Tuesday present

Contrasting the darkness

Or phlegm confusing the swallow

Of Tuesday prior

Announces the vigor of Grace

Coursing through my veins

In perfect electricity

Mad and ecstatic. 

The style and poise

Of Godsong

Are rich chords

To my ears; 

Hefting the world,

Feeling its throb. 

©2012 Rhys Hastings Publishing
All Rights Reserved

These may be the complicated musings

Of a complicated child

Sipping through a complicated straw.

© 2012 Rhys Hastings
All Rights Reserved

In heated jazz display

Vapors expire from deeply dug

Double bass. 

© 2012 Rhys Hastings
All Rights Reserved

To the bellicose dream making war

With my thoughts: You are the sun

Left to burn out, straining through a cloud. 

© 2012 Rhys Hastings
All Rights Reserved

Within the seeking hour

I close my eyes to the madness

And squeeze the pain from shuttered lids

Distilling tears into a fine drink.

In the silence

Joy throbs through my soul

As I sit and realize

Hate is hard as glass

And if I touch the chaos

When it moves

My heart is either freed

Or littered. 

© 2012 Rhys Hastings
All Rights Reserved

Your silent screaming

Means I’ve been dreaming

While we waste each other away

In drams with the crucial lip. 

© 2012 Rhys Hastings
All Rights Reserved

Bodies are BROKEN

            Against the WIND

When peace is DESTROYED at morning

Like babes in quiet solitudes

            (THE PEACE OF QUIET)

YOU came through open windows

Like an unwelcome guest

            MET by strangers working

In factories IN THE vacant Midwest

Where no WAR raged like

            Fireflies in the tall grass

Of dark warm summer FIELDS.         

© 2012 Rhys Hastings
All Rights Reserved

Fear of science and the importance of

Suffering:  a man lies, the

Needle damage dangles from his arm

In the rheumy mezzanine

His finger pointed toward the

Door as though something got out. 

© 2012 Rhys Hastings
All Rights Reserved

Exposed to the elements

My alter-flame laid to waste

The joy in my heart:

My insistence with candy

My masque unkempt

My blue throat!

Toxins of hempen avenues

And bees in the periphery

That do not fall street-side

Like spent cigarettes and newspapers

Drifting thru chaotic streets

Catching anecdotes of sometime lovers

And aficionados of fine aged whiskeys. 

© 2012 Rhys Hastings
All Rights Reserved

Like delicate kiss a thumbprint pressed

            So softly into clay

The sinews of intertwined love

            Seemed of a joy to be wed

With ardor our lovers cleaved

            To the boughs of fertile trees. 

© 2012 Rhys Hastings
All Rights Reserved

In a flash the night absconded

With a dream of my mind’s making

Beyond my acquiescence

A thought that fell

From a strange place in my head

And landed with remarkable weight—

I awoke from it to see the night

Fleeing with awesome haste

Across the spheres

Beyond the pane glass irises

Of my eyes.

In the sepulcher I saw

Beast devour beast

Beast of fortune devour

Beast of burden

The former to his own satisfaction

To sate his tongue and teeth.

Nothing is naturally unclean

And nothing consumed defiling

And should advertisement sway me

The cause would blur the self

The mass would blur the soul.

Should man hold dominion

It’d be his ambition to shelter kin

And sustain life

Lives of every consequence.

As boys we’d welcome bugs

Into the shelter of our palms

Who found themselves into our rooms

Merely by curiosity and course

And designation that is nature’s prerogative.

Should I blot out that life

Whose purpose may lie beyond my sight

I’d just as well sever hand from limb

For this is not my house

These are not my clothes

This is not my bed

These are not my bones!

I yield myself to incomparable grace

I contest the pardons of purgatory:

Once do I live

Once will I die

To live no end withal.

Don’t make them love you;

Let them. 

© 2012 Rhys Hastings
All Rights Reserved

On the beach she passed

Through the ephemera of youth

And a seaside cigarette—

The sand, salt and smoke

Blended lazily as she reclined

Against that dry and antiquated summer

Stirring her sunburnt soul

The wind laughing blithely

Indifferent to the whims of the young.

The ash would spoil itself

Atop innumerable grains of sand

Like gulls upon the water

As she daydreamed in the shade

Of her unlikely heart.

© 2012 Rhys Hastings
All Rights Reserved

Dusk creeps imperceptibly into dark

Nestling into the comely folds of night

And sighs the dozing ones

To speechlessness and peace.

Irresolute in her shift

She seems

Poised on the cusp of ignition.

© 2012 Rhys Hastings
All Rights Reserved

Rumination of Spirit,

Remembrance

Of Spirit in pursuit,

A man ever longing

For reinvention. 

© 2012 Rhys Hastings
All Rights Reserved