The magic of summer twilight casts a spell
In ink blue incantations and honeysuckle dew.

Each shadow stretched out like the years,
That spread deeper and darker, stronger too.

As the mystery of day's last light is cast afresh,
Gentle glows, fearfully goes our sacred time.

Hidden there we lose and find ourselves,
In the murmur of the evening breeze, our lullaby.

It sends us, brings us to a mystic place
In which we all relive each memory's hew.


Tom Lefort July 2023

if you want to find me
I am slightly left of centre
at the back, a different colour
more drab, grey even
quite unnoticeable
an extra in a street scene
there to make the numbers up
a voice in a choir drowned out
by those around me
probably mouthing the words
half remembered
a shadow on a sunlit street
where everyone is having
a good time, or on the beach
sitting staring out to sea
no small talk, not even hello

my mind is shooting
gathering experience
like tracer fire
target secured

Seems I've already been here before,
searching endlessly in a void
A man trapped by the eyes of those who still see a boy

I guess I'm still yet to grow

There's an echo bouncing off the wall; back and forth
Swinging by, and whispering a sweet lie;
it could be the monsters, or just the voices in my head

Either way,
none of those sounds playing,
leaves me feeling a little bit scared

I should say a prayer,
but I've preyed on so much precious time,
I'm only left chasing the few seconds I have left
While being stuck in between an acute happiness,
and all the feelings of being depressed

There isn't an angle to explain how loudly
I want to scream at people's faces
Describing the colours of their aura,
mostly in their displaying hatred

But then again,
it may come out a little racist

I've come to find myself writing love letters to the dark

And the result:

the ugliness of the morning
to see such a beauty, of my dark art

                       ...bite your tongue,
                          as there are no other words
                          to speak of this
  
Just quietly shut your mind,
and open your eyes

                             This is the unholy piece

❝ while he runs from darkness
  she purposefully turns off her light
  he saves her flicker and makes it burn

  like a california fire guided by his wind
  she spreads through the mainland
  curving through the hidden crevices of the world
  her scorching heat;
  felt and seen and adored

  as he runs from the darkness,
  her light continues to burn a fire blue
  the shadows slowly melt away from her touch
  and he feels her warmth and basks in it

  she thought she has saved him from the monsters
  she thought she has saved him enough to stop running

  but the shadows crept back in
  slowly, until it consumed him entirely
  and off the ledge he went

  her savior,
  reduced to nothing but a pool of dusk
  and emptiness
  and sadness

  she was but a flicker but he preserved her
  a flicker which continued to burn in her heart

  so she savored the beauty of his grey tones;
  found and accepted his darkness
  in all the bright places ❞

by Theodore Roethke

In a dark time, the eye begins to see,
I meet my shadow in the deepening shade;   
I hear my echo in the echoing wood—
A lord of nature weeping to a tree.
I live between the heron and the wren,   
Beasts of the hill and serpents of the den.

What’s madness but nobility of soul
At odds with circumstance? The day’s on fire!   
I know the purity of pure despair,
My shadow pinned against a sweating wall.   
That place among the rocks—is it a cave,   
Or winding path? The edge is what I have.

A steady storm of correspondences!
A night flowing with birds, a ragged moon,   
And in broad day the midnight come again!   
A man goes far to find out what he is—
Death of the self in a long, tearless night,   
All natural shapes blazing unnatural light.

Dark, dark my light, and darker my desire.   
My soul, like some heat-maddened summer fly,   
Keeps buzzing at the sill. Which I is I?
A fallen man, I climb out of my fear.   
The mind enters itself, and God the mind,   
And one is One, free in the tearing wind.

I would make the light.

I'd take it
from wherever I found it.

I'd bring it inside
and make it work for me
and so find the hidden
and show the truth

and so lift the shadows
to their rightful place.

we are the stories between the armpit
and the hand
between the whisper and the sigh
forged by galaxies of wounds
in the fragility of light
of spaces crushed
by the acceleration of time
our irises boundless
sometimes

we are the stories that tell
our soles when to stop
our bones when to sing
that put sunflowers
in our haze
cranberries in our waitings
delight in our might
skyscrappers of thought in our deeds
promises in our hands full of mud
over caskets

we are the stories of love's failure
(aren't we asking too much from love?)
of decay of pretend of parasitic laughter
of the violence of bodies without minds
without singing in the hearts
stories of fists strife and toil,
the boredom of dawn
repetition of self-deception
circles not round
triangles full of hurt
of the rigidity of one plus one
equals two
the rest is wonder

so many stories exchanging nouns, verbs
attributes just to capture
what is forever escaping alluding flowing
naturally undisturbed in the exchange of
vowels
like dark matter that escapes iself
only in dreams

was it the awe of vowels that invented the world?

incessantly on the edge
of chaos of blindness of knowing
of loss of void of grief & joy
of floating to the unknown
or pausing into certainty
hard working minds and eager souls
errect citadels of meaning
in dialogue sometimes
or as oppressive as
the denial of slippery roads
of sad guitars or
maddening violins

our shadows sit closely next to us
precisely when
we're stepping into the light