Kayo Dot

ome, fading
Something makes sense in ripples
Grief is the corpse from which worms feed
Alas, I am not this stricken man
Suspended by sunlight, shadows break
Their silent vigil
As rainwater collects in barrels
Lucifer rose up to kiss the analgesic dawn
While below, Something roll'd the stone away
Something makes sense in ripples
Gradually, I saw Abuse is a Name
And ghosts will seem forever
Less fantastic

Like a kiss, soft, and wild with the delicate steps of petals fallen in a stream
This swirling ballerina turns in faint and sighing grandeur
Across the floor to me.
A monarch plays the violin to a summer's afternoon
Whilst quietly the earthworm adores the soil in winter's sparkling gloom
It breaks away, growing as the flowers do.

A thunderhead embraces his enraptured lover
And kisses with a gale that also makes the cattails shudder.
His tears cannot, as he proclaims his love, be held with lightning back;
They fondly dance into an open window
And fondly dance with mine.

Our eyelashes weaken with a weight that is sweet and fine,
And this feels like frogs and spiders in the sweet outside.
Tell me why world, unfathomable and good,
The beauty of everything is infinite and cruel.

An airplane, a puppet, an orange, a spoon,
A window, and outside
Stars and the moon.


2. A Pitcher of Summer


One morning, before the leaves began changing
I caught a piece of summer and poured it into a pitcher;

This I placed in the cellar on a shelf collecting dust .
Autumn, then winter, rose up from the sea, and my
Garden was a garden filled with unbroken snow.

No flower strained its face to the ice giants' whisper,
No life coloured the vision of a newborn Spring babe.
My cellar-water dripping into a pail

And I lifted my piece of summer
Like a piece of memory or a dream

Like these, caught on film
And carried it to the garden floes,
The wind turning drifting stars to madness.

Poured forth gracefully, this ctheric tincture
Lifts winter's coat-of-arms with coaxing aromas and electricity.
Used with vigilance, a Pitcher of Summer stirs a memory into swooning,
And bravely, the flowers of the past will stretch their limbs into the sky
While snow falls quietly all around.


3. The Manifold Curiosity


It never hurt this much before,
And I feel I'm courting Saturn.
The Twelve-Eyed Secret gazes through a prism,
Staring into raindrops swirling slow
It lifts its horrible heads
With lidless orbs of limitless vision.
I dream with fluid movements in a lake
The ripples cast from skipping stones
We speak below a gushing mind,
Crouching in a corner, hid behind a box
Full of Worms and stalking shadows.
Magnetism draws me to a cone of space;
I sift still through hours of its plasma,
Biding time until the clocks collapse.
Music shattered my spine on the steps outside;
I cannot move; my liquid breathing
Is sculpted with this binding gel.
But come, my love, and rescue me
From failure.
Cover me with an opium sheet,
Embrace me with gossamer;
Kiss the moonstones from my eyes
And brush the cobwebs from my bones.
It all sings beautifully;
With all your strength believe this.
But I know you can't understand
Why I threw myself from the glass again.


4. Wayfarer


Sing to me a romance, sire
That splendid trod the starry roads.
All ye dust-strewn travellers, hasten
To the hearthside!
What seest thou, wayfarer,
Upon thy journey to a citrine sun?

Caves of candlelight with amethyst imbued,
Opal skulls of opal creatures decorating tombs!
Woods of columned water supporting ceilings breathing blue,
Seascapes fill'd with poison, lonely, waiting for the few
Final scarlet denizens to march into the scorching fumes!

Stalks of lapis lazuli groaning against a tired breeze,
Sparkling in the quaint moonlight, and owls' eyes in sapphire trees,
Hooting to one year of moons that hang on petals in the air!
Growing ghosts in silver pots upon a silent windowsill,
Built into the side of nothing built into a nothing hill!

A cage that housed a nightingale was hung upon a shepherd's crook;
He lightly stepp'd across the tide, his statuary effervescing.
Boughs dipped their lovely heads into the lake of one-thousand tiers
To admire an Absinthe floodgate, and a piquant gallery.

Morning, and the dreamers fade
Like lovers' gazes past their hour.
Cannot sunrise wait forever
For its time?

Farewell, starry wayfarer,
I'll bless your name when I dream of you.


5. The Antique


Dust fills my Mouth with a Timeless Poltergeist Rapping
Lightly upon a Dusty Door;
It Locks the Days together
Yesterday
This Artefact wasn't rightly so.
Flanked by Shelves incorporating me into their Lonely Dream,
I search for Tremors lying Weeping
'Neath the Broken Tiled Floor
Weeping with a Broken Madness,
Weeping for the Day Before.
Tarnished Silver in the Cupboard soothes
The Fathoms of my Aching Silver Beard;
Like Shining Eyes scoured by
A Sour Creaking Gait,
Cataracts dim the
Eloquence that wore
The Shining Cloak of younger Pride,
And This was Long,
Long before their Careless Keeper died.

A Revenant spread its Foul Curse to Every Living Thing
With Stories trapp'd on Yellowed Pages
By Talismans of Poignant Lethargy.
Tales Twilit bear their Ruin'd Words
To this Ghoulish Scenery,
Slouching over Candlelight
Extinguished in another Century.

The Grandfather Clock once Told its Beads,
While Outside the Branches
Bowed their Windows slightly Out of Key.
And this Downstairs, where a
Forlorn Clock has long since Lost its Faith,
And a House's Stale Breath sighs like the
Whispers of a Wraith.

Spiders Decorate an Appearance
That stretches Gnarled Hands
Back into a Relinquished Parlour Game;
Wisps of Ghostly Languor hinting faintly of Perique
Ring the Ancyent Air and Fade,
Murmuring of Things Antique.