No longer come to walk,
They’re hanging in a wardrobe
Pressed inside a dream
While the charcoal petals brittling
Between the twisted vines
Flake in cold soliloquy
Where once they were employed.
I’ve seen not the hand of friendship
Not the texture of its skin,
The wind is blowing cold
The rain is driving hard.
You flower in the canyon streets
A stoic Mona Lisa
Telling me to meet you
By the Jordan river
But the absence of your shadow
Casts me as the fool
And throws me in the dirt
Where weeping seeds
Are sown.
Pushing out the darkening spine
Plays a bitter timbre
As halcyon days bow their heads
Before the force of winter.
You spend your time in clover
Wearing a mask of paper
Playing everyone for fools
Choking on ashes and pearls.
And then you stand and count
The diamonds in your number
But the fingers always grasping
Are begging for applause
And the coolness of your summer
Beats on my reflection
Chilling me in mirrors
Upon which gray clouds roar.
It’s not in death’s dark chamber
That these words are given fire
And it’s not in distant woodlands
That strength is forged in steel
But in the heartache of dark scratches
Lying on a paper,
In the bleeding waters running
Where bark is stripped and peeled.
I don’t know the clever lines that
Dylan Thomas would emit
Or the wit of Oscar Wilde
Or the depth of Friedrich Nietzsche.
All I know is that I miss
My friend like a blanket
Like a coat that is hanging
In my darkening wardrobe long,
And as your shadow slowly drifts
From the armchair to the highway
I am trapped inside the mist
On the lake on which I’ve cried,
For the snows of yesteryear,
For the snows of yesteryear,
For the snows of yesteryear.
Author Bio:
Martin grew up in a violent family, was forced to leave his country and by 17 was living in a park on the other side of the world. Libraries were warm and poetry a best friend. Escape to magical places and hope. Strength of character meant by 25 he had qualified as a lawyer and had dug himself out some very dark places. Poetry paints images, word pictures... layered with nuance and a chance to stretch words to reflect a feeling, an emotion (not captured in prose) -- the sideways glance of the silent actor. He writes for himself, an ongoing therapeutic expression of hope.