Perfect Moment [poetry]

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For a perfect moment
I turn to touch you with my lips
I give you sweet kisses down
making you tremble with anticipation
I take you to the edge of a precipice—
a teeter at the edge of a fall

You cling to me
but you fall in the rush of your sweet release
crying your passion
into a beautiful embryonic abyss of mind and soul

You open your eyes and smile at me
You tell me how perfect everything feels
making us sigh and wish it were so
We return from the depths of our reverie
taking our time while we go

Black and White [fiction]

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There it was in black and white, the feeling that drove Sarah mad—old tingles that used to come in color when she was a teenager. But the passage into adulthood had clouded the rainbow with storms, her eyes searching with a half-smile for the sunlight behind the clouds.

Marriage had been a shelter from the rain—his love for her as loud as thunder. But a meddling Zeus struck their tree of life. Its fruit only seeded twice before it died with the tree.

Damn the gods, she vowed.

Still, they tried new things to sow new gardens—all of which withered and died. They whispered hope to each other and grasped at whatever hunger and edge they felt. Sometimes they hoped too much; their attempts derailed like a speeding train on a mountainside, crashing them against bitter rocks, hurling them bleeding far apart, and their good times forgotten amidst hostile after-thoughts.

Some days she hid within the shadows of her walls, and days when she limped through life fractured and poured out, almost empty. Other days she awoke to bedroom curtains flapping from a desert wind blowing hope. A crack in Zeus’s armor. A rainbow on the horizon. A sudden tingle and a thousand syllables on her tongue and lips.

But rain came always and stole her color.

Dark.

Black and white.

And through it all, she held on harder than she ever tried letting go.

That had to be worth something.

Love [fiction]

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Again, Sarah was moved, obsessed, reaching out, entwined. Next to her open window, moonlight covered them as they climbed higher; the peak ever closer, closing in; all the right switches connected. And in that moment, she found it, or what she believed it to be: Love! It embraced her in brilliant colors and strengthened her raison d’être. It shattered the darkness of doubt deep within her. Like a new day dawn filling a long night’s sky, life became love.

Only for a moment until the moment was gone.

And in her return to lonely singleness she started over again.

When Dawn Came (Revisited) [poetry]

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It was here one night,
among white blossoms and junipers,
that we lay and were touched
while the rest of the world snored
in their small beds.

We breathed frost words to breezes on branches,
breathing deeply in the deep woods
with no earthly destination,
hidden behind the pulse of dawn
throbbing on a trigger’s touch.

You were delicate incense I lit alone.

In silence,
my fingers found the sweep of stars on bare skin—
a house-warmth murmur of Christmas gold when you breathed.

You were a bird
whose only cry came in color in the company of starlight,
whistling up the violets
in a garden wilderness of morning delight,
flowering into streaming pink and gold,
and fleshed with last night’s rose petals when dawn came to us.

When Dawn Came To Us [poetry]

Steve CampbellLeave a comment

It was here one night among white blossoms
that we lay and were touched
while the rest of the world snored
in their small beds.

We breathed frost words on branches
breathing deeply in the deep woods
with no earthly destination,
hidden behind the pulse of dawn
throbbing upon a trigger’s touch.

You were delicate incense I lit alone.
In silence,
my fingers found the sweep of stars on bare skin,
house-warmth murmur like gold when you breathed.

You were a bird
whose only cry came in color in the company of starlight
that whistled up the violets
on a garden-full wilderness of new-day light,
the yellow flowering into streaming pinks
and fleshed with rose petals when dawn came to us.

Our Love [poetry]

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We bedded with moss and leaf and sand
drenched in that evening’s rain;
a shimmering surf at our feet
where diamonds and poetry wept on ocean waves.

We stirred to passions rising in us,
caressing below an unwatched moon.

  • our
  • love
  • open
      no
      love
      closed
  • we
  • found
  • heaven
      in
      all
      disclosed

Your breath and sweat filled my senses
blossoming and mating with the heat;
like joyous roses in morning light,
they grew to swim in our ocean waves.

I consumed your fire and fed you mine—
even the trees shut their eyes.

