alone in the darkness of night,
like a rose that is paired to its thorn,
true love is connected to light.

In the crackling heat of the logs and twigs,
bursting into fire at your feet,
did the drums drown out my heartbeat,
in the swirling ecstasy of your trance, and still,
the fervent longing of your missions bitter pill,
to take this darkness, tucked under your wing,
an offering to this ever loving man, and dash it,
down into the fire, devouring the night,
in the kindling embers of that radiant light.

Beauty lifts the soul,
laughter softens the chin,
love holds the flame,
that shines the light within.

To soften hearts, and raise the subtleties of spirit,
above the rancour of dull earth,
the din of the forlorn and broken.
No greater beauty doth a spirit bring,
than that it fill a soul, to raise its heart to sing.
Magic rings,
in every soft simple sweep, of your melodious trill,
the epiphany of gossamer chords,
drift mellifluously through the morn,
for yours, little bird, is the gentle gift of the light reborn.

© Richard Michael Parker 2012 

The Art of Nothingness...

The Art of Nothingness...

Releasing your all to the all,
becoming one and all without becoming at all.
Being, without intention,
without collusion or confusion,
simply melting in a melting pot without sides,
all times, stirring in silence,
timelessness brought into the moment.
Staring into eternity through a single raindrop.

Photograph: Inge Van Dam
Poetry:  © Richard Michael Parker 2012

-The Fecund Seed-

-The Fecund Seed-

Fate and destiny mark our bond,
for you my love,
are the flower that blooms late,
in the bittersweet field,
sown with the ashes of past grief.

Tilled and turned within the rich loam,
the death of fading hopes and dying dreams,
strewn between the rotting mulch,
mingling in the cool rain of your fallen tears,
the sodden peat of all those forlorn years.

This fecund seed,
that bursts into the fading light,
screams 'LIFE!'...
Born from every woe and strife,
feeds upon the sorrow and the grief,
broken and discarded,
in the doleful debris of your past.
An efflorescence of courage and triumph,
erupting into this dim world,
the effulgence of our hallowed glory,
bedazzling, in the twilight of our years.

This testament, rich and fragrant,
emboldened in these dark silken petals,
the blossom from out the solemn shadow,
resplendent amidst these two bespoken fettle's.
The aromatic splay, of natures patient ways.

 Poetry: © Richard Michael Parker 2012




Photo: 'black tulips' by Gennady Shingarev

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

How can I be without you?

How can i be without you?

How can I be without you?
What is a bird without a wing?
Or evensong, without the nightingale to sing?
How does a fire burn on air alone?
Or this fruit taste so sweet,
apart from the good earth,
from whence its seed is sown?

No man is born whole into this world,
each a separation,
torn from out the womb of love,
bearing the locket and the hope,
deep within his breast,
the remnants of that fallen dove,
a memory, caged and crushed within his chest,
the burden of the unconfessed.

Silently fearing the terror and the dread,
to walk upon this earth, the walking dead,
searching for naught that can be found to atone,
for the loneliness, and the bitterness of the dark,
save by the hollow in that stone,
the stark remembrance of the coddled silence,
all that fate, or God alone has left him,
in the remnants of the yearnings left unsaid.

How can I be without you,
my soulful love, your living loving art,
the breath of me, whispered through your heart,
This unbridled passion, not even God could forget.
For when the sun has arisen,
who amongst us can say it has set?

© Richard Michael Parker 2012