Shards of Blue

children peer in nests
observe treasures
blue notes
an ecstasy of anticipation
emergence
an appearance
a mystery arrives
a hatching to ensue...

fertility in eggs

vanished
a hasty vernal exit
an empty bowl of sticks
remnant feathers
an abandoned pillow
distressed
ruddy breast
cracked
shards of blue
an end before a beginning
a falling before Spring
a death before birth
when you left.

Cellared

Dusted off the claret
a vintage from another time
held her in my hands and stared
imagining her taste and rhyme...

The label still bright and vivid
the shape of the bottle fine
the fill, the neck, the lace like foil
all spoke of nectar divine.

But that wine required returning
to the rack from whence it came
to pass more years of ripening
and so nearly drunk remain.

The feast postponed indefinitely
the concubine on hold
venal thirsts and hungers cellared
to await a nobler mold.

Storm-tossed Heathen

Passage

The drifts
exist
in exile.

Stocked in shady niches,
clinging to a fleeting existence.
Drifts of a season
drifts of a reason
the purging white winter of our love
replaced by the thatch
of the prison of the past
woven in
to birth and new life
thereof.

Here we do wait.
Here it is over.
Here it begins
and ends
and begins.

Straddling the razor
pierced by the zenith
holding what it was
what it is
and what it always will be.
What is promised.
What is born
what is lived
and is dead.

Yesterday’s drifts,
today’s trout lilies,
and soon
soon
soon
the stinging nettles
of regrets.

stamping on dead snow
futile fits of impatience
hastening Spring

Aurelia

Another lament
and it is time
to more than dream
your metamorphosis
to more than find
your hysteresis
to more than bind
your Polyphemus
to escape the blindness
of sleeping Rhesus
of your own cave
your own cast
your cocoon.




Metamorphosis from Glenn Marshall on Vimeo.

Blood is the New Currency

Blood is the new currency.
Five hundred thousand Rand
a head
a shot.
This is easier than coke.
Cheaper than nukes.
And they will come.

The life blood is the animals now.
They are more than feeding.
They are life- the blood is the life.
And the guns.

The guns come from Mozambique.
But that must change.
Everything is changing now.
The Afrikaners are out.
The sanctions are out.
The secret is out.

It’s a market after all.
And there is supply.
And there is demand.

The “why not?" comes
upon you slowly
you suddenly realize
you are plotting
you are scheming
in the dance of the predator
and prey.

How you got there does not matter
now that you can see the heart
beating
in the chest of the mark.
It is simply a matter of when…













This is not an animal rights poem. This is not a hunting rights poem. This is not a judgment about any regime in South Africa. This is about irony, about predation as economics. This is self analysis, nothing more.

Elixir

When all I can recall
is the tingle on my tongue,
when all I can remember
is the instinct of the young.
When the only memory
is the subtle scent of you.
When a taste of out of time
is my only useful clue,
I will know I wobbled
but will have spoken true.

Tangled up in Blue

Wisdom and Judgement

Just because you have a stick in your hand
does not mean you should treat a hornet’s nest
like a piñata.

Blood Red, Sister Snow
Originally uploaded by Wyrd

multiflora rose
Valentine for Artemis
drops of blood on snow

Beijing Bicycles

real relationships
are about whole people not
just the pretty parts

This was given to me by an angel.
Not in haiku form , but as a heartfelt statement, that has been knocking about in my head since entry.

On Cats and Condemnation

She is leopard
she is lithe
she is a loud torment
she resents
she resists
she remands
she remits
she refuses
the portents
then permits
she permits
the pigeon holes
masked balls
salacious snares
the cat calls
the faux brawls
lascivious lairs
fomenting
what can only be

a feline response
retract or recline
slink away, away
or drink the wine
or slash and flay
deny or dine
or deny
or delay
or devour
and become mine
and please
not master
mentor
nor mistress.

yearning for sweet springs
to tap a sugar maple
and let go

Festival of the Trees

Festival of the Trees #32 is up! Check it out!!

I am frost ringed moon and crystallized breath...
cracked bleeding lips and comfort's quick death.
I am the arrival of dread and the resident forlorn...
the old man's heir... I am Winterborn.

nothing left but Live Oak
surreptitious altruism
all my love's in vain

Undone

On a pier in Durban on a windy night a man hooks a shark. It is dark on the boardwalk despite the festival lights on the beach and the cherry glow of first cigarettes and new love.

The fisherman is Indian, and exclaims in a fevered pitch to no soul in particular that this is the biggest of his life. I look into his eyes and he into mine and then to his observing young son and see a stranger helplessness in this man and know a hunger in the other one.

well worn rod and reel
father and son cut bait
fishing for supper

"He's so strong" he calls out, face to the wind, the dizzying waves crashing below
against piers
against posts
against pilings
immovable
concealing
repetition
of our common drama...

"Towards thee I roll."

Minutes drag on. An hour. The man tires. The son's eyes bore holes through shaking arms and straining line. Over and over with desperation and an ironic lilt come the words "Oh my God." "Oh my God!" punctuated by the reel's siren song. At the first exclaimed, now as a sob. At first astonished, now as if sentenced.

a leviathan
lurking beneath sunlight
steals the bait

Slowly he is gaining the beach, inching along the boardwalk, yet the waves grow larger in shore and the arms weaken as the shark, relentless, but neither panicked
nor resigned, fights, fights, fights.

life feeds on life
embraced by larger power
self-awareness

In the waves now
near the shore
a surge
a roar
of desperation
of fearful anxiety
of wide-eyed wonder
of ambivalent wind
of the dawning
of impending doom
exclamations.

"Oh my God, no."
Quavering.

"Papa!"
Demanding.

A singing reel
an audible snap
a limp strand
a fractured monofilament
a deflating father
a collapsing pedestal
a lost hero
a wizened son
and wordless exchanges
sobs of emptiness
failure
and despair.
Undone.