AdrianK

Herring:

Word count:386

This, us, it sits upon an unmoveable stone, a hill, a mountain

Crowned in precious blue

The blue of evening

Which in keeping the sacrament of belief that what is said shall be kept, we sit in silence

What would we do, you do, when I say it

This, we, this us

Isn't just lust

What say we must achieve what looks acceptable

I think we already are

Don't you

The way we are

You say so, say the words I long to hold in my heart, my ears through action

You hold me; see me, closely

Yet these words have yet to be evicted from beneath my your tongue, from out of your throat let them immigrate from your voice box, your larynx to my ears

What would you do, we do, when I say it

Say what all lovers long to hear

Lovelorn even in experience of love

Hurt and simultaneously ecstatic in blissful agony I long to hear them

But I also choke on the same words

I may not be strong enough to say them

But more than strong am I to show you

This

This we, you and I

We sit in nights embrace and days passing grace, anon and evening bow as the stars twinkle in gossip, eyeing the moon for more of her observations

Of our.....our us ness

Id like you to fall into me

For me to sink into you

For you to vanish

For me to faintly flicker

For us to be you and I

Not as a replacement og our individual sovereignty but to compliment our personhood

For when I say it

I wish to still be real

For you to still be physically, mentally anf spiritually present for me to feel you, see you, hear you

For when I say it

Doves

Is this it for me?

No one to pull off this lace shawl that adorns my head

No one to sully, to soil the white that covers my head

Doves

on your flight

Doves

whos wings flap for flight

Take me with you i beg and pray I lose nu shawl in the throngs of excitement

Pray a lad takes it from me

Holds it to his chest snf treasures the texture

As if spun from heavens breath

Doves wont you coo in conversation

In gay gossip

In groups alight with gaeity

Whisper of his voice

Is it low

Is it crisp foes it crunch under my heels like the autumn

Is it smooth

Will my breath ripple its surface like a pond, a pool, a puddle

Whisper of his visage

Are his eyes kind or are they cold

Do they wonder?

Oh pray I needn't worry of competition

Lest I forget the whole affair

Are they intense, will he dissect me with his eyes, poke at my soul through its windows like a Tom cat in search for meals thrice a day

Or will they be shy, flee at even the hint of approach from mine

Oh sweet Doves

Coo louder

Loud enough for me to hear

Not so low that it is only in your gay groups of gossip that his form shall circulate

Speak of his lips

Is he flirtatious

More smirks than smiles

In his teeth

Those perfect teeth

Are there pieces of hearts before mine

Callously shattered by arrows of attack disguised ad those of correspondence

Speak of his nose

Is it proud, a marvel of sculpture

God must then be a patron of sculptors no?

Is it soft as if paint were made runny by the brush?

Is God then a patron of the watercolourist

Tell me...

Does his face don locks of fair fields

Are they like the wheat and the rye

Are they like charcoal

Don't be so

I only ask so I may know

Are they like a horses mane

Do they stand as straight as the bow string or coil and curl

Does he coiff them often

Doves of exquisite plumage

Does of crisp white feather

I beg you take me with you on your voyages to distant lands

So I may lose my lace shawl in the throngs of foreign fetes

Let a handsome man with broad shoulders find it and wrap it around his neck a personal trophy, a gift from his beloved

Which would be i

He would tell me every second he could

And in banter id murmur of my reservations to the theory

He'd prove his words with his hands his lips

Tell me

Is he well read

Or shall I settle for one kind of companionship met while the others starve

All I can do is sigh

Sigh since you'll say nothing

All you Doves know to do is gossip

Gossip in your gay groups

In your hushed coos and little snickers

Who needs you anyway

I have never seen a lemon blossom

I suppose fitting for how far fetched my request may be

I wish to witness such a thing

To see such a sour citrus before its bitterness

Could time ask his delightful youth to bring me a lemon before it had fruit

Could she be so kind

I wish to lay my eyes upon such a sight

I wish for lemon to greet me with sweetness

Wish to see beyond what is, to what was, to what will be

For a lemon stays not a lemon for good

It too must meet its maker

Masked in mystique he moulds this precious petalled fruiting flower

All the potential in the world

Hidden behind sour viscera

I dare not bite its delicate skin

As it bites back with venom so bitter

I'll regret even thinking of it

Oh to be held as precious as I see you

Pick of a fruit before it has come to be

What do I sound like

Forgive my antique disposition

For it is the lemon aging my psyche

Lemon lunacy ?

