Feb 25~ LDW

Friends, today I'm so pleased to shine a spotlight on the very cool, LDW who brings us a delight for the imagination through his feast of words. Please enjoy his poems Tales of Elysia, The Night Bleeds Electric, and Ode to a Prizefighter. Thank you, LDW, for sharing your work with SHINE!

Tales of Elysia

Elysia fumbles but she fights
As paper snow pouted from saccharine clouds
Levels hedge maze heaven
And the rain’s frowning machinery
Spills grey ghost fables
Through vortex thimbles
Prodding grumbling waves into pelted brick
Wrapping orchid wine carrageenan
Around her silver sailing dance
Skirting stealth menace
Beneath her war tattooed ship
Where glassy sky cutouts
Web their slivering rankle
The toothy reef dragoons
Reaching to stake her briny heart
But Elysia’s tiger pride
Is bronzed furnace creek fire
Throttled and boiled
Death Valley kettle hot
As she coasts high on rebel stride
Heading off with Zen quickened sputter
Boundless for sanctity’s palatial mouth
Through grim oblivion’s parted seas
And tarrying never
For what is death’s melted wax kissed fate
But instead
Elysia dives
Into the shark eyed void
And beaches upon Sion sands
Perfumed by hibiscus claret hands
Forever kept in the time emptied hourglass of God.

The Night Bleeds Electric

The night bleeds electric
Spilling neon throbs which halo roving satellites
And mausoleum skies blanket plum thumb stars
Cocooning amethyst glint in marbled solemnity
Their dying fever of infinite flame
Fleeced of livewire ember and dulled to charcoal vault shade
While the rebel throated wind screams bawdy and nude
Through sorrow beaten boulevards
And hectic carnevale avenues
As her teasing cabaret legs
Cut through deaf air like sultry whispers
And the wind speaks obscured passages known only to God
Whipping her shock of dagger hair
Against starless vacancy
To frame the frisky and beguiled moon
That washes dark earth in his pulsing currents
To mirror the cityscape’s blossoming gloom.

Ode to a Prizefighter

Don’t panic
Don’t crumble into a foggy lagoon of tears
Don’t shiver under firecracker skies
With its tiger roar sonic boom
Or be dashed inside
From night’s crooked smile
And vacant moon
You’ve got nerve, my friend
You’ve got gutsy punch
And electric storm fury
That barrels through
The razored maze
And
The needling briars
Of brutes and bastards
Who want to tank your ship
Through the greedy storehouse
Of their petty mutinies,
So hold on to the wheel
And the invisible calm
Knowing that the absurdity of life
Is all the better
For you being in it,
And may your transparent heart of glass
Blind the dogged scoundrel
And flood the malice eyed adders
Hungry to bruise your heel,
For the self loathing beasts
At war with themselves
Despise a ravine of purity
And may their towers of rabble rousing Babel
Plant themselves face first
Into the God-smacked realities
Of black and blue earth,
But don’t write your epitaph
Or realign your course,
You’ve only touched the simple depths
Of a universe of worth
Alive in the kindness of your eyes
And in the beautified candor of your words,
So keep sweating blood
If you must
But saints preserved
Keep pushing on,
Wave your die hard flag of no return
Because I think you absolutely matter
To God
To us
To art
To the world
To the neighbouring prisms
That reflect the stellar outline
Of a diamond pearl
That shines
That is you
So onwards you prizefighter
And steady
To ready
To deaden
The calloused nerve
That pinched you
In its boxing cage,
But break down the gates
And let the world
Hear the resurrected songs
Of your valour
And make it
A revolution
Of love,
Saturn’s return
That dries up the frenzied
Scalds of hate,
Now onwards
Now on!

LDW, in a thumbnail sketch, has been a composer and arranger musically, while fully exploring the joyful and cathartic merits of full-time writing. Poetry is his first love, and the bug bit when he was an adolescent. He has traversed the world and lived in Los Angeles, Portland, and Leeds, UK during his creative pursuits and those experiences pepper through his work. He loves animals, pastoral landscapes, engaging conversation, and taking walks.

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