The Poetry of Jeffrey L. H. Naylor

See in the shadows steps my perception,
Loyal companion always waiting at my door.
Though I walk the forest’s green floor,
The shadows foment my apprehension!

she is the focus of all i see.
she is the beauty
with her listening eyes,
deep as the Black Sea of the orient
that shimmer like leaves of gold upon cresting waves
to lithely dance across love’s space
in any place, spiraling heavenward, rapturously lost…
a girlchild in the innocence of unmeasured age.

Is her love merely drolling sacrosanctity, cataleptically dreamful?
‘Tis she or he whose grace is scarred unthoughtful?
Why dost she hide after a season of knotted pining, heart unwinding?
Hast she now become the clock empty, awaiting the clock maker?
The vials her love fills, stills time with that venal Hellenic potion.
Vessels nefarious his trust she seeks lips to sip conium maculatum.
Chapel Alight from his Adorn, he waits to breathe his lover’s soul.
Wilt thou find him in the weeping place? He suppurates forlorn!
Up he swings, Celestial, pendular wings gliding in the moonlight.
Wilt thou grant love, freely from opened heart or ensorceling perfidy?
Shalt thou love scorn his duty sworn to love only thee–thee alone?
Athena’s fury arrantly vents upon such love, neither fair nor tare.

i can be sad now…
and think deep deep
deep thoughts of love
for you and idly disappear
into a place where
we are suspended
above a plane
of ethereal love…
and for a moment…
just a moment…we are there…
though in reality separated
by thousands of miles…
just for that moment…
in that deep deep
deep thought of love…
there we are suspended together…
in an undoubtable incalculable
eternity of heavenly emotions…
emotions of my faithful…sweet love!

Ode to Emily Dickinson
Up high within her room, the window raised, she thrusts her silky hair
From a secret world of steamy, breathless, morning sea-air.
Dancing sprightly upon awakened imagination with unwillingness to wait
For a constructive instant, but snatches an idea from all her spaces,
Consigned to dwell as a fairy-tale princess who lives for a Word.
From the silence of Nirvana on paper, too crumbly, now unfurled,
Upon recipes she mixes for Zeus to taste, but, not so aptly, so sure.
Pure magic is the wind that catches and plays with her coiffure,
Stirred from Olympus? In fear, she commands the windows to close,
As from Her soul springs the sweetliness that only her mind can know.
Tender is her cry to claim a word, a thought, but not the might,
Of thinking pen that sings from secrecy, writing through the night.
A craft poured from a mix of love, to her ne’er no man shall bestow.
A greater love was her indwelling; greatest, most true, truest abode!

Who are these Editing Ghosts?
Bleeding words strike the hosts.
The feel of words they seek,
Not the banter of the weak.
Out of the silence they creep with nothing,
Butchers to haunt and curse my somethings.

Sorrowfully blue, my lonely heart yearned to taste
Her love, a rich red wine I only dreamt to drink
To her veins my soul did willingly concede
To her and her alone
In her heart sings
Rich the vintage
Toast to love
Redest love
Bluest love
Colorlusts
Drunken
Into
Her
Go
I.

In this cup
I will taste tomorrow
The dregs of sorrow
From the dreams I borrow.

To design a truth of purest reality is the dream
Of the me, but of the you as well–so well.
It is a search for some new hope, which clings,
In the shadows, but still unknown or unborn. Its
Living song waits to be heard. It’s cunning: a living,
Panting, dreamlike soul! Defiant, as others claim
Their grave accent. Hinged doubts hang onto the fallacy
Of days ephemerally short, projects of genius,
Cold nights that turn me to yearn, always I spurn.
Once upon a time, failure was merely a concept.
I would not stop. No armor or valor to sway tomorrow’s aim,
All things flowed in sorrow’s purity of Eloquence.
Timelessness in full redoubt cries. Sitting here, alone with
All the future sold, I wait in the pools of my tears, which
All the yesterdays hold, and plead the dream to awaken.
Who knows this thing I cannot see? I wait as what I am.

I step lively toward a place,
Making a thunderous pace
To reach and seize with haste
A life of delight intricately laced.
Yet, elusive always to taste
Truest joy in all its grace.
The more I fight to find its face,
The more distant happiness is to trace.