Prose & Poetry

A Class of a Sin ~ wanting to be lost within...

Prose and Poetry

XVII.

suspended, ribbons of fog
hover
whispering licks to the
spindle legs of snowy
egrets
perched lonesome at the
pond's listless edge

majestic, displayed to
empty eyes
casting lines leading to
hollow log
deadened oaken from
years long wintered

forgotten, folded within
tangled hands
betrayal time hasping tight
locket treasure
tarnished memory in
heathered field of
... once upon our time.

All Rights Reserved © 2007 Diane Anjoue.

Bravery

Midfield, alone
bustled by the November breeze
clings a single reddened leaf -
tiny, brilliant,
alone (but I already said that, didn't I...)
without comfort of crowd for warmth;
that begins in the decay below

this morning I once again argued
"it is November 6th...
there are no more hot days!
you will wear your warm jacket,
and that is my final answer."
I won the argument,
he wore the jacket.
his final hurrah....
it was draped over his shoulders.

brave and cocksure
face, nipped and windbit
the leaf clings to it's perch
a lifeline?
the last straw?
good to the last drop...
I see the fascination,
I'm in love with that view too.

All Rights Reserved © 2009 Diane Anjoue.

Etchings

Slim pencil lines
faint, foolish
etchings,
coal rubbings
across vellum-

-crisp linen...

Brief flourishes,
emotions,
tempered by
stark, blunt to
faded, dates-

-marking time....

Miles passing,
age old days
left behind,
each pitted post
painted over-

-masking true...

Unspoken,
hidden, ciphered
etchings without
trace... markers
abound-

-aging without you.

All Rights Reserved © 2011 Diane Anjoue.

Walking the Fool's Road

You been running
'round my head
chasing down our
old thunder
blowing past our
good ol' time
easing along our way

Making words come
and gotta go
building them to a
riding crescendo
spreading them thin
til they break

When will we
just let us be
prove that we can
more than we can't?
fall back to make
good on our word
of rolling deep

The day grows cold
yet we still walk
the same fool's road
we've been on before
a mile round to you,
circle back to me.

Let me prove you
a lick of worth,
our time held down
bring back to now
the whisper of
my name, your lips
to play the blind.

Forgive the past,
rain down our storm
take my hand - let's walk
where we belong.

All Rights Reserved © 2011 Diane Anjoue.

Searching for Solace

I love the sense of peace that comes with the drifting of snowflakes. The gentle covering, by white blanket, of ravished land that the autumn trails in its wake. I suppose that I relate to the barren fields with their dying grass and leaf litter. The naked trees shivering as the winds whip ‘round their trunks, further stripping them of their dignity. By nightfall, nature is robed in delicate lace and silken nightdress; nestled down for a peaceful rest.

Often my mind is in a similar state; thoughts blowing helter skelter in the icey gusts of emotion scraping over the tender psyche my muse sometimes calls home. How I am able to lend snippets of sentences to the incomplete barrage of renderings, I cannot be sure. An outpouring of loneliness spills into this emptiness to create a poetic drift of delicate flakes of musings. Each lonely line built upon the next to create lost stanzas and at long last a blizzard’s feast of my senses. In the end, I am again left devoid of inspiration.

Time spent staring out my window, subconsciously counting the lacey snowdrops that weave in and out of sight just as my thoughts sieve through and disappear before I can catch them on the tip of my tongue. If I could only surmise a way to collect them in a downy covering as the ground cradles the snowfall; making a pallet of creative canvas for the joyous pitter pat of children’s feet and haphazard snow angels.

Some would say that the youthful creations mar the staid beauty of uninterrupted fields of white, yet their freedom is tangible. If I only had the gift of penning a poem woven of gaiety and grande abandon…. Instead I am destined to call out to the vast echoing heavens in a nightly plea to the man in the moon not to abandon me as my muse tends to. The only solace I know is that although both do leave me for a spell, they will always return to console me at day’s weary end.

Mianzi

actions misconstrued
misinterpreted,
written thoughts
twisted for pleasure
turn to broken words.
ill conceived response
mad comportations
disappoint the muse.
back pedal, recant
quietly apologize....
For, I can't bear
silent displeasure.

