Verse Escape

Mirage

2012-02-26T08:00:00.004-06:00

Mirage

Can I trace it, that spider footed midnight kiss

that once walked its lips across my crying skin?

Is it hung head down in the cobweb spun across my

crumpled cheek; waiting still? starved rigid?

But no, it ran; I see its mark, staggering spider steps

through dry sand floating on the dust of desert years

at home in emptiness, a secret life uncurled after the

scirocco passes, charming away dead flesh from bone

not even a smell to hang in the drying frame of air.

Any little busy thing consuming convenient corpses

to white skull’s stare knows each precious drop preserves

savor and sweat for a hankering life spent waiting

for the next foolish thing to drop, hamstrung by thirst

lost beyond finding, hallucinating deliverance

blinded by a lunatic sun that tilts the web's sweet spin

to catch an oasis kiss and in mirage to live again.

February 2012

Posted for real toads

Sunday Challenge

featuring Ellen Wilson

Top Image: Web, by Ellen Wilson

Footer image: Blossom, by Ellen Wilson

of Ella's Edge, Used with permission.

Feather From An Empty Hat

2012-02-25T15:19:00.002-06:00

Feather From An Empty Hat

In the whirlwind

leaves in tumult turn

seasons change, chiseled from

an empty hat

hooping along the curb,

flown to drown in the sleety river

by snow’s hardliquor breath

huffing in staggers through the

winter grass cut before the storm

where dry brown leaves nest

a broken feather pulled
by djinns of the stuttering south,

homeless in the field.

The poem I wrote in my sleep

was huge

it moved the earth

it changed the world

it was a rock mountain

out of which I carved

clanging truth in heads of jackals,
ravens and goddesses

and wrote their conversations

verbatim etched in a brazen font

upon the golem’s brow

yet when I woke

in the blue crystal light

there were no words

on my pillow, only one

spent feather, ragged

from the cold.

February 2012

Posted for Poetics at dVerse Poets Pub

Image: Guinea fowl feather

By User:Ben_pcc (Some bird.) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

Leaves of Absence

2012-02-23T18:00:00.022-06:00

Leaves of Absence

One comes

while another leaves.

One afternoon

becomes

a month of falling leaves.

The long job

of loving needs

a leave of falling months,

leave to go

re-leaved,

tho leaving is grieving

gone is better so;

to leave

Love's little fat god

smirking,

pleased to

take each sacrifice

and close his till,

scattering

dead leaves.

February 2012

55 falling leaves for the G-Man

Photo: Pressed Leaves, by Petteri Sulonen on flick'r

Thanks, Petteri.

As well as sharing his photographic talents on flick'r, Petteri blogs eclectically at

Come to think of it, an always interesting read.

Another Poem Written at Morning

2012-02-22T12:45:00.006-06:00

Another Poem Written at Morning

for Wallace Stevens

We always were

as different as two things can possibly be

as far apart as a white bear on an ice floe

from a neon flamingo preening on one leg

or a thinking mouse in a live trap

from the distant hawk that stoops.

We always were

as close as two feathers nesting in

coralpink scales on that same flamingo,

as mouse and thought,

as the freeze of boreal ice

to the bear's shaman paw.

When all there was to read
was ratscratch and pigeon droppings,

you'd already written for me

the encyclopedia of myself;

Go on through the darkness, you said

The waves fly back.

When my only drawing was child's

chalkdust, fumbling baroque intricacy into

crude streaks, you painted my adjectives in oils

with the extravagant precision of a Poussin,

carved from cloud within the sister, mother and

diviner lover, out of our own imperfections wrought.

Ever you were truer to me than any breathing man.

Even now in the room where the interior paramour

lights the highest candle, begins the twilight music,

I bend in the dance with your businessman's stone

in its calico gypsy shirt and cobweb shoes,

still try to read your book of granite mossed

with shadows, sudden lightning burst over

inkblack seas pounding meaning

in constant making and unmaking,

whispers calling, fill the four corners of night

flutter your empty sleeves,

it's the spirit that we seek,

ask often. No matter if answering is all reflection,

dimmer, poorer through prosthetic eyes;

let them shine and serve, let the wench's tongue wag,

if only in echoes softer than tumbled shells suspiring

on a ghost beach, because you gave not killing order

but the idea of order

that grew the garden that saved me

from the domination of black, sent

dreams of baboons and periwinkles,

put peacocks in the

heavy darkness of hemlock,

rejoiced in green curls.

February 2012

Posted for real toads

where Kenia's challenge today is to dialogue with a poem or poet. I have probably misunderstood the intent of her prompt, as I think she was wanting to promote internet relationships, but I did what I could to respond, dialoguing with a poet who always blogs inside my head.

Poem Written At Morning

by Wallace Stevens

A sunny day's complete Poussiniana
Divide it from itself. It is this or that
And it is not.
By metaphor you paint
A thing. Thus, the pineapple was a leather fruit,
A fruit for pewter, thorned and palmed and blue,
To be served by men of ice.
The senses paint
By metaphor. The juice was fragranter
Than wettest cinnamon. It was cribled pears
Dripping a morning sap.
The truth must be
That you do not see, you experience, you feel,
That the buxom eye brings merely its element
To the total thing, a shapeless giant forced
Upward.
Green were the curls upon that head.

Italicized words are quotations or titles from Stevens' poems.

Image: Diana and Endymion, by Nicolas Poussin [Public domain], via wikimedia commons

Sanctuary

2012-02-21T11:31:00.001-06:00

Sanctuary

It was the time of cold.

The water from the sky ran black as inky blood

and the tree in the dark storm was ripe for burning,

solitary acolyte in a serpentine ceremony of snow.

You kissed my summer dry palms

just before you ran to your winter white pack

far off along the indigo rim of night.

I heard the howling begin

without me. I pulled in the last syllable of stone,

stripping myself to bare words. A single step danced me

from maenad to anchoress, peering through the squint

at your unconsecrated communion.

January 2011

Posted for OpenLinkNight at dVerse Poets Pub

Having nothing ready for tonight, though a huge snarl of cantankerous works in progress, thought I would post an older poem that had limited exposure. This was originally submitted for a prompt (at the now defunct Big Tent Poetry) to utilize alliteration by choosing a letter, writing a word list, and using the ideas it generated for subject with a word from it for the title. Apologies to those who have already seen this.

Photo: © Copyright Colin Smith and licensed for reuse under Creative Commons License.
Cell of the anchoress Christine Carpenter, 14th Century. Shere, Surrey, UK

Piquée

2012-02-19T00:30:00.005-06:00

Piquée

There’s a little grey snake most cunningly faced,

curled up in cleaved breasts, well hidden in lace.

It’s only as long as a tailgunner’s song

only as thick as a Semtex stick

but it bites to the raw with a jaguar’s jaw

then tucks its head down and keeps drilling.

Sometimes it slithers outside on warm fingers

disarming observers with its plastic display.

Others the poison tongue drips out and lingers

soaks through the lace in a green disarray

to the sponge in the core

that echo'd reservoir

the little grey snake’s slowly filling.

February 2012

Posted for real toads
Open Link Monday

Images: Photos of Femme Piquée par un Serpent (Woman Bitten by a Snake)
1847Auguste Clésinger (1814 -1883)Musée d'Orsay, Paris, France by fmpgoh on flick'r

Shared under a Creative Commons 2.0 Generic License

Desert Trip

2012-02-18T17:09:00.008-06:00

Desert Trip

Dust for dinner

in the day end bitter and

nothing to drink but a glass of sand.

Bare souled and dry mouthed

plodding shredboot through hoop

after hoop of unrolling heat, horizon

radiant with mirage mirror lures to

push me from the path

cut through the fantasia of quince colored

coral curled cactus. Behind me a torn trail

of shed skins, miles of peeled naked

shins fondled by creosote shanks
corkscrewed and toothy, my airs
leaking from memory holes

spined through raw scars, burnt lashed,

blinking blue coals under swollen lids.

Ahead a whirl of drab dirt devils

dance down a blind mountain's ashes
to the parched hellfloor where I am not going.

Pooling improbable greenery shines

lush O surely too much a skirt of

turquoise and lemon on a stone doll

to be so stubbornly alive, brushing

jade shadows where the new dwelling sits

with no guards, no guards at all

except the length of hardscrabble slope

pulling world worn flesh
step by ebbing step to the

moon's seat, the hidden well

that holds all I can drink

before darkness so
tenderly falls.

February 2012

Posted for Poetics at dVerse Poets Pub

Brian is hosting today, and has brought on board the expressive photography of Reena Walkling to get the word pump primed and flowing. Come join us.
Link in is live till midnight Sunday.

Used with permission

The Woodwife

2012-02-16T23:17:00.002-06:00

The Woodwife

The woodwife fled

when none could see

and went where none

but she could go.

Green were her sleeves

in the howling snow, out

from the halls of Kingswinter

when no moon shone.

Ashen she was as the grey

before break of day

from living where no fire

could stay, or sun's ray pierce.

