"Maybe you should just do it tonight so you can sit in a box all day tomorrow."

Burn and Burn and Burn

for Megan Shay

First she was a late autumn breeze
coming through a café door
surrounded by
a phalanx of ebullient guards

Curious with her eyes wide open
glancing at the contents of the room
as if it were a ghostly pantry
of beeswax candles
and dried old mystery herbs
jars of dust preserved like patient guests
by buckets and deserted brooms

And as she left
again in the centre of an undulation of flesh
blown like orange and scarlet leaves around her
I felt the blue breath of her speechless passage
and asked and asked and asked

And as fixed winter came down
Her candle gaze of snowy attention
sparked a fire in my hibernating furnace
found in the locked basement of memory
and I could not hide
from the burning of her waking cold
or frostbite of her perfect touch
as sideways like the ghost of snow
she went and came and went again

And often I could not see her through her blizzard
but only hear her voice as it floated on
electric wave from Christmas
in the valley of sweetly frozen grape
or five blocks up the steepest street;
her words written down as wind inscribes
on banks of drifted paper snow
or tiny runes on shifted dunes of blown sand

And once she arrived large and sudden
as a wall of affronted weather
wafting some paper scraps before her
like a fallen dove’s shattered feathers
And in a sudden gust called my name
and indicated that my supposition
had offended her growing care
and slim modicum of human trust

And once calm as horse latitudes can be
her whisper seemed to say
(as it tangled my brain in a dream
of soft Sargasso sea)
I love you you will never lose me
but as a wind without edge or ropes
she moves and moves, is always there,
but like her subtle soul, always she is air

Her whispers and trick hunting whistles
tell me she wants me near but far
here not there or there not here or be with me
But you can’t hope to be
beside me when I cannot be held or hold
contained unless you’re as patient
as a canvas sail on a still lake stalled
then someday I will arrive big or small
and move you here to there and touch you
as a breeze across curved landscape
and through the stretching trees
until you start to smoulder then
leave you in the centre of that water
to smoke and sputter, wave and yearn,
leave you where I can discern
your perfect heart
burn and burn and burn.

ANGEL OF BLIGHT

Song Lyric

for Megan Shay with love and invariable respect Timothy Shay

"Maybe you should just do it tonight so you can sit in a box all day tomorrow."

While the world ended

in florescence and phony white

some chose to clutch thin candles

at the fall of interminable night

Some chose the bleak announcement

of rattling party horns

to pronounce their tiny crumbs of joy,

brief sunshine in a storm

Some fucked like no tomorrow

and some didn’t fuck at all

while they waited for the orders

and cowered within their walls

And while the world ended

one sat in a room alone

dreaming of bridal veils

the soft song of a groom

A groom and his celebration

a bride in her flight of veils

circled the sky as black birds

tossed like ships with sails

And while the world ended

all danced and danced again,

some sang like dirty angels

in a choir of the pained

Their voices of cardboard and ribbon

sputtered to false dawn

and the Angel of Blight directed there

with the hook on his baton

While the world ended

some still bowed to their ancient dreams

and begged their gods for the magic

of some forgotten former scene

And while the world ended

one spoke on a dead telephone

calling for bridal veils

in the sweet voice of a groom

Sad groom and his calculations

cold bride in her flight of veils

circled the sky as black birds

tossed like ships with sails

And outside in the corridor,

way down a deadened hall,

someone took their hardon

and beat a heart to hell.

7.III.09 Timothy Shay

LOVE POETRY & EROTIC POETRY

READINGS

VALENTINE'S DAY SATURDAY NIGHT OPEN MIC

FEBRUARY 14 2009 730PM-10PM

THE VIENNA

NELSON BC

HOST - TIMOTHY SHAY

READERS & LISTENERS WELCOME

THIS EVENT HAS NO COVER

AND ENDS AT APPROX.

10PM. WARM UP HERE

AND CONTINUE WITH

THE MANY LATER EVENTS

IN TOWN... AFTERWARDS

READINGS

SATURDAY

January 17th 2009

730PM

THE VIENNA

POETS/WRITERS

CALL

FOR SUBMISSIONS

HORSEFLY

LITERARY

MAGAZINE

is accepting submissions until December 2008
of poetry, (5 poems max.), and prose, (5000 words
max.). Submit by snail mail to:

HORSEFLY LITERARY MAGAZINE
c/o #308-507 Baker Street
NELSON BC V1L 4J2

or by email or word doc. to:

horsefly@netidea.com

No handwritten mss. Attach SASE for ms. return.