from Songs of Ani

3 the morning sun steams through a break in the bamboo curtains and drizzles through a veil of dust over Ani's body where she lies on the bed unadorned but for a gold chain curling around her thin neck beneath a cascade of feathers falling from her hair her skin is soft and young like a blank page from a notebook smooth and white waiting only for time to write its inevitable story in black ink smudges across her beauty and crease such pristine alabaster with cruel lines of experience and though i hesitate between the longing and the first kiss between the imagined readiness and the unexpected sensation i claim my place in the first pages of her story as i scrawl simple lines of paradoxical poetry across her willing flesh and tattoo her with a simple prologue and a complicated warning to every man who travels her body a simple caution that everything perfect easily flames into fulfilment only to lose its miraculous first spark that is too soon extinguished in a bed of grey ashes Copyright © Kennedy James, 2011. All rights reserved.

the future ...

the future ... behind the curtains of frost morning's light crackles through the black limbs of frozen trees a shiver traces a distant memory and wakes me from my dream to air so still that it pleads for sound rum pa pum pum faces familiar thaw the icy mist of unconsciousness and with the warmth of love stronger arms lift me up sure hands become fingers of feeling and wake my heart pa rum pa pum pum i remember you saying that the world breaks everyone and afterward many are strong at the broken places and so i stand on one good leg and march with the many in hobbled footsteps rum pa pum pum the road not taken converges with the road i chose where i see a final future stretch before me and crashing through yesterday's stark silence at last i hear tomorrow's child striking the drum each reassuring beat on beat calling me forward pa rum pa pum pum, rum pa pum pum Copyright © Kennedy James, 2012. All rights reserved.