Author, poet, musician • Best of the Net nominee 2024 • THE ART OF GLASS HOUSES (The Alien Buddha) • WHERE SANDS RUN FINEST (DarkWinter Press) Available now ⤵️
One must bypass the heart completely
be the drunken wanderer and walk,
broken and naked into another world
sleep in the wilderness like you were born to
- fearless of wolves and drought
overstay until vines and exotic flowers
grow taut around your limbs...
'On Love'
#poem
What is time apart
but art in the making
blue storms across my chest
if only you see the murmurations
migrating between tomorrows
a momentary lapse of reason
lapping only to retreat
you would know the saudade
that makes this sea
the centre of all my worlds.
#vsspoem
Night tastes of old licorice
over a bourbon ocean,
a blue heron in flight
across a rusted turntable sky,
movement only perceptible
to those who still dream,
sound only heard by those who
believe in surrealism,
and strange acts of beauty,
loving without knowing why.
#poetry
We learned to sob in silence
like cold autumn rain,
everything falling slowly
falling
almost
sideways,
slants of memory
sliding down
the cheekbones of distant hills
the wheat fields flooded
with a year's worth of dreams
melancholic, pale & beautiful.
#vss365
Somewhere in time
I carry you softly
as dusk over broken walls,
narrating, translating poems
into a gown of amour
this fabric of dreams I wear
may be dark but never empty,
for my hand still reaches for yours
deep inside a pocket
of velvet memories.
#vss365
The dust is settling
these photographs are fading
soon I won't recall the pose
which caught your eye long ago
maybe I was just standing
by the ocean, in a linen dress,
waiting for a miracle to blow in
turn these stones into seaglass,
- something I couldn't rehearse for.
#vss365
Call to me in the language of sunset
and I shall answer in the hushed tones of twilight,
the broken shards of stars
strewn upon our lovers' bed,
our lips pressed shamelessly
against the pregnant moon's
pale light.
#poem
#fsmpy
It comes & I soften
flesh like ripened orchards
as blood runs through my body
with purpose
I never asked to feel
but I do
as dewy petals in presence
or fallow fields in absence
they call it kindred
but maybe this breeze
is a season
a whole reason
to love in spirit.
#vss365
I remember when waters were clear
death was not a word
nor sorrow ever heard
we bathed in milky lakes
doves skimming an infinite blue
something lived on
from our devotion
time so precious
sun silken on lashes
your heart paid it forward
love - somewhere, I still do.
#vsspoem
Hello
#WritingCommunity
, followers & poetry lovers. I'm delighted to announce that my debut chapbook will be coming out soon!
"The Art of Glass Houses" will be available on 20th Dec.
Thank you
@thealienbuddha
and everyone who has supported my writing journey 💙
#poetrylovers
Us quiet ones
we've been a victim
of postmodernism too long
so I'm simplifying my life
to ebony & ivory
ink on parchment & piano keys
bathed in old stories
my vintage renaissance
art in a dusky room
aging under linen sheets with grace
almost heaven this place
...safe.
#vss365
A flirtation of stars
is the affair one seeks
while never betraying the moon
I swallow the night whole
the whisky of mankind
burning the throat of time
we meet in the black eye of sorrow
lying in open fields
as prey or temporary flowers
in desire's grand masterplan.
#vss365
Your silences & mine
blend seamlessly
you arrive & I'm leaving
how else does art find
a perfect conduit
to magnify this feeling
I offer verses in hues of spring
but you're content with faded ink
maybe love can sit, wordless
in a forest of autumn light
& call it poetry.
#poem
After dark
the trains run into the past
the moon & I, willing passengers
a silver currency
traded across an endless night
seasons of wheat & stars pass by our carriage
as we observe each other's body language
forever arriving late
with the fire of dawn in our pockets.
#poetry
I make a place for you
in my palms
holding you as a form of prayer
knowing you are more
turtle dove in autumn
your molt blends with the sky
marries my aloneness
and all is fine
I say your name three times
like something so small
and unheard
could save me.
#vss365
#poetry
To the artist who painted my portrait immaculately without seeing the girl I was - merely touching the lilac breath of half-forgotten nebulas
the silken hair of dusk pooling
into the opus between silences
I am indebted with the hush of a hummingbird suspended over hope.
