Velvet Mistress by Richard L. Clayton
Her velvet melded perfectly
With lighted nights
With syncopation
Wallowed in
Her mystique air
Velvet, swelters and welted wounds
Her licks of lingering dementia, burning
-
Cut through air, sharpest sound
Downward strokes that carry momentum
Whistles warning of impending pain
Leap flogged left but not before
Her stitch of enlightenment resounded soundly
Her merging twists and black gloved hands
Symbiotic switches, lashing me
-
Curved smile, lips of darkest red
Blooded pools of pealing laughter
Strike the velvet cat o�nine tails
Across the solstice of my life
And still the indecision reigns
Whiplashed cords across my backside
Lather me with loving licks
Doled out in wicked flicks of warmth
-
Dangling participles, blasted
Cold hand of the Mistress, haughty
Brought about to face
Her beauty
Lips ripped back in feral grins
Teeth are more than enough to seize me
Lacquered kicks from steel toed boots
My trilling vowels fall on sadistic ears
Puckered wax (whacks) with vicious kisses
-
Still, I�d have no other
Steeled against the punishment
Later when the wounds are tended
She melts into my strong embrace
A woman, still the same
Needing love and romantic passion
Whips to hang upon their chains
And it is
She that sighs beneath me
Tranquility by
Richard L. Clayton
We walked hand-in-hand
Over the dew-topped grass
The sun mounting the sky
like a proud warrior mounting his
steed
Our path took us to a shadowed,
wooded valley
where the crickets still chirped
and this crevice in the crust of
the Earth
held onto the night with the grip
of a thousand men
Here, in this synogogue of silence,
my thoughts poured out and flooded
me
In flashes I saw myself
from childhood to my venerable
days.
A smile rose up from my lips
as I began to walk once more
My friend offered me more than
I could imagine
We left the shaded valley, hand-in-hand,
just Death and I.
Blackened by Richard
L. Clayton
Blackened moats, delve into
the inkspots of the soul
Where exists, or has existed
this quagmire of my being
Surface sheered, rounded, obtuse
Chameleon's way of changing colors
but blackened is the sound it touches
My first time around, this recollection
-
Gutted landscape, deepest chasms
Not flat and not conforming, truly
Grays to swirl with reds and whites
Blackened, just the same, I see
Chips and shavings, flakes to curl
crumble off the husk to create
a distant, partitioned union
An idea, formed, at its birthing,
bathed
and blackened
-
Peaks to rise, to form a network
of heights not surely tasted, elsewhere
Come and touch, smell and hear
the gathering of these Goliaths,
singing
In a voice of soothing gestures,
reaching
touching, gnarled knobs
Gesticulate and percolate
To melt back into a plane of dissension
-
Troubled soul, one would fathom
Lest one knew the workings, therein
Without the meaning, judgments
are pardoned
Hardened, thick carapace of obsidian,
black
-
Search the scar-covered shell and
watch
Formings happen, chaotic intentions
Where else could such beauty arise
but in this melting pot of mine
-
Slickest handholds to gather dust
where no hands or feet or other
appendages amass, under brooding
skies
The gusts and gales to surely shiver
-
Think not of this as the soul
it is but an outer shell, a skin
Buried, deep, within this armor
lies another sentient being
Blackened
