Exhausted

You’re the end of the smoke
The waving lines of ashen dune
Heather grey and gone too soon
Silent crashing nevermore

The space wherein your body fades
Far above and far away
That moonlit contor dissipates
Left me looking for the shape

Slate stiletto lifts from embered tip
And yawns between the awns and leaves
The orange fades below the greens
Your eyes the emerald gleam in vapor

Back to steam and back to naught
With rippling heat the last mirage
Your departure – it gave me pause
For I can’t find your tether

Then it dawns on me just there
For once aware, as such she rises
Sunlight on the shape no more
No servent of the smoke’s devises

No ashen dune or dagger tip
No heather teardrop upward drips
Lifts into the virgin air
From swift ascending vale

Don’t taste the scent on bygone lips
Begone this kiss of rising, parting
Lucent to the cloud departing
Far above one left below
The rainfall salted,
never known

-Galwyn

Unique

Charming in her words
Uniquely chisled as her face
With marble eyes of fountains
In flowing soak encased

The silver stream like vapor
The rising steam of glance
To find a peerless longing
For a creature built of chance

Unique in every factor,
Every fracture,
Every fault,
Yet all of this together,
Captivates with its gestalt

For there is not a single line
Through which she’d be defined
Composed so very wonderous
As if plucked from dreaming mind

-Ganwyn

Creed

Never had the tongue for creed
And never had the tune for choir
Never had a reason to need
What my soul never sought to require

Though in this exception
There’s one faithful perception
Which is yet to succumb to the real

And I know it sounds pious
But I find that there’s heaven
In the way that you’ve made me to feel

Cross my palms before they dry
Silver alms fall from my eyes
Not of fear for the divine
But of wishing you goodbye

-Galwyn

Mark

Pinched between my words and woes
Rubbed smooth between my lips
This honeysuckle rose,
Preened and plumed and picked

Between the glassy gossamer
Ensnared between the sheets
Nightshade in her eyes
Your vying violet creeps

Planted within my memory
And bound within my thoughts
With eyes between fresh lavender
And blue forget-me-nots

Grace my face dear buttercup
And wait between the page
My words may rot and fade away
But my mark will never age

-Galwyn

Salt

It’s been hard to ply inspiration with sorrow
Saline sleepwalks through dead seas
Brine listless in commodity
Barren insights, so insultingly plain
– Oh, what a mild flavor is pain

-Galwyn

Wellspring

I find her in the wellspring
As we find it each together
Across, but never far apart
Midst vaperous wreath of heather

The parting of the trees so slight
That only song permits
The wind and willows melody,
That which mutters from Her lips

Spring to me
Abscond the woes
Which pin us to our pining place
Wellness is a fickle thing
Bereft of time or place

But if you wander close to lost
And loss encloses you
Your misty eyes remind the place
Where we can be a part as two

-Galwyn

Distending

Revolving, as the earth;
We thought out time
was infinite
We’d echo
forth and fro
In and out
this modest pace
With nowhere left
to go

Carried, on the wind;
We thought our time
was permanent
We’d suture
abscess closed
Threading out
this modest space
As horizon rips
the hole

Sheltered, in the fire;
We thought our time
was tenanted
We’d kindle
Stringent soul
Flicker, dither
exigent
As space between
goes cold

Still, upon the air;
We thought our time
was eloquent
We’d speak
and so we’d Be
searching for our distant ending
Aloft on thoughts
of space distending

-Galwyn

Thoughts…

I’m not scared of death
For then none would mourn
The thoughts I had inside

But if I should live
All my life I would give
To see them realized

But if I grow old
Oh, the sorrow I’d sow
If my thoughts were first to die

I’d mourn, for I’d say
They’d been taken away
And I’d forgotten why

-Galwyn

Fibers

Raw, romantic, and ravishing
Revoltingly captivating
The writhing of lovers,
So tender empassioning
And while they gawk from the doorframe
We’ll be here in the art
Where we’ll never feel ugly
Knitting fibers of heart

-Galwyn

District Rain

Streets like canine noses
Afternoon rain subsides
Chilled particles dance upon the wind
While music plays inside

The city never sleeps,
They say,
It sits and sings the blues
Without the sun,
Without the moon,
We sway in foggy streetlight hues

With golden rays upon the street
Glisten green and red
As passing cars glide down below
And steel birds, overhead

In gleaming mire of wake-ing tire
The streams of beige concrete
This hazy rain can soothe your pain
Through ambiance, replete

-Galwyn

Sea Glass

And in this seldom stoic
Through yields of quondam fruitlessness
Preen and pluck this nettle flotsam,
Of grasping whalebone

And as the thrums abate resistance
Cascading nets to stems so stern
Suspended there in seafoam loam
Yield seaglass to my reach