Far to close to home to admit

I'd rather sit and lament

Lament of the lemons inability to love me

Lament of his affections to another

That precious petalled fruiting flower

Meets me with bitterness but bares his soul to her with ease

He vexes me and he knows not

He consumes my days with endless daydreams of a world poised better and he knows it not

He knows me not

I have never seen a lemon, blossom

But I see now I wasn't meant to

For if exposed to such a sweet sight

Green doesn't suit you

In sooth I know not what you speak of

Of course Green suits me

I fear you misunderstand

I speak not of the springs bounty And it's vibrant hue

Not of the bright grass greens, limes and vibrant shades of the world

Not the sheer splatter of tones

Honest in both quality and quantity

Green doesn't suit you

You pale at my comment

As if made callous of your feelings

As if I had asked you to empty your wardrobe and start a fresh

But in graceful comparison

I mean not the quiet sages, dusty, ancient and stained against linen

I mean not the dark comfort of veridan and it's family of hues

Nor do I picture the serenity of a Glen and that if a wood

Darling when I said Green doesn't suit you

I brought forth in all it's mangled, mangy, magnificent glory the grotesque corroding colour of envy stained across your cheeks the same hue that pushes down your brow and holds your heart hostage

I said Green doesn't suit you because I wish you to wipe jealousy from your eyes

To steer it off your delicate heart strings and once again shine with your natural hue

Green doesn't suit you

And I mean it when I say it

So when I repeat myself

I open my mouth to speak

Only to be drowned by the creek

She speaks louder than me I bet

She holds her tongue not

Not around you

You seem to adore her so

Who am I to belittle your affections for her

Her locks echo her beauty, feline in nature

She is and you seem to adore that

I hold nothing but good will, I merely ask

Why not me

Is it that I am not as beautiful

I suppose vanity isn't my strong suit

Is it that I seem to lack those golden locks you seem to adore

Or perhaps is it her name

Does she love back

Does she excite you as you I

Darling so many questions

Not one of them to be answered

You've damned me unknowingly to an existence of grey

A grey of queries doomed never to be answered

A study in longing

I can wish, I can dream, I can manifest

But the reality seems not to change

I see you everyday

And you I

And yet we meet not eye to eye

Heart to heart as I wish we could

That very night you professed your love for her

Your arm draped on her shoulders....the sun fell off its pedestal

The linen round my frame seemed to shiver as the night caressed me

I finally had to.....

Had to stare at it face to face

Without the sun the illusions of doves, of pink tinted skies and of the sweetest sights seemed to grey I had no will to grieve for what was I grieving

I made haste to hide from the edge of night in the most ancient basilica

Their roofs sunken already

Their velvet pews molded

And wept to the heavens

I no longer could blame Aphrodite

Or scream that my heart had held warmth

for he who I named the key

Who I named my champion

Surely ti's my own fault

I formed and moulded his being in the palaces of my own mind

And shielded my eyes

To reality spelling my demise

Still I run from the edge of night

To the masjids and mosques

Cocks cry

Heralding the days arrival

And with it the departure of my old self

With the ballads of prayer

And the scent of incense

Carrying the musty air

I weep on the prayer mat the imams set for me

Telling them tall tales of my love and watching them pity me

My love is a fighter

My love is virtuous

My love is my defender

My love is unbreakable....

My love is flawed

My love is mortal....

