THE MIDNIGHT BIKER

 As an enthusiastic longstanding biker and an equally enthusiastic digital artist newbie, I've recently combined these two interests of mine by launching my first pictorial blog – RebelBikerDude's AI Biker Art (click here to view it), in which I present a very diverse range and ever-increasing number of galleries containing my biker/motorcycling-themed digital artwork – the creation of which, incidentally, has proved not only very enjoyable but also extremely therapeutic while I've been dealing with the stress of ongoing medical issues. Moreover, it has also inspired me to write the following brand-new biker-themed poem earlier tonight – at midnight, appropriately enough – which I shall in turn be illustrating accordingly via a gallery of images in my RebelBikerDude art blog very soon (one of which appears above), so be sure to look out for it there [29 May update: I've now completed my Midnight Biker gallery of images - so click here to view it]. As for the Midnight Biker: my concept of him is as a sinister, supernatural biker who seeks to steal and ride away with our vital life-force, our very soul, while we lie asleep at night. But can he be quelled? Read this poem and find out!

THE MIDNIGHT BIKER

What if Midnight were a biker,
Cruising the back streets and alleys
Of our subconscious as we sleep,
A dangerous, dominant darkness,
Lustful and louche in leather,
Slouching dissolutely against a streetlamp-lit wall,
Or sitting astride a twin-wheeled monster of menace,
A dread shadow hag-riding our prone somnolent slumber
Beneath the silent setting of the sun,
Confrontational and confident, powerful and purposeful,
As he gazes down disdainfully upon our weak, submissive mortality,
Pitilessly upon our drowsing dream-led ramblings
Through the cryptic hinterlands of our hidden soul?

But even as he steps forth from the subtle shades of evening,
Ever-changing yet ageless, embodying our primeval fears
Of darkness, of dwindling, diminishing, and ultimately of death,
And now about to claim and to conquer,
To overpower and overcome,
With chilling, all-consuming certainty,
Another soul to steal and ride away with
On his steeled, wheeled steed of steel,
The first flush of Dawn appears upon the horizon,
A new day inexorably approaching,
To banish all nocturnal soporific phantoms from our mind –
And the Midnight Biker is gone,
For now…

 

THE LUMINOUS OWL

The alleged existence of anomalous luminous birds, particularly owls, that glow brightly in the dark has been discussed and documented for centuries, yet remains unconfirmed scientifically. While writing a review of this fascinating subject for my sister blog ShukerNature recently, I sat for a while, imagining what an extraordinary sight such a bird must be, and the following lines came into my mind. So I wrote them down, yielding my very own verbal picture of a luminous owl.

THE LUMINOUS OWL

A marvellous fowl is the luminous owl.
It glitters and glisters and gleams.
It lights up the night in its shimmering flight,
A vision of wonder and dreams

MY LADY OF DARK DESPAIR

For some, depression is a Black Dog that pads resolutely alongside them, a hound of shadow and sorrow relentlessly stalking their steps, unable to be shaken off or shooed away. For me, it is a Lady, a Lady of Dark Despair, whose great wings enfold me unexpectedly in their terrible shadows of doom and doubt.

MY LADY OF DARK DESPAIR

My Lady of Dark Despair, why have you encompassed me once more

With your black-plumed wings of grim shadow and spirit-numbing gloom,

Their enveloping, all-embracing pinions of cool ebony extinguishing all light from my life,

All wisdom from my world, all memory from my mind, all salvation from my soul?

I feel your icy tears like disconsolate, dispassionate dewfall,

Trickling ever deeper into the warm, sunlit sanctuary of my heart,

To freeze it in crystalline cemetery night-chill,

Until its very beating seem stilled and silent.

Am I as pale, as pellucid now, as your own pallid complexion and reflection,

As isolated, as insular, as the sorrowful realm in which you reign supreme,

Alone, apart, aloof from the mortals whom you torment with your denying of hopes,

Your destruction of dreams, your despoiling of memories?

