This one I've just written in response to a recent painting by the artist on 'Boules de Neige'. You can see the picture on her blog at www.scrambolo.blogspot.com.

I suspect I've taken a rather sideways look at the picture. But who knows what's actually in an artist's mind, even less so than in a poet's?

Crimson Space

What's holding back the crimson space?
A shell of real, façade of fake?
An unreal girl half turns her face
and hears the sound her friend would make

if he were not himself a prop.
While gravity pretends to hold,
beyond the stage the endless drop
of nothing as the truth unfolds.

And that holds back the crimson space
that only artists could create.
The really empty world we'd face
is black as unimagined fate.

Roy

Another from about a year ago. Something had set me musing on the idea that creativity takes place at the intersection, or slight overlapping, of the conscious and non-conscious minds, as though at times there is a gentle ebb and flow between the two, like a lake lapping its shore (and vice-versa).

Mere Abstraction

Our dreams are mere abstraction;
re-created mood made real
by involuntary actions of creationistic zeal.

We make legends when we're resting,
turn reality to suit every feeling we're attesting:
every mood must have its root.

But the sources of these stories
are mere flickers in the brain;
chemically created glories -

Don Quixote conquered Spain in a swarm of self-deceptions,
we'd do well to be aware.

Yet our sleeping brain's perceptions
may relate what's hidden there -

Though our dreams are mere abstraction,
re-created mood made real,
at the point of interaction lies the life those dreams reveal.

Roy

A Poem for Valentines Day.

This is one I wrote a year ago. It's a personal poem, but I hope it's sufficiently universal for you to enjoy as well.

This Love

This love is far more complex than a rhyme
or even than a poem: though I try
explaining what it is from time to time
I cannot, and I cannot tell you why.

This love is something greater than I know:
I only know compulsion from within
that made me stay when you would have me go;
that wouldn't have an end, that bade 'Begin'.

This love affair is everything and nought
will ever come between this man and you.
If anything's contagious, we are caught,
the fever more malarious than 'flu...

This love outlasts a Valentine, my love;
outlives a thousand festivals and more.
It rides upon the wing-beats of a dove
who never knew eternity before.

Roy

Here's one I hardly remember writing, even though it was only a little over a year ago (last January). It has a hymnal quality that was commented on at the time, and some incongruous language, perhaps, but I post it here unedited.

Awesomely, Awfully (tears of old oceans)

Awesomely, awfully, runs the sun over us
so ever-onwardly turns the green Earth
quite unforgettably, always oviparous,
carries the oceans, the place of our birth,
carries the mountains and skies tall and wondrous,
rolls ever under our mass at her girth.

Now we refer to the future: projecting it
carries a warning - illusions are dumb.
Earth can't survive 'less the species protecting it
sees her diseases both painful and numb.
Cannot revive if the testers inspecting it
stand unaware of how she may succumb.

Wake to the warning and hearten heroically:
carry the fight by the light of the flame.
See how she bears her mistreatment so stoically,
only occasionally fixing her aim...
Yet she is wounded and weeping - ironically
tears of old oceans from whence we all came.

Roy