This Poem is a Secret

this poem is a secret,
that will splinter into a thousand untruths,
as it leaves your open lips,
bloodied and screaming,
the salt acrid around your tongue
like a guilty sea;

this poem is a secret,
that will scatter into a hidden light,
as you read its thoughts,
new words falling in cursive shadows,
convulsing strangely
upon its crumpled sheets;

why are we here.
why are we still here.

this poem is the secret
chanted into an ignorant ear,
smelling of the heaving desert air,
of the sigh of a lone date palm,
of the shifting knife-edged dunes,
a drop of vermilion blood
whirling for a moment
in a riptide of infinitude;

this poem is the secret
that fell from frozen fingers,
with the silence of the clouds after the rain,
with the absence of the sky in the haze,
a mirage folded along an unseen crease,
the inevitable cause,
the unresolved effect;

here.
still here.

 

For Poets United where the midweek prompt is “Secrecy”

Desert Rose

sharing
the blanket of night
we sleep under different stars

***

in the warm night air
fragrance of the desert rose-
who sighs so sweet

Linked to Carpe Diem Haiku Kai, where Basho’s journey to the Deep North (Oku no Hosomichi) continues. Reaching the Ichiburi Barrier, Basho is distressed to find that in the next room, there are two prostitutes from Nigata. He wonders at their misfortune and regrets he cannot let them join him on their difficult onward journey.
Previous posts in this series are HERE

Desert Tales

If you can hover in the heated air simmering over those shifting sands, will some primeval spirit begin to stir in your blood? Will you be able to hear the songs of the first camel caravan, smell the ancient wisdom in the flickering light of old camp fires and read the poetry spelt out by the sharp edges of the waiting dunes?

Can you discover in the depths of that brown ocean, the bleached lives of intrepid men and beasts and the lost stories of their impassioned journeys that the shadows try to recount every evening at sunset?

in the restless desert
like sand through clenched fists
time slips away


Merzouga Dunes, Morocco

#33

A parchment sky
over sterile hills,
muddy rivers
across dry wheat fields,
a desert wind
tuning an old requiem.
Last night I dreamt in sepia.

Poetweet: Exactly 140 characters long including spaces and punctuation.

Desert Blues

She was the last camel
in the caravan,
lost in thought, falling behind.
Her heart heavier
than the load on her back,
light as the love on her mind.

She looked up at the sky,
where mighty blue camels
trudged across dunes of white.
Where a young buccaneer
sang with the birds,
drank at oases of molten starlight.

He had followed her
through the morning mist,
once caught her watching him.
How long, she wondered,
before they could meet
at the golden-azure rim?

The blue desert
was turning pink,
the sand took on a darker hue.
She could close her eyes
in the warm firelight,
maybe he’d dream of her too?

“There are various eyes. Even the Sphinx has eyes: and as a result there are various truths, and as a result there is no truth” –  Friedrich Nietzsche