July 2020
We stroll along the river side
by side
Full of nods and silences
Still-frames
Fragmented between slender fingertips
And like a polaroid,
I slide into the moment
Capturing
But a small token of this soft,
And silver beauty.
The tide rushes up quite hungrily
Gulping in shards of the shore
Drenched roots, entangled
As they sway like an earthy pool;
A dark cluster of ponytail that could belong to either me or you.
The shore is empty and unloved
Just like the rush of a first touch
The morning after love has snuck on out the back door,
Nevermore.
We climb inside cement rectangles
Discovering new angles of ourselves
Stone octagons bring on transformation
Broken bridges, offering shelter, forget themselves
If only for a little while
And I climb out like a freshly figured out Rubix cube
For
Each
Wave
Is
New.
Grey waves
Grey day
Grey sky
Inside
And if the sun were but a flower of fragmented colour
Then surely it would be off-white.
Above the grass-stained horizon
Sits a perfectly quaint little blue-stained castle,
All wrapped up
in a white picket-fenced dream
Swaying softly
Made up of a thousand sweltering Arabian nights
And bound by being not quite what it seems
The scene,
Floats off in the distance like a forgotten fairy tale
And I imagine myself its queen
What would you do if you were me?
I wonder quietly
To no one and to anyone who will hear me
To the castle, still floating
To the sun, still grey
To the levy, to the grass, to the water still rushing
To my destiny, unfolding
To the queen.
A set of swings sway gently in the breeze
Floating like the soft song of an old soul
upon warm and humid winds
I throw my shoes to the ground
Lay my head back
And smile
Whilst he pushes me forward
In more ways than one
Straight towards
The silver tongue of a restless river
I swing it all away.
A soft blush of grass
Brushes up against my tickled toes
Laughter
Oxygenates my brain
Back and forth
Back and forth
Back and forth
We each grow
And swing it all away.
Only the wind carries me now.
My freshly painted nails
They too are grey
And all except the rouge that is cast upon my face,
I have no make-up on
Today
I am queen of my disenchantment
A slave to the circumstance
Wanderer of the world
Peasant of the Levy
And potential ruler of all that could ever be
I am bound by a consequence
Governed by a simple conscience
That cool voice determining
Who
I
Am
Yes… me.
We walk among the ruins
Of some older time
Stories broken down
Refined
To the dust
Of what once was
I listen
To the hush
Of history forgotten
To the dust
Of what once was
Or will potentially ever be.
Graffiti and rubble
Torment and trouble
Oh what tales these walls would tell
If they were not but brutally boarded up
Closed lips
Mouth shut
Sealed and sewn
with rusty nails
Such secrets
They grip me on this silver lined afternoon
Try to trip me up
On rubbish and used needles
Scattered upon an overly used ground
The sound of silent stories permeating forgotten gardens
Wasps a buzzin’
Nature growing
Showing that it won’t take long for her to take it all back.
It feels kind of
Dangerous
Somewhat
Adventurous
But it keeps me on my on my toes
For with each trespassing step carefully trodden
My mind is blown
Into the same silver crumbs that I step upon
Walk in between
Weave on through
Like bombs
like The Great Land Mines of Our Time
Twenty thousand and twenty years
Spilling rhymes out from within the secrets of me
Casting spells
Witnessing the sorcery
That joins our lives
History has kept pieces of it
These secrets
Aged documents
True in their longstanding falsity
Just like a perception of you or me
And we each keep our own pieces
A personal testimony
Recorded deep in the broken rubble of our homes
The fractured bones of those who have fallen before us
And these silver concrete crumbs upon which we stumble
Our only photos.
Musty murals mimic life
And life mimics intangible dreams
Dreams chop and change
Crumble
Cut and past
And much like the castle,
Drift into not what they seem.
I drop the mic
Watch it roll around upon a concrete breadcrumb trail
And, following, I start to make my way home again
back to my life
back to my friends
back to my own dreams
Floating… feeling… somehow knowing
That we are but broken fragments from a movie scene.
Capturing,
all the while,
But a small token of this soft,
And silver beauty.
Written by
April Lee Fields
Media by
Elliot Twiggman
&
April Lee Fields
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