Or will I find the strength within my being to dismiss your dread visage,

To discount your intrusive murmurs of doubt, to disdain your grey forebodings of doom,

And turn away from your darkness, from the sadness that your presence imbues,

And step back into the laughter and the light of the world once more,

Where the sun still shines, the moon still shimmers, the stars still sparkle,

And my soul awakens anew, renewed and restored,

Raised up once more upon the bright wings of recalled, recollected, resurrected Hope,

To greet a new day's golden dawning, with all of its wonders awaiting me there?

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...?

THE GREEN MAN

While browsing information online concerning the ancient European symbol of fertility and rebirth known as the Green Man for a future article that I am planning to write on this subject, I came upon these extraordinary, surreal images, above and below, which inspired me to pen the following poem.

THE GREEN MAN

Cometh the Green Man,

Stepping forth from the meadows of our ancient mind,

Shedding leaves of withered verdigris

As rebirth restores him anew,

To replenish, regenerate, reactivate, revive,

Reproduce and reassemble, recreate and resurrect.

Fertility, fecundity, his horns imbue their essence,

Erect and branching outward to embrace, enthral, encompass.

He strides from shade and shadow,

Confronting noontide sunlight

With viridescent swagger

And cuprous confrontation:

"I return, and return,

Every day I relive,

The world is mine for as long as I so choose it to be,

For as long as I nurture its nature,

For as long as I seed it, sustain it,

For as long as my beating heart revitalises its existence."

And then, he is gone –

Lost among the sunbeams and solitude

Of a bright, beautiful, golden afternoon,

Heading onward to the green twilight of tomorrow,

Where the cycle of rejuvenation, reinvigoration,

Will begin all over again.

So be it now,

And let it be so forever more.

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.

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 PIPER

After viewing this entrancing artwork, the following words were carried to me upon the wind of evening, as light and as free as the dancing notes from the piper's flute.

THE PIPER

The piper plays her pale banshee notes,
Soft and shivering in silver elfin dusk,
And I am lost, a child alone in the darkness,
With only the silent white ravens of Faerie
To greet me, to come to me, or to take me back home.

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.

THE WHITE COBRA

Painting by Zdenek Burian

Even though Star Steeds and Other Dreams contains more than a hundred of my poems, there are many others that still await publication. This is one of them. As a child, one of my favourite stories in Rudyard Kipling's Second Jungle Book was 'The King's Ankus' (the subject of Zdenek Burian's painting above), featuring an agèd white cobra guarding a priceless but long-abandoned treasure trove of untold riches concealed amid the depths of the jungle. Here is my tribute to that still-proud yet etiolated ophidian warden.

THE WHITE COBRA

Here, 'midst the heat and the steam of the jungle,
I see you, white worm, embittered by hate.
Ruby-fire eyes glowing brightly as embers,
Deep in the darkness, they watch and they wait.

So you persist, poisoned guardian of treasures
Hidden below in your caverns of gloom,
Vaults long abandoned, avoided, forgotten.
Now your pale presence embodies their doom.

No-one dares venture to pillage or plunder,
Still are the caskets encrusted with gold,
Scattered the gemstones like stars cast from Heaven -
Gifts for the gods that no mortal shall hold.

Yet should men find you, encoiled in the silence,
Then would they see that your power long has gone –
Empty the sockets where fangs once bled venom,
Withered by age, only pride lingers on.

Older than time are you, impotent serpent,
Spanning the ages no others shall see,
White as the sun that has bleached you forever,
Ivory sentinel, ever to be

Hooded and poised, though the world has passed by you,
Dust and decay wait upon you in thrall.
Yet you live on, with that chill heart still beating.
Life holds scant terror; and death, none at all

THE FLYING SAUCER

'UFO' (Peter Turosq)

When I was younger, my grandmother, Mrs Gertrude Timmins, told me of how, one evening many years earlier, she and other members of her family had stood in her bedroom watching three brightly-coloured UFOs circling back and forth for quite a while in the skies over their home in Wednesbury, West Midlands, before eventually flying away, never to return. Not having seen a UFO myself, I had to content myself by imagining how it might be if I ever did do so.