She’d come to learn

the celestial dance, practice

the arts with a man of air

for the time that never came.

She tired of the silken crucible,

cameos cut with quicksilver scissors

and learned instead to laugh confetti

from chains of handfast paperdolls

tossing their snow as she ran, to fall

on dead hearths, blow for eternity

round empty halls, behind the cursed

blind windows of Kingswinter.

February 2012

Posted for Meeting the Bar at dVerse Poets Pub

Based on a dream. We all have our own heroes.

Image: Morgan le Fay, by Anthony Frederick Augustus Sandys

[Public domain], via wikimedia commons

Night Light

2012-02-16T09:12:00.000-06:00

Night Light

Luminous the globe

around my hope, a diamond

phosphorescent fish

that undulantly beams along

darkest ocean floor,

gleaming

or in meadowed night

a child’s eye

swimmy deer gaze

peering through the heart’s glass lantern

stuttering, fluttering, dancing,

burning the fitful wick

that lights my way to you,

whoever wherever

in this dark place

you are.

March 1990

55 eyeballs gleaming in the dark for the G-Man

Note: This was one of the last dozen or so poems I wrote before stopping for ten years. I've revised it today a bit here and there, and cut a few words to get it to exactly 55.

Image: Owl Flame, by Darkr, on flick'r

Shared under a Creative Commons 2.0 Generic License

How Hansel Ate Gretel

2012-02-14T12:49:00.006-06:00

It's Valentine's Day, that most commercially candy-coated of holidays, and the day when Love in all its sweetness is celebrated across the land--except, of course, at Castle Hedgewitch, where instead we have a twisted cautionary tale for hungry young lovers whose eyes may be bigger than their stomachs, and a retelling (with customary poetic license) of an old feral, er...faerie tale from the Brothers All-too Grimm.

How Hansel Ate Gretel

Looking back, as I make off into mothering trees

I see your trail wind under their stooping knees,

snake of cherry heartbits beneath the moon

and know it for what it is, your pheromone croon

baiting the sweet biological trap up on the heath

where every heedless sacrifice drops its spore.

See your sisters all come running to hide from death

and instead become your food supply, nothing more.

Your candy call draws the lost ones, wild to eat

the gingerbread house with sugar hands and feet.

Each famished girlchild sucks at white icing's sweet

slick, swallows glazing and dreams the full child's dream

inside the cage made to plump her up as the oven heats.

With luck, the last one's fallen bones gnawed clean

make a silent deceit to a blind eye’s need for meat,

pinched to test what's forever incomplete.

Still, gingerbread girls will always let you start

those hungry cannibal gulps that crumble the heart

but what surprises is the discipline you show

sparing some of the half-baked morseled dough

(bitten off, those cookie legs can’t run like flesh)

to pull and scatter speck by speck as you refresh

that trail that tells the strays just where to go.

O we all need to eat, so I don’t mind the meal

or being dessert that's thoroughly lost in the woods,

nor the sandpaper licks I took so I could feel.

It’s the marker you make of every spit-stained crumb

to bait your sweet-breathed trap for damaged goods

that freezes all I have that’s still not numb.

February 2012

Posted for OpenLinkNight at dVerse Poets Pub

Note: I've significantly altered this old tale to suit my fancy, put it into a valentiny rhyme scheme and fictionalized first-person form, removed the stereotypes of the wicked cannibal witch-hag and evil stepmother and made poor innocent Hansel, who was the original victim, the villain of the piece. That's what happens when you let feminazi witches rewrite the history books.

Image: Late 19th century illustration of Hansel und Gretel, by Carl Offterdinger, photo by Harke [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

Repose

2012-02-11T19:03:00.004-06:00

Repose

It is in changing that things find repose.

~Heraclitus

Between this breath and another

is that atoms' dance that abides forever

intrinsic parity, growing in declension

and likewise myself constant in tension

now new now dying change and remain

endlessly negated perpetually created

ocean sunned, a steam of water meeting flame.

Restless blue remakes the river drop by drop;

time's dry file rasps on vanity's hide

as friction cooks the soul to snakes of smoke.

All things set free their savor in a smolder

of the sum to nothing, intangible but plain;

we're brought to know each essence

by the brazier and the flame.

Rosehips and lemon wet on my lips

only kindle the dancing blaze, a salamander

that cleans itself with coals, whose breath turns anything

to a wild wisped arabesque of incense,

the airgrace and deathgift of fire the same

from a pinched wick as from a burning slum,

all rising from the identical artist’s flame.

So these lips, only tasted now by time, kissed

only by citrus, salt and hips of roses,

exhale their essence; between this breath

and another, spirit dies and comes again

as it did before the world moved on and does

once more, sweet as any smoke of mutable flame

that finds repose in what is born to change.

February 2012

Posted for Poetics at dVerse Poets Pub

Charles Miller of Metanoetic Poetics is hosting at the pub tonight, and his theme is the exploration of philosophy through poetry. Come join us. Link in is live till Sunday Midnight.

"If all existing things were smoke, it is by smell that we would distinguish them."

You can find these and more of the words of Heraclitus which influenced this poem here at wikisource.

Image: Heraclitus, Detail of Rafaello Santi's "The School of Athens" (1510)

by Raphael [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

Wayfarers' Tale

2012-02-11T09:21:00.000-06:00

Wayfarers' Tale

The Watcher and the Wanderer

and the Wayward Child

walked hand in hand across the Moor

in the midnight wild.

The moon was only a distant eye

that looked the other way.

The Moor was only a frying pan

that cooked the heather grey.

The Watcher kept her eyeless watch,

the Wanderer went astray,

the Child thought it saw another child

and ran after it to play.

Night grew long and the cats all wept,

till there was nothing left

but the empty path across the Moor

and the watch the Watcher kept.

February 2012

Posted for real toads

Prompt: Photography of TALON

Image: Photo by TALON

Used with permission.

Jasmine Rain

2012-02-09T12:30:00.011-06:00

Jasmine Rain

The front rolls in as I’m

drinking the jasmine

from your silver eyes.

Hearts and clouds kaleidoscope,

revolve, shine, shred

to murk; storm

falls, petals tattoo

waves of night white
with hurtsweet fragrance.

Bruised away are all

the broken things

that can't outlast

the big blow;

but

every storm ends

even

jasmine rain.

February 2012

55 torn petals for the G-man

Image: Stratocumulus by Darkr, on flick'r
Shared under Creative Commons 2.0 Non-Commercial License

Repost~Spring and the Fool

2012-02-08T12:01:00.002-06:00

Spring and The Fool

Spring loves a fool,

throwing her sticky caltrop

blossoms under his dancing toes,

laughing with him as the cold white

blood of January turns blue,

brims the river

and slides his fool’s shack

off the bank.

Spring cares for a fool,

washing his winter soiled

questions of living, tumbling them

in her dryer to be folded away

neat as a fallen leaf sorted back

into earth,

sucking him up her pressure hose

for a lark, blowing him out the nozzle

or percolating him down from his cloud

as he juggles hail in the wild storm,

morning coffee for the

first grasshoppers.

Even this spring

hot as any summer

where the flatbread plains crisp

under her sudden yellow eye; where running

before the distant blur of the moon the south wind

exhales with the used heat

of dragon breath.

Spring loves a fool

as the fool loves the dance.

Blistered feet soon summerheal,

distrained harvests soon reseed.

Thrice denied before dawn,

the sun’s judas kiss burning

on his cheek, still he sheds his skin

and dons his pointy hat

one more time.

June 2011

I'm reposting this for Kerry's Wednesday Challenge at real toads, which is to explore the idea of Magical Realism, making connection with things through their unseen and mysterious attributes. Thanks, Kerry, for letting me dig this one out of the cellars of Castle Hedgewitch.

Running by Winterlight

2012-02-07T03:18:00.005-06:00

Running by Winterlight

Midnight called me up from my rifled bed

where I’d searched in vain for sleep’s last hiding place.

I went out to look at the fraying brindled clouds

taped to the far ice moon, and the Hunter's sword

once Freya’s distaff weaving the ravelled world.

And I knew beyond my doubt your soul ran free

parkoured from star to star canopied above me.

I saw the aching dumbshow of what’s past,
a flickering stereopticon of days
each one still a sharpness of blinding glass

stuck in time’s deep gut the bleeding pass of
a dance above oblivion’s shifting cracks.

Light of my heart, you make a fine traceur;

one slip's enough to kill, yet you endure.

Clouds cry ice, sweep in the shaking void

with its black mouth wide, its bone white lich’s grin.

I’ve made myself so small, so fine a dust

that plaited baleen will never seine me out,

just lose me where the cell-shed seeds sprout green.

What's lost flies out and floats on seven winds.

What’s left puts down its root to live again.

February 2012

Posted for OpenLinkNight at dVerse Poets Pub
Brian Miller is our host tonight. Come join us at the Pub for a night of poetry sharing lasting through Wednesday at midnight.