#vss365
Sit & watch the rain with me
even if there is none
I know you know what I'm saying
in times like these
we cannot breathe alone
didn't you know
the roses bloomed
because you looked at them
another world exists in your eyes
& today my dreams choose
to linger there awhile.
#vss365
Dear life,
after this winter
I think I will be ready for you
my bare feet pressed to your heat
daisies and dandelions
at my ankles
old literature in the clouds
the memory is long
in these undulating vistas
I will lie here
until I hear the sound of hope coming home.
#vss365
Sometimes you meet a soul
who is neither sun nor moon
but a quiet burning of faraway skies
you are one
& if I close my eyes
colours invade my lonely hours
just above the mountains
no matter where I lie
there you are
aurora borealis
the gateway to a rare kind of magic.
#vss365
About love
I keep a secret inside your beauty
part star, part rose, part music
you would know its scent & magic
from the far end of loneliness
you'd recognize its presence
without seeing it
I'll hold it if you cherish it
our moment of surrender
...cynosure of all senses.
#poem
Poetry is a girl who takes
the long route
..but never home
she's a letter written patiently around river & mountain
punctuated by rain & pine
on restless winds
a boy will catch her scent & follow it all the way to the heartland
hoping to catch a glimpse of summer.
#microprompt
Drunk on romanticism at noon
the typewriter curses in italics
at a world gone awry
my mind lapses away another day
of September melancholy
beyond her dusty amber windows
orchards tremble
nothing writes itself
except tales of fallen apples
cut from the sinew of memory.
#vss365
I wondered where time went
so I followed the sun
to an ancient courtyard
south of desire
the light was soft & the air fragrant
I sat sketching the seasons
under a sycamore
this became my life
even when I couldn't afford
the days
because I "found" time
but it slowly flew away.
I prefer the beauty of irony
than comfort and stereotype
How the bouquet of dying violets
you bought has outlasted
the well tended lilies
More coveted
when hung upside down
withering at great height
— a world softly subverted
in the eyes of a difficult woman.
#vss365
#poetry
I ache silently for our lost years
when we but strangers in a lonely world
I look back through
every windbeaten window of time
& believe I've held you all along
you were a deliberate act of love
sleeping under winter skins
a slow thaw
~ testing the patience of spring.
#vss365
See me for who I am
half angel, fallen from grace
a dark side of daylight
a light side of night
reticent in my ways
my halo tangled
with roses & thorns
tainted with fragments
of the past
perfectly imperfect
take me as I am
this enigma
~ a tale of real love.
#vss365
#poetry
Every day, I begin again
listening for distant ignitions of life
to roll softly over the hills,
until their sounds become
a birdsong, a rush of rivers,
the ordinary world assuming
the timbre of fragrant vistas,
the low hum of winged creatures
the opus of love's future.
#poetry
Show me a soul that isn't haunted
or a star that isn't taunted by darkness
you come for the glistening words
the perfume of romance
but would you touch the dendritic
stems of a dead language
the rust of years accrued in rue
the brutal roots of who I really am?
#vss365
From dusk to dawn
reflections dance
in a million shades
of light to dark,
and I wander breathless
between dreams
grasping for a wisp of sunlight
only to stumble into a forest
of wildflowers,
- your hands bending softly
around the contours of my love.
#SenseWrds
338
#poetry
There is a silence
that manifests inside the heart
it is asphalt winged,
a murder of crows circling September's burnt out wheat fields
we lie here, waiting
it's a safe place to dream
for no one walks here
none hear what we're saying
except the wind & our kindred spirit.
#poem
When all the world is quiet
I am complete
as the sunsets you will never see
the art you'll never create
the words you'll never write
the mountains & valleys you'll never walk
the oceans you'll never bathe in
I am an emptiness
made whole by the mutiny
of my imagination.
#poetry
I remember when waters were clear
death was not a word
nor sorrow ever heard
the lake was where we bathed
doves skimming an infinite blue
something lived on
from our devotion
time so precious
sun on soft lashes
your heart paid it forward
love - somewhere, I still do.
#vss365
Sometimes you meet a soul
who is neither sun nor moon
but a quiet burning of faraway skies
he is one...
