A Decade of Sun A collection of micropoems and photography by @sillionshine for the decade 2009 – 2019. At first it looked like they would catch him easily. Then he began lightening his load by discarding random words, falling in time to his ragged breathing, now whole sentences and manifestos, curses and seductions, till sparks flew from his feet and he vanished like a lost book... ~<>~ As if to emphasize its beauty The horizon underlines the sun ~<>~ Pyramids: Ideas of lost mysteries and kings evaporate when seen up close My sweat reminds me of the human effort in every stone ~<>~ The fog rolls onto the lake like someone's breath like someone getting ready to write their name on it. ~<>~ Shut out by the blinds the sun is waiting outside getting angrier ~<>~ I retrace my daily walk to school for old times' sake and when I arrive find all my knowledge obsolete ~<>~ Our bright yellow oar-blades inflict a thousand cuts on the mighty Waikato the river bleeds itself ~<>~ A clock reflected in the table's rich polish, and also in the wine glass, and I suppose if you were close enough, the bubbles ~<>~ Feral, fast, and fierce he pads back into the wild leaving curiosity and a city cat licking their wounds in an alley ~<>~ She's cried more from movies than in real life ~<>~ Korimako and tui cast out lines until one finally reels in the dawn ~<>~ A razor-thin Samurai blade between haiku and hack ~<>~ Flipping through a book of poetry my thumb the head of a restless matchstick eager to catch flame ~<>~ The letterbox towered over by the tree in turn dwarfed by the high-rise which stands in a shadow as old as the hills ~<>~ Water still flowing down steel flanks a minute after exiting a concrete pond, the hippo waits for us to do something interesting. ~<>~ In an almost kiss a row of Daffodils bow towards the ground pining for a reflection ~<>~ Bicycle reveries: Me racing a pollen-drunk bumblebee and winning ~<>~ Bicycle reveries: Time slows down hands outstretched gravel whispers in my ear until I slide to a stop ~<>~ Bicycle reveries: My stubborn little brother riding falling down refusing all help It got dark before he learned the trick ~<>~ Exam time again on the library steps in the morning chill an early bird oblivious to bookworms ~<>~ From under the Pacific Ocean I breathe goodbye to air bubbles surrounded by water falling upwards the opposite of rain ~<>~ He sent us a gap-toothed grin on a postcard, relaxing in the shade on a holiday paid for by the savings from his DIY dental 'surgery'. ~<>~ Blue sky curdles into white clouds ~<>~ A building site jackhammer pauses to catch the end of a dirty joke ~<>~ A mosquito who cannot build a pyramid fly to the moon or predict the future still has me utterly defeated ~<>~ This damn frog outside will not let one subject sleep 'til he's Prince again ~<>~ A wooden ripple frozen on a cut stump's face took ten years to spread ~<>~ A galleon’s rusty coins now worth more than gold if only the same transpired for all our buried secrets ~<>~ My dog guards my old shoes guards where I've been which is really who I am ~<>~ In the wind a feather trapped between two barbs of wire a quill writing below the fence line forever doomed to flight ~<>~ Out over the bay chalkboard lightning erases itself as it falls ~<>~ Blue shower curtain casts all my mornings in twilight ~<>~ My morning footsteps startle a lounging lizard bedecked in iridescence who scrambles back into pre-history ~<>~ In Cullen Bay a flash of green feathers shuttles through a forest of bobbing masts ~<>~ In the midday heat a dusty car yawns its indifference at the mechanic who disappears into its maw ~<>~ Wasting the holiday sun a husband and wife continue an argument both remembered to pack ~<>~ It's funny the things you remember funny and so sad ~<>~ A little red leaf falling in pendulum swings rocks itself to sleep ~<>~ You execute a perfect turn of phrase as I hang on every word ~<>~ He couldn't believe it. He had planted a word, and after the rains, a small poem grew, tender and green. Not a good poem, but still. ~<>~ In the mall three boys make fun of a girl who isn't there (who is at home) reading about mice and men ~<>~ She pulls the strings and from the dark of the mahogany well the dead wood sings ~<>~ An old dearie struggles up the stairs with her purse some shopping the war and widowhood ~<>~ We knew that the apocalypse would we worse than we could imagine when we saw on a hill the fifth horse ~<>~ My head on the bench in the sun my eyes closed I listen to footsteps could be almost anyone going almost anywhere ~<>~ A solemn breeze passes through the playground comes back again to give the swing a little push ~<>~ An old professor: "Muscles, from the Latin 'musculus' meaning 'little mouse' ". I forget friends' birthdays, but have never forgotten that. ~<>~ For them India is an exotic dream for me she is a dirty, holy river flowing through my veins ~<>~ My pillow won't requite my pillow talk ~<>~ On a bright white wall, Munch's most famous masterpiece mopes back at me in the form of an Australian electrical outlet. ~<>~ With a stern face and a kind touch a policewoman kneels and brushes ants off the body though they have broken no law ~<>~ Even in the midst of heartbreak the poet's shadow takes notes ~<>~ Having flirted all day two blushing suns kiss at the water's edge ~<>~ She waits for him to finish his cigarette. Kicking up a sigh of dust, he waits for something much less tangible, smoke rising ever up. ~<>~ Three palm trees like darts speared at an angle into the green felt bolts from