Process notes: Parkour...is a training method which focuses on rational movement [where] the focus is to move around obstacles with speed and efficiency...to move through the..environment by vaulting, rolling, running, climbing and jumping. Parkour practitioners are known as traceurs.~wikipedia

The last lines of the first stanza refer to the constellation of Orion, a Hunter in Greek mythology whose belt of three stars holds the Orion nebula, representing the point of Orion's sword, and in Norse mythology, the distaff (a spinning tool) of Freya, goddess of love, beauty, fertility, war and death.

Optional Musical Accompaniment

The Wall

2012-02-06T09:51:00.002-06:00

The Wall

Behind the green mountains

is a green towered wall

around the green center

of a thousand sprouting dreams

sown in an unseason of

crepitant hollows, dry

depredation, where

sleep is

defenestrated

and shattered below

in shards that grow

a yeast of redolent fantasies

piercing their way out

each with a flower

of bright loss nodding swaying

releasing dancing airsprites to

put Dorothy to sleep

in an opium dream

till twilight’s brighter wife

glares down and scorches

the slime from the stars

and the wall

jumps on its own back

leaping

taller and taller,

greener than green.

February 2012

Posted for real toads

Image: Photo by Richard Schear, provided by the Imaginary Garden with Real Toads

Valhalla of Trees

2012-02-04T15:07:00.003-06:00

Valhalla of Trees

The first gift the tree gives is grace, definition of air

waving branch to twig as the wind stirs the great pot,

taking the sky in its arms and showing

the invisible so all is bound together.

Then next green sheets that roof the homeless wing,

bed and breakfast scattershot crawling gypsies,

or smolder orange bronze in the cider of seasons’ change

sweet scarlet and sharp, distilling light's last sugar

before winter’s white hands bring the enemy sky.

The last thing the tree has to give is its lifesmell,
savor of soil stretched from soft earth to limbered wood,
colors planed to flat scented on the lathe, or split rough

and fired in the hearth, exhaling ringed incense of trapped time,

flames flying the way long streaming gold hair

might fly up from a burning valkyrie.

February 2012

Posted for Poetics at dVerse Poets Pub

Mark Kerstetter is our host today at the pub and he's set us the challenge of seeing objects a bit differently, attempting to give them their own voice, as inspired by the writing of Francis Ponge.

Image: Horse chestnut Leaf, by Petteri Sulonen, on flick'r

Thanks, Petteri.

Petterri's photostream

Copyright Infringement

2012-02-03T09:21:00.001-06:00

I have just found one of my poems posted to a blog called Bluebell Books without my permission. I also found the names of several other poets there whose work I believe may have been used without permission. These poems are drawn from G-Man's Flash 55 entries. I have logged a protest at the site and a request to remove the poem. We'll see if that is enough, and the blog owner will comply. For others interested, I am willing to share my poetry but I must approve your use of it in writing, so please email me at my profile link should you ever desire to do so. Bluebell Books is in violation of US copyright laws, particularly as they intend to publish a book of these poems.That will leave them open to criminal prosecution. I strongly advise people to be leery of this site.

UPDATE: As of 11:14 am February 3, the poem and my comment protesting infringement have both been pulled. I have still received no personal communication from this site, neither of apology or an original request to publish my work, despite my email being on public record. I would like to restate that I will report any copyright infringement from this site or its sister sites in future to blogger, and hope this never happens again. Thanks,everyone, for your support.

Incubus IV

2012-02-03T01:01:00.003-06:00

Incubus IV

It’s perplexing

that the incubus is still

after all these nights

a mystery to me, with his

rippling heat, his sudden chills

and I to him

the last unknown.

Tonight he’s here to play his games,

oh the same games so sweet and heavy

with desire I can barely carry them

to the last decimal.

I don’t choose to resist; resistance

only teases. Besides,

he keeps me too busy to care, while he

recites beneath my breath the half-made spell

he's come to fetch my blood to cook.

I know he wants to

catch me in a foolishness

even greater than the one that calls him here

but I am sly, slyer than I was

before he seared that first split hoofprint on my breast,

before we danced tail to tail under the cracked moon

before he claimed on smoky contractual clauses

with just a trace of suphur-tinged regret.

No, he won’t catch me

till he turns his back and finds

I’m wound where he had no idea

I could bind.

February 2012

Posted for Fireblossom Friday at Real Toads

The inimitable Fireblossom hosts today at the Imaginary Garden with Real Toads, and her theme is temptation, or perhaps confession, or both. I'm obviously too perplexed to tell.

This is a companion piece to Incubus, Incubus II, and Incubus III

The Art of Smothering

2012-02-02T18:30:00.016-06:00

The Art of Smothering

I remember when

you arsoned smoky fire

from a touch

on a turning page.

Now you’re

the spark arrestor

heat suppressor

insuring nothing

ignites.

The hazel extinguisher

of your foamwhite eye

drinks Molotov's cocktail dry;

my breath freezes

as it passes you

medusa'd to
ramparts of ice

protecting, imprisoning

a midnight of ash.

February 2012

55 burning ice cubes for the G-Man

Image: Eyjafjallajökull ash plume, by Gunnlaugur Þ. Briem on flick'r
Gunnlaugur Þ. Briem's photostream
Shared under Creative Commons 2.0 Non-Commercial License

Candlemas Sestina~Revisited for Imbolc, 2012

2012-02-02T00:00:00.006-06:00

The Hedgerider's Lament

Part II: Candlemas Sestina

Winter rides the leafless hedgerow, black and aching for the thaw

a frozen masque of mummers misbegotten by the hag.

A dying moth in winter’s web, I’m null, unwarmed by fire.

I call to the guardian of the living earth to forsake her vestal well

to bring her yellow days and put an end to the strangling white;

instead of snow make milk for lambs and wake the sleeping sun.

I pulled the blackthorn's sloes and brewed the gin of autumn’s sun,

drank deep, then burned the sticks to keep alive until the thaw.

The Cailleach’s staff struck and brought the tedious vault of white

where water was married to restless air in the couplings of the hag.

There are bruises for the hand that cracks the ice-crust on the well

and earth’s white cloak hisses on the coals of the worldsmith’s fire.

Once amber green my fingers tore the world-skin, meeting fire;

finding only the haunt of a look, a tendriled scent that fled the sun.

No living hand can draw your twisting wisp from that black well.

Only wishes' mist can pass between, and dust awaits the thaw

I hunker by a murdered fire and bandy curses with the hag,

who laughs and shrouds my hedgerow tight in her bands of white.

Yet there’s Another coming when the blackthorn flushes white

and the wind will thrash the greening twigs as all is cleansed in fire.

The spring will dance her mayday on the apron of the hag,

and unwind the days and bring her bag of blue that holds the sun.

The Cailleach will freeze, a standing stone before the thaw,

while her snow becomes white water rushing azure to the well.

So day’s full light expands and ice is melted from the well.

Tomorrow’s gin is brewing in the blackthorn’s buds of white.

Grass-green grow the seedlings as the hedgerow starts to thaw

and winter stubble burns but I’m still cold beside the fire.

The blood-burned breach still shows itself a curse beneath the sun.

The silvery white bride’s smile still flirts with the eyes of the hag.

But a bride might need a midwife someday, hidden in a hag

and a hag might be more than a weight best cast into the well.

The carcass of dead caresses burns to ashes in the sun

and births a skin of amber green that swallows up the white.

Summer gives her pledge of life and bids me tend her fire,

and all her seed and kindred in the razor leaved hedgerow’s thaw.

Perhaps this year the sun will shine so clear and burning white

that the hag will laugh to see me in the mirror of the well

and I’ll forget the thing that’s broken as the world begins to thaw.

January 2011

This poem is part of my quartet of sestinas on the four seasonal pagan festivals. I wrote it around this time last year. My friend, bard errant and student of the mythic, Brendan MacOdrum over at Oran's Well, is in an Imbolc kind of mood, and after sharing his own scholarly take on the occasion, asked for a reprise of this sestina today on the date it is usually celebrated, February 2nd. As always, happy to oblige, and even happier since typing is still a bit painful.

You can find all four sestinas dealing with the pagan festivals here.

For pronunciation of the word Cailleach, click here

Originally posted for OneShotWednesday at the inimitable OneStopPoetry

Image: Cailleach by RedDragon102857
Used under terms of Photobucket license

Raven and Stone

2012-01-31T12:43:00.004-06:00

Raven and Stone

The raven holds

a found brightness in his claw

that his sharp beak

will never crack

yet he eyes it with

the very speaking soul

of possession,

one hunger set aside

while another feeds.

Winter with her cueball eyes

stares me down, professionally

grinding me grey, brushing me blue;

send me something green, love

something round and alive

to put in my raven’s claw,

not this old riddle

worn in my hair

that I will never crack

the petrified chrysalis
of a dead butterfly, the
forgotten classified secrets

of two paper forms loving in code;
undelivered, undeciphered

folded apart in an alien cryptogram,

too afraid of ripping

to yield and make

one perfect origami.

