THE DREAM-CATCHER

When I saw the above image online, it immediately suggested to me the concept of an otherworld dream-catcher, a silent preternatural being standing unseen beside us as we sleep, ready to capture the dreams that we shall dream that night. So that is what I wrote.

THE DREAM-CATCHER

The dream-catcher stands unseen, still, beside our beds,

Powdered skin as pale as bleached bone upon a beach,

A tippet of swan feathers around his shoulders,

A dense ruff of white owl plumes encircling his neck.

His long fingers snatch at the dreams that flutter by,

Like ghostly moths in the miasma of midnight.

Then he blows them softly inside our sleeping minds,

Keeping watch over them, and us, through the dark hours.

And when dawn comes, when the bright sun wakes in splendour,

He is gone, leaving no dream nor any trace here,

Gone away to ensnare new dreams for new sleepers,

Until our dream lives are over, our dream lives done.

THE GREEN ELEPHANT

On a number of occasions down through the years, I have been inspired to write poems and verses after seeing beautiful, bewitching works of art online. And today was another such occasion, in which I penned the following poem after encountering the spectacular illustration presented above.

THE GREEN ELEPHANT

I dreamed one night that I had seen

An elephant, but it was green.

It stood amid a leafy glade

With light and shadow overlaid.

A patch of sunshine on its brow

That glowed like gold, I know not how.

Its opalescent tusks glowed too,

A pale, pellucid, pearly hue.

It gazed at me with stately calm,

A scene suffused with leafy balm,

A green cathedral, still and bright,

A place of wonder, dreams, and light.

Serene and silent, arched and tall,

So too its guardian of all.

Majestic in the mellow mist,

Where dreams can linger, hope exist.

Its trunk rose up in slow salute,

Its sunlight-sprinkled message mute,

Yet eloquent inside my mind

Before I left its realm behind

And woke once more within my room,

No green or gold amid its gloom.

Just fading memories remain,

Until one day I'm home again.

THE FRACTURED GOD

Here is another short poem that I wrote after encountering a remarkable example of artwork online, in this instance the fascinating illustration presented here.

THE FRACTURED GOD

Behold the fractured god in fragmented florescence,

His turquoise-tortured visage tormented by its trace.

His eyes by shade are shielded, lost in lidded languor,

His mad mind dreams our fancy, our fear, our form, our face.

WHO KNOWS...?

(c) Anne Wipf

The following verse wrote itself inside my head while I was gazing online at this wonderful fantasy artwork produced by Anne Wipf - so here it is:

WHO KNOWS...?

Who knows what wonders
And miracles be
When no-one's watching?
Not you, and not me...?

WINTER WOLF

 I saw this beautiful illustration online today, and felt its winter wolf inspire me, impel me, to compose the following lines in its honour.

WINTER WOLF

White wolf of winter, of starlight and icicle,

Padding softly through the silver trees in blue frozen haze,

Its chilling breath swirling, curling, a smoke of sudden snowflakes,

Its frosted fur sparking and shimmering in pale, pellucid scintillation,

Its azure eyes imparting a glacial gleam of cool frigid fire.

It turns and gazes at me as I stand before its mesmerising presence,

Resistance is futile, is fickle, submission is solace, is all.

I never suspected that death would be so subtle, so silent.

But then the bright sun filters down from the treetops,

Down through the branches to where we both stand.

And the winter wolf vanishes -

A spectre swept past-ward,

A dream dreamed and done with,

A shadow extinguished,

A vision discounted.

The snow keeps on falling as I retrace homeward,

The winter wolf's footprints my lone steadfast guide,

I still hear its howling, its heartbeat, all round me,

I still feel its cool chilling breath on my face,

And know that one day it will come, it will find me.

And I shall be there, shall be waiting anew.

WEARY OF LIFE

((c) esfitts-d4165pv)

Life is for the living, and death is for the dying. But what is there for those whose living has no life, and for whom dying is not death but release?

WEARY OF LIFE

Weary of life,

Of shrugging off the darkened drapes of melancholy,

Settling like a shroud of grief upon my shoulders,

Like a veil around my face,

Like a mask around my mind.

