whispers ...

whispers ... i've painted over the whispers of love that you left indiscreetly on the walls of the bedroom brushed over all the purrs and hums and denouements that wound us into the single cocoon of the secret sexual life we shared a life entwined by the ribbons of deepest departures and the cruellest dares ... i think you would like the colour a mustard yellow gone orange blended something like a sunset irreconcilable in its determination to end the crispest blues of daylight and now that i've finished i can't help but wonder how easily the dark night eclipses all the colours of my life when i remember asking you to stay and watching you walk away without so much as  a single whisper  Copyright © Kennedy James, 2013. All rights reserved.

sometimes you don't fit into the fairy tale

sometimes you don't fit into the fairy tale sometimes you don't fit into the fairy tale  you step through a defective looking glass  or fall down the wrong rabbit hole  and presto!  the land of magic and mystery  is not quite what you hoped for  oh sure, there's a frog waiting for your kiss but kiss as you may no prince pops out from beneath the warts and the slimy green skin and the next morning you are sporting a cold sore the size of Portobello mushroom undeterred you march through forest and glen  shack up with seven dwarfs in a tiny cottage  that you're expected to keep clean when the little guys  go whistling off to work  while you wait patiently for some crone  or at the very least your older sister to show up  with a poison apple to eat so that you can fall asleep  then suddenly wake to a prince's kiss and  a lifetime of ease watching the afternoon soaps  but the apple never arrives  and you spend sleepless nights in anticipation  until one of the seven little people  slips a pea under your mattress  and you sleep for three days straight  only to wake up and discover  that you've been left out on a marble slab in the bush  and that you're beginning to attract flies  you buy a crate of glass slippers (one size fits all) from the shopping network website and you drive through the richest part of town leaving one at the gates of every castle you can find and you even tie one to a telephone wire high above the entrance to the legion hall but no Prince Charming comes 'round looking for the happy-ever-after with a slipper in his hand no, the best you get is the pizza delivery boy  with a double cheese and anchovies x-large pie  misaddressed to your front door  which you pay for  despite the obvious mistake  because the interchange is at least  a minute or two of human contact  and that pizza is something you can munch on  in bed before you fall asleep  all the while hoping the anchovies kick in at some point  and flush all this fantasy shit  out the rabbit hole  and down your porcelain throne  because quite seriously  the worst nightmare of reality isn't half as bad  as wasting a lifetime in a dreamy fog  and wishing you were  someone you're not  Copyright © Kennedy James, 2013. All rights reserved.

blue station wagon ...

