phoenixrising

A tale of two cities;  The suburbs, I cannot recall… One, to gain and rise; The other to stumble and fall…  A river of swift currents,  Keeps the two apart;  Flowing through the middle  Like a dagger to the heart…  The metropolis of greying towers,  Where designer perfume masks,  The stench of the dark, sleek suits;  As in power, they continue to bask…  The hamlet of shanties, on the other hand;  With it’s tattered blue tarpaulin crowns;  Must wrinkle their nose at the open drains  And pray, that in squalor, they don’t drown.  The megalomania of mansions  With their blinders of gold and sea;  Blink a thousand times at the brown bereft,  Yet cannot deign to see…  In such close quarters of otherness,  Where the neglect would almost glare;  The bought and the buried wheezed and coughed;  As their tired lungs struggled for air.  The premium oxygen of level 24,  Made it necessar...

  Tiptoe,  Keep it slow,  Step around the eggshells;  Let the silence grow…  Tiptoe,  Don’t let him know, That you hate his guts,  Don’t let it show…. Tiptoe,  You won’t have to stow, Your feelings in the freezer; Just let him go… Tiptoe,  Keep your head low, Until he’s out the door,  Dab the sweat off your brow…  Tiptoe,  Not everything you sow,  Do you have to reap,  A ruined harvest, you can feed to the crow. Tiptoe,  Your bag now packed,  It was all about him,  And nothing that you lacked.  Tiptoe,  Now it’s your turn to go;  No backward glance, no regrets;  This is your chance.  This is where you say ‘no.’ *****  Tiptoe,  No, never, not in this lifetime;  Never to shield or deny a crime.  Let the eggs break with the loudest crack, This much abused shell has deflected the attack. **This was a difficult poem to write because of the subject matter. Domestic...

  And who do you call when all is done? When the guests have gone  And you’ve had all your fun?  The evening yawns and yields to night  This hour is for rest,  Before you awake at dawn, for another day’s fight.  And you peel these layers off, one by one From the shoes that slip off your reluctant toes, To the irksome material, now removed and done.  Your face - now that it is of war-paint bare;  Do you see your soul?  When you ; at the mirror, stare… These fragile pieces that you keep concealed,  In the recesses of your mind, your heart… How long until they are completely healed?  The pain you hide in the tissue of your skin,  The constant prick of an ache unseen.  In search of blessed peace within…  May some day be granted and within your reach,  On another day when the evening is done,  When you can slow your pace to a walk instead of a run… 

  Back and forth  And this cold wind ought,  To die down a little,  With warmth, fiddle.  The cold cold air,  A tropical rare,  The heart grows colder  As time turns older.  The song of the senses  Transforms it’s tenses, The present merges with the past,  The tired soul floats, now at half mast.  Driven down and out,  A creature once so stout  Must let winter enter her bones,  Finally vulnerable to sticks and stones.  Redemption brings persuasive heat A tempting morsel, a forbidden treat.  The hope that soon, winter will be overcome,  This sinister silence, replaced with summer’s hum.  The ice recedes,  And this body now feeds,  On glimpses of golden light,  And greens to soothe the sight.  The seasons turn and fade away,  Just as night morphs into radiant day;   Today the cold, may be ever bold;  But to warmth it must soon give way.  And we live t...

  Like sandcastles on a beach,  Swept away, soon out of reach; The waves decide - the fate of the grains.  These manmade shelters of grey and brown, Ruined, violated, haunted mega towns,  Of crumbling roads and decrepit, lonely lanes… A reminder of what was promised, what could have been;  The present scenario mismatched with the imagined scene;  The politics of preservation only focuses on the chair… When the campaign is over, and the dust has settled,  When the blackish mud has covered your sycophantic petals;  Those spoken vows fade away, once the podiums are bare… And power is won on the back of the ‘need-more’;  The window of hope closed, to be shown the exit door.  ‘You’re on your own’ a whisper now defines the voice…  Elections that yield not a representative, but a king,  Or a queen who favours constant winter over spring…  This folly is now fulfilled, this illusion of choice.  The option to choose between a t...