Month: December 2017

A Leap of Faith

Just before midnight

step into the painting

not yet painted

sit in silence

breathless

hear the rustling of change

something is about to burst

like a bomb

 

Humanity : you can’t go back, can’t correct

Blow a kiss to the old

scatter sorrow to the winds

take a leap of faith

begin again

 

At the stroke of midnight’s magic

Pick up the brush

paint me your finest self

with each stroke

from the palette

a scene more beautiful

Truer

Hand the world a miracle

 

Beneath a sky of diamonds
She knelt
Raised her hands to the heavens
Perchance he could reach back

A gravitational collapse
Within a circular path of galaxies and souls

Humbled by Divinity

His daughter, his blood
Born with the stealth of a wolf
Fuelled by the heart of a fawn
Tenacious as a honey badger

Immutable thread: Do you hear her whispers?
A spoken oath, a crossed heart, a blown kiss
Rustling on the wings of Winter

A star collapses luminous and tumbles to earth

Miss Birdie

~an excerpt

Bing’s Palace

1963

Birdie unsnapped the clasp of her sequined clutch, reached within the satin folds and pulled out an ebony compact and a tube of lipstick. She appeared oblivious to his insults and her surroundings. Her mister had forgotten her, therefore, she’d remind him.

Snapping open the compact case, she gazed at her reflection in the mirror. With stealth precision she traced the outline of her lips, plump with colour. Slowly her steady grasp creamed the center of her lips. As a final touch, she removed a tissue from her clutch and softly kissed it.

Taking one last glance into the mirror, she paused. Satisfied, she clicked the compact shut and returned the items to her clutch. The clasp snapped. She turned and pecked a faint scarlet kiss on Annie’s tender cheek. Birdie might as well have fired a bullet through the floor. The silence at the table was deafening.

The boss growled, “Shouldn’t you go for a walk or something?”

Birdie shook her head and motioned toward the bottle. “Pour me another, Roy,” she murmured.

Roy met her gaze; she winked back. He didn’t understand the boss. Birdie was a class act, easy on the eyes, even owned her own business: a sausage factory. No one knew how she’d ended up in that line of work. It seemed profitable. She was clear title on a home nestled within the west side of the city and a good looker. The boss is a fool, he thought and took a drink. As the bourbon went down and warmed his soul, he knew this: Miss Birdie lit up his dark.

 

 

To Dream

An excerpt~

1961

“You want to fly to the moon, Annie?”

“Yes,” she said.

“One day. Maybe one day, honey.”

He offered her hope, something big to imagine, the chance to dream. This was the country where dreams came true. One had to hold to dreams.  From an early age, he had clung to hope. It felt as if yesterday. Shivering, he had cowered beneath the scratchy covers, tossed as an after thought to blanket the rusted army cot.  His small hands clutched a wooden ship.

During those lonely nights he had gazed through a curtain less window and mapped the stars. Questions popped into his mind: Who am I? How did I get here? He dreamt of sailing away from the little house on Second Street. Each morning, he woke, convinced that there was a chance. One day, he thought One more day and then another. Buoyed on dreams and possibilities that melted like fairy floss from the carnival stall, he had carried on. Hope rooted him to the universe; he convinced himself that his destiny was to rule an empire.

If only someone had warned him that the odds weren’t in his favour and that boardrooms were full of men of privilege. It didn’t matter; he knew this as truth.

TBC