blue station wagon ... i'm driving around in the blue station wagon ... driving around and around and around i been here and i been there seems like i been  just about everywhere and still i ends up here here in the same old place out down the 88 past the motel flops past the pee-by-the-willow-tree  tip-toe hops past the scenic view points and the sloppy-joe  pick-up joints past the weigh-stations of the cross where long-haul truckers sleep between profit and loss  past the roadside coffeeshops and the fat cowboy cops looking for pussy to munch or gays to punch  far past the endless fields of frozen crops and burnt out Christmas tree tops until like a full-blown heart attack everything stops  you know the place i'm sure most people simply call it nowhere ... i'm driving around in the blue station wagon ... driving around and around and around listening to the worst of K-LITE music seeping like Amish honey from the radio and here i am humming mindlessly along trying to remember the words to some faraway song words that once were like a storyline underscoring a photo album of a true love found and a passion bound to last until the sudden crackle  of highway static shreds the moment  into cross-cut fragments  of melancholy thoughts scattering like confetti out the back window  and all i can think of is that something in me has stalled or faltered or clogged all i can think of is that something must be wrong so very very wrong but i can't put my finger on it can't say exactly what that something something is ... i'm driving around in the blue station wagon ... driving around and around and around all alone once again except for the memories i got packed in a steamer trunk clattering around  like a corpse  trying to thrash through the quagmire of denial and find some way back to life only to discover that ending is not mending and torn denim beliefs  get so full of holes there ain't no one can stitch  them together again but hey no sense crying no sense trying to blow the morning fog away and so i roll on knowing i been alone before been alone most of the time been too much of a dreamer too much a drifter living in restless boots shoe shined by one escape after another ... i'm driving around in the blue station wagon ... driving around and around and around i was sure someone called "Shotgun" but never showed up or at least not in time before i started out 'cause when you gotta go you gotta go or they'll find you just sitting and idling away your time inhaling the carbon monoxide fumes creeping like invisible fingers from the rotted out floorboards and some will surely wonder which is better before or after life or death but what they don't get is that sometimes you can't tell which from which you know sometimes you don't know left from right or up from down only thing for sure is that sometimes things last a little too long ... i'm driving around in the blue station wagon ... driving around and around and around i needs me a woman with a hard-luck story and courage in her soul a woman who can fly me over that valley in the 23rd psalm a woman who is better at using her head than she is at giving it a woman with strong hands stained with ink and calloused with colour hands that can lift  the furniture of sorrow and redecorate even the darkest mood a woman who will lay her fingertips over these tired old eyes and lull me to sleep with gentle caresses lull me into the dreams of a younger man with nothing but hope in his pocket and a clear mind  that guesses there's a future beyond the next turn in the road and time to fill beyond the next five minutes a woman who carries me on before the night crumbles into dusty regrets and the morning comes to find me forever gone ... Copyright © Kennedy James, 2013. All rights reserved.

click ...

click ... click she stirs from sleep click click she raises her body props herself on one elbow click turns her head first one way and then the other click click pulls herself from the bed and listens more carefully click the window click click yes the window click she carefully bends the blind and peers into the dark click click there there by the street light a shadow more than a shadow a man cursing at a long barrelled rifle click he is struggling to seat the killing bullet in the chamber click click she watches and wonders why he is there on a public sidewalk in the middle of the night click she lifts the blind higher to see what might be his target click click again failure and just as he seems to be ready to give up he slams something shut turns to face her widening eyes and fires Copyright © Kennedy James, 2013. All rights reserved.

if you love me ...

if you love me ... if you love me say the words and touch my face with a soft finger that trails down from my forehead to my lips and please do not say "Shhh" do not tuck me into your neck and whisper vaguely all the vague words that lovers who have no more love for one another use to console the moment of imminent separation if you love me say the words pour them into my heart and write for me a future of joy everlasting and please do not turn your eyes away when you guess i am composing a vow of everlasting love for you do not end what hope has begun with a sweeping turn of casual disregard if you love me say the words and make reassurance something real and certain something to hang on to and please do not leave me here alone dried up and pinned to the wall with a nail through each painful palm do not leave me suspended to suffer a night of silent anguish wondering where we fell out and how i mistook love for love Copyright © Kennedy James, 2013. All rights reserved.

noise(less)

noise(less) slap of dominoes on a wooden table the upside of double sixes blocking the one escape from a haunting memory of someone screaming in the night someone torn from the silvery remnants of a cocoon life muddle of busy streets cacophonous clatter under mushroom police sirens feet and more feet stepping through doors and arches and over sidewalk betrothals immutable initials encircled by concrete hearts just before dawn squeak of bedsprings repetitious and unrelenting until after a groaning gasp blending with a guttural moan nothing and then nothing and then something cruel and acidic something that eats the moment silence Chaplinesque and idiotic a flutter of eyelids and fumbling fingers not blind but like blind sounds unheard except by the empty heart waiting for a whisper that never comes ©  Copyright  Kennedy James, 2013. All rights reserved.

