Wither

 

 

 

 

 

 Wither

 

 

 

I feel an ending

traveling through my bones.

It stops for gas

just short of my liver,

looks for some diversion

 

a roadside attraction

 

as it spreads a cloth

under an infested juniper,

making a picnic of fingernails

and rheum, mumbling,

"Damn the bagworms."

How long time seems

 

in this heat-strangled house

carpentered by a coffinmaker sun,

with no appetite for increasing,

no single cell willing

to grow and not die.

 

We gracelessly surrender

 

to the wither

of merciless azure. Even the land,

with its skin drawn taut

as a snake's winding sheet

drying in August's crinkled moult,

 

knows when to quit.

 

The newborn rain comes,

leaves flush and spin;

when this red shambled summer

finds its cold-spangled grave,

 someone will laugh

up a pumpkin-spiced sleeve

 

under feckless wild stars

 

while the goldenrod blooms and my ending

takes a short vacation.

 

 

 

 

 

 

August 2023

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

posted for Summer's End

at desperate poets

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Images: Gas, 1940 ©Edward Hopper      Fair Use

Native Oklahoma Goldenrod, via okprairie on Pinterest  Fair Use

 

 

 

Murmur Of Flight

 

 

 

 

Murmur Of Flight

There is a murmur in the roost.

There is a rumor in the mist

and a feather in the dust,

a drop, a stall before you fall

into the long flight away

far from the silver cage of the rain,

far from the river that spies on the moon,

far from the shudder when wings are torn

by ruby traps and diamond rats

who gnaw soft parts of dreams away.

There is a tremble at the lock;

there's an assembly under the wind,

a memory at doors the sparrows tend

whose lintels are stars and whose handles, hearts

turning to open the musical sky.

August 2023

originally written for In the Footsteps of Our Feathers

and posted for Open Link Weekend at

desperate poets

Images: Three Sparrows In A Rainstorm, ©Ohara Koson  Public Domain

Ornate Door in Fez, Morocco  via internet author unknown   Fair Use

Dancing With Crabs

 

Dancing with Crabs

Little crabling bastard

what makes you think
you matter

 

a million like you

hatched a day

for the chef to batter.

You chase what you can’t have;

you get what you won’t own,

a tin can for a hat

 

a scuttle down the sand

sideways slow alone

to lose what you never had.

 Little crabling baby

you know that you’re
half crazy

to want what women have

to love what makes you mad;

to dance, a hermit crab

 

in a white parade of swans.

Little baby crabling

ballet's not for crustaceans.

So borrow from the oyster

loneliness the pearl

that adorns any station.

Last Day of November 

2011, revised August 2023

posted for Lonely Town

at desperate poets

Header Photo: Black Eyed Hermit Crab by Dan Hershman on flick'r

Footer Photo:  Swan Lake by Bella Lago on flick'r

Both shared under Creative Commons 2.0 Generic License

Brujeria

 

 

 

 

 

 

Brujeria

 

I don't know what fetch

was living in his hair

but there was always something

 

when it blew back in the hot breath

of the redtangled hills; new-hatched snakes perhaps

curling from the small broken shells of his words,

 

tendrilous avatars in those nights that hid

the color of blood so well;

or soft rain-threads each sweet as a sugarfall

 

on my open face as we made love,

for the medicine painting, not la brujeria,

skintalking the Healing Way.

 

Whatever it was, it

wasn't the mild dog in his eyes,

not fur, not a tail-wag.

 

It was syllogistic, sensate, restless;

hungry as a hopping flea.

whose tiny itch is only felt later.

Perhaps it even had Buddha nature,

or something else

 borrowed from Kali.

 

It was one of those things about him

that taught me to look away.

I saw only its soft brown habitat

as I slipped my fingers through

felt its satin dance

against my touch

but what lived there never left

like all the other things I tried to disappear.

I could feel them breathing

though they never made a sound

not even now when

they ghost him back to my dreams.

August 2023

posted for Odd Little Things

at desperate poets

 

Art nouveau lithograph poster 1903 ©Alphonse Mucha  Public Domain

Man with Long Hair, ©Odd Nedrum    Fair Use

 

Inflection

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Inflection

 

 We drew the breaths 

of butterflies in high June,

beings never still

whose feet are small

as whimpers in our sleep,

light as the gauze of

a first-hour dream

until it falls,

a blood-splashing guillotine.

Butterflies

know nothing of blood

except the blood of flowers and that

is what we sipped, flitting from one to

the next because life must

spread or be stilled;

we never thought we

could ever be stilled

for we had no thoughts,

so new, so insubstantial

and ingenuous were we, certainly

not one that whispered

"Here is the starry inflection of

Love's extinction event," as we deep-

drank our liquor from the meadows

drying beneath us, even as the vapor

of your breath closing to me

dried on my lips

 

in a sigh, tenuous and bright

as wind-floated pollen,

your mouth soon withdrawn

to suckle the next flower's mouth

until flowers and memory and all their savor

 too were gone.

 

August 2023

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

posted for Tipped at

desperate poets

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Images: Untitled(Landscape With Butterflies) 1956 ©Salvador Dali

Butterflies ©Odilon Redon