Feste's Lute

Beyond what’s fixed
she hems red shifts,
rav’ling as we pass.
Aphasia barks, as
myth and fables drift
in certain realms
unsettled planes
permit.
A narrow Miss
would stir up surly fits
so singular, she’d crush
their bits with bliss.
The myth fits
battered glass,
stairs and steps
as trips and traps.

Lepers fall prey
and ample ankles
shatter,
but some reeds
never bruise.

They grow to wave
their shoots
beneath
the crescent.
Crying out
their passions,
brushing past
all agony,
they shake.

Forsaken stalks
live lifetimes
while we wake.

We’re past appeal.
They hazard us questions
straight,
punctuated
by padded rooms,
insular jackets
warding away warmth
with sweet stasis.
Analysis is swift, and
gratefully with grit
we scrawl pages
on cotton.
We bleed in
the wash.

Agrieved, the fever
shattered glass.
Mercury surpassed
our atmosphere’s
permission.

A silver box dispenses
locks and friendships
strung on spanish moss.

The heat’s effects, severe,
souls sequestered in a sphere.
Questions scraped
our throats.
I broke…

We crossed a thought,
becoming more,
bridged the rot
that should have
fueled a pyre.

A crashing voice
cut under our approach.
“Never to launch,
never to land,
never a castle
on the sand.”

We started at the thought,
and glanced beneath
for comfort.

The journey’s hope
undone.
Your shores
are cliff-faced.

The vandals embarked.
Their course
set fire to our skies.
It arced across
the night,
an ad for endings,
a signboard with shackles
and stock proclamations.
So assailed, we
inspected our riggings
and re-painted our figurehead
with dreams.
Our bravos still echo,
a Victor’s horizon ahead.

Her hardened plea
had risen, mad,
from masks
that strapped on
sidearms.
A skewer in her
conscience grew
like bamboo
it thrust her past
the plaster-wrapped
admissions.
It’s no one’s fault.

Our surging thoughts
were grasslands,
born up in dawn’s
hazy eyes.

Each crevice filled,
each parcel dense
with eglantine and
ornaments
of our bold Nature’s
exploration.

Soft irises unfolded
in our shade.

We hang gently,
orbits grave as
rays carve shadows
‘cross our plains.

Set regrets spin
retrograde,
belief adopts
a stray.

Feet unlaced,
The Messenger can never carry (she crushed his wings)
thoughts so temporary
as these…