Weary of life,

Of shaking from my memory the dusty webs of sorrow,

Woven by the spiders in the chasms of my soul,

In the ashes of my future,

In the sunsets of my past.

Weary of life,

Of gazing at the broken, empty dream that once had lived,

That once had brought the light of love, of hope, to me,

Lost now, all over, dead and done for,

Lost now, 'midst the stillness of my tomb.

THE STAG OF HEAVEN

I saw the above picture earlier tonight while browsing online, and its strange, melancholic beauty drew from me the following lines, which echo the solitude of my own existence.

THE STAG OF HEAVEN

Gently, calmly, in stately silence,
The hart of Heaven, the celestial stag,
Steps forward through the graveyard of my life.

Its leafy coat, grass-green amid the moonlight,
Flows like forest waves upon the lake,
And glows like living foxfire in my eyes.

Its antlers bear the promised buds of future years,
The dreams that may be mine in other days,
And I can only wait and hope and pray.

It passes from my sight, the land is dark,
No phosphorescent glimmer, the waters still and cold,
And I? Alone once more, as ever it shall be.

   

BLUE TIGER

Remarkable as it may seem, blue-furred tigers have been reliably reported on several occasions from certain regions of China and Korea, and strands of their fur have even been found on trails utilised by these evanescent, dream-like beasts. How magical it must have been to have seen such a creature...


BLUE TIGER

Once,
In a dream it might have been,
I saw a blue tiger.

As cerulean as the sky,
Ethereal yet awesome,
Eclipsing even the scarlet rays of dawn,
Its strange, unearthly hue
Filled the heavens with its wonder,
Gleamed in the gaudy plumes of jungle birds,
Glimmered in the plush, powdered wings of butterflies,
Glittered in the cool depths of a forest pool.

It lowered its proud, regal head,
Shaking it in the pool's limpid waters,
And ripples gyrated madly across the dark surface,
Skimming and shivering,
No longer calm, no longer tranquil,
A liquid mirror in startled disruption.

Refreshed, the tiger raised its head,
Majestic, aloof, magnificent,
Quelling the ripples, the mirror restored.

And the tiger's azure reflection
Took shape,
Took form,
Took substance,
Took life.

Then,
The tiger opened its eyes -

And I was awake.

THE BLACK LION

According to science, genuine black lions do not exist, and on my ShukerNature blog I have exposed as photo-manipulated hoaxes a number of eyecatching internet images purporting to show these creatures (click here and here). Yet the dark romantic majesty of such a noble, spectacular beast ceaselessly stalks my imagination, prowling with silent menace through the twilit recesses of my mind.

THE BLACK LION

Darker than dark,
A shadow from the shadows,
A black lion steps forth from the night,
With the night,
Into the night,
His melanistic mane a stole of sable
Enveloping his shoulders in inky might.

So regal he seems, and so powerful,
I can scarcely conceive that he is not real,
Just a figment of fable and fantasy,
An illusion of imagery and imagination,
An embellished embodiment of ebony,
A dream from the depths of the darkness,
A mirage from the midnight of my mind.

 

THE POOL OF DREAMS

The inspiration for this poem came from Maurice Maeterlinck’s classic play, The Blue Bird, a delightful fantasy work first produced in 1908 that seems nowadays to have become almost forgotten, yet which is filled with wonderfully evocative scenes and imaginative personifications.

THE POOL OF DREAMS

‘Midst the cerulean heavens
Lies the fabled Pool of Dreams,
Veiled in rosy mists of Slumber
Casting tender lilac beams
Through its cyanescent waters
To its darkened depths of blue,
Each transforming purple ripples
Into iridescent hues
Racing swiftly o’er its surface
Like a phalanx borne from Light,
Flitting rainbows glinting brightly
‘Ere they disappear from sight.

For the dreams of sleeping mankind
Lie within this glossy pool,
Which releases them like phantoms
To emerge through evenings cool
In the drowsing worlds of mortals –
Empty shadows of the mind,
Which with rapturous enchantment
Mortals’ conscious spirits bind,
Till the morning’s pale suffusion
Rises softly through the sky,
Then away through twilit heavens
To the Pool of Dreams they fly.

