-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