i have loved you

i have loved you i have loved you for only a moment and i have loved you forever i have loved you in your dresses of silk ribbons that flew in the wind around my uneasiness and bound me to your flesh until inflamed by desire i surrendered my heart and matched you spark by spark flame by flame until like two candles  red and blue we melted into a single sealing shade of iridescent indigo i have loved you for only a moment and i have loved you forever i have loved you through the music of a perfect violin playing through the solitude of some lonely winter's tale and when you were most alone i was alone with you like steam dissolving ice on smoky windowpanes and forming crystalline constellations  of silvery white on the blackest of  imperfect mornings i have loved you for only a moment and i have loved you forever i have loved you in the hallways of ambiguity watched your eyes fly from certain to uncertain or heard your words stagger without warning and still i never doubted that every flickering question would be answered and that love would transform the darkness of mystery  at the end of a day  into the bright knowing light of a day without end i have loved you for only a moment and i have loved you forever Audio Verson Sorry, audio is not available.

Copyright © Kennedy James, 2013. All rights reserved.

Songs of Ani — 12

Songs of Ani — 12 Ani pulls stars from the night sky and with a frozen stare says "Here, I will build my universe around you" and she smears a galaxy of flickering pinpoint promises across the primordial dust of desire floating in shadowy streams of light through the haze of my room and when her Ptolemaic cosmos is complete she comes to the bed and with eager fingers undresses my brittle body and ties me to the bedposts then with her measured art she tattoos my flat and paling skin with a map of Bedlam around where her mouth coaxes my arousal into a trembling tower which she inscribes with the name Babel "The chaotic centre where lesser women will come" she says "and plead for your love in tongues" Copyright © Kennedy James, 2013. All rights reserved.

Songs of Ani — 1

1 Annie stands by the bed, one hand curled around an ornate Victorian post, the other carving a surgical red line across the uncertain heaving of my ribs. She says, "You're not as holy as you think," as she examines my body with a look that collapses beauty into wafer-thin fragments of flesh under her dissecting eyes. Eyes so cruel they disembowel even the last entrails of my love for her and I feel the hemorrhage of my faithfulness spill beneath the corpse of my longing. My hope pours out from me like the darkest wine, a sacramental blood pooling around me and staining the bed sheets in the shape of a heart. Copyright © Kennedy James, 2013. All rights reserved.

who is it ...

who is it ... who is it in this broken picture frame whose face smiles from beneath the cracked glass so ragged it nicks my finger and leaves a drop of blood drying like a red sun just above the tilted horizon whose bright eyes recognise the shadows of my face whose smile rekindles some sacred memory from the ashes of forgetfulness a spark leaping into flickering flame so bright it catches me by surprise then quickly flares out in a swirl of smoke who is it on the telephone late into the night whose determination calls me up to say something familiar but whose hesitation smothers a trembling voice and leaves me waiting in the quiet of my loneliness a vacancy that smothers my hope and my longing to hear the words those words the whispering promise i remember and still crave so madly that i am afraid to hang up the silent phone who is it dancing inside some sad refrain on the busy streets of my desire whose flesh once met mine in a perfect erotic rhythm and carried me towards eternity whose body met my body here and here and here the two entwined one to another like resonating vibrations of separate steel strings sharing a note within the polished wood of a blue guitar the one i played at the bus stop where i waited in my certainty that love would return never guessing that you were not coming but were somewhere else where you were waiting too who is it in the hallways of my deepest thoughts whose anger drapes the walls with stains apocryphal whose blood boils and rages at my foolishness at my wilful sacrifice that denied any other heartbeat but my own that let love go when like God's most defiant angel i stepped outside of bliss and mistook independence for freedom only to fall from grace and squander the best of chance or circumstance forevermore who is it who will lift me from despair and with renewed joy wash me clean again who will peel away the gauze of disappointment and show me where the wounds of so much ancient damage have healed into a fresh hope for love who will hold me above the river of time for the breadth of a single breath then plunge me deep beneath the water's surface to absolve me of my misdeed even at the risk of drowning me instead Copyright © Kennedy James, 2013. All rights reserved.