And within its silken waters
Lies each tiny unborn child,
Sleeping long in drowsy silence,
As the Pool’s reflection mild
Shines upon these infant dreamers,
Till their mothers softly pray,
Then they wake from golden slumber,
And are borne on sunlit rays
Down to Earth, where every mother
Will, her newborn babes, embrace,
As their tiny eyes then open
And behold their mother’s face.

Yet among the Pool’s clear waters
Lies a dead child, for he lay
So entranced within his slumber
That he dreamt his life away.
But the angels take him softly
On their snowy wings of Peace,
For from Life’s harsh world beneath them
They have given him release.
Now between the clouds of violet
Like a cherub winged he flies,
To the Glory that is Heaven,
‘Midst the splendour of the skies.

DREAM LEOPARD

Aeterno (Anastasia Korochansckaja - http://balaa.deviantart.com/)

Dreams are such transient, elusive entities, almost feline in their sleek, prowling restlessness...


DREAM LEOPARD

A dream leopard stalked across my sleeping mind,
Its azure paws as silent as the morning dew.
For just a fleeting moment it gazed upon my still, prone form,
And then its pale moonstone eyes swept by,
Its long slender tail switched in the darkness,
And like a cool twilit phantom it was gone,
Leaving me alone once more with the night.

PURPLE PROSE?

To stroll through such a breathtaking array of Wisteria as this must be like walking amid a mauve mist of fragrant dreams, as far removed from the mundane reality of the everyday world as it is possible to imagine, and inspiring a very different kind of purple prose from the type normally associated with this phrase.


PURPLE PROSE?

I could lose myself in subtle shades of lilac and lavender,
Immersed in a miasma of mauve and magenta,
Empurpled in veils of summer-dreamed violet.
Yes, I could lose myself so easily in lavender and lilac,
And who would ever know?

POST-OZ

Nothing lasts forever, not even fairy tales, but something will always be present...

POST-OZ

Long after the Emerald City is no more,
In a time beyond wizards, witches, and cyclones,
When Oz is a distant memory, and Dorothy but a dream,
The world will continue, the sun will still shine,
And the land will be green…

YEARNINGS

'Sweet Dreams' (Elda The)

The wistfully innocent, delicately poignant, and potently nostalgic qualities of the above painting subtly combined and intermingled within my mind as I viewed it, until I found myself expressing my innermost yearnings in the following lines.

YEARNINGS

Ah...
For those long-vanished days
Of childhood, innocence, and optimism,
When everything seemed possible,
And the world was an exciting place,
Full of sweet promise and wonder.

MY LADY ABSINTHE

In just a few short, succinct lines, I have sought to convey the ecstacy and the agony, the zenith and the nadir, the dream and the nightmare, conveyed by the bittersweet enchantment of absinthe - the potent green fairy of bewitching intoxication.

MY LADY ABSINTHE

Give Grace to My Lady,
To Absinthe of Wormwood,
The dream-robed Green Fairy
Of Delight and Despair.
Delight in her smile
As her lucid inebriate,
Despair in her scorn
As her ague-ridden fool.

WOLF MAGIC

Inspired by the spellbinding image above, the following verse calls forth the inner wolf within us all.

WOLF MAGIC

I am the wolf at your door,
A howl at your moon.
What big eyes I have,
All the better to see you with.
And what big claws I have,
All the better to seize you with.
I am the shape in your shifting,
The dream in your drifting,
The wolf in your wearing,
The teeth in your tearing.
I am the night and your hunter,
And you are the day and my waking.

