Memories

And still I remember
The rustle of your dress on the marble stoop
The echoes of every muddled emotion in your eyes
How I held you against the creak of restless metal, and the cooling October air
As the night wind was singing through strands of your hair

I remember it all, in this gray heart of mine
Knowing that when each of our winding days of rain
Were laid to rest by this fire
We left them telling stories of rebuttal
Between collusions of desire

Oh to sleep in shadow
Of such passionate song!

There was mist in the vale, then;
Men in the lion's den.

New art!

This piece, 'The Siren', is my first time working with a self-made digital model rather than a stock photograph. I am quite happy with how it turned out. Usually I think rendered models look a bit 'plastic', but I spent quite a few hours painting her face and so on until she looked a bit more vivid.

A print is available at my deviantart: http://phoenixjackson.deviantart.com/art/The-Siren-366591150?q=gallery%3Aphoenixjackson&qo=0

As an aside, to all the indie authors out there, I am considering designing book covers for the ebooks of indie authors. If you would like to commission me or use one of my current works, let me know -- I would love to work with other writers in this way.

Magic Mirror

Lamplight pools
Around yellow leaves
Collecting at my feet

My reflection,
Water-warped,
Darkens under shadow

Reeds

My heart
Veined with reeds
Cutting, keening
For the music of your voice

Free

The music takes hold and I drift away on the high notes of flutes as they trill bird calls over the great waters in my mind; slowly I transcend into being one amongst those calling, soaring, looking down on worlds of my own creation all the while. As my wings spread I am darting across endless snapshots, fantasies I could choose to dive into, only to wake again in another reality. For a spell I can be a Russian Tzar, a Celtic warrior, a tiger lying low amidst jungle ferns; I can ride horses across the desert under a tapestry of stars, or I can fling myself into Arctic waters and lose myself amongst the shifting blues of ice floes -- I can change shape, change form, change time and space. I can dream of another time and place where you never came to be, and for a while, I live in a world you never marred, a place you never touched. I am free of you, as I am free of all things. In a thousand other lives that exist behind my eyelids, you never broke my heart. The possibilities are endless. You have never fettered my ability to dream, and so you have never truly owned me.

I can fall into the velvet details of a rose, or a slanted beam of evening sunlight glinting off crystal, and it's like you never happened at all. The only things that exist then are myself, and a profound joy in the details of creation. They inspire, striking flint against tinder, spawning so many stories in my heart. In those stories, I find my passion unbroken.

Salvation is packaged abstractly in the subtleties all around us; full is the heart that can unlock its own freedom.

Apres Eau

My hair, sleek
Seal-brown sheen
Slaps against my back

Rivulets of water
Silver stars
Cherish every line of me

Hesitant Spring

Snow crystals crumple
Into soggy loam
The river sluggishly stirs

Yellow grass hunches
Few blades yet daring
To brace a silent world