January 2012

Posted for OpenLinkNight at dVerse Poets Pub

Guest Post~The Anglerfish

2012-01-29T11:04:00.004-06:00

A bit of a departure today, friends. This is a poem by a person close to me who I'm going to leave anonymous, and who is just beginning to write seriously. It impressed me, and I requested permission to pass it on to my readers here, which was granted. I have included some process notes to make the title and subject of the poem clearer. Your thoughts and impressions on it are very welcome.

For those of my close friends who know or might want to speculate about the identity of the poet, I ask that this not be discussed for various reasons. Thanks.

The Anglerfish

When scientists first started capturing ceratioid anglerfish, they noticed that all of the specimens were female...and almost all of them had what appeared to be parasites attached to them. It turned out that these "parasites" were highly reduced male[s].."~wikipedia

A floor of no note
seamless, featureless and plain
unimaginable amounts of my lifeblood
weigh it down flat

were it to move, the hungriest
would strive against one another
fighting for one sweet morsel
if only for a year

as flat and crushed as the sand
am I, every moment I live
I struggle, foolishly no doubt
just to breathe

I feel the pressure of a thousand mountains
around me, the darkness of a thousand moons
I am lost in the darkness
Yet I seek a fate beyond it

I am swimming, searching,
useless alone, I must continue.
The vast blackness surrounds
yet lights distantly beckon.

Through water thick as syrup I wander
This blackness treacle and burden
searching ever, for sustenance
a miracle of rage and love

there is only the joining in my eyes
the endless suckling prison
my mouth fused to her side
an endless sustaining of nothing

her maw approaches me slowly and still
in the thick water
teeth so deadly her mouth can never close
and dangling the light of promise in front of her.

So glorious is she that I am overwhelmed
and have to resist the urge
to swim into those lovely jaws
into pure oblivion

dazed, I stand still in the thickness
daring against hope
that I might just survive
and go unnoticed

luckless, she spies me through the veil
and begins to circle
I circle as well
thinking yet to shake the menace upon me

No chance, her gravity
is ten to mine
though she swoops and gulps greatly
still I am free

a blast of pheremones
brings me to a standstill
I am compelled beyond instinct
blindly observing

I am to her an accessory
now she free to ravage and kill
and giving a pittance for me
to remain here alive

the ultimate trap, was it me that grew
into her side, or her sides that hungered
for usefulness and purpose
knowingly growing into the weakest of me

the scales upon me, meant to protect
no gap to be seen
except for the ones ignored
in the words from my lips

those shoals of my soul
like hooks waiting
for another hook of like make
to bring misery and sorrow together

Further Notes: "...The male ceratioid lives solely to find and mate with a female...When he finds a female, he bites into her skin...fusing the pair down to the blood-vessel level. The male then slowly atrophies, first losing his digestive organs, then his brain, heart, and eyes, and ends as nothing more than a pair of gonads which release sperm in response to hormones in the female's bloodstream indicating egg release. This extreme sexual dimorphism ensures that, when the female is ready to spawn, she has a mate immediately available..."~wikipedia

Note: This poem is copyrighted to Verse Escape, and to the author, and may not be used without written permission. January 29,2012

Image: Humpback anglerfish, via wikimedia commons.
Public Domain, full information given at link.

Train Time

2012-01-28T10:22:00.008-06:00

Train Time

I’ve made my accommodations,
set my watch to the new time zone
for this journey rolled on the tumbling wheels
of an iron horse rocking in darkness
as the wind blows the flying flag whistle.

The last ticket crackles in my pocket
a faint fire on my skin as I
try to forget the dead girl I left
tied to the carousel, round and round;
I’ve made my accommodations.

Out the window the night’s a film
come sifting down in haze
through clouds' warm rich milk
sieving back secrets like kept curd;
only skimmed wastelight falls in the new time zone

where we chase the hours through the lengthening night
with a cawing louder than a lunatic crow’s
up and up the spiral way through rockbound trees
before the snow, the long descent to the sea
as the journey unrolls on tumbling wheels

unwinding a silkscreen I barely can see:
bright and flashing dawns, white cabins
malachite forests, yellow-eyed owls
beginnings and red tulips overtaken, outrun
by the night horse rocking in darkness.

The sum of what I want is not where I must go
but all the places this train will never stop,
while the sleepless wheels whisper: no drugs no drink
no magic trick can ever take
the flying whistle back from the wind.

January 2012

Posted for real toads

where the prompt today is the photography of Daryl Edelstein

and also submitted for

Poetics at dVerse Poets Pub
hosted today by Sheila Moore and Karin Gustafson, and where the theme is undercurrents. I'm pretty sure there are a few of those lurking here somewhere.

This poem is written in the Cascade form. The first stanza sets the number of lines per verse (it can be any number) and also provides the end lines for the subsequent stanzas, in sequential order: first line ending the second stanza, second line ending the third, etc. till the final line ends the last stanza. I've played with the word order in some of the repeating lines, just because.

Images: Both photos by Daryl Edelstein
Used with permission

Fireblossom has suggested the following for optional musical accompaniment:

and here is what the poem reminds me of:

Mist

2012-01-26T18:53:00.003-06:00

Mist

Those eyes are holes

where

too much

nothing shows

sending me dark,

floating alone

listening to what’s left

when the buzz and traps

shut down:

crow-wing slapping

tap of the living rain

falling in the gingersweet

night on a

ghost's face, marshlight

flickering in the gloam;

chasing you

is all I know of home.

January 2012

55 ghosts in the mist for the G-Man

Image: past mist, by Robb North, on flick'r

Shared under Creative Commons License 2.0 Non-Commercial

Chains

2012-01-25T11:46:00.003-06:00

Chains

Everything has its thinbeat chain

attached to the torc, an accessory

the tattoo on freedom that shows

off her white paper flesh

binding

flower to root

star to darkling center

bird to sky, you to I

the end is reached

the chain snaps taut

but still we fly as if

the broken neck is nothing much.

Everything is coupled

and so doubled, twinned sun

defined by a shadow;

bee to queen

sea to moon

water to thirst

moon to sea, drifting

mist of pain to condensing pleasure

heart to echo, reflection to real,

ululant yowl and whoosh to song

the restless wind’s loving

chained to a passive speck in space

all forever frantic in the tender rape.

January 2012.

Posted for real toads

No idea if this comes close to what futurism really is, but I did my best, even put in some onomatopoeia, and hope I hit somewhere on the side of the barn.

Cheap Shoes

2012-01-24T10:05:00.005-06:00

Cheap Shoes

Before it was a blizzard

there was rain and wind and darkness

but we had word beams to bend

boxes full, a sundrenched attic’s worth,
enough and more

for any shape we wanted

so I opened the back door

to let the animals in before the storm.

The mares came first fluttering their buttery eyes,

whom the bitter goats tried to hound thru the wildering night

and the geese were lost as sheep, as the braying mule

when the howling finally came to eat the world.

Then we knew it wasn't safe in the filigreed cage.

We let everything fly heartbird from hand

so that back before it was wind and rain and darkness

and up the stairs of the sunbright grove

bumped the pit wagon---remember? it took

so many---we could still

choose not to board,

and bend and bend instead

these beams of words

to make the half moon

spill over with lovers' night
deep in the snow.

So I wonder if it's true, what I've heard them say,

that death's unbendable in his cheap shoes
and walks the longest way.

January 2012

Posted for OpenLinkNight at dVerse Poets Pub

I'm the ghostess with the mostest tonight at the pub. Come join us and enjoy our unique je ne sais quoi ambiance and poetry au lait. Link in is live from 3:00 PM Eastern Tuesday till midnight Wednesday

Images removed due to possible copyright issues.

Back From The Garden

2012-01-23T11:40:00.001-06:00

Back from the Garden

Out in the garden

bent to the earthworks, last

darkening hour over the herbs

I plant to remember

the driftsweet bouquet

that erases December,

fighting the lunatic wind

tugging skin tight

shaking brain loose at

the top of the tower

so it rattles downstairs to

damp dungeon, where you live

forever lost to reason and me

a fact winter can't seem to forgive.

Now slowthump half gelled steps inside

each limb's weight dragged

stiff, eroded stone cyclops clops

sponge brain following behind

a lost but willing puppy’s tail that

wags as nerve endings rewind

radar puzzles, strategic placements

for curling on bed like a grey-faced dog

on torn but precious rug

round and round, trying

to find that sweet spot where

rest will fall like rain

and system shutdown

snows over pain.

January 2012

Images: Header: Thalia and larkspur gestating

Footer: Hare in January, both © joy ann jones, 2012

Off the Shelf Archive~January

2012-01-22T20:07:00.003-06:00

I've been most remiss (as usual) at refreshing the Off the Shelf selection, but again as usual, my excuse is I've had many poems and new-to-me poets to choose from recently and its been hard to pick. What I've chosen this month is a bit of a departure for me, a poem spoken by the author. Myself, I'm a visual person, and poetry spoken is almost always poetry that has less impact for me, and which I frequently misconstrue, but this piece works fine for me in this medium and comes through loud and clear. Punishment, by the Irish poet Seamus Heaney, is an intriguing piece of writing to me, juxtaposing the distant past and the present for a dubious squint at the progress, or lack of it, we've made as a species.

