Ghost Apples
Gothically sublime
as Frankenstein’s monster,
they hang as fruitful impostors,
bending boughs under icy loads:
ghostly, phantasmagoric pretenders
like poltergeists in new homes
built upon disused graveyard soil.
Blasts of frozen winds
thrash once glossy skins,
scorching internal fleshy cores
as medieval witches
burning fast with charred hearts
upon patriarchal wooden stakes.
Globular worlds drain hollow,
morphing to echoey spheres
where abstraction overpowers;
concrete nouns slip, frozen-apple elusive:
unsteady upon slippery surfaces.
Fairytale poisoned, spectral apples
dangle in eager expectation;
awaiting an outstretching princess hand -
to enshroud internal, melting madness.
A fair maiden approaches
entranced by watery planets,
spinning as malevolent underworlds.
A slender, frost-kissed arm
reaches out, eager to pick, hold, bite…
She melts away as Eve (Eden: a mere figment).
*
Time passes…
Ghostly apples refreeze,
primed as villains for new victims…
Rubik’s Cube
You’re plastic pieces in my hand,
rotating to form handsome faces;
eyelashes sweep as ballgowns
where eyeshadow, satin-soft,
dapples your chiselled cheek
from near kisses that excite your mind:
you’re transfixed and under my spell…
I’m your Sugar Plum Fairy.
I turn your sliding sides
aiming for precision
seeing you in each triangular wall;
smoothing edges like sandpaper,
tapering off spiky sinews;
erasing imperfections:
striving to form perfect portraits
(you always had too many faces).
Yet, my efforts fail.
After tunnels of time,
your surfaces are plained clean,
ubiquitously characterless:
formatted like streamlined autobahns
of monotonous, predictable grey;
dissolving are your colours
as paint globules in water-pots,
crumbling to sticky residue
wallowing soundlessly
upon the glass jar bottom.
You’re an unseen, but once beautiful palette
adorned with numerous tonal shades:
each mountain peak of paint
is a former vivacious planet -
spinning, rotating in an artist’s mind’s eye;
eager to dispel creative potential -
forming works of grandeur:
wall-proud pieces,
invaluably worthy.
Now…
You’re a forgotten sea urchin,
buried under layers of mundanity;
a gloom of grungy green blankets you,
disguising prior plastic-fantastic faces
(always duplicitous).
Blackening with antiquity
where seaweed bedecks your skin
reminding you of salient touch.
You cower further,
forgetting your soul:
his needed nourishment.
Instead, you shutter your eyes,
forging a self-induced prison
so I can forget you.
Moon-bow
Hardly known as historic women in science,
I flounder on edges of existence:
profoundly elusive, barely seen,
mostly smudged at edges
as charred, spent charcoal;
I blur, lost in tears of forgetfulness
like firewood within wintertime hearths,
blazing fiercely, full of heated flames.
My counterpart: a diurnal rainbow beacon -
the splendour of solar skies;
her fair hand paints artic pale heavens
as awaiting canvases, thick with need,
upon which she impresses chatty,
dashing, obsequious hues:
resplendent, fully seen
in bright beaming sunshine;
she’s even majestic when smouldering
in rainfall ruin like a toppled queen.
Me: I’m an erased memory
or nightmare best tucked away
in a hidden, hushed drawer:
too intrepid is its owner
to claim ownership of me.
I too, like infant bad dreams,
(am the frayed, forgotten one).
My reign is transitory
in gloomy midnight climes
where my painter fingers are ghosts,
merging with nocturnal nightshade
as translucency itself, hidden in water,
dwindling to nothingness
as infinite Russian dolls
where oblivion’s hand erases
with bold, effacing brushstrokes:
muddling who I am,
what I could be.
As Dracula’s existence,
I’m shuffled sideways,
barely documented,
in need of a hopeful lover
to photograph my unravelling
as Kardashians on red carpet runways:
Snap. Snap. Snap.
Golden. Glamour. Glitz.
Yet my beauty is nature-made,
stamped, ordained my Mother Nature’s hand;
I need no filters,
no retouches of foundation;
no flicks of flattering mascara
to enliven my allure.
I just need a nighttime viewer…
Two eyes searching for me
piercing through cloudy blankets of dark,
camera click ready
and perfectly poised
to timelessly steal
my invaluable autograph.
*
Signed and yours,
Moonbow