Time and Mercy

Time and Mercy

Do you remember when

we sat pretending

to read, numb

in the merciful place

that had been made

as comfortable as possible;

coffee blooming, warm lamplight, soft seats

in an ersatz home, (torture cell

foyer to hell)

where looking past the glow,

grotesque swinging doors

muffled in rubber

buffered the place

where love breaks us,

where the bodies were

explained, numbered and named,

confusing sacks tubed and tangled

in the hopeful rape of machines.

Pain, gasping for air, amnesia of coma

walked up and down across the beds

while we watched helpless

those who came to help but

couldn’t care. The round clean clock

jumped at my face, a monocle

filtering, 

focusing the white waste

through its ticking lens. 

Do you remember? I'll

never forget, or how I thought

I saw us then the way

we really were

and was so wrong.

~September 2013

 posted for     dVerse Poets

Poetics: Try To Remember

Karin Gustafson (ManicDDaily) hosts today's session at the pub, and asks us to follow the winding trails of memory wherever they may lead, or where they get lost. This one took me somewhere I haven't thought about in quite awhile.

Image: Time Transfixed, 1938, by Rene Magritte

May be protected by copyright. All copyright belongs to the copyright holders

via wikipaintings. org

Incubus VIII

Untitled, by Zdzisław Beksiński

Incubus VIII
(Bloody Hell)

Hell is lonely without my demon--

my personal one, I mean, because

there's no shortage here of devils.

Basting on the liquid lava's lips,
I'm alone in brimstone sunscreen,

no ruby pitchfork's flip

when one side gets too burnt,

no serpent sapient tail to scale me,

just the brisk popping of my cookery.

I thought my demon knew there's no

vaccine for the maenad's bite, that

nothing says forever like damnation.

I was killing more than willing

to lie griddled on bloodred coals

and call it love; but I missed his

listening kiss in the hissing steam.

Hell is lonely, bloody
empty without my demon.

I thought this blistered blaze might hold
his blade-heart's forge, and a hammer pain to

twin us bright as living never did

yet after the first in-twisting, after

first blood spilled

he disappeared

and that is Hell for you.

~June 2013

posted for       dVerse Poets

Karin Gustafson (Manicddaily) challenges us today to deal with the great splitting gemini within us all, to write of twins, twining, combining or uncombining. Though I thought I'd finished with him, as I've written many little scribbles about my twin the Incubus, still he seems to linger somewhere at the back of Hell's waiting room.

  If you'd like to read the others in this series, you can find them  here.

Image: Untitled, by the great Polish surrealist Zdzisław Beksiński may be under copyright. All copyright belongs to the copyright holders.

Viking Spiritual

Viking Spiritual

There'll be a morning

to rise up and go,

when wings pink-plucked naked

are finally fledged,

when the wind shows her kindness

not too hard nor too little.
We'll ride on the back

of a valkyrie's song.

There'll be a noonday

forgiven  with flowers

over the battlefield

poppied with stone,

sunlight in a child's cup,

cedars swayed in a kiss,

voices raised in the shield song

for hearts killed in war.

There'll be an evening

written slant in our name.

We'll be its last murmur;

rose summer will glow

on a face now forgotten

and darkness will close

sweet as mead, deep as dream,

long as the serpent

that swallows the world.

~April 2013

posted for   dVerse Poets

Poetics: Trip the Poem Fantastic

Karin Gustafson(Manicddaily) asks us to take a trip without leaving the farm, or about leaving the farm, or having nothing to do with the farm, like this one.

Image: Valkyrie, by Stephen Sinding, Copenhagen
Public Domain by photographer, via wikimedia commons

Still Life Reviving

Naturaleza Muerta Resucitando, by Remedios Varo

Still Life Reviving

A moment

where pain fills then falls

from the heart's high point

draining out from

A flame

that destroys nothing

to build itself,

fluttering cloth in

A wind

circling buoyant,

that inflates without informing,

transports, supports, returns to

A flower

blooming without a pension

to pleasure a bee,

for a flame-juiced globe spitting

A seedspark 

that blows,

sailing match to wick,

no need to know why.

~December 2012

 Posted for    Poetics   at dVerse Poets Pub

Karin Gustafson hosts today and asks us to write to a holiday(or not)theme of presents/presence. This painting seems to me the embodiment of a presence unseen, life perhaps, as the title suggests. Remedios Varo(María de los Remedios Alicia Rodriga Varo y Uranga) was a Spanish-Mexican, para-surrealist painter and anarchist. She was born in Spain in 1908, died in Mexico City in 1963, making this one of her last paintings.

Image: Naturaleza Muerta Resucitando(Still Life Reviving) 

by Remedios Varo, 1963

All copyright belongs to the copyright holders.

Silence

Silence

Behind the closing door

under the shuttering eye

below the root cellar floor

at my back under night scarred sky

hooked at the end of the roar
after the last feelings die

beyond where the last breath blows--
it lives. It swallows. It owns.

~October 2012

Posted for   Poetics   at dVerse Poets Pub

Stu McPherson is hosting tonight, and asks us to write about a phobia or fear. I love quiet, but I am creeped by absolute silence. 

Optional Musical Accompaniment

(instrumental)

Image: The Isle of the Dead, by Arnold Böcklin

Public Domain, via wikipaintings.org