Favourites

For You

I wait for you even now that you have gone.

I wait for you like the stars twinkling
with the distant hope in the vastness of space.

I wait for you still like a lighthouse
a silent sentinel, a beacon in the immense
blue sea.

I wait for you today as I did yesterday
pacing the hours with an empty heart.

I wait my love everywhere I am.

I hold you in my blood captive, in the air
I mouth your name in night abandoned.

I wait for you my beloved,
time is all that still holds my hand.

I wait with the patience of carnations,
stoic and petrified by loss, by departures,
by doors that close but remain ajar,
by your sunlit thighs that advance and retreat.

I wait for dawn to cast its penance,
for the day to burn a hole in my eyes.

I wait love without decline,
with an urgency that drowns the sea.

I wait with the hallmark of hours,
pecked by minutes and seconds full of teeth.

I wait for night to disappear,
suspended by your hallucinated presence.

So tell me please how shall I measure this life?
by single drops of breath
by gasps of shivering light
by the nocturnal drone of sleep,
Tell me please.

Kevin Harling


Ode to Distance

If I could stand on a glass watery surface,
calibrating its depths with heartbeats,
fathoming its leagues with metaphors,
that smell like poppies.
Taste the salt of its winds with opaque lips.

Would I be any closer?

If I could hold back tides with melancholies knees
portaging its breadth with measured sighs,
lamenting its scope in a swell of eyes,
traverse its blue with vigorous buoyant breaths,
calculating with reflection its cold waving spine.

What would I gain to that end?
Would I be any closer?

Does an urchin forget about yesterday?

Everything is castaway drifting towards the sky,
evaporating like blue waves, scurrying,
ascending and descending in tensions
that defy land, defiling the Heavens,
demonstarting with soluble fingers full of
circumstance.

The miles of separation seem like midnight,
cresting with a neverending persistence
against a night full of sky.

The air is swallowed by sanctions,
drowned by unconviction, by mouths,
by its bleached tresses,
by sand that spans day and night
with wicked tongues.

Everything is expanding, surging and rolling,
confined by the silence to which it resides.

Does an urchin remember yesterday?

Kevin Harling


Eternal Are These Thoughts

You cannot abandon me by distance
for miles are beyond the reach
beyond the grasp of these eyes
beyond the scope of finite fingers
beyond the taste of flesh.
You cannot abandon me with horizons
nor oceans overflowing with salt.
You cannot abandon me with skies
nor knees like a sunrise.
You cannot abandon my dreams
nor the touch of willingness
the apprehensive sighs or days.
You can never translate the minutes
or the transgressions of thought.
You will never understand the depths
nor relate the hours of daydreaming.
Such things can never be erased
they are beyond these earthly bonds.
This can never be abandoned by ignoring
by the colour of forgetting.
Such things exist, because they have to
because hearts have eyes and hands
because words touch with softness
with liquid fingers and traces
like the dust of stars.

Kevin Harling


Essence

Neon padded stars envelop
the sky with glances
that gather around dusk,

the silhouette of dawn
showing its supple cheek
upon the day that outstretches.

Wind chimes its airy bell
like a modicum of silence
embracing and cheering the day,

from time indigo blue drops
bead dew and bread nectarine
zesty to the touch like lemon,

and sometimes that seem few
what is left dwindling like a flash
is not the shadow but the essence.

Kevin Harling


Eve

Show me addiction
light
wrap me in night
nocturnal
sheet
of black
show me the addiction
and ground me
beneath the light
night evening
spoon of moon
wading loon
lotus
show me the addiction
write its words
nocturnal.

Kevin Harling


Athena

Does your compassion lack wings?

Dare you not fly with emotion
flowing beneath your beautiful white veils.

Has the winds of war diluted your grace?

I think not my Goddess, you hyacinth hair
and perfect porcelain gaze of blue.

Oh Deity that bewitches the earth and stars
belittle my armour and heart.

Endow me owl of the night with strength of
mind and rational thoughts.

I bow to you angel of light and sands that spill
radiant wonder and beyond that glory.

O Athena the air sings your song forever.

Kevin Harling


Word Maker

Submissive hands fall like grace had a face
subdued and dawning like the magenta sun
I kneel with opinions and seas of salt
with worship played out in the stars
with words I cannot comprehend like sand
oh lyrical granite finite and true
speak to me in whispers like air
like I am swallowed by sound, behold me
your kisses of stone eroding my flesh in gazes
oh succumb these coal limbs utopian
embellish my thoughts with galaxies
eradicate my nights with merging daylight streams
and surround my heart with blue blue water.

Kevin Harling