My love...loves me not

My love is not my own

Fleeing the nights end

I roll myself in the skins I've shed

In the exoskeletons I've outgrown

In an attempt to relate to the world

The reality my eyes are trained to see...

How foolish I was

Nay not foolish

Young

Young and in love

U scoff St such a notion

Love....

I free myself from the role of prey

And edge of the night from that of predator

And rather embrace the mornings light and with it....the me to come

My love may have never left me

But rather taken a form I should've recognised long ago

The form that shall never leave me

And that which meets my eye

Every morn

Daring me to sieze the day

I have made friends with the edge of night

And finally myself no longer needing to run

Finally content with the cycles of change

The gentle ring of bells and the tune of angels mourning a collapse of their own

Herald your arrival

Your eyes roam and prod the crowd of your devotees utterly missing me over and over

Darling

The shimmering brilliance of your doe eyed gaze missed me in the maze of my contemporaries

My poor innocent heart

My poor innocent ever trusting heart

Opening my chest to your perception

So you may judge the purity of my being

I wish to be exposed to your gaze

I wish for my eyes to be the ones yours meet

With such warmth

Such softness

But the sun of heaven chose for himself a freckled foxglove he would scamper with across the Glen

The kin of men see nor feel what I do

If only you knew

You shower that bush of foxglove with all your light, saving the warmest and softest for her and leaving me with nothing

I must ask is it far more painful to feel my heart still beat for you in the winter I stranded myself in or is it, to see you with her

See her touch your hair

Caress your cheeks

See how you lose yourself in her eyes

I can't yell at you to stop throwing her your affections because what right have I on you

I cover my eyes at your arrival

Unworthy to gaze upon you

Every step bathed in uncertainty as I question myself for the waywardness of my thoughts

The gentle thump of my heart at your nearness

Even if your scent ghosts the air I feel you

Do I choose the fortitude of the ocean's embrace

Or the naked vulnerability of the sun's gaze

Do I pick myself

Do I pick you

For it I'd in the wisp of the wind

In the lapping of the waters of the wayside

That whisper softly against my ear that I cannot find myself with both

I dance with the stars

Throw my arms to the heavens

My eyes to the cloudy skies of autumn

And cry that love has skipped me

Cry that the holy flames of passion have yet to be lit

That my heart lays cold

Feeling abandoned

Feeling unwanted

The sparrows fool lays without his lord

If only I could play with your hearts cords

Speak love to your spirit and hope it reciprocated

Darling if only life worked that way

How I wonder

Would David have played a tune that so pleased King Soloman

Nay

That so enchanted King Solomon, that he refused to let him leave his court

Would he teach me to play

Play that which enchants you

I wish you to be smitten

Not with her but with me

I break my own heart by hoping

But the unknowability of the me with out you is far scarier

I wish to be wrapped in your affections

Like a shawl, a dupatta

Wish to mask myself in your adoration

Be hidden in the mystique of your mind

I wish to shield myself from the unforgiving elements in your air

To seek sanctuary

As a sinner, the embrace of Mary

As a gypsy to Notre Dame

I wish to rest my weary feet and lay my head in the shelf of your arms

Away from the prying eyes

I wish to seek refuge

Ad a protestant, England

To be held in prestige, under your gaze

Not a mere speck in your eyes as they laze through the air

Is what I would need

Need to spare me the haze of your disinterest

You vex me

You neglect me

Just ad the sun scorcher the earth when his lovers part

You scorch me with your adoration not showered on I, no, no, no

But on her

That fair freckled foxglove

The same, you scamper with 'cross the Glen

It's clear I can't compete

There's nowhere to which our hearts could meet

So rather than weep and keep these crumbs I have imagined you've thrown

I will flee

Flee far into the sky

Fly high and never look back

Past the sun

Never to weep of his disinterest

Never to cry for his adoration

So I finish my requiem

My song of sorrows to the sun

I finish my poem

I will no longer mourn what could've been

I see you off

A long awaited valediction

For the sky's eye

For he who I adored