& if I close my eyes
colours
#invade
my lonely hours
just above the mountains
no matter where I lie
there he is
aurora borealis
the gateway to a rare kind of magic.
#vss365
I am not so interested in the light
as I am curious over the way it pours through rose tinted glass
when Chopin is playing
windows flung open to October
as I write you a longhand letter
just to remember love's voice
...this kind of faith on any given day
of my afterlife.
#poem
Opening the windows in October,
the air is a ripened reverie
harvested with cold plums
it tastes of smoke & time
moving on without us
the ash of old sonnets
littering a wasteland
but mostly
maples & auburn silence
slipping into sylvan dialogues
with no particular end.
#vss365
The armour is there for
those who need it
and sometimes silence
is the perfect shield
and so, we quiet ones
fold inwards like a demure lotus
on a glassy lake
soft but resilient
never simply opening
just to spill words
...for words' sake.
#vss365
#poetry
Love is
a chariot of stars
to puncture my silence
or the burn of whisky in a jar
a poem lit by a pipe dream
the smoke of sage
drifting between eras
lost as a black hole sun
a dose of hope
caught in my throat
as I sleep in your skin
to the ache of a distant revolution.
#vss365
Postscript:
each time I write
my tea becomes steeped,
yet it tastes of deliberation
a drawn out sigh
where light eventually
bends to night
I have thought about you
long enough
to preserve what has been;
deep enough
to see the amber of dawn
breaking at my window.
#poem
The leaves shivered
the final act in wintry verse
the bough lit by an orange lantern
the way home finally clear
against the pewter of years
& if not, the path to magic
lay itself for all, shimmering
as any wild, unexplainable thing
a sonnet of birds folding up the sky.
#vss365
And did your lips not blow the dust from my hollow bones
your hands planting
wild peonies in my chest
did you not feel my withered ways
washed away in winter's thaw
at your touch,
the start of Spring
fervoured and fragrant in my flesh?
#vss365
#poetry
"There's a place where we go on
in the soft shimmer of trees,
the sacred spaces between
history and all that could be
come, rest beneath gunmetal skies
....call this moment love...."
"Amaranthine"
#piano
#newmusic
#original
#composition
🎹
I was the one who broke the stained glass you called sacred
disguised the shards as peacock feathers in a garden of happiness
I trembled like a maniac
as moonlight sonata played
under Van Gogh's starry sky
not all madness belongs to men
women have died hiding it
not I.
#vss365
No one listens for the overture
between two maples
so sure the fall will happen
the same way
auburn, obsolete
the instrument, blunt
pointed towards death
Instead of an untuned violin
caught in goldlight
exhumed from a lover's grave
their fingers still warm.
#vss365
Dawn spoke as it broke beautiful
my room a sea of shadows
to contemplate your contours
the lines of truth between us
befitting paradise
a bird sings me softly alive
but these limbs stay tangled in your dreams
to tremble a little longer
remember every last night.
#vss365
#poem
Sometimes you fall into a painting
becomimg deft strokes
just before the rain
sweeping paths
through the old fields
the grasses leaning into the wind
blonde waves of wild,
then the wings catching light
we glimpse the underbelly of hope
in a dove, pale grey on rose-gold.
#vss365
The place I miss most
is where I left my soul
a ruin in the
#west
country
steeped in history
a Roman bath
of glittering mosaics
you are legend
& I am mortal
all the pain mine to bear
a shadow close to death
but the old world is sacred
it lets me bury all my secrets.
#vss365
I will give all I have
...until I break
but I hope when I do
it will be beautiful
the way dawn breaks over you
that my fragments
will scatter smoothly
- melodious notes
you'll gather into a song
& hold as the light
in your dark hours
that place
our love belongs.
#microprompt
I know the ghost of you
the quiet one lost between worlds
never wanting to appear
in living daylights
I understand your language
as my own - a heavy sigh drifting
to a better place, invisible
there, love is fearless of falling
I walk through you
unseen too.
#vss365
#poetry
When the sun dims to a candle
find me....a shadow of the girl I was
close your eyes and see
the worlds I dream of....
listen to the language of a poet's lament
and all its undying colours....