If you'd like to know more about Heaney, born in 1939 in County Derry, Northern Ireland, winner of the Nobel prize among many others, there's a short but detailed biography here at the Poetry Foundation.

Just click here to go to the Off the Shelf page for Heaney's poem.

~*~

In order to make room for the current piece, the former selection, two poems by American poet Wallace Stevens, are moved here for a final perusal. Feel free to comment on either selection here, as comments are disabled off the main page. Suggestions of poems or poets for next time are always welcome.

Two Poems by Wallace Stevens

Disillusionment of Ten O’Clock

The houses are haunted
By white night-gowns.
None are green,
Or purple with green rings,
Or green with yellow rings,
Or yellow with blue rings.
None of them are strange,
With socks of lace
And beaded ceintures.
People are not going
To dream of baboons and periwinkles.
Only, here and there, an old sailor,
Drunk and asleep in his boots,
Catches tigers
In red weather.

~by Wallace Stevens

The Snow Man

One must have a mind of winter
To regard the frost and the boughs
Of the pine-trees crusted with snow;

And have been cold a long time
To behold the junipers shagged with ice,
The spruces rough in the distant glitter

Of the January sun; and not to think
Of any misery in the sound of the wind,
In the sound of a few leaves,

Which is the sound of the land
Full of the same wind
That is blowing in the same bare place

For the listener, who listens in the snow,
And, nothing himself, beholds
Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is.

~by Wallace Stevens

Header image: Winter Coats, by Jose Clemente Orozco, Oil on canvas, 1932

Bottom image: Woodland Stream in a Winter Landscape, John Henry Twachtman, Oil on canvas

Both images courtesy of wikipaintings.org

Epona's Dream

2012-01-21T23:20:00.010-06:00

Epona’s Dream

In eons’ life my white-lashed eye has caught

consuming cross the goldgreen grasslands' wave

the endless star broomed dance of come and go;

generations of ravens laughed

as cactus centuries passed, yet

one short wishful glance, only once

a glimpse of you, the dark stallion in

a sunmist I’ve seen prancing, seen you stand

more than horse and less than man

fiery four legged totem, dolmen jawed

pounder of the white wolf’s skull.

Never have you come to graze

the pastures I have wished and wayed,

hooves flying to me under the sickle moon.

I dream you still as your high red eye

rolls white, sleepless on your

gravid seraglio.

Do you likewise dream of me, once only

glimpsed, the fleetly fading stippled stray

stranger, maverick mare whose mane unbound

that gold and silver ribboned sleet

stretched on prairie air with the tossing wheat;

do you ever think we might

outrun the wind that blows behind the stars,

feel again grey muzzles nudge up dawn,

hot blow of breath, trembling flank, equine

hammering heart be all our wealth

of soul, of singing, all of rest?

Or am I the one that wandered a step too far

in the moon of slipping tides

the one you fed just once in the hungry night

content to watch the shadows swallow back

the empty chalice of a symbol

when the wine’s poured out?

A dreary jog a weary winding fate

bound to go ahead of you and wait

for journeys end, the last low luminous gate.

January 2012

Posted for real toads

Prompt: Photography of Margaret Bednar

Process Notes: "In Gallo-Roman religion, Epona was a protector of horses, donkeys, and mules. She was particularly a goddess of fertility, as shown by her attributes of a patera, cornucopia, ears of grain and the presence of foals in some sculptures suggested that the goddess and her horses were leaders of the soul in the after-life ride..."~wikipedia

As usual, I have taken a few liberties with the mythic elements.

Image: photo by gracious permission of Margaret Bednar

Harmless

2012-01-21T13:31:00.003-06:00

Harmless

Harmless, she is, so they say.

She used to know her name

and write it too,

knew fruit from flame.

Useful she once was

in every way

now harmless is

the highest praise, they say.

The worry came when

she locked herself away

alone in a red-ribbed room one Saturday

all the better to parley and to play

with what had bordercrossed the air

hungry for her firefly flick'ring care.

The voice that was
its far fey self declared

within her voice, answered

its sudden, unoccluded prayer

with her mad laugh

her tousled hair;

but she's harmless,
even happy

so they say.

January 2012

Posted for Poetics at dVerse Poets Pub

where Claudia gives us the prompt today to write of crossing borders, and what we find there. Link in is live till midnight Sunday.

Image removed due to possible copyright issues.

White Widow

2012-01-20T09:51:00.002-06:00

White Widow

Light stained amber, carmine, jade

sapphire, citron and amethyst

in drifts and beams makes a searchlight prism

that gilds over faded faces framed in faith

with a radiance banked;

in the far corner banished by

the clerestory where she sits

in a phosphorescent white dress

with her black sin clutched tight

there is only blanked shadow

of no color

no color at all.

January 2012

Posted for Meeting the Bar:Imagism at dVerse Poet's pub

Process notes: Horribly hard prompt for me, (!) but I think this may come close. I'm not big on the Imagist movement, though it was an important one in that it began to free poetry to explore other more spontaneous forms of expression, and supported the emergence of vers libre. I've also been trying to work up a poem to go with that very odd moody painting by Hacker for a long time, so this serves a double purpose.

Image: The Girl in White, by Arthur Hacker, ca 1895

By Arthur Hacker [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

An Unfortunate Happening On The Stump

2012-01-19T18:00:00.003-06:00

I wrote this 55 last week, and what a perfect day to post it, with a Happy rewritten Ending, as former Republican presidential candidate Rick Perry at last surrenders to the inevitable and goes back to make life in Texas hell, instead of persisting in his bid to do so for the entire country.

An Unfortunate Happening On the Stump

I don’t know why
you came today
I only wish
you'd go away,

hair pouffed-up
in 'Statesman Grey;'
when your jaw moves
--instant replay.

Now it seems
my wish I'll get
you're finished, smoked
as a cigarette.

Your botoxed eyes
can't express dismay
but they weep--for the money
you just threw away.

January 2012

Biting Political Analysis for the G-Man

Image courtesy Pundit Kitchen, at I can has cheezburger?

Spelled Out

2012-01-19T00:30:00.005-06:00

Spelled Out

I finally noticed

when the trees fell and

the leaves were bare

when the sandstorm rained moss

when summer rode into January

on a seahorse

that you had put

a spell on me.

I think I saw you

slip flashpowder

in my cells and light it

with a whistle you blew

from the corner of serious and Canis Major

and when that howling is on me

when the spell is wound up

I’m deaf and leafdrunk;
I drop

like a marionette when the puppeteer

breaks for lunch, watch you

pull a string from my
soul laces and hang it

on your ley line

to dry in the stone wind.

I never asked

to be this
charmed

but now I find I can’t navigate without

my wheel tied down tight, so

I drive with eyes closed

drift to the side of a two lane night’s

brownout desert, and bump

myself still, afraid of the broken mirror
afraid to get out of the crazy car
and walk

the crooked ghost town of my life.

January 2012

Image: Carhenge, by cm195902 on flick'r
Shared under Creative Commons 2.0 Non-Commercial License

This Blog Is On Strike Against SOPA

2012-01-18T05:00:00.002-06:00

Stop SOPA/PIPA
In support of the protests against SOPA/PIPA,

Verse Escape will not be participating in either blogging or social media activities during the black-out period on January 18th.

This blog is joining wikipedia, reddit, and many others in "going black" to protest the enactment of alleged "anti-piracy" legislation censoring the Internet on behalf of large entertainment and broadcast companies, now on the legislative floor of the US Congress.

Here's a brief explanation of the two bills SOPA and PIPA by BBC News:

"Sopa and Pipa explained

The US bills are designed to block access to sites containing unauthorised copryight material.

Content owners and the US government would be given the power to request court orders to shut down sites associated with piracy.

Advertisers, payment processors and internet service providers would be forbidden from doing business with infringers based overseas.

Sopa also requires search engines to remove foreign infringing sites from their results, a provision absent in Pipa."

There are many things wrong with this, but possibly the worst is that the bills are so poorly written and conceived, they leave tremendous room for abuse.

If you'd like a full analysis of the issue, the BBC article continues here

Since this is a blackout, comments are disabled on this post to simulate the censorship process. Here is a link to a petition you can sign to protest to Congress:

Thanks for reading, and get ready for lots more of this, I'm afraid. The internet is the biggest single threat on the planet to those who want to control media, money and ultimately, people's minds. It needs to remain a force for intellectual, artistic and personal freedom, and that isn't going to happen without a fight.

Many thanks to Mark Kerstetter of The Bricoleur for providing links and inspiration, and Susan S, of Prufock's Dilemma for the text at the top of this post. Verse Escape returns to normal programming tomorrow.

