5 Poems On Mystical Love

5 poems of Magical Love. by Ian R. Thorpe, Lancashire, UK Some rights reserved. These previously published titles may be distributed with attribution. Publication history below.

Maid of Paradise We shall meet in cool and torchlit courtyards, the silent precincts of night's sweet embrace and bathe there in gentle fountains where clear sparkling waters cleanse past's tainted trace. A couch waits, draped with fine silks and linens, dates and almonds rest upon a silver tray. Before us a feast of new beginnings, each choice placed like a jewel in the display. Scents of jasmine and musk intoxicate us, the stars anoint the bed where we will lie. Your eyes are like the gates of seven heavens, four basilisks stand ready to defy mortality - and all time's hungry hunters who would pursue us to this den of peace; bring their pious rules here to confront us and spoil the pleasure we have in our feast. Your body like a slice of moonlight falls softly on this torn and battered frame, opens to me, lets our beings unite to best the gods at fate, their chosen game. The gentle night will hide and protect you but when cruel dawn calls, bidding you depart I will beg Cronos halt the sun and let you forever be the houri of my heart. NOTE: The Houri of Arabic and Indian mythology are the Maids of Paradise, virgins who will be wives to the faithful dead in the afterlife. Although they are usually packaged in sets of between four and seventy - two my chosen one is quite a lively girl she tells me - and I am not as energetic as I used to be.

Arianrhod (of Silver Dawn*) In moon's pale glow I watch you sleeping, beauty kissed as gentle rays highlight soft lips that promise absolution putting all my doubts and fears to flight. Though madness prospers all around us within the peaceful bubble we float free, protected by your golden nimbus that shields from perils none foresee. And when I touch your naked body, hold you close against the pre - dawn chill you stir, and shifting closer whisper words to bring ending to my vigil. Arianrhod sets ablaze the far horizon then spreads bright skirts over night’s dark field, begins her journey westward to liaison where earth meets sky and even gods must yield. Wake my love, share with me this enchantment, shed your light upon the nascent morn and in this wasteland steal for us a fragment from Arianrhod of the Silver Dawn *Arianrhod of Silver Dawn is one of the Celtic Goddesses of sunrise, though as her name is said to mean "silver circle" this suggests lunar associations as well. I choose to think of her as especially potent on mornings when sunrise tints the horizon before the moon has set.

Cages

We lived in cages, you and I, Seeing each other as shadows in a place with no light. We stood reaching out, our fingers almost meeting, faces pressed to cold iron, but people who held keys told us contact was against the rules. The others there all lived in cages and did not complain. When everyone is imprisoned imprisonment is freedom of a kind for those who can surrender. Each day we reached, almost touched. Almost.... Did our fingers ever meet, did the glow we made light our faces or was it just a trick of my imagination that burned your image on my mind. I could not if I tried forget the hunger in your eyes. My flesh still imagines the passion of your touch. Perhaps my sterile love stays with you now. But I am gone, and you live in a different cage. A lot of people think they know who inspired this. They are only partly right, there have been several incarnations of the poem over the years, each time I fell mutually

and hopelessly in love with somebody but we were prevented by various circumstances from pursuing the attraction to its logical conclusion. I'm not being mean in hoping everybody has had an experience something like this (or these perhaps?) Its frustrating at the time but the memories are delicious. boggart blog

CHIMERA. You take my hand and kiss my lips then like a starburst you are gone; flown on psyche's coloured wings to outshine the dazzling sun. And when I find you once again where, as night's dark mares hold wake, you rest; lonely as the moonlight reflected on a still, deep lake. And sometimes like a timid deer and sometimes like a butterfly you change, fearing to know yourself while I must love you constantly. Though you may come as summer's nymph, clothed in colours of Lammas - day or as a sullen silent shade cloaked and cowled in sorrow's grey. In memory's cavernous fears where monsters haunt your sleepless head whispering with voices from the past, wearing dead faces that you dread to drive you a million miles from the sanctuary of my light, love's timeless, purifying flame will always guard you through the night. NOTES Chimera: A shape - shifter, a fabulous creature, an impossible fancy Lammas day: festival formerly held in England on Aug. 1, when bread baked from the first crop of wheat was consecrated at Mass.

Mare: though we usually think of nightmares as simply bad dreams, in old English mythology a mare was any kind of monster thus night's dark mares here are the monsters that prowl the dark world when we cannot sleep. ian thorpe at gather.com

For An American Girl It is often said that if you remember the sixties you weren't there. There are times I have forgotten, times I'd rather forget and some times the memories of which will live on long after my body gives out.

I still love you on summer mornings remembering the way you would stand by the window, greeting the Appalachian light Delirious dust-motes danced in your aura, Cool green sunlight filtered by tall trees dappled your body as we swam in the pond while voyeuristic squirrels watched and preoccupied birds ignored our growing love. We smelled of grass And earth, made friends with wise old trees Offered up our love to the sky and Rejoiced too short a time in freedom Before the pious world recalled our names And annulled our irreligious marriage.

Publication History: Maid of Paradise:

Love’s Many Ways anothology; Forward Press, UK 2005 Poetry Life and Times

(UK, 2004)

Arianrhod Poetry Now Magazine (UK, 2006) Poetry Life and Times (UK, 2004)

Cages Write On (Commonword Writers’ Workshop 1981) Pennine Ink (UK, 1984) Poetry Life and Times ( UK, 2001) Millenium Dawn Anthology, Kedco Studios, Las Vegas, 2001

Chimera Greenteeth Multi Media 2006

For an American Girl Millenium Dawn anotholgy, Kedco Studios, 2001 Poetry Now magazine (UK, 2005)

A Pale Horse In a dream I saw a rider on a pale horse but still felt no remorse for the things I’ve done, and the moonlight shone upon the graveyard picking out black letters on a pale stone. The sky grew lighter as the dawn drew near,

revealing the name of one I once held dear who shared my pillow for a joyful year. Slender as a willow, she had blue-black hair, slender as a willow and as pale as death and tender as a blossom on a green stem. Her hips clung like ivy and her sweet breath tasted of berries drenched in cool cream. I knew my cold heart froze the spark within her, the vital spark that wills life to persist. My cold indifference tore the life within her as sure as if my hand had held a cruel knife. Indifference to a love that’s truly given is cold as any blade, as cruel as any blow. I found her cold and rigid in the morning, hanging from a willow in the cold rain. In my dream her lifeless eyes accuse me. Beside her is a rider on a Pale Horse. I want to cry and beg for absolution, Retribution would grant a kind of justice All my life those lifeless eyes will haunt me. Each man kills the one he loves the poet said; she filled my world though she came from another, I tried to love her but she was a mystery. Each day I try but can feel no remorse, beside me steps a rider on a pale horse, only through my death my love may live again. I only see reality within a dream.

Ian Thorpe at Authorsden