Mercury

Whence this transgression?
Opaque, heavy, little
Blob of mercury seeped through
My eyes, taking root like silvery crevices,
Robbing me blind.

It changes and manifests,
A thousand-headed serpent,
Gnashing through my veins.
Hissing its forked tongue,
Insidious rattling in my head.

The final prey found,
It wrapped its scaly hide,
Crushing muscles undulating
Around the pulsating victim,
A choking demise.

What more left,
Limp and senseless flesh save
The cold and voracious
Bite of maggots,
A body forgotten.

Sparrow

Dwarfish form flitted gleefully
Amongst the branches and leaves.
A blurry brown never resting,
Only to pick the seeds
To satiate the twittering brood.

Blackened thieves with sharpened tools,
Emboldened by size and disdain.
Robbed her dry of earned keep
And desecrated the nest,
Left it butchered and torn.

Empty eyes on abhorring sight,
A grief hardly conceivable
For one bereft of guilt.
And yet the silence echoes,
Stabbing the chilly air.

Winter spent and Spring awakes;
To the familiar shrills and
That similar woven basket.
A blurry brown beneath the foliage,
Never resting.

Carnation

Pretty pretty, petite
Princess of blooms;
A regal air of grace.

Brilliantly-studded tiara,
Vivid for the masquerade
Of yellow, white and purple.

Swirling potpourri; intense
Scent of regret,
Passion, purity, love.

An enduring blossom -
Soft-cracked smile
And evocative gaze,

Resilient through wind-chill,
Sun-bake and rain-flood for
Eager butterflies and bees.

Breeze

Gentle breeze
Lift the withered leaves or
Weathered dreams that weighed
Upon thy soul that yearns for
The guileless flight of doves,
White amongst the orange.

Gentle breeze
Pass through the verandah and
Brush off the stubborn sediment
That defies the reluctant cleaner. And
Aerate the musty room left
Abeyant and stifling.

Gentle breeze
Comfort the discomfort
Of a body ravaged by the
Angry Sun and impossibly take
This body elsewhere, so that it
Burns no longer.

Gentle breeze
For all that can be but
Chose the pettiest of forms, yet
Moves the oceans in
Gentle oscillations so it be
Fit for sail.

Pantomime

Oh what is love,

But a clever little pantomime?
Garbed equally in brilliant motley
Or black and white rhyme.
A portrait of unsullied glee,
Yet palpable and culpable
Of dastardly connivance and tragedy.
Clever twit delightfully bilingual
In both silence and playful revelry.

Weaving stories and worlds
From expansive nothingness
For the imagineless mind but unfurls
A landscape of richness.
Addled trickster nary a stand.
Content a truthful phoney.
Oh what is love then,
But a beautiful irony?

Snapshots

The audacious and naive,
To harvest time like maize in springbloom.
Petty scythes; dull and tainted iron,
Hacking, hacking. Fruitless labour the farmers bled.

Prized pick rationed; spoils-of-war they trumpeted!
Alas, a rancid breeze and flaying heat steals all
But the frigid decay, an artefact of rumination that
Neither feeds nor nourish.

Entwined - grapple-hooks
Eke the flesh, scale the mind.
A damning shroud; apparition of folly that binds eternal,
Graying yester to wispy now.

Pompeii saw the thick and ash, torched and razed,
A glutinous funeral, yet inked by
The caprices of history. For the stoic dead
Never tears.

Christmas

Cacophony of lights,
A gilded web; merry of men harkens
The mewlings of a thousand phoenixes.
Incandescent, a glorious burn,
Yet empty and phantasmal, dour be of greed
And insatiable pursuits.

The siren's call -
Beautiful swansong that cajoles
That same vanity, egging the fervent.
Dancing o'er the bones,
Mirthful cackling to the hollow dead, whose sockets see
Naught but rueful tears.

The child strays.
The fiendish mob licked their wry lips,
Beholding the patron with salacity.
'Come to us!' they screeched, midnight ravens
Pecking, pecking, pecking. Another stained glass;
Bloody and shattered.