the blue ~<>~ Only two seasons here in the Territory the Dry and the Wet cracked earth or tears ~<>~ I can hear tiny mirror snap before she knocks ~<>~ In the backseat battles and truces childhood's short highway ~<>~ A fever breaks and the jungle hum mists into silence he barely discerns the receding phrase "the whites of their eyes" ~<>~ The Territory sun throws itself down like a challenge ~<>~ She waited And finally he did return in the way he chews his food closes his eyes while smiling just like his dad ~<>~ My little cousins ask me questions as if I know everything but also as if knowing everything is not very impressive ~<>~ An overturned beetle shakes its fists at the heavens ~<>~ My first Christmas away from my family From my balcony waves whipped into my mother's meringue Cinnamon and salt spray ~<>~ Fireworks, flame and fury then the dark then the dawn ~<>~ Dumb guy yelling at his smartphone ~<>~ What of our walk which of our words will linger here among rough cobblestones after the rain? ~<>~ A literally street smart crow hurtling through crowded lanes at traffic height now in the shadow now in the blaze ~<>~ Everywhere I look here in rural India another half-finished Caravaggio ~<>~ Each relative's house I visit more old photos of me I don't remember This second life where I never left ~<>~ Three golden birds around a feeder dip their beaks into and out of the sunset ~<>~ High cliffs over a quick river we break camp at dawn answering not the call but the silence of the wild ~<>~ On palm frond wings an eagle brushing the sky clean ~<>~ Your arms folded (around me) ~<>~ With heavy lids stars at dawn blink themselves out ~<>~ Stream of light from a low sun chopped up by a ceiling fan so precise bright chips always fall on the same dark spot ~<>~ At first, they couldn't believe their luck. All manner of confectionery, raining down, some as large as cars. But then, the giant ants. ~<>~ Girl on the bus reading one of my favourite books I try to catch her eye but it's one of her favourites too ~<>~ A dingo settles in dust jawing on hollow bones that used to circle high above him a black hair in a too blue sky ~<>~ A yellow brick road of dimpled waves skating across a glass ocean into the heart of the sun the sky falls down ~<>~ A litter of cigarettes by the sapling where two old diggers met and talked about everything but the war ~<>~ In the heat haze dragonflies dart space-shifters ~<>~ Stroke of blueberry Impasto on a rough white tablecloth ~<>~ Arabica I swill the word around my mouth caramel waves lapping against some exotic fire-roasted shore ~<>~ I listen the whole way on my morning bus ride as the scar down his face silently tells its story ~<>~ On the deck, talking through stifled yawns, we miss the moment the sunset matches the shade of rust on the shearing shed walls. ~<>~ The train's final soft tug from front to back jolts me out of mindless reveries and I must remember how to be me ~<>~ In the cool dark of the temple holiness resides in the space between the penitent footstep and the echo ~<>~ Two men in a boat so still it might be painted One of whom fishes for information about a flame-haired sister ~<>~ Dive-bombing anyone who walks into the shade in smooth inverted arches a magpie for whom all things are black and white ~<>~ Two cyclopes chainsaw around the bend kicking up gravel chasing each other leaving slick diesel goodbyes ~<>~ Lightbox flickers to life cranial X-ray Doctor scans for bad news two skulls staring at each other ~<>~ Memories measured in years settle in my grandparents' house Even the candle has put down roots ~<>~ So, she let it all go, to drop away like the railroad ties cast behind her, like a forgotten smoke ribbon, like a town getting smaller. ~<>~ I have to admit your juvenile crystals catch the sun and throw rainbow constellations like a million divine promises ~<>~ Even as an underweight infant you slept with both fists clenched and every cry in the night a declaration of war ~<>~ All of Romeo's belongings fly over the balcony. What bile through yonder window breaks? It is the east, and Juliet rages like the sun. ~<>~ Saturday morning markets paw paw and lime ginger and jackfruit Gossip is free and always in season ~<>~ A solitary light across the bay blinks through the rising steam of my 2 a.m. coffee We both disappear at dawn ~<>~ A nothing day not happy or sad just a cold chewing gum day with the flavour all gone ~<>~ Dinner table diplomacy circle of appetites the last donut ~<>~ My first lucid dream spent watching myself from so high up I could be anybody ~<>~ In the silver light a wedge-tailed arrow startles the breeze which startles a lake that had been as calm as the moon ~<>~ Ms Fitzgerald and I take a walk around the waterfront my silver-domed headphones give me a martian shadow as Ella sings ~<>~ No signal out in the bush save for smoke curled into a question mark and a duststorm writing a reply on the horizon ~<>~ What wakes me at dawn? My groggy mind easily accepts two overlapping suns one hung on a slender gibbet on my street ~<>~ The gods have been writing and rewriting for so long the heavens black with ink and here there flickering full stops ~<>~ I turn off all the wars with one button ~<>~ September swallow with a Spring in his swoop ~<>~ We sit with the Fijians and drink kava root our tongues go numb and this everywhere ocean speaks for us all ~<>~ The sound of a rugby ball kicked on winter mornings at Steele Park is eaten up by the fog then the sight of it too ~<>~
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