SLEEP

Much has been written about the scientific and philosophical associations between sleep and death, but the ancient Greeks encapsulated these links in a particularly telling, succinct manner via personification. For in classic Greek mythology, death is a god called Thanatos (not to be confused, though he often is, with Hades, god of the Underworld), and is the twin brother of Hypnos, god of sleep, with Morpheus, god of dreams, as the son of Hypnos. Moreover, the parents of Thanatos and Hypnos are none other than Nyx (Night) and Erebos (Darkness). In addition, one of the most famous death-related scenes in Greek mythology is the passage across the River Styx to the Underword of the boat steered by Charon the silent ferryman and filled with the souls of the dead. Consequently, to emphasise the ancient Greeks’ perceived kinship between death and sleep, I chose to adapt the latter boat scene, transforming it from one that features the dead to an equivalent featuring sleepers and sleep (though as a female rather than male personification), but acknowledging the link between sleep and death by way of the final verse.

SLEEP

Day sinks away through the oceans of Evening,
Rippling like stars sweeping outwards to die,
While from their vortex the moon rises softly,
Borne from its depths to the roof of the sky.

And ‘cross the waters a boat glides serenely,
Nod is its helmsman, and Sleep is its queen.
Gently it drifts o’er the waves deep in slumber,
Dappled in shadows of violet and green.

Grey are the sails, each dream-woven by Twilight,
Sewn from the cobwebs that Morning passed by;
Pale is its image ‘neath moonlit aurorae,
Fashioned from memories, murmurs, and sighs.

And from its silhouette Sleep whispers gently,
Calling to mortals who follow like shades –
Entering slowly her boat of enchantment,
Drawn through the evening to mystical glades

Deep in the depths of the hidden subconscious,
‘Neath the dark heavens of shimmering Night –
Silently watching her star-shadowed journey
Into the morning, ‘ere fading from sight.

Waves bear Sleep calmly through dream-clouded kingdoms,
Misty surroundings of lilac and grey,
Fragile illusions like butterfly wing beats,
Melting like ghosts ‘neath the lantern of Day.

And as the dawn blushes shyly through Heaven,
Far ‘cross the ocean is Sleep softly borne,
Each mortal soul drifting back to its dwelling,
Waking once more to the laughter of Morn.

Thus she continues – the wisest immortal –
Fair both in features and mind she’ll remain,
Leading our souls till the world calls no longer,
Then shall we never look homeward again.

OBERON'S GARDEN

Hidden deep within the shadowed lands of Faerie is the garden of their king, Oberon – a setting of magical delight, where shy unicorns roam in freedom, bright flowers sing with dulcet voices, and Oberon’s entrancing queen, Mab, reposes in sunlit splendour. Let us step inside this enchanted place for a moment, and see what we shall see…

OBERON'S GARDEN

Sing, yellow linnet, of Oberon’s garden –
Mystical, wonderful, strange to behold,
Hidden away in the deep realms of Faerie,
Dappled in shadows of green and of gold.

Here singing flowers trill their soft lilting music,
Violets, red roses, and other fair blooms,
Borne from all seasons to serenade softly
Oberon, resting in gossamer rooms.

And through these gardens enchanted and lovely
Bright wingèd steeds flit from rainbows to streams.
Timid and shy, here the unicorns frolic,
Misty and distant as overnight dreams.

Pixies race swiftly on glittering beetles,
Harnessed with gossamer, saddled with leaves,
Past tinkling fountains and waterfalls tumbling,
Through groves and woodlands each chariot weaves.

Mab lies serenely in deep beds of sunshine,
Graceful and pale as the bright morning star,
Strange fairy beauty, enchanting and mystic,
Born in a land that lies hidden afar.

Now, as the evening draws o’er this strange setting,
Stars twinkle softly like lanterns of Night,
And when we look back at Oberon’s garden,
We shall find that it has vanished from sight.

It has slipped back to the kingdom it came from,
Back to the fairyland realms of the past,
For in our world nothing lives on forever –
Not even fairies forever may last.

THE SILENCE OF SOLITUDE

It has often been said, and it is perfectly true, that each of us enters and leaves this world alone, but it is also true that many spend much of their allotted time here in solitude too, with only silence and the stars above for company.

THE SILENCE OF SOLITUDE

Within these dappled vales of Space
My seeking mind is found,
Amid the empty pools of Time
That softly pivot round;
For silence, long and endless, here
Is e’er the only sound.

But in this plane of nothingness
My mind can find release
From human woes and human grief,
For here, all failings cease
To be, among the silence of
This citadel of peace.

And here, my weeping tears and sighs
Can drift unseen away,
For who can know my silent doom
That lingers through each day.
For me, the loneliness I hold
No words could e’er convey.

And oft I gaze unseeing through
These misty realms of Space,
And wonder at the sadness of
The thoughts that swiftly race
Across the pale illusion of
My silent, sombre face.

Yes, I know more of loneliness
Than I could ever say,
As silently I’ve walked alone
Along its dismal way,
Till far ahead a Light has shone
To clarify my day.

So many times I’ve wondered why
I should be on my own,
While others reap their harvests in
From fields they haven’t sown,
Then leave me there in silence as
I gather mine alone.

But I have long since realised
That I must strive alone
If I am e’er to find the life
I seek to claim my own,
By reaping only where I know
My silent work has sown.

So, silently, mankind may frown
To hear my wistful tones,
But e’en in death my soul must flit
Through Heaven’s Door alone,
To kneel before the Glory of
God’s everlasting Throne.

So let them stare, for onwards still
My thoughts must stream and pour,
If I am e’er to navigate
Beyond this present shore,
And stand amidst the silence of
The Future’s open door.

SWANS AND HORSES

'Emergence' - Jack Shalatain

What might happen if a flock of swans somehow coalesced with a herd of horses, even if only in a half-dreaming mind? That intriguing premise was the starting point for the following word-picture – a poetical flight of imagination…in every sense!

SWANS AND HORSES

Like a phalanx borne from Heaven
On a golden drift of Love
Glides a stream of snowy shadows
From the cloud-worlds far above
In an ever-wider spiral
Sweeping slowly through the skies,
While the lake’s reflection shimmers
Like a star within their eyes,
Growing brighter every second
As their silhouettes descend
To its violescent waters,
Where the ripples softly wend –
Each a trembling ring of sunlight
‘Ere it falls away to die,
Just an iridescent nimbus
‘Neath a cerulean sky.

Now the swans reside serenely
Near the sable-mantled shade
Of the melancholy willow
From the lakeside’s dappled glade,
Where the breezy zephyr murmurs
As its gusty whispers cool
Catch the willow’s pearly teardrops,
Each a tiny silvered pool
Cast in deep, despondent sorrow
As the willow bows in grief,
Dewdrops trickling down in torrents
From each slender yellow leaf.

Here the swans glide by in silence,
Necks held high in regal stance
As their eyes gaze up to Heaven
While its darting sunbeams dance
Through their incandescent plumage,
Wings held proudly o’er their back
Like an arch of sparkling crescents
Tipped with inky plumes of black.
On they glide, past ruffling meadows
Flecked with starry trains of flowers,
Blooming brightly in the shelter
Of their viridescent bowers.

And across these speckled grasslands
To the silver-spangled streams
Chase a herd of snowy horses
Like a host of starlit beams,
Manes caressed by breezy fingers,
Like a sea of moonlit waves
Surging down across their shoulders
From its underwater cave,
As their eyes, afire and glowing,
Burn with bright undying flame,
While their tails toss ever skyward
With a joy that none can tame.

Soon they pass from sight and being
‘Neath the woodlands’ leafy shade,
And my eyes grow weak and heavy,
Each with slumber overlaid.
Yet as Hypnos murmurs softly
From the drowsy realms of Sleep,
Still the horses race before me
As their flowing spirits leap
‘Cross the streams and to the lakeside
Where the swans sedately gaze
Through the heavens’ golden shadow,
Through the skies’ translucent haze.

And as clouds float by in silence
O’er the warm, caressing skies,
Strange to say, the swans and horses
Merge as one before my eyes –
And as Morpheus casts softly
Dreams of slumber round my mind,
Wingèd steeds ascend to Heaven,
Leaving lake and streams behind.
Wings spread forth, and lustrous feathers
Gleam and glow like rays of light,
As these fair, enchanted visions
Pass so swiftly from my sight
To their mellow hierarchy
That no man shall ever see.
Earth is ours – a world of mortals.
Theirs is Immortality.