Resten Swondo

I cannot love you
With all the love in the world
I can only love you
With all the love in my heart.
...

I wish I could say how beautiful you are to me
But I could not taint the same lips that touch yours
With words that charlatans have well used
To raise them in favour for a time, wasted.
...

What smile made this soul quiver?
Shiver on this day in her audible stare
Each fingertip touch made the world
Tremble at the thought of caressing
...

A wreath of flowers in her hair
Cherry and apple blossoms curl
The air into colours of wishes
Lying at her perfect dancing feet.
...

From skyward peaks edging the land
Awash in cold misty blasts and snow
A babe in swaddling burbling spit
Closes its fist around sacred life.
...

Afloat in a tempest, deep tongued kisses
Of ocean storming caressing waves, peaked breasts.
A gusty wind sweetly moaning, a trembling lover; -
Sail me across that pounding sea, that beating heart
...

Creeping into your bower,
Pleasuring with expense,
Sparing no innocent flower
Or shiny minted pence.
...

Julian ghosts wander perplexed in the forum; -
The dead statues of a pharonic general
Honoring a conquering god are forever gone.
The crumbling ruins foretell no golden age.
...

In her day, she was nothing but a nice ride,
But she had been ridden into the ground;
She coughs and splutters among cats,
Her cold dream cracks a dry walnut dash.
...

Humble men know their natural place
And place no store in self-conceit.
They live far from all vain deceit
And court the favour of divine Grace.
...

The clowns dance upon invisibility
their painted masks hide tears,
Do clowns not love
though misshapen?
...

Tender love was all I had
Soft touches, subtle gazes, lingering
Moments in embrace
A smile of stupor
...

You are first in my thoughts
When I wake,
With every ray of light,
Every rustling of the breeze.
...

A black stripe towards a horizon
Drawn in misted grey and vermillion
Fading into lusterless swirls on
A canvass drawn too taut on
...

The rites of passage, broken on a wheel
Of populist displeasure, populism given
To coca-cola urges, Nike-driven coitus,
Distance between reality and self.
...

Corrugated heaven,
The promise of a wisp
Slipped beneath shadowed light
Hooding thirsty, scouring eyes.
...

A fig tree stands alone on the road
To Gethsemane,
It carries the curse of a savior
It alone survives.
...

Never a kind word, never any praise or a dram
Of encouragement.
Each breath was a curse, a blasphemy.
No person found praise in your tongue
...

God stretched me across the heavens
After He created the world so long ago
Such was the beauty of her heart
The serenity of her countenance
...

My eyes gently rest on her beautiful face
And all the follies of the human race
Lay whittled down to the last twig.
It was not in some Divine order,
...