War and peace


Lazy July breezes
Whip their fingers through my hair
Soft tongues of emerald kissing soles of dancing feet
Running blindly through the sprinklers on the lawn
Shrieks as icy sharp shards of liquid glass
Burst and burn. Grenades
Against snowy skin.

Chivalric sword fights.
Tearing wildly at branches for makeshift weapons
Pull on cardboard costumes
(You were always the black knight,
I always resented that)
Slaying the dragon, and
Apparently saving the damsel
(feminist objections as you did).

Stealth tactics in the formal gardens.
World war three between the box-trees
Eyes peering out through a thousand windows
Guerrilla warfare.
Slipping silkily through the leaves
Twigs snap,
Silently brush them from a grass-stained jumper
Brutal, savage battle cries - before a stumble

The fearless warrior melting,
Shrinking beneath the war paint
to the boy who I know
With scarlet beads, streaking his knee,

We make our peace-treaty.

Crimson light bathes,
Streaming over tousled locks caked with mud.
Legs swing freely from the boughs of a
Gnarled, battle-scarred tree
World peace perhaps? - Then
Assault from afar
A thousand complaints
Shoelaces sullenly fumbled into place
We trudge silently to the house,

To face the reality of
Our dictator.

04/18/2003

Author's Note: This was probably about the first thing I ever really submitted to anywhere to be properly critiqued and pulled to pieces. Suprisingly (especially as I look back on it now) it didn't do too badly. So this isn't so much a good bit of writing, more a badly scrawled crayon picture to try and illustrate a point about where I want to be moving away from in my work. Much like the rest of the poems labelled "chronology" - so bear that in mind when reading :)

Posted on 04/18/2003
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