Mark Tarren is a poet and writer who lives on remote Norfolk Island in the South Pacific.

His poems have appeared or are forthcoming in various literary journals including The New Verse News, The Blue Nib, Poets Reading The News, Street Light Press, Spillwords Press, Tuck Magazine and Impspired Magazine. He is currently working on a collection of poetry and a novel.

The Tower of The Winds

She came to him at night,
on horseback.

The tower was half buried
so she would descend

away from the moonlight,
her neck moving into shadow

to the doorway via a stairwell
from the street.

Her body submerging into
their intimate underworld.

She was, to him, an angel
that appeared

the same time every night,
only at night.

Half buried,
in the permissible darkness.

He was her unforgiven saint
and this, their shared confessional.

He showed her by naked torchlight
the gold flicker of their life

revealed against
the ceiling of Egyptian blue.

He dusted the red earth from her feet,
gently placed his thumb on
the pulse of her wrist,

as they lay together
in their shared baptism.
 
Then came the winds.

Boreas —
Who could bend a tear
from the surface of her cheek.



Zephyrus —
Would gently lift her hair from
her shoulder and breathe to her the domain of flowers.

Notus —
Who always carried the rain for
the fire between them.

Eurus —
Would wipe away a bead of moisture
from her trembling lips.

Kaikias —
Provided a shield against the
knowing death of love.

Apeliotes —
Would drape her in the cloth of the
rising sun to conceal her nature.

Skiron —
For the onset of winter
when the mist would rise from her mouth instead of words.

Lips —
When she needed safe passage
away from her discontent.

On the night she
did not return

he spent his evenings
searching the red earth

for a glimpse of the cradle
of her hair rising from her shoulder.

Feel the ghost pain of her pulse
at the tip of his thumb.

Watch the gold flicker
of their life

gently retreat from his hand.

The Three Kings

Across the threshing floor they come,
bleeding towards Bethlehem,
 
marching across the trampled offerings
of frankincense and myrrh.
 
They have swallowed the searching star
in the valley of The Shadow.
 
They have emptied Pilate’s wash bowl
and robbed the grain house of our
shared grief.
 
They have come for Jerusalem
they have come,
 
to steal away even our last
subterranean joy.
They have come
for the straw and dust
in your lover’s goodbye.
 
They have come for the scent
of your new born baby’s head.
 
They have come for the wild burning
hidden horses in your heart,
 
for every tender thing fallen
from your only tree.
They have come.
They have come for the base
of your spine,
 
for every dream that you
ever possessed.
 
They have come for the Christ child
in you and I
for the Christ child
for you and I
they have come.
They have come for nothing less
than everything,
for in the pasture of the Lord
fools have no faces,
and Herod’s hands are full.

Let Not the Art of Love

Let not the art of love
be removed
 
from the bow
that touches the body
down the neck and swoon,
away
with the tremble and ache
of the tides,
 
the sound of water
retreating from the moon.
 
Let not the art of love
be removed
 
from the hand
that crafts a fabric
 
to cover the midnight
of the small of your back
 
or the arc, sway and shiver
of the heart,
that cuts
towards the place of that little murder.
Let not the art of love
be removed
 
from the eye of grief
across the cartography of
 
shoulder,
to the curve of your
abdomen and thigh,
 
to the burning tablelands
of our tender self possession.
 
Let not the art of love
be removed
away
for if it were removed,
all the small gods could not forgive —
the glory of our quietness.