Autumnal Drift

With breath cinctured and led
of each summit's step, thread
consciousness of her lips.
And as moon echoes days' keep, pulse crests of need;
our veridical silibance tucks its transience to sustain this teething heart.

Quelled of palsied flesh, thy spent yennings spread tense
as I enunciate attempt of life-lit constancy.

Temper now tongue to own name, to subdue taste
to hold her of hands
sanctioned, shadowed.


© Christopher Brandon Lancaster

Eunid Phytotomy

Feel this amaranth's echo as I etch the extant
of each graze, to steady its tempest
to tread elongation and bend the strophes of rise.

Nuanced of pinch and ambled

constructs erst, dip
to claim and entangle our breath
For it is piety that shall spell and sustain.

Curved slowly, your tide
vaults lift of all width and explication.
Heaving years wreathed of intent
this kiss mutes, collapsing

glimpse atop body to articulate...

And so my earth slakes the bow to scrape and arrange hour and image.

Sound kneels of translation...
Of all effort, all endeavor,
fall toward my hand,
pass feel unto pledge.


© Christopher Brandon Lancaster

Winter Porch Dawn

As rise reasserts itself and figments farewell,

life wharfs about sentience to bless

this loosened warmth, to accommodate
the listening of sky and sound,
to tend to days merged of dream.

Frost echoes of distance and touch, readying its verse,
for of earth, we ebb.
The ballast of shadow draws star and slants
retrieval to etch hour and abstract day.

Of my remove and morning's metes,
bore of innumerous sirings and ceasings,
only this place.


© Christopher Brandon Lancaster

Etymology of Pleasure

Breathing reflections' fealty
within the finitude of dawn's flesh
bedecked of piecings that unpin
the swollen majesty of stroke and skim.

Dogged minstrels sustain;
their pulsings assuming pace, preemption.

The visited years of intent
hasten the limit of garden
to rear the ripening mercy of aged hours.

As expectance sires those gathered touches of wave,
the toy existence of night's sanative bounty
binds charge.

And we dream the drink of devotion:
what sets fix to the limits of man,
the fails of all hands.


© Christopher Brandon Lancaster

Toward a Freedom (Faith's Falling, Its Failing)

Of your lackings, my laborings have not lapsed.
Though your kingdoms, nude of truth,
of images that distend, impede this heart, its yen.

The ceasing shape of belief;
the infinite feeding of tease, of all.

To piece the each severance of scripture and dream
I must cede this self...

and of your worth I am unwilling.

The spirit has known shadow and string, hope and hymn.
Enough of each to swim existence.

But as I vanish the votive mouth of nursling,
I envisage ignorance and incertitude;
all that is needs to assemble anew...

O deliquescence, remit me this revelation.


© Christopher Brandon Lancaster

Bantam Willows

Through light's kiss,
its slip and sprawl,
my morning grazes the nighing palms of summer;
the dulled hour of azure
conquering the slow curvature of our entire.

Seisms evince offer to glean among this scape's flesh,
as our urnal drag bodies the assails of mutability.
Siring nuance, ambages loosen to perpendicularity
lending ascent...

To the stalled fume whose flood structures cypress
as we behold this aspect's clench.

Of its weaving of seasons,
we are time;
celebrants of its secret.


© Christopher Brandon Lancaster

Antarabhāva X

...But what keeps our fetish fed?
The flight of lightlessness,
natally anointed,
deathlessly spread?
Remembrance as totem?
The chiefmost contours of illusion as moment?
The advent of light,
of moon-fed skies,
that enable silhouettes' furtherance?
Ill-paralleled, toward a truth, we amble.
Onward...


© Christopher Brandon Lancaster

Ruth and Rose

...Hand of hand
Whose strikings, steeled and scored,
render a sweep pledged of return, gathered of glow.

Choired tongues that pace my days,
image reality to rear retort of ignorance and echo.

Stillness gouged of the cyclic staves of age

shores light's spread turned of its lacking.
Tethered to memory and pardon,
sound, once loath to noise neath our harvest,
Psalms now the siblings' unstitch.

Calm wife, whither and wherefore shall your godship stretch?

Devoured of brisance,
the ivory hours, that illumed once the flesh of your earned curvature,
settle, keyed of breath and the perils of flight...

As I, foundress, of helms, sleepless, ceaseless
Of what feeds each
past puissance of sway to gentle descent,
Furnish doubt and preclusion of all pence

To mount life of vested hymnary
To freely relearn the episodes, the gestures
of strangers, their sleights, their sleeves...

Arrangement sheds the feigning of shape
As I fall my thoughts to you and
upon their artifice
the visible sings if to only remember.

Ash of pride and hymen
I behold, kneeling the unearthed keep of praise:

Graced palms, absent of feeling
graze the diphthong of our union.

Having nourished the every limit and rise,
Need of needs,
Ever unseen,
I carry your return

Tholing asides as my chilled hands rescind their reign.


© Christopher Brandon Lancaster

The Dancer

The intrusion of movement speaks of the paling order
of rhythm and limb.

Pulse and slant sing unslumbered,
passing stillness and balance,
as the body fails its center.

Raising hand from heart
she is shape and bloom, through even sleep,
that lurks then leaves.


© Christopher Brandon Lancaster

Boy Beneath His Cap

Of this brim's dim and eclipse,
Of neither hold nor home,

Of Septembers spent

Padding the Orphic sinew of sky,

kissing cloud and cry,
gouging seas of height,

You are mouth:

Veneered appetite,
sleepy of this motion,
quoted of laughter's mercy

as the crown within accordance
of this ascensive versicle rises,

Seduced of dream
awakened of touch.




© Christopher Brandon Lancaster

Antarabhāva

The marrow of dirge tips
betwixt merge and tear, 
crowding frame and the birth of body.

It is an attempt of stretch
within devotedness, of heft,
of spread.
So thread and ascend empyrean archs,
For you are day,
Progenitor, of debris, decay,
Supplanting sufferance
And all what was the earlier's each cinder and grain.


© Christopher Brandon Lancaster