Rain

Am I to blame
If I make myself the target
When Eros' arrows rain
Martyred like the a varaed bull
In the last lists of pain
As painted on my face
By Eros arrow's rain.

Some hope

Would you be my lover.
Forever.
So that they name stars after us
And wedding cars carry our figurine.
Is this an innocent or idle dream?

The beach

Last night tar skies were harbinger
Wind awash with ides
Galloped the stretched beach
Grain routed over grain
Fled the tide in vain.

Like Hannibal from West
Rolled billious stratus
Bloated with scorn
A pall, moonless and deaf
Told of pain by morn.

Sail open below the awful ranks
With little room leeward she ran
And was broken
Vessel threshed 'gainst cliffs
Wood rent and canvas tore
As land and air and water
Vied in blackness, each unsure.

Unblessed her crew were lost
Their cries like candles in a furnace tossed
Dashed and drawn down restless deeps
For Davey Jones their souls to keep.

Now sun is splayed like deck planks
Upon the beach
Sick mast rifted through deck
Decorates the break.
Figurehead cast upon a crest
Lies a lonely mourner on the wreck.
The rest has become flotsam
On the path in this morning fresh
And some young wife
Dons spinster's dress
Such crushing loss,
In passing interest.

A note of clarification

My love is not the first blush of summer wine

I thought it was a well known fact.
Beside Richmond's wide narrative
Tide tickling shoes and tyres
Doe fretted from barb to captor
And back
From what I thought
A well known fact.

I didn't note the polysemics
The grand Victoriana
Colonnaded against context
Grass bank and straw boaters
Placed me in another time
I thought you knew
It wasn't wrote between the lines.

I should've known
Should've had more sympathy
For your semantics, so unladdered
I said it
Just in observation
Meant it
Not as declaration
Thought it
No great revelation
But echoes of other utterances
Spluttered and frustrated
The dreams they trick Carp with
Must have caught your word
And made it grow
As misused beauty does
So unlike you
Misunderstanding
Its just
I meant it different.

You of all should know
Should not be suprised
It's not like I never told
Or gave it much disguise.

But I should probably know
You must have heard some lies
And looked upon a wintered rose
That promised much but died.

But since misunderstanding
Has budded, lest it flare
Let me hasten to the clifftops
And with pride to all declare

My love is not the first blush
Of summer wine
But like Brandy, the reserve
Rested, more refined

No quick crush
Of some rushed harvest
That bubbles heady light
A stronger liquor
The vapors lost
In alchemy of decade nights

No spritzer, diluted
Or coloured with Gin
Downed with a song
When the evening begins

A burnt love
Distilled drip by drip
From the alembic
To be sipped

Not the driving ocean wave
That claws the sand
Or raves at cliffs demanding
Or mirror vain and valueless
Till beauty gives its gaze

A love lain cellared
Vanillaed in oak
As seasons have ripened
And frozen
And blown to colour again
And children grown from swadling
To broad and sturdy men.

Beyond the flame of wax and wick
That startles timid at each breathe
A beacon blaze in optics set
To rest, in storms, the mind of ships
And proclaim above the cliffs
Occasionally
You are ever part of happy
And out to sea
At least for me
You know
I guess I always felt
You would save me from myself
I trust your judgement still
You always held my heart so well
Even at a distance.