~ The Orangery Affair
#original
#piano
#music
#composition
#ambient
#afterdark
Delighted to have my story 'A Crossroad South Of Utopia' published today at the incredible
@IcefloeP
, inclusive of
#music
soundtrack &
#spokenword
version 🎶🎙
Also honoured to have it paired with gorgeous artwork by EIC
@frede_kenter
🎨 Thank you so much 🙏
#WritingCommunity
Thrilled to present a new expansive work by writer, composer Vikki C.
@VWC_Writes
at Geographies 2022 series. Luminous, textured, evocative - Vikki's new fiction incl. immersive soundtrack & spoken word. Art by
@frede_kenter
@MJSEyesOpened
@SeaGoatScreams
I feel I have known you
from lifetimes ago
in ancient cities & sacred ruins
when Earth was young
& every path bloomed wildflowers
sentience was a salted breeze
on our skin
our prayers always answered
by a carmine sunset
woven into the opulence
of bottle green seas.
#poetry
Poetry is the morning bird
the sigh between lost verbs
every Sunday less than holy
silhouettes tangled in quiet moxie
poetry is the swansong you heard
that one time love was almost real
poetry is the ache
the belljar of hope
the soundtrack of rain on
#rotate
.
#vss365
#poetry
Duality, this poem in my chest
a contrast of both light & dark
the calm symphony of leaves
& the din of rusty windchimes
on the porch
I taste of tea drunk
in wildflower meadows
whilst lost to a lover's hands
but mostly whiskey on the rocks
to numb the pain at 3am.
#BraveWrite
All this while
I believed poetry to be a ballerina
pristine and composed
something aesthetic
written around the perfect pose
but now I see she is just an amateur
an ordinary girl with bruises to prove her falls
she still needs someone to lift
her from life's cold floor.
#poem
Some souls exude poetry
without a word
she was one of them
a long graceful silence
draped in greys and absence
I see her in the gloaming
shadow of the girl I was
breaking neath a gunmetal sky
becoming one with the trees
and for a heartbeat's length
I regret nothing.
#vss365
When the coffee is finished, but never the story. The ritual is an adventure — a desultory mind displayed to a world intent on making it fit a set theme. The beak of a hidden dove tapping to the rhythm of my pen is no coincidence. Nor is one's sudden flight into a poem.
#vss365
Borderless
Along some shore, in the milieu
of salt, kelp and lesser protest,
I am unguarded. Slide my hand
elbow deep into frothy shallows —
a gauntlet of lace and orchids meaning — there is no war today.
Pale horses folding the cool waves
of my language into yours.
#vss365
It's somewhere darkly
between poison & pearl
...our trembling hands meet
in the wreckage of a forgotten world
sporadic glimpses of light
swerve along the swell
of errant thoughts
You turn my tide
& I see your soul shimmer
bare & baptized
in the salt of beatific waters.
#vss365
There are lovers we mourn in secret,
untuned violins that break the skin of sentience.
Cities you wake in alone,
a crow imitating your sorrow
as stained glass cracks mid-prayer.
The
#dark
is all these wounds,
disciples of the you I never knew
the absent rays of mercy.
#vss365
You ask me, what is poetry?
I take words like precious gems, grind them into
#powder
with pestle & mortar
until they resemble a liquid gloaming
if you recognize the stones
& their colours, you will know
what I meant in that moment
when sun & moon traded places
for good.
#vss365
I looked for you
in the longshadow of June
where ancient pillars held up
the vestiges of a lost empire
& beyond the dusty amphitheatre
of pushcarts & poetics
fingers of dusk plucked
at harpstrings
as if an old god had poured
the wine of ambrosia
& held it to our lips.
#vss365
The journeys are long
take a poem in your pocket
& leave the stones behind
at sunset, breathe deep
as you would before
planting a
#kiss
on lips
you will not feel for a while
keep a diary of joy
for the rain will remind us
why we keep running
let it be a lesson in love.
#vss365
✨️ Totally moved, surprised & honoured at this news..
The Inflectionist Review has chosen to nominate my poem "The Unavoidable Fifth Season" for the 2024 Orison Best Spiritual Literature ✨️
Huge gratitude to editors John Sibley Williams & A. Molotkov 🙏
#WritingCommunity
She wore poetry
in its most beautiful form
sacred war paint over vulnerability
she was the written essence
of an ancient forest
limbs twined
with songs of experience
you could lie face to bare earth
& hear her heart beat
from a wellspring of words
to an ocean of love.