Feeding The Plumed Serpent

2012-01-17T03:00:00.220-06:00

Feeding The Plumed Serpent

The day after our wedding with the moon

in the piercing sun of a blood drinking god

we rode back through dust on the rocking bus

shy dark children patting, taking my yellow hair

for lizard feathers. They turned off Madonna and

you sang their songs. They laughed your laugh

each one the child we'd never have.

We went back to the slum hotel and locked the door

while the drunks hurricaned up and down the halls;

we the same up and down the walls, the stairs, the

fretted sheets, up one belly and down the other

till we were drunk as they could never be

and saw the things no seer ever could say.

When your body moved on mine in neon glare

it was the black shadow and white light

of that pyramid of skulls and jaguar’s caves

where amaranthine sacrifice filled

death’s new toybox, blood for lubricant
easing the clockwork bones,

throats craned toward the copper knife,
your dark eyes swimming with night

carving into timeblurred petroglyphs
my life upon their lids, feathered cries
vapor murmured out in velvet visions,

spinning down down

into the solstice of light and dark.

In the cold morning we drank atole hot and sweet

with all the vanilla thickness of my flesh

against your whipcord bones a steam

rising remembered in each sip.

Your thin musician’s hands held the cup

in mimic of the circling of my breasts

stroked to purrs and sweat on the hard bed.

Oh, having me for breakfast was

the richest meal you ever bought

and paid for with
each drop of the god’s owned blood

until time came

to put the toys away.

January 2012

Note: This is a carnal companion piece to a much older poem of mine,

At Teotihuacan, posted here

Posted for OpenLinkNight at dVerse Poets Pub


Feathered serpent head at Teotihuacan via wikipedia

Atole is a thick drink made with milk and masa, flavored with sugar, vanilla or chocolate,cinnamon or other spices, usually served hot.

The Plumed, or Feathered Serpent is Quetzalcoatl, a deity whose first worship is seen at Teotihuacan, pictured above, in the first century BC or first century AD, later spreading across Mesoamerica. He is variously, a harvest god of fertility, a creation god, god of books and inventor of the calender, a wind god associated with the planet Venus, and the god of the Aztec priesthood who brought visions to shamans. There is archaeological evidence of human sacrifice at the Pyramid of the Moon and elsewhere at Teotihuacan as the top picture shows, but it should be noted that Mesoamerican culture believed the universe was sustained by a great ongoing sacrifice and that the highest form of repayment to the gods was human life.

Header Image: Detail of one of the burials found in the Pyramid of the Feathered Serpent in Teotihuacan,dated around 200 AD. by ~s shepherd (schizoform) on flick'r via wikimedia commons Footer Image: View along the Avenue of the Dead to the Pyramid of the Sun, taken from the Pyramid of the Moon,by Jackhynes via wikimedia commons (yes those tiny ant-like shapes are people--the pyramids are huge, but set in such a vast open area it's hard to tell the scale.)

Musical Interlude~Leonard Cohen

2012-01-16T10:59:00.003-06:00

This song, soon to be released on Cohen's new album, Old Ideas, has totally invaded my brain:

There's also an informal performance/soundcheck vid, with some nifty guitar work and rather drastically different in spots lyrics, from 2009:

Leonard Cohen, is 77, (born 21 September 1934) Canadian, and a longtime amazing and amazingly prolific singer-songwriter, and poet, among other things.It's typical of him to release this on the internet with no strings, no yawing copyright/piracy garbage--to me it's an example of that pure desire we all have to not just write something, but to have it be heard, and do its work.

Thank you, Mr. Cohen.

Tidal Island

2012-01-16T00:01:00.017-06:00

Tidal Island

an incantation

The causeway

teases covered

uncovered

shadows long
waiting

for the ebb
shadows abraded
falling away.

The mountainous

oceanfloor walks
forgotten
shadows
scatter the petals of

pink anemones

on the shore abandoned

shadows gut

the found fish.

Island not

an island
song
not a poem

broken bridge

a bridge

grey rock

in the wood

where no wood is,

sun center
circled

by shadows,
call the morning
through.

January 2012

It's Open Link Monday at real toads

Process Notes:
My attempt to write a piece with no personal pronouns & minimal punctuation.

Images are of St Michael's Mont (Cornish: Karrek Loes y'n Koes meaning "grey rock in the woods") a tidal island located off the Mount's Bay coast of Cornwall. When first settled, the island was part of a mainland woods and agrarian settlement, later inundated and cut off by the ocean. In various theories, it was a port for the prehistoric tin trade, or possibly the historical nugget behind the Arthurian kingdom of Lyonesse.

images courtesy wikimedia commons.

Pink sea anemone, via web brittanica

Mortality and the Little People

2012-01-14T18:58:00.007-06:00

Mortality and the Little People

When I die
open the gate;
no traps.
Let this clay burn
to the visible
nothing it already is.

Let the wind blow,

let the knowers know,
let me go.

Oh I’ll see
the dancing leprachaun no doubt,
with fire for a hat and death for a snout
His cheeks are red
his eyebrows shed
and he grins like a goat with
his oversized prong
come to roast me
toast me for a party favor
but I’m determined to give back
a rather off flavor.

After the gate opens, fire
has taken all it can.
Go home
and sleep alone.

Let the wind blow,
let the rain turn to snow
let me go.

January 2012

Posted for real toads

Image: photograph by Isadora Gruye
Used with permission

Tribes

2012-01-14T15:14:00.004-06:00

Tribes

The past is romantically rotted,

regularly rewritten

the vampire sucking at the future;

we know we can’t go back

and forth from the grave

yet still we cling to his blood clotted cloak

for that deathsmell high he sells,
the lie we can't live without.

We bathe in the black essence of a thousand

million compressed reptiles' tarred blood

fatten on the pretense a pigmentation

a language, a way of walking,

a perfume, a feather,

a red dress, a neighborhood,

incubates an alien immune to

thought or grief.

We eat the spiders of our tribes and

call them good beef, though it’s closer

to soylent green, suck out the phantom

succulence from the compliant citrus

of our senses, and always always

we worship a golden coined god

whose paper horns

nod and approve.

January 2012

Posted for Poetics at dVerse Poets Pub

Victoria is hosting at the pub today, and has given us the art of Columbian painter and sculptor Fernando Botero to work with. Come join us. Link in is live till midnight Sunday.

Images: El Conquistador, and Man Drinking Orange Juice, by Fernando Botero, have been removed due to possible copyright problems. They can be found through a google title search if you want to look at them.

Salamander

2012-01-13T18:34:00.008-06:00

Salamander

It’s easy to say

lick me as deeply as these flames cling

to what they devour

crawl on fire across the dry

husks of tenderness, rustle and spark
in my bed of shed skins

and watch me be consumed

but this is a country of cold

of ashes, where the green moon

looks down with basilisk eyes

to this polar waste where
nothing can burn

except the heart

skewered for the auto da fe,

up in vanity’s smoke

crackling and spitting its fat

into the roasting flames,

built to fuel a heat that mocks

the end of fire.

So bring your napalm skin

let me be the burning ballroom

where the salamanders dance

and I'll give you spark for spark

flame for flame

before the cold dawn

blows us out.

January 2012

Posted for real toads

Not much in common with my Tom Waits choice, except they're both about that whole love is the drug concept.

Process notes: In medieval and occult lore, the salamander was thought to belong to, if not actually be, the element of fire. From wikipedia:"Leonardo da Vinci wrote the following on the salamander: 'This has no digestive organs, and gets no food but from the fire, in which it constantly renews its scaly skin...' Later, Paracelsus suggested that the salamander was the elemental of fire..."

Footer Image: Pinup Model: Erika the Texas Timebomb(in 55 Thunderbird), by christopherallisonphotography.com, on flick'r
Shared under a Creative Commons 2.0 Non-Commercial License

Broken Cored

2012-01-12T18:00:00.005-06:00

Broken Cored

I think about that black

gas oven night;

how you talked me into it

the delirium, the smoke

and the insanity

how you changed me

from riches to rags

reluctant to retread

oblivious to obsessed

before you left.

One broken spoke

brings down the ferris wheel;

one rancid memory

spoils the whole barrel of

dreamapples.

January 2012

55 apple slices for the G-man

Exercise in Metaphor

2012-01-11T14:17:00.004-06:00

Exercise in Metaphor

Under the trashcan my rosemary lies, concealed to

endure bleeding hell in this intractable garden,

so far removed from your wild conception as a weed

for Aphrodite’s aromatic cloak, spun of the sky god’s seed,

living dew of that Attic sea from which the goddess rose

before Athens, white limbed and cold as fear.

You were her mantle of living warmth, austere.

You lived on sea spray and sun in the maritime dunes,

wild and free as the piping of Pan.

Your needles mimic tongues philosophers ran

standing where grey pillars capped words of gold

now debased and traded from your native land.

You eke out your life a commodity of man

in each fold of this foreign world that seeks your savor,

still giving your pale shy flowers to each rutting bee.