I would lose face
just to save yours.

"Mianzi" is a Chinese word which roughly represents the inner dignity that is possessed by every human, which all others dealing with its possessor are duty bound to uphold, and neither to threaten nor to challenge.... roughly translated as "face"....

All Rights Reserved © 2004 Diane Anjoue.

Sketched in Poetry

Laughter caught in twinkling eyes
Sadness dampened our lashes
Beauty cast by tilted smile
Tears drawn out in splashes

Verse defined strokes of pencil
Stanzas captured it’s bloom
A title applied as stencil
Compliments penned with plume

Love softened the harsh angles
Fear danced on our every nerve
Heartache bowed straight to tangles
Desire enhanced the softest curve

Image flowed freely in prose
Etched in symmetry with rhyme
Paintings brushed in repose
Our artistry sealed in time.

Into the Silvered Gloaming

Greyed frigate may not reach
your shores in season, even
in berth, your sea worthy ship
has pirated my empty sails

Shipwreck tongues,
bitter tears - love's demise
isolated foghorn blows
it's melancholy song

Without due course
dusk spills into the sea,
gleaming silver and dark
rides a lace edged tide to shore

Twisted beach gathers
solitary damp lighthouse,
desires storm blown, left
staring into the silvered gloaming.

Crimson Kiss

the twittering of leaves

clutching at brittle branches

roughly tossed

by fallen whispered winds

a dying sound, groaning

signs of life yet unabandoned

hope struggling to re-emerge

captured in muted colours

decaying apple’d greens,

yellows - lifeshorn, heaped in

burial browns, faded sunsets

rusted risers of creaking

wooden bench, traced by

lone skittering crimson leaf

slivered by jagged splinter

pierced deep my skin with

seasoned memory of your kiss

slipping between my lips;

I changed that day

as fate’s winds swelled

colliding with reason,

quietly, I fell for you.

La Primavera

Crimson petals
spill their life -
unfold, open, offer

Lay bare bits of tenderness,
spring's pastel growth redefined

Bowed lips
whisper fruited truths

Awesome uncertainty
wells within a certain heart
-scarlet ribbon curls
from pinprick needling,
cupid's arrow quivered

Lifeblood shed
to spare love's demise,
our season
lies fallow no more.

Spontaneous

Her day is empty, done
with daily deeds and doings
(hours since he woke her
with that sweet kiss adieu)
he left her with little
to straighten and tuck
save a bed of sheets,
tangled - doused with love.
untangled to lay light to -
one gold cuff link, a scrap of lace
and a lonely wayward button.

As she wanders about the rooms, ensuite
(their temporary love nest)
She trails her fingers longingly
over his orderly things -
his razor, a forgotten dossier
the silk tie from last night...
She grins absently and whispers
"tu me manques, Luv".

She slips into his dress shirt, left
draped across the chaise lounge -
a perfect companion to
her favourite frayed cutoffs:
buttoned sparsely, midriff tied
lavender lace plays peek-a-boo
against bronzed dewy body.

Bare feet flash in sandal dance,
taunting all with secrets borne
leading of their own accord
to unplanned point of rendezvous.
a small vacation timed amidst
their grande adventure for simply two.

His day is full, beginning
a schedule brim and unrelenting;
appointments, meetings overlap
five phone-lines groan under strain
atrium overflows with unexpecteds
yet, somehow, his mind
has wrapped around an image -
flashbacks to an arrival certain
a simple moment - eyes catch,
stairs descended, a tarmac kiss...

Silence overtakes chaos, reason intervenes
he senses her presence unaware
again, a single minute without time,
split second decision made,
an answer foreign to unspoken plea,
outstretched hands herald rescue offer.
chagrined subjects left to gape
nodding, knowing the look of "lunch"
as he follows her determined lead
(and the rich scent of warm fudge brownies).

It isn't the humid heat spilling from
the pregnant tropic sky that melts him -
it is her intriguing declaration of...
"C'est si bon! Allons-y!"

The Loneliest

I carry the trace of my loneliest times
on imaginary scraps of tissue,
tucked deep into...

