Thursday, December 22, 2005

Twilight



(c) A McN

Clear night

A damp and winter stillness;
Black tree bones beaded with water drops;
The velvet gaps between the clouds beaded with stars.

A crescent moon hangs crookedly, slipping down the sky and Venus blazes bright above the trees. The light has long since gone; the western fires are less than embers.
Only the faintest smudge of ash lightens the horizon..


Imperceptibly, the clouds dissolve.
One by one the lonely stars regain their constellations and the jigsaw sky reforms.

The air is damp and soft but under this cooling canopy of stars the long thin threads of light will stitch their bright embroideries.
Frost needles fix white sequins into place.

And as we sleep, this gentle, liquid air will harden into stone
To set like concrete round the threshold of my home.

(c) A McN

Temptation

In my heart I know it is wrong and I am ashamed
But I want to with all my heart.

So to resolve the dilemma
My mind comes to the table as a peace maker
Between my desire to protect myself and
My desire to fulfil my passing obsession.

But the mind is a betrayer
Looking only to prove its cleverness to all.

The mind is full of wise arguments
"No, it says, this will not hurt anyone"

And I am grateful to the mind's excuses
Because now I know that that which is wrong is justifiable and if it is justifiable
Then it is not wrong any more...

And this is the tree of knowledge whose fruit I strain to reach
While the serpent, hissing, weaves his way
Through the holes in my arguments
Into the very corridors of vein and artery
That lead to my heart.

(c) A McN

Browsing photography sites the mouse drifts towards the Fine Art Nudes. There is beauty in the female form that can be celebrated but there is a dangerous borderzone of the spirit that desires ownership, power and indulgence in the realms of imagination. The choice is simple - do I justify the weakness? Or resist the temptation? And which will enrich the real me - whoever that is?

Moon reflecting in mud



(c) A McN

Wednesday, December 21, 2005

Moon surgery

The light is clean,
surgically clean.
The moon wears the whitest of masks and the stars are
scalpel points of polished steel.

The land is anaesthetised with cold,
And even the pulse of time
Is barely discerned in the slow
Tick of constellations round the pole.

Needles of ice implant
with crystalline precision.
Frost acupuncture
Pierces leaf and levers stone
From soil.

This is war against disorder,
Crystals in advance,
Fixing the world in chains
of ordered, geometric
beauty.

Tonight, such order wins.
The water will no longer dance.
There will be living things that die
And cells that freeze in geometries of ice.

But there is also tomorrow.
Always, there is tomorrow
And always another alchemy...

Of sun, and light; of life

and warmth.

(c) A McN