Here you’re made to stand against the burning lee

of American days, feet bound in clay unaccounted,

damped with calcareous tepid water shorn of salt.

When hard times come, I cage and darken you in a vault,

make you winter a cold that wracks your bluegreen bones.

Wind sucks them dry and bleeds you like a blade.

Still in death you give what’s asked from what you’ve made,

that undying and remembrance-laden scent

that releases mnemonic prisoners from their cells.

But all’s forgotten now of what your fragrance tells;

how once you were the herb of fussing alchemists

boiled to bouillon in precise alembic wells;

for sweet union men once begged those body-spells.

Your arms were crowns in countless lost endeavors.

Even crushed in death your juniper lingers.

Tonight the front freights down with frozen fingers.

Blue express of oblivion, dark wailing wind.

Across millenniums the sky god gives and takes.

I bind you in burlap, secure the shroud it makes,

cover you with a plastic catafalque

meant for the dregs and detritus I buy,

and your last freedom, daughter of the sky,

is to choose if it’s better to live like this or die.

January 2011

Posted for real toads

Kerry's Challenge is to write a poem in which flowers do not appear in a cliché'd way. I hope this one works. It was originally posted at One Stop Poetry, about this time last year, when I was struggling to keep a rosemary plant alive, and boggled at the state of our democracy (both things coming to us from Greece--yeah I know, a stretch.) Whether this metaphor is appropriate or not--who knows, but the plant in question died.

Image 1: West Front of the Parthenon, Edward Dodwell,

1821, Views from Greece.

Source: wikimedia commons.

Image 2: Rosemarinus officianalis

Source: wikimedia commons

Study in Indigo

2012-01-10T05:03:00.005-06:00

Study in Indigo

The death of a beautiful woman is unquestionably the most poetical topic in the world.
~Edgar Allan Poe

deep

indigo blue the lake

as her dress of sighs and sky

just the relic of wrinkled skirt

showing above the snow's white line

when he came walking down the beach

across the scrabbled sleet

to see her face beneath the lace thin

ice, the past with a

frozen scarf of present

over her snowblind eyes

deep indigo

blue

January 2012

Posted for OpenLinkNight at dVerse Poets Pub

Optional Musical Accompaniment

Image: Snow, by Julian Fałat, 1907, oil on canvas

Julian Fałat [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

Knotwork

2012-01-09T00:03:00.001-06:00

Knotwork

When the fever comes I always think

in strands and balls of ifs and whens

rolling, biting, weaving, choking;

I cut through them with a whimpered cry.

They're ligaments that severed, pain

and cripple, yet born of fever so are born to die.

Still love runs bright, there in the maze before me

self-contained and whole as wild things are

desired more than breath until she’s caught

to burn the lungs with all her embered stars;

but in this dream we’re infinitely more

than we could be in sanity before.

Dry as thirst’s bones, braiding sheets to chaos,

I speak sweet life all night in liquid tongues

dancing the map of flesh that only mimics

our minds’ soft burnished labyrinths unrolled,

roads and ways in rubric, ever knotted

bound inward in a winding beaten gold.

As journey’s end returns to sunset fire

so waves of dreams break on the beach we are.

There are ligaments that severed, pain

and cripple, born of fever, born to die

and some that twine forever and remain

the knots of lovers, twined as lovers lie.

January 2012

Header Image: detail of the Uppland Runestone (#U871) dating to the 12th century, originally located in Ölsta, a village in the county of Uppland in Sweden. Full image below.
By Mceder (Photo by Mceder at Skansen May 2005.) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons


The entire runestone.

Process notes: The knotwork on this runestone I found through a random image search is very similar to, or perhaps just reminds me of the visual images of a rather tortuous maze from the dream that seeded this poem. It was colorized for protection by the Swedish government in 1991.

Dead Man's Curve

2012-01-07T18:30:00.001-06:00

Dead Man's Curve

“ Live as if you were already dead”

~unsourced “Zen” saying, as quoted by poet Marvin Bell.

“You don’t come back/from Dead Man’s Curve…”

~20^th Century American Pop Song by Jan & Dean

The Dead Man as Poseur

The Dead Man is living as if he’d been alive, because he has it all backwards.

The Dead Man is primarily a pretentious but not harmless twit, prowling the internet, squinting at some tasty wisdom he thinks he can consume like a burrito.

He likes the way the monks' robes swish as they rake the rocks
in the sand gardens of sleeping neurons deep within an electric foreign tranquility, and thinks he must just totally must,

have that app.

He’s staring at his navel, and sighing over the Bodhi tree; a plastic green predecorated scotch pine in the window of the home warehouse store.

Of course, there’s no reason he couldn’t sit beneath the tree, but he worries about store security, and really, he just doesn’t have the time, even though he’s supposed to be Dead
for quite awhile.

His watch hasn’t stopped, on it tocks, so he’s still late. (If you’re pressed for time as a corpse, certainly you have no time to lose.)

But he can’t tell time very well anymore, what with the being so Dead and all.

If his eyelids hadn’t rotted,

if his eyeballs weren’t a crow’s canapé,

he still would look at everything and see nothing.

More about the Dead Man as Poseur

There is no more, except a Dead Man’s ego that stalks cyberfinity

and hides in the picture of a prettier girl smiling in her prom dress.

There is no more, except the Dead Man’s maw of ever gaping hunger

that dips ink brushed parchment into chocolate, and deep fries a butterfly on a stick under a maraschino cherry tree.

There is no more, except the Dead Man’s fear that the bottomless void

will suck the Dead brains right out of him and spit them into a peanut shell.

There is no more, because someone
buried the Dead Man alive.

December 2010

Posted for Poetics at dVerse Poets Pub

Sheila Moore is hosting this week, and her prompt is to write a poem using the poetic device of onomatopoeia.

Process Notes: Hi, all. I am enduring some kind of nasty crud that leaves me unfit for poetic composition, or sitting up for long, so I went looking for an existing poem for the prompt. Apparently I don't use onomatopoeia much in my writing, but I found a little bit of it here, in a poem originally written in response to a prompt at the now defunct Big Tent Poetry, to write a “Dead Man’s poem” a la Marvin Bell, who's made quite a thing of this form. There are four of his Dead Man Poems at the preceding poets.org link if you want to see what they're supposed to be like--I'm afraid I found the whole thing pretentious and went off the reservation in this satire of the genre.

~*~

Disclaimer: I cannot find any source in Zen Buddhist literature for the saying Mr. Bell has used to create his genre of Dead Man's Poetry. Internet searches on these keywords will return only Mr Bell as a source. While this does not detract in any way from the independent merit of his work, I would take the assumption that it has any real citable source in Zen tradition with a grain of salt. It seems more likely to me that this is a corruption of the famous quote attributed to Gandhi: "Live as if you will die tomorrow." But that's just me.

Totem

2012-01-06T03:00:00.003-06:00

Totem

Spirit eater

White waltzer

secret inside my skin

snailcurled in snowdrift

sleeping, black lips closed over

teeth big as carrots, dark poppy pod eyes

shut, REM flutter stilled

silent as the melting flake;

in dreams you

come to eat the gold yolk

from the half-egg moon called

winter’s sun.

Wake

when the hunter comes

lift up your chainsaw paws and

show your ivory yellow teeth

scrimshawed and snagged by

the obduracy of your kills;
shake
his bones from your throat
with a growl.

Ice orphan,
White diver

my only protection now.

All arctic summer you sidled closer

in your need, your frost breath

following me across another country.

All summer you harvested

the sleek black bodies

of grief, turning the ice

salty red with your patience;

only the fleetest fled unfurrowed,

melting a path to

that stonecold
immeasurable abyss.

When the dark time came

and there was
nowhere else, you wooed me

with garnets and alabaster freshcut from all
the sorrows' spawn you'd slain

for me.
So I gave you

sleep in the black heartcave

content to barter away all

of yesterday’s skins

for the talisman necklace

of your ebony claws.

January 2011

Posted for Fireblossom Friday at real toads

Header image: Post card. Bear totem on grave. Ketchikan, Alaska.

Source: US National Archives, series: Photographs of the Inhabitants of Metlakatla, British Columbia and Metlakatla, Alaska, compiled ca. 1856 - 1936
Public Domain via wikimedia commons

Rats

2012-01-05T18:00:00.005-06:00

Rats

I dreamed the big storm

finally came.

The crippled tree

came through the roof.

It wasn’t bad;

it let out all the rats,

scrambling up the

streaming branch to blow

in the screaming whirlwind.

All but the

tiniest heartheld

within

who raised his

demon’s white snout

for an eyeblink,

then went back

to chewing.

January 2011

55 rats plus one for the G-Man

Still Life in Early January

2012-01-04T23:02:00.002-06:00

Still Life in Early January

Your long dead face

stares from its dusty boundaries

companioning the fluid smile

of life beside it.

