The Gull of Pamplona

The stuttered charge of a wounded soul,
Erratic flight of a wind-swept gull.
The charging and gliding share so much,
Melting inside the bi-lingual touch.
Knowing we’ll vanish before too long,
The venturous gull bursts into song,
And weeps a sweet tune, a mild melody,
It mattered not where, but when we would be.
The charging bulls don’t see the day,
Both gliders lose memory, throw photos away.
And now I stare to the sky I can’t reach,
A solitary gull on your ocean swept beach.

A Thousand Cold Winters

A thousand cold winters grow in my head,
Sinking smile that alerts drowning dead.
Sprawling stars ploughed your petulant fall,
Your photographs drown in the drifting wall.
Manor-house minds mapping a way,
The stalk may stretch the black elastic day.

Inside of you there still burns a low light,
That doesn't diminish after one mourning night.
Inside of you there still flows a deign blood,
Inside of me, a dark drowning flood.
Overflowing lungful of pain and fear,
Mechanical capsizing of a life, most dear.

Heart waiting patiently, time passing by,
My marshmallow mind up in the sky.
Mid-summer's night, your warm, brittle voice,
Your ocean eyes, I had one final choice:
collapsing and melting in your eternal smile,
A perfect, brief feeling, but for a while.

The smiling black stalk turns off your machine,
A genial heart that was, has been.

Textile

At first a solitary stitch is torn,
The shining material needle reborn.
A patchwork quilt that's almost broken,
Our fraying love, literally unspoken.
We fooled each other with weak white thread,
Our material stained with wild-cherry red.

Stained with embarrassment, marked with guilt,
Pulling apart this tapestry we’ve built.
By stitching myself to material you,
With second-hand thread and non-stick glue,
We've devalued our quilt, it’s started to fray,
We tear our material by walking away.

Put a hammer in our sowing machine,
Leave us wondering what might have been.