photo credit: Giuseppe Milo (www.pixael.com) Summer farewell – Calabria, Italy – Black and white photography via photopin (license)
You hug my shoreline,
Waves gently lapping my soul
Until I give in.
Waters rushing over me
I suffer deluge’s touch.
© 2020 | Frank Regan, All rights reserved.
photo credit: pni Sky Eyed Mammoth via photopin (license)
I can sense the breathing of the city
Even though the windows and the curtains are closed.
I’m doing everything I can to shut out the light,
Yet I know the city keeps right on living all around me,
Hemming me in. Cocooned within glass and steel
A manufactured being in a designer prison that is all too real.
I can’t stand this conditioned air, the sterile thoughts
And pretending to be civilised enough for this society.
For how it plugs me into its desires,
The pleasure centre stimuli.
For all the antiseptic pollutants that it uses to subdue me
Are not enough recompense for what this city demands of me.
© 2019 | Frank Regan, All rights reserved.
photo credit: VinceFL MacroMondays_Bubbles2 001 via photopin (license)
Stillness,
A momentary calm
Like the heart breaths before
The exhalation of water
From the lungs of a drowning man.
A baptism of desire,
Of cold, cold fire.
The absence of touch
In a universe without feeling.
Just the biology of the vacuum
Without emotion only needing,
Then the tsunami.
Colours exploding, overwhelming;
Like a million hands
Reaching out of the darkness
Touching skin, caressing my mind.
© 2019 | Frank Regan, All rights reserved.
Originally Published 23 March 2018
photo credit: Deep water via photopin (license)
Holed beneath the waterline
Again, the tide is rushing in.
The end is staring back at me
In its funeral suit,
Wearing that black cap. Judging me
Guilty of everything.
Too many sins
For all the waters in the world
To be enough
To ever wash me clean again.
© 2019 | Frank Regan, All rights reserved.
Originally Published 23 January 2016
photo credit: amsterdamfan My Own Insanity via photopin (license)
If we should drown
Then we should drown together.
If these emotions should overwhelm.
If these waves should overturn,
Should capsize this flimsy craft.
Send me down to Davy Jones.
If the Arctic current of an icy sea
Should wrap its frigid limbs about the fragility of me.
I ask no more than to stretch out my hand
To feel my fingers entwined with yours.
To know, that we will go down together.
© 2019 | Frank Regan, All rights reserved.
photo credit: docoverachiever Indecisive weather via photopin (license)
And the dark clouds roll across the sky.
It is beautiful, but it makes me want to die.
The beauty of those impenetrable clouds
That could swallow me whole like a funeral shroud.
Swaddle me in a mystery from which I could not escape.
Smother me in their motion, erase the memories of my fate.
© 2019 | Frank Regan, All rights reserved.
photo credit: IamNotUnique Slowly we fade via photopin (license)
Sometimes it is quiet here inside my mind.
When the whirling dervish is resting
The silence can be overwhelming and yet sublime.
But usually the hubbub is frantic, frightening, and kind of hectic.
Like the clash of cymbals, a symphony of drums,
A chaos threatening to overcome.
© 2017 | Frank Regan, All rights reserved.
photo credit: Fedrizzi Junior Come baby, light my fire via photopin (license)
Conflagration;
Of all roads
It is the destination.
And this city
Burns at the heart
Of me.
© 2017 | Frank Regan, All rights reserved.
photo credit: jaci XIII The angel of the dawn via photopin (license)
I’m lost, or I’m forgot,
Or somewhere in between.
A heat haze or autumn mists
Can cloud the vision just the same.
Too much or not enough,
Emotions, leave me dazed.
© 2017 | Frank Regan, All rights reserved.
Day 29 of my review of the last twelve months and a poem about the gap between my ears…
photo credit: Bible Verse Photo Medical Cellblock with Verse (Free HI-RES) via photopin(license)
One must have a mind of spaces.
Imagining windblown silence
In a meadow, summer ripe with butterflies.
In between the hustling tornadoes
Of traffic jams and parking fines.
Or the pin prickle caress of spring rain
Washing skin cleaner than baptism,
One’s soul dancing with the divine.
Between inhale and exhale, seeking
A sanctuary for the urban mind.
© 2016 | Frank Regan, All rights reserved.
This poem is the first to come from a series of five prompts from ‘How to Write a Poem’ by Tania Runyan