-the corners of my eyes
-the creases of my palms
-the button placket of my top
-the inseam of the worn-down knees of my jeans
-the shallow cup behind my heel

most of all,
in the deepest point
of the back patch jeans pocket,
where you used to slide your hand deep
so often to hold me close
in those (contented) times -
you wore a hole at the seam.... now,
my lonely scraps
won't even keep my company...
they slip away
through that hole you left,
wearing me down
with contentment
while you taught me
just to settle
for lonely.

Weaving Gypsy Spells

Autumn sunset blooms over Grecian turquoise sea,
crackled glass bowl showcasing
radiant glimmers of faintly perfumed skin,
silky talc shimmering across his beauty's breast
as it dips below a crushed jewel'd silken twist -
desire displayed en gallerie.

Winter'd afternoon delight peppered with Turkish harem spices,
Sandalwood and bergamot oils caress pulse points pounding to tempter's riff -
temptress sways and curls to gypsy mandolin,
trailing sexy musk, drawing dark and brooding eyes
of seaside storms,
as lovers lounge.

Spring's scent, the downy crown of their newborn's head
redolent of a fresh laundered towel spun 'round
newly bathed shoulders bare -
possessing fingertips trace through obsidian waves.
A father's worship'd love glistens on their dewdrop cheeks,
awed with familial yearnings vestiged.

Summer mornings wake to baby's dewy kisses,
amidst finest Egyptian cotton awash in lavender and forget-me-nots,
damp mahogany tresses swirled cherry vanilla
over crème-puff pillows down'd.
Tickling of milky giggles tracing mama's hot cross'd cheeks
as papa shares his bakery fresh baklava....

Pensive

Pensive at 4:30 a.m.

thoughts of you wake me
(have you had time for your morning tea?)
at an hour of the morning
as my world around slowly bursts to life:

outside my window-
the white noise...
trains blast as they clatter along
an occasional siren whoops
every planes' flightpath direct-jetting to the airport

but it's the blooming of spring that drowns out all of that.

birds. From the sound of it, thousands of them, in the trees
outside my window and at 4:30 a.m. to boot.

what wakes them so early, or do they wake to wake me?

is it my white noise?

will it become white to them,
or remain a menacing black
or electrifying electric blue...

when will their cacophony of chaos
ever smooth out into a symbiotic symphony
so that I may return to being

Pensive at 4:30 a.m.

All Rights Reserved © 2011 Diane Anjoue

Fickle Muse

You've taken my words,

Whisked them away

To some far away place...

Were it some fairytale land,

I'd live to tell the story

But I fear they're wasted...

I have nothing left to give:

Canvases are plain;

Murals are empty

Landscapes are deadened

Portrait's faces are turned away...

Tomes are empty;

Fiction is without plot

Biographies without cause

Poetry's emotions, gray and weary...

Now, when the time has come,

When the need is great - I am

left with naught in head and hand

My heart is all I have left to give.

Lightning in a Bottle

Desert's dry earth
clings to cracked feet
dragged forth, bared
in single filed procession
gallant in tattered rags
as the church bell tolls
it's death song mourn'd

Empty skies burn
seared clouds, edged
in reddened haze
smeared cross dusk's
approaching back,
dragging thunder;
lightning screams-

For childless mother.
brutal flash gives light:
rough hewn cross
tiny mounded grave
skeleton guardian
rain lays mourning
dust back to dust.

Hideaway

What images would you recollect
if you could,
would you bear witness to short foggy nights,
more like snapshots,
scattered across a down duvet
rumpled and dampened
with sweat from bodies straining

Would broken images
rain down
to skitter across polished oak floors
sliding under throw rugs unraveled, or
are those the ties
that bound your restraint-
holding back the midnight storm

Should images
freeze frame in tandem,
start, stop, start, shadows
dance with hesitation -
a give and take sacrifice
slow burn sparks to funeral pyre
small death's mural caught in bas-relief

Dark nights but photographs
faded, curled
torn from albums long past
moments lost inside -
buried memoirs
hiding from us, yet
we've seen traces left behind
tucked within this time's hideaway.