Fatal Charm

Fatal Charm

Untie the leaf and let it drop.

Shrivel each wing of the stuttering moth.

Shrink the sun, let loose the dark

to stripe the sky-beast's paneled heart

heavy with more than it can hold;

let the rain come hard and cold,

each death's-head drop a memoir told

of summer's wasting, long-winded decline.

Freeze the fruit and kill the vine

that can't be mine. 

~September