The Life Expectancy of Wind

ON THE WINGS OF ICARUS

The plan is to fly free from the web of self-creation
under the vermilion flowers of superstition’s reign,
on borrowed wings made by the man who deftly crafted
the labyrinth for a King at home in a kingdom of plays.

Dazed, against the golden decimals of the apple-red sun,
Diamond-dust fractions, refractions from One,
Bright light wakes your eyes in the tortuous skies,
as the moonless maze gravitates away:
Convex thoughts in minds concave.

The guise of equilibrium, balanced like water and stone,
The glass throne splintering its links, Seeded white light
winking defiantly into your silk-spun dreams;
The epiphonous stars courting intrigue and charming your celestial wings.

Rise until you fall, Reborn, Reformed to redeem judgment
borne to wiser rules and rulers fuelled by lesser gods of merciful duty
before the course of fire’s fury that will pilot such fortuitous fate,
Resulting in your cerulean grave,
Life dissolves: Light in shade.

As the hourglass sands pour their sand-dune rivers
To sand off your branded skins, The triumph of the white lament is
forever falling into the gilded Aegean, But as an archangel bound to heaven’s melting wings, You will breed a new league of dark, before darker kings.




RUBY’S WHISPER

“Dragon fly,” she whispered
from her humming heated heart
on the eve of her awakening
in the cradle of Brahma’s arms,
Her golden brow surrounded
by the halo of the sun,
Rings of hope evolving
from the wonders of the past,
The thousand-petalled-lotus
Spinning fortune in its wheel,
Winding memories of her future
within its golden weave,

Bejeweled inside the ruby realm
on the edge of divine gift,
His third eye calls upon her soul
to transcend her worldly drift:
“Lift the golden dusted nebula
that clouds your dying star
and move beyond the human coil
that wraps your sari heart,
Shed this light across your
other worldly course,
Sense delights arcane to you
and curl inside your golden task,
The dragon flies will find you
In a promise to the skies,
Orbit this new wonderment
And inside my mind so rise”.




THE SEVENTIES SLIDE 1965-1974

At Seventeen we dreamed of living in The Yellow Submarine, we could Close our Eyes and Imagine Lucy’s diamond skies wondering what Major Tom could see flying past the moon, But Sunshine Superman would find there Ain’t no Sunshine in War, and too many would see the stars too soon.

We watched man land upon the moon beneath wallpapered ceilings made for the honour of movement by the kings of style; Flares pared with collars for royals, Within the circles of turquoise and orange, We sat beside our lava lamps taking Polaroids of pigtailed friends, wearing velvet as a testament to taste and trends,

Dinner parties were crafted amid cocktail rounds and hors d’oeuvre dips between the chain-smoked cigarettes of coral-stained lips, with odes to the Happy Days child. Immigrants were broken-in like an egg in a brawl, and were warmed to by the banquets they cooked us all. We grooved under the influence of granny’s green stick, smoked in the Purple Haze, By the players of the 70’s slide, We lived,

As Drafted troops were set astride, The Riders of the Storm performed under the compulsory call of the Vietnamese mind of uncultured war and the Cherry-red oxidized oxygen of the occupied flew in the haste of guns retroactively filed by the left-over jackets of those unbribed, as a million Cambodians died,

Fortified against the fall and rise of the government’s totalitarian shake, The colours of skin and clothes and sin all strode the protesters stride, Anger surfacing on the art deco streets: Graffitied thoughts of conscientious objectors and those strong enough to be weak, All fought for the hors de combat and the people’s irrecoverably altered inherent beliefs.

Love on vinyl, Twisted tiles, innocence lost on common streets, The heat of intervention abject in the contention of defeat, Our naive wiles bent, without resentment until, Returned, We saw our men, grafted by the very actions that sort out their cause, and a free wager was formed, We’ll Paint a Red Door Black before we conform.

As compatriots fled war’s heroin highs, lucid American juice, and Saigon cherry pie, Recurrent images forced the post-stress-disorder rise, and diners filled with the non-ambulant, the addicted, and the idle, All denied their community chest, Searching for comfort in the orally divine with the familiar words, “love you very long time”: All courses eaten in the same small file.

We immersed ourselves in cubes of orange and brown, our 4-channelled televisions framed by lime green backgrounds of Jazzman as macramé pot holders, adorned with beads of love, jangled in the winds of change, while we made our way back from Delta Dawn and that Country Road that would take us home to the kings of style who lost their rights to a politically erroneous future that forced its people to fight,

Susie Quatro has finally arrived…