Spy through verdent messenger
Once skiffed aloft a lonesome reef
Marooned with vineyard sediments
And lade with sentimental speech

Love-lost flotsam jettisoned
Final shanty lost in ante
Yet beryl bits forget me not
– with frail oceanic leaves

-Galwyn

Familiar

“This is familiar”
You said for the first time
The last time that we had each met

I tried to remember,
what was said just before
Then I tried evermore to forget

-Galwyn

Footsteps

The footsteps tell me we’re not alone
Isolated on some ruddy sphere
Between the pit of our passions,
and the summit of our fears
Yet drawn to this danger
The sordid allure of familiar intruder
Imposes reign upon this heart
How familiar it sounds –
and sounds and sounds
only when we’re around to hear it
We fell to the forest and called it dead
while the shadows lived and moved
We’re back here, still in fear
Nothing more frightful than a peer
Empathizing with some psychotic pathos
Which this species shares, ever selfish
I know the stranger and they know me
We’re the stranger of all
Who are you; I scream
Both mirror and screen
Just some ghastly human being
Looming romantic and
stomping their feet

-Galwyn

Vendetta

The rage enkindled, both stock and amber
The grief, itself, amused
The fury rends, combines together
Adhering flesh to wounds

Detach the stitch, unband contuse
Where air can breathe loft kindled pyre
Far into the onyx sky
Where sorrows blink forever

And still it burns, though not of flame
Erosive of eroded planes
Flush between the blooded stains
Which patter head to floor

As bile sears low thrumming ears
With eyes unmet to stance upended
Chilled saline fractures lacerate
What flames had left untended

And here, in this
We find one’s self, entombed in traitor’s silhouette
Lost in wrath bereft of flesh
Intendment lost before

The shadows dancing desultory
Where which mattered; nevermore.

-Galwyn

Should We Dream

What we lack in in intrinsic, we make up for in dreams
The shapeless form which binds us both
Are you in love with it, or in love with me?
Or is this perhaps another dream?

When we’re different heights, yet walk the same
Is there some broken clock which slows the pace?
So who walks slow, or who walks fast?
Or perhaps we walk within a dream?

If beauty rests in the beholder
Am I still here when you can’t see?
When you look, will I awake,
from unsurrendered dream?

Am I the figment, or maybe you?
Plucked from sleeping scheme by perception?
Do any questions make it true?
Are our dreams the death, or conception?

-Galwyn

Birch

Wither you, don lichen bones
Primmed with furbelow sage
Molded parchment crumpled closed
Round instigated page

Skirting birchflesh lamina
Roseate, you tempt of deeper hue
Ashen till these eyes draw close
And silver ribbon sunders you

-Galwyn

Rest

Quavering, your tie undone
Yet bound in narrow spaces
Voice elated,
We cross the line
Pitching elevated
We breach the coda,
Take our time
And linger on each fleeting rest.

Scratch me latitismal
Lay your trouble horizonal, pressed
With vinyl snapping primal fretless
Panting as you strip the setlist

Wavering, the duet sung
Yet no feedback as the wires meet
Amplifier drones discrete
Below our feet,
Discarded sheets
We linger on the rest

-Galwyn

Hers

Heard her speak my name
In that moment it was hers
That, and so much more

-Galwyn

Where Love Runs

My loneliness my onus
The price of love
Paid in advance
Or perhaps a sunk cost
Coins strewn to a graveyard
Pressed to my blind eyes

My penance is my faith
A child in the desert
Wandering more than 40 days
With no oasis
No spell or hymn
To end this dry spell

I’ve never dipped my feet
Or tried to wash my hands
In filthy bargain waters
They may flow through many
But that only thickens it
Congealed with salivation

I want to go where love runs pure
It runs both warm and crisp
It runs between a kiss
Balmy
Never startling
Unflinching

A well to drown myself in
But never die
The surface above me ripples
As I watch then sun rise and fall
Through a dancing kaleidoscope

Embraced by her up to my neck
Her love evaporates
Into the tranquil air I breathe
The precipitation above patters down
And runs its fingers through my hair

Thunder and lightning
Her heart was never domestic
A deafening pulse
To galvanize my own
Yet when the storm passes
All that is left is perspiration on my skin
Foggy and calm
Like the grass in the dawn

-Galwyn

Roots

There was a discrepancy
in the roots
So sayeth the tomb
stone to no one

There was a homily going on at the time. Smoke was drifting from incensed belles and met the breeze by the window. Someone pulled a nest from the rafters, leaving a boot print there on the pew. It was deathly hot outside.

There at the church of something
or othered
A hempen nimbus

they called for rain

The congregation withdrew to automobiles. Hand fans were elevated and shaken. Eventually making their way home as the glove box drew closed. It was beginning to become cold.

Birds flutter before they fall
leaves silent
Bronze echoes the tree

-Galwyn