#poetry
And did the rains not fall softer
in the hour of your touch
as skies bled rose gold to lilac
serein was her name
a prayer whispered in vain
your knees stained viridian with wildness
the whole world became you
as I faded in your hues
the one time, sans rue
I surrendered.
#poem
What can or can't be erased
nor disguised under a poet's dress
footprints in the sand
evidence of a languid summer
drifting tween loss & lucidity
the gulls gracing the sky
like a peace sign
even I cannot whelve
the moment that washed over me
the bluest seas
I remember.
#vss365
The art of disappearing
there are places I venture without you
a necessity as this is where life begins
wild winds & a forest of light
my world without people
a language that simply knows, without me saying a word
for there is no greater love than being understood.
#poetry
About life,
it is all broken
the way you slip away
simply but wholly
the way a song fades
after your name
as blue turns to grey
never quite returning
save for a wisp of smoke
in an autumn forest
missing something that moves on
its incense a
#transient
affair
unspoken.
#vss365
I need to be elsewhere
in a grove of lavender
near the moon,
writing sonnets for the dreamers
& all the heartbeats
lost in translation
I, your inamorata
a soft spoken voice
behind archives of trees
in a forest library
where our moments
are indexed to the stars.
#poem
I'll sit at the end of the pier
waiting for a miracle
under the pretense of watching the sun set
there's something about salt air and the colour red
that brings passion to my monochrome world
I can't explain it until the last ships pass by
and I'm alone with you.
#poem
There are places deep
within your hollow being
I see & feel but I do not disturb,
for I know you dream
instinctly of love as I do,
the day we touched
we became an inherent song
written in each other's soul,
no words needed
for I cradle your heart
wherever I go.
#VerseAngel
When did I ever
#sit
quietly?
Not even as a child,
never as someone loved,
for a pulse is heard through walls,
across continents
absence is a soliloquy between
bare winter boughs
I wait for blossoms to return
& speak to me in the flesh,
- an exchange of forgotten scent.
#vss365
People change, trees lose their verdancy
but the books, the intimacy of letters
these go on forever
for every season of pain, I'll show you one of magic
that place where stars covet vulnerability
time will turn, skies will fall
but in your heart, I will stay
~ I promise.
#poem
I'm honoured & absolutely thrilled to be one of the winners & in such fine company too 💙
Congratulations to all those on the list! ✨️🎉
And of course, a huge thank you to
@MatthewMCSmith
for this amazing opportunity with
@blackboughpoems
📚
#WritingCommunity
#poetry
I listen with intent
for a paradigm shift
that never comes
or maybe I've always been
an outlier of this universe
my matters too eclectic
to be drawn towards
a single constellation of thoughts
in a plethora of broken stars, I drift
observing how human love is taught.
#vss365
To fall again into the stillness
of a fading photograph
where streetlamps
guide the way along
but never home
relive the rains that fell lush
in the spring of imagination
we met here before
in the renegade silence
hands & hearts held in hope
of one more breaking dawn.
#vss365
It takes grace to fall silent
to be inanimate, like a still life
with so many things left to say,
the vase of lilacs
on my window sill
catches sunlight
teaching me to sketch
expressions
of moments together
to hold you differently,
on days that words can't find a way.
#poetry
Who's going to drive you home
when the city leaves you
with unfinished dreams
the scent of his cologne
on your dress
your soul flooded
with a bottle of gin
when day breaks
along the West End
I'll take the long route
hoping to catch
one more glimpse of him.
#poem
#londonVERSE
I rise with the morning star
launched softly into a languid summer
perfumed walks in sultry heat
along boulevards of lilac jacaranda
the present consuming me with sun
the past fading in contrails of mist
on this day each year
I understand with clarity
~ what love is.
#poetry
I'm ready for more
but don't come for me
unless you sound like summer,
wrapped in wild roses
and literature that never dies,
I am feverish & too far from home,
longing for a breath of sultry jazz & a Bloody Mary at ten am,
- hungover from my so-called life.
#vss365
#microprompt