Seven candles guard the waypoints,

bridge the river floating

the boat of the dead

out of a heart shaped shadow

abandoned territory

so long deserted there are

no inhabitants left

even in the grave.

Above the china pine

tomorrow's postcard pinned high

calls the eye to

read it one more time.

January 2012

Posted for real toads prompt The Art of Assemblage

Assembled from a list of articles in the room I write in, framed family photos, candles, figurines and postcards.

Fireside Chat with the Devil

2012-01-03T04:30:00.028-06:00

Fireside Chat with the Devil

The bite of the wine

distant and astringent

ashes that insulate

under the tongue,

the bed of flames

a river of undulating fire

feeding on the rippled wood.

There’s a face in there, O

laughing heart, bright blue eyes orange lidded

sucking souls like the mad Eye of Sauron

outward up the inward fleche,

daring me to tango my intoxicated way

across that salient edge

between air and fuel.

There’s no out-staring

a log with a thousand eyes

bright sparks winking its entire

architecture up the chimney,

flying it ambitiously apart

to light the cold

blind stars.

January 2012

Posted for OpenLinkNight at dVerse Poet's Pub

A Love Song for Troubled Girls

2012-01-02T10:33:00.002-06:00

Got Them Cosmic Silver Blues Again, Mama

Coal Black and Silver Blue
went walking after midnight
Coal say,' Blue, baby,
Things they just ain't right.
We should be Queens
We should have limosines
We should own the machines
Why for all these clownshoes
be fuckin with dynamite?
We could blow this town open
our powder's so dry
but we can't get a light
never mind a piece of the pie.'
Blue say, 'Girl I so hear what you say.'
an she picked up her dobro and began to play:

Silver Blue's Love Song for Troubled Girls

Baby don' go
Don' go again please.
It makes me cry, and it makes me wheeze,
Makes me sing the blues when
I'm really mad as hell.
Baby please don' go, and I'll never tell.

Baby come back
Baby come back please.
I'll buy you a new hat and a dipped Tastee Freeze.
I'll dress you in red and
undress you in black.
I'll sing you that tune if you'll only come back

Baby go 'way,
Go away from me please.
Don't want your true lies, don't want your disease.
Your engine blew out,
you took my last dime
Baby go way and stay gone this time.

November 2011

With apologies to the immortal Coal Black

Header image: courtesy of The Steel Guitar Forum

Footer image: courtesy google image search

New Year's Rulin's

2012-01-01T10:18:00.000-06:00

New Year's Rulin's

by Woody Guthrie

These are Woody Guthrie's New Year's resolutions from 1942, via Brainpickings

Woody Guthrie's birthplace in Okemah, OK, 1979

I'm not much of a one for either blogging or making New Year's resolutions, but I came across this today, and it seems to epitomize why Woody Guthrie has always been seminal in my own life--why I moved to Oklahoma from Chicago, why I respect the working man and his sense of what's right over the philosopher and the professor, and why I love folk music.

Woody Guthrie had a hard hard life. He wrote two wonderful autobiographical books whose titles and themes express the essence of who he was, Bound for Glory, and Born to Win, a collection of writings, stories and poems, which he wrote prolifically until his health deteriorated. These titles express his boundless hope and optimism as well as his grit and determination in the face of adversity. He carried the hereditary disease of Huntington's Chorea, which leads to dementia and muscle dysfunction, he saw his sister burn to death when he was seven, his mother was confined to an insane asylum when he was 14, he lost children to fire, wives to divorce, jobs to politics, and his own ability to play the guitar through yet another fire injury. He never achieved the success, stability and recognition commensurate with his talents. Yet his writing and singing are full of hope and humor, and above all, compassion for the plight of others.

Guthrie is most well-known today for his thousands of songs, many based on traditional folk music, which he popularized and brought from obscurity, as well as the ones he wrote himself which are considered standards. So here are a few of his songs. And I don't think anyone can go too far wrong following that list of rulin's. Now I'm going to go 'wash teeth, if any.'

"As through this world I've wandered I've seen lots of funny men;

some will rob you with a sixgun, and some with a fountain pen..."

~Woody Guthrie

Images courtesy wikipedia

New Year's Sonnet

2011-12-31T14:25:00.002-06:00

New Year's Sonnet

Will New Year come to my garden with his sharp secateurs

to deadhead with zest all my brightest elflock flowers,

unfinished blooms of crimson damask, fleurs
du mal et bonheur alike, the columned hours

clipped carelessly, tossed in a loathesome braided trug

of blades, a compost forgotten in the dryrot heat?

Or bring a plague of wasps to buzz in my mug

so each sip is a sting to a thirst so long incomplete?

But I dream that he comes, his arms overladen with days

his pale star eyes sailing lucent in a white-sickled sky;

with a quirk and puff of dawn’s breath, her seducing ways

to raise the blood wine in the flute, a kiss without goodbyes

a song on the moon, a sigh you can’t conceal

that opens the flower, feeds and makes it real.

December 2011

Optional mellowness to start out the new year:

donovan--sunny goodge street

Posted for Poetics at dVerse Poets Pub

Mark Kerstetter is hosting Endings and Beginnings on this final day of 2011, and invites reflection and speculation on the changing of the year. Come join us, and Happiest of New Years to all reading.

Disclaimer: I'm horrible with sonnets, and though I've tried very hard here to make iambic pentameter work in this, it's a hard voice for me, and I may have improperly scanned or forced it, because I never hear it properly--apologies to all purists of the form.

Header image: Ridiculous Bird, by ~Neural Disarray on deviantArt
Shared under a Creative Commons 3.0 Non-Commercial License

Butterfly

2011-12-30T09:52:00.003-06:00

Butterfly

In out out in without disruption

warding the shell's inevitable corruption

in billowing sighs where the Master sits

the apprentice is peeking with eyes like slits

blind to a logic of infinite drops

in out out in till the raindance stops

each moment alone in a trance of calm

a butterfly netted in the silent palm

in now where his fingers play

out now already flying away

December 2011

Some nursery rhyme styled couplets for

Gay Cannon's FormForAll prompt at dVerse Poet's Pub

Chalkboard

2011-12-29T18:00:00.005-06:00

Chalkboard

A lesson in stars,

night's orderly arithmetic

chalked on darkness,

shines on the tired skin

that covers me

once blank, babysoft

then work calloused

life enscribed

roughened with sun

now sueded soft again

erased blank as night sky

where nothing's written except

the chalkmarked numbers

of old dreams

the blue moon is

tidily

brushing

away.

December 2011

An equation in 55 integers for Professor G-Man, to close out the last semester of 2011

The Dominance of Grey

2011-12-27T22:47:00.003-06:00

The Dominance of Grey

A villanelle

The grey veil she wore ate up all the years.
It licked at her grimaces, nibbled her smile.
It didn't pull off, only washed off with tears.

At night she’d spit into its fine woven fears,
proudly wear it next day to hide naked denial
that just like the veil ate the flesh off the years.

The veil grew a voice and it talked in her mirrors.
It held her more closely than husband or child.
It didn’t pull off and she needed more tears.

What once would dissolve it now reversed the sheer
wisps to dark masking stiffened with bile;
the grey veil she wore grew fat on the years

as she aged, a blown eggshell, flat eyes, lips and ears,
her features erased like an asphalted mile.
It didn’t pull off and she had no more tears.

No salt left to wash her old face back with tears.
No mind left to fight for her long-eaten smile.
The grey veil she wore ate up all the years
It didn’t pull off, only drank all the tears.

December 2011

Thanks to Karin Gustafson at ManicDDaily for getting my villanelle juices flowing. Also dedicated to every Mommie Dearest.Grey will eat you, you know.

Rán's Road

2011-12-27T04:24:00.008-06:00

"...With fearful might the sea surged

Methinks our stems the clouds cut,-

Rán's road to the moon soared upward..."

~The Prose Edda

Rán's Road

Back home

from nowhere

on the sundown road again

out beyond the ending

after the wildest wave,

a light floods

sunfallen scarlet in seastream.

Feeling stops, mind in

memory’s mooring

no longer finds netted

maritime eyes of pearl
rippling sundrops

chained shells of silver

to barnacle the heart.

Still, far inland

a spring wells

dripping from the split rock

a dribble, compared to that

vast redstained road flowing

from white Rán's mouth, yet

quenching, sweet not salt;

time stops the oarsmen,

the twin bladed hands

are still in the dark.

Alone becomes

a mooncell, it’s centromere

suspended, each joining
separating identical
chromotids, a whole

from division’s drilled duality

a sensate totality

light made from shadow.

When

the soul returns

from her long journey

impossible not to know her

under the silver hair

the shabby close

the smile unchanged

December 2011

"...The stormy breast rain-driven,

The wave with red stain running,

Out of white Rán's mouth..."

~Ibid.

Posted for OpenLinkNight at dVerse Poets Pub

Note: In Norse Mythology, Rán was a sea goddess.She was the wife of Ægir, a sea giant and god of the ocean, known also for hosting elaborate parties for the gods ~per wikipedia