THE FLYING SAUCER

Through the night-time’s spangled valleys
My enquiring eyes raced far,
Still enchanted by the beauty
Of each twinkling evening star,

When a hazy gleam surged outwards
From a chasm deep in Space.
And its eldritch light grew brighter,
Darting swiftly ‘cross my face –

Like a stream of glowing fingers
Chasing softly through my hair
In a multicoloured spectrum
‘Mid the evening’s breathless air.

Then the gleam became a halo
Spinning slowly through the sky,
As the moon cast ghostly shadows,
Sinking ever down to die.

Soon a shape became apparent
In this strange, unearthly glow.
Now a humming sphere, it circled,
As its light began to grow,

In a luminous suffusion,
Till, when slowly gliding by,
I could feel its eerie presence
Probing deeply through my eyes.

And I sensed at once that, there, some
Strange intelligence looked down,
One that watched with eyes unblinking
O’er the sombre, sleeping town.

Then the phosphorescent globule
Glided silently away,
In a cosmic orb of aura
Through the heavens draped in grey,

Till its weird, fluorescent image
Faded slowly from my sight.
And my eyes were left to wander
Through the shadows of the night.

But that alien aurora
Still cast shivers o’er my face,
As I gazed in spellbound wonder
Through the catacombs of Space,

In the fear that one dark night it
Will return amid the gloom,
Like a strange, unearthly phantom
From the abysses of Doom.

SNOW CAT

A few moments ago, while browsing online, I came upon the exquisite painting reproduced above, and within my mind the following lines sprang into being, engendered and inspired by its strange beauty.


SNOW CAT

I felt the swirling flakes of winter surround and embrace me,

Enfolding me within their soft, chilling shroud of silence and death,

As icily mesmeric as the cool, purring caress of a snow cat.

THE HAUNTED COTTAGE

'The Country Cottage' (Sydney Currie)

Haunted houses are normally ten a penny, nothing special – but the ghost-associated cottage in this poem is very special, very different indeed, as you will discover…

THE HAUNTED COTTAGE

Deep in a green woodland vale wrapped in sunbeams
Stands a small cottage, alone and afar;
Windows still shining, transparent and lucent,
Each pane alight like a shimmering star.

Over the walls clings a shroud of green ivy,
Crisp arrowed leaves shot with yellowing veins;
Emerald spear-heads outsplayed in the sunlight,
Beaming and gleaming from warm noontide rain.

Briars glisten softly with wet, fragrant roses,
Sending forth beauty in sweet-scented bliss;
Each one half-opened as if still in slumber,
Waiting for Summer’s awakening kiss.

Swallows skim swiftly from chimney to gable,
Mazarine star-bolts with waistcoats of flame;
Aerial gymnasts each vaulting o’er cloudlets,
Chasing and racing in sky-diving games.

Spiders spin curtains of gossamer fabric,
Hanging serenely from windows and walls;
Light as the soft gauzy drapings of Faerie,
Murals suspended in Oberon’s halls.

Blossom drifts gently down over the cottage,
Apple and cherry cast far from above;
Fragile and fragrant it sails on the zephyr,
Borne on the wingtips of Nature’s warm love.

So it seems strange that this cottage is haunted –
For, if we enter its small shaded rooms,
Phantoms ne’er loom forth to frighten or mutter,
Nothing appears from the shadows and gloom.

But if we let this small cottage’s image
Out of our sight for a moment or less,
When we look back, we will search for it vainly –
For it has gone, we will have to confess.

Although no spectres appear in its bedrooms,
There is a phantom of which it can boast.
And its strange secret it holds to this day – for
This lonely cottage itself is the ghost.