Eleventh Hour Ebullience [poetry]

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Late in the valley at a house with a ribbon on the door handle
She lies upstairs at the hall’s very end
Beating her pillow and lowing “you”

But it does not matter
He is more than her imagination
And she imagines the angels keep on him
Ride hard, cowgirl
Lead him with a dark all-over open-eye feature
Seen only in the moonlight of the mirror crying at the night

Aching
Eyes wide open
She knows well this feeling
Almost like dread
Anticipating the eleventh hour almost here

Sensations strengthen
Seconds crash like waves over her
Sweet surrender rocks her soul
Charging from its depth
Galloping over rivers unleashed

This tempestuous night sights him in her gaze
Trumpets sound
Around the bed
Unleashing her cries in the valley beyond the Sea

Down River Hebrus [fiction]

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Sweet Sarah dreamed she sailed alone down River Hebrus where she found sudden love at the center of a liquid mirror that reverberated with the clear perfection of her face—with angelic grace, as done by the master hand of the world’s finest Victorian painter.

The morning sun behind her poured her shadow like honey over daisies sunning themselves in the eastern sky,. Dimension of depth seized the pink and blue clouds over her. While she watched everything around her, she strolled to the lake shore where water nymph lovers made her their maiden queen.

They called her Promise, gave her a throne, and sang songs to her. They presented to her Pandora’s wounded body in a blue world flashing with the decaying sounds of war, whereupon she ordered all sentries to burn their weapons and to lay Pandora alongside the head of Orpheus in the garden of Cupid where Psyche still waits for his kiss beneath a pregnant sky of stars ready to sprinkle down upon her bosom.

And then, around the weddings of children finally thirteen, she tended Pandora’s wounds. With Okeanos’s authority, she forgave Apollo of his crime, healed all hearts and flesh of the blackness of their wicked church, and took away the hour that would be winter eating the earth forever.

Halcyon Days [poetry]

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A gentle breeze caresses leaves,
swirls past children playing in meadows,
and whispers ancient language
on a beautiful warm summer eve.

The setting sun brings her special kiss:
a fiery burst across the hems of satin blue dresses
of angel-looking clouds,
A mist falls from the east.

A woman laughs. She loves. She watches rain sprinkle her lawn in a soft caress.

Long shadows dance and grow longer
around blue-eyed Mary dropping off to sleep.
A noble thunder quickens some to retreat indoors
where windows shine as whitest gold.

The increasing darkness stirs the lonely to reach out to friends.
Lovers hold each other close,
sharing an ancient communication
while the pattering rain adds a gentle nocturne to their world.

Rain on us, they say, and the woman agrees: Rain on us all.

The Sea On Her Honeymoon [poetry]

Steve Campbell2 Comments

The sea on her honeymoon
was nearly silent around her

A faint skitter of fiddler crabs on the sand
connected to a familiar murmur of the night-wind
breathing on the palm trees behind her

Her lover tide blew wet kisses at her
teasing her to swim in its sway
and strike up merriment

But the beach sighed like aching earth
and told her to behave,
to never trespass where she went

It takes a million ocean waves to birth an inch of sand.

She kept half-awake the anguished spirit of self-love
and told him about her new-found husband—
the sky Akume drenched rain upon her like red-hot embers from the brand

The torrent paled—a broken trail of sparks danced in the overcast,
a splash of crimson paint so frail it could never last

But sunup broke on the horizon
Her marriage ceremonies had ended
They left like a dream to a brand-new day

Kiss Her [poetry]

Steve CampbellLeave a comment

Lower your lips to her heart
Where your souls touch and flame
Where you are ageless in her embrace
Protected enough to say you love her

Lay with her over moss and leaf
Drenched in last night’s rain
The shimmering surf at your face
Where diamonds and poetry love to weep

In this discovery you descend with her
Her sweat and breath fill your caresses
Like blossoms joyous in formal delight
Mating when they wander from the sun

Even the trees shut their eyes to your pleasure
Bending on you bald and wild
Bearing witness to the moments born
When you finally kiss her