© Candice James, Poet Laureate

 

The Sound of Shadows

 

In the sound of shadows

Circular haloes extend themselves

Through hollow nights

And non-descript days

Chewing on sunbeams and moonglow

Exhaling mist and fog

Into my already dampened spirit

 

In the sound of shadows

There is no music, no cadence,

Only a haunting hum of whispers

I don’t want to hear

But they grow louder

Clawing incessantly

With long bony fingers

At a memory that lingers

Slicing my mind with reality

Peppering my heart with lies and truths

Spilling onto the mirrors of my soul

The smell of dank earth extends itself

Resurrecting images

Better left dead.

 

In the sound of shadows

I hear everything

Except my own voice.

 

THE BOOK REOPENS

© 2012 Candice James

 

Coming full yet waning and ebbing

On fading shorelines,

Treading softly through the pale iridescent dust

Of ancient skylines

 

Wandering through cloud drifts

And mother of pearl pyramids

The days shine, a pink glow

Against opalescent nights

Reversing through each other

Spiralling within the seasons

In the book of life

 

Windblown pages

Always moving,

Forward, backward,

Opening, closing,

Going past the end,

Back to the beginning

 

A wink,

A sanctified blink,

Through the pale iridescent dust

And the book reopens

 

TORN ELOQUENCE

© 2013 Candice James

 

On the brackish edge of a cloyed moment

I stumble into a nightmare

Constructed with broken toothpicks,

Damp with dental musings

Forever unuttered

Porous with poesy.

 

A barbed wire blanket of bliss

Threads its way through this dark reverie.

 

An eagle hobbles

Across a crumbling asphalt highway,

Its broken wing

Trailing over shards of glass

Glinting in the broken bits of moonlight

Surrounding the dark.

 

The eagle’s throat is stricken tight

Choking on unsung songs.

 

Guttural sounds:

Harsh,

Hacking,

Piercing

Fill the air…

Torn eloquence

Hung out to dry

On a blanket of barbed wire bliss.

 

The Land of Blood Snakes © 2013 Candice James

 

I am bloodless

A stir of emotions and blurred memories

Words have disappeared

Into the echoes of my mind

 

I fight to find my voice

In a canyon rife with raspy whispers

I search for a sunset that remembers

A moonbeam that knows my name

Looking for a scene that fits my story

 

A river runs through it

A cabin gleams in the raw red sunrise

Searing the lost words to my eyes

 

I wander blindly

On a never-ending desert island of blank papyrus

Searching for my broken stylus

In deep dunes of snake infested sands

 

This is the land of blood snakes

Broken styluses and lost words

 

Left arm

Buried up to the shoulder

In the twenty-seventh dune of the eastern edge

I feel the welcome bite of the snake

Blood flows into my aching veins

Into my fingertips

 

The reptilian jaws release

 

I pull my arm out of the sands of time

A new stylus in hand

 

The lost words re-appear

In the echoes of my mind

 

I touch the papyrus

My tears become ink

And spill onto the sand

The island comes alive

I have given it breath

I am blood

 

The Fog © 2013 Candice James

 

With Silent footfalls

I wander these midnight streets

A ghostly gray figure

Blending into the fog

 

I become invisible

Inside night’s hazy envelope

 

I drift aimlessly

Through the atmosphere’s

Thick weightless element

 

Voices without faces ebb and flow

In a distant tide of unseen strangers

A siren approaches

Its desolate scream

Invades,

Passes,

Fades

Swallowed up by the fog

 

A creeping damp

Chills my ankles

Climbs to my eyes

Makes them wet…

 

I’m not crying!

I’m not!!

 

With silent footfalls

I continue walking through midnight

A ghostly figure

Hazing in and out

Slowly, slowly

Becoming…

The fog

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