A PHANTASIA OF GHOSTS AND ILLUSIONS

The following poem owes its creation to a very curious snatch of conversation that I happened by chance to overhear one day on the radio, in which the speaker was contemplating whether it might be that many of the people that we casually pass by without interaction or see only from a distance are nothing more than ghosts, mere phantoms. And so, from this remarkable muse, sprang ‘Phantasia’ (constituting, incidentally, the longest single sentence to appear in any of my writings!).

A PHANTASIA OF GHOSTS AND ILLUSIONS

Hear the echo of a lifetime
Doomed forever more to last,
Or a murmur drifting backwards
From the theatres of the past,

Whirling softly through a vortex
Spinning deep in silent Space
Like a whirlpool in the heavens,
Or an eye within a face

Gazing outwards, yet unseeing,
Pale as Dawn’s auroral birth
From the snowy dreams of slumber
Shrouding velvet, verdant Earth,

Like an unseen clock vibrating
As its lifetime ebbs away,
While its fingers trace the seconds
Of another unborn day

Through the silhouettes cast downwards
From the shadows of the stars,
Now a host of winging phantoms
From a distant world afar,

Flitting slowly through the evening
As the planets e’er rotate,
Each a windmill in a spiral
On a shining, spangled plate

Spinning outwards e’er to nowhere
In their orbit round their lord,
While lugubrious crescendos
Chase like half-forgotten chords

In a lonely helter-skelter
Through the avenues of Time;
They – the spheres’ eternal music –
Lacking syllables or rhyme,

Drifting downwards through the starlight
Lest their meaning fades away
To a ghost upon the moorlands
Of an evanescent day

Ever seeking ‘midst the future
For a future of its own,
As the souls of Past and Present
Soar like cloudlets to the throne

Of a duplicated kingdom
On Time’s unknown, farthest side,
Where their memory still lingers,
Round its universe to glide,

While they merge with more illusions –
None is real, for none can be
In this pseudo-world of Shadow
Cast from vacant Destiny

Like a set of footprints chasing
After footprints of their own,
Or a pool’s encircling ripples
Running rings around a stone;

Yet their messengers are present
In a hundred other lands,
Groping ever through their darkness
Like a metamorphic hand,

E’en within our crowded suburbs
‘Midst their noisy, raucous hosts,
Who could guess that most are shadows,
Mindless images, just ghosts?

A FILIGREE OF FRAGMENTS

Over the years, I’ve written a number of short compositions, rhyming and non-rhyming, to serve mostly as chapter openers for a variety of different publications (and sometimes even using a pseudonym), but which, I feel, deserve the opportunity to stand alone in their own right as poetry. Here is a brief, representative selection.

ON 'LA SERRE', A PAINTING BY JEAN-MARIE POUMEYROL
(pictured above)

There's something very mysterious, gothic, and totally spellbinding
about this painting,
redolent of decay and disuse,
a scarcely-remembered memory
lingering like a flickering shadow somewhere in a lost attic of the mind.



MIRABILIS

Let not the dream pervade these living hours,
Lest the winged cats of nightmare stalk once more
The haunted spires of distant memory,
Their pinions raised, alert and poised
To deny the conscious dawn.






THE PANTHER

Velveteen silhouette, silent and sinister;
Satin-furred midnight on ebony paws.
Eyes hewn from emeralds, seeking a sacrifice;
Death to deliver with ivory claws.



SPIDER OF THE NIGHT

I shall garb myself in gossamer,
And dance amid the darkness,
Silver in the shadows of my song.



KING CHEETAHS

How tragic it is that such wonderful creatures have no concept,
no awareness,
of just how beautiful and magical they are.
Then again, perhaps they do -
after all, they are cats...

King cheetah (African Safari Pictures)

THE UNICORN

Unicorn (Johfra Bosschart)

My homage to the fairest, most magical beast never to have existed...

THE UNICORN

A shaft of bright golden sunbeams broke through the leafy canopy of the forest, illuminating a clearing deep within its verdant, secluded heart - and also illuminating a wondrous creature, standing sedately like a living statue hewn from shimmering starlight.

It resembled an elegant snowy-hued horse, but its noble brow bore a single, central horn - long and finely spiralled, upon which the sunbeams joyfully danced.

Here was the forest guardian, the very spirit of nature incarnate - for this was that most rare and fabulous of animals, the unicorn.

Suddenly, however, the distant sound of a hunting horn pierced the stillness of this magical scene.

Instantly alert, the unicorn raised its head, momentarily betraying flickers of alarm, and of sadness too, within its shining eyes.

Then, as softly as the echo of a single heartbeat, it was gone, lost to human sight and knowledge within its woodland sanctuary.

THE VAMPIRE

Kiefer Sutherland in the cult vampire-biker movie 'The Lost Boys'

Just for a change, the following composition of mine does not feature in my book Star Steeds and Other Dreams. As you may know, highly-acclaimed graphic artist Andy Paciorek and I are planning various collaborations. One of these may result in a future book on supernatural entities of the night. Consequently, I'm currently preparing some samples of text for it, retelling these entities' legends and lore in lyrical prose. So here, in an exclusive preview, is one of them. I hope you enjoy it!


                                         THE VAMPIRE

Alone with the ghosts of days long departed, stretching back in silent homage, I dream that I am gazing into a looking glass and fancy that I see there, staring back out at me, a tall grim shadow, a wraith in human form that haunts my very being, chills my innermost essence with its dread pallid countenance, mesmerising and yet also captivating me with its icy doom. I have so many questions to ask this creature of darkness and night, I scarcely know where to begin.

Why do you and your kind exist?

“We exist to remind humanity that sometimes not even death can bring release from the evil that is nurtured in life. We exist to feed upon the fear that such realisation generates, to feed and grow stronger and wait.”

But why feed upon blood too?

“Blood is life, blood symbolises all that has dried up and long since disappeared from our shrivelled, exsanguinated existence. When we imbibe it, we are temporarily regenerated, rejuvenated, and reborn. For a short span of time, we are fully alive, even if only during the veiled hours of night. We may never feel the warmth of the sun, but we are sustained by the coolness of the moon and by the fire of the stars, nourishing and restoring us, empowering our living death with deathless life.”

I stand before this mirrored being of nightmare, and imagine with trembling electric horror its long slender fangs pressing so softly, imperceptibly, against my exposed neck, seeking the throbbing jugular beneath before sliding within, to freeze forever my existence with a single scarlet-trickling kiss of eternity.

Why?

“Life is fleeting, death is immortal. Those who become one of us shall persist forever.”

But what kind of existence will it be? Nothing but an undead, half-living, surely, surrounded by death but unable to find release.

“True enough, but that is the punishment for having lived an evil life. Only a stake or the burning caress of sunlight can end our torment, and then shall we decay and crumble, ashes to ashes, dust to dust, our long-postponed mortality finally upon us. Until then, we must linger, and hunger, and wonder…”

Only a dream, and a foolish, impossible dream at that. True, now that I am awake again I could indeed stand before the looking glass. Yet I know only too well that to do so would be futile, it would serve no purpose. How could I hope to elicit answers from my own reflection? After all, being a vampire I would have no reflection...

'Kiss' - Sue Woodlace(?), 1994

I'd very much like to include this wonderful artwork in a future publication of mine, so I've been trying to trace its artist for a very long time, ever since I purchased my numbered print of it, in fact, one Sunday afternoon in 1994 at the Sunday market formerly held regularly at the Holiday Wharf in Birmingham, England. I can't quite read her signature on the picture - her surname may be Woodlace, Woodlane, Woodlore, or even something else entirely! - but if anyone reading this blog has any information regarding her identity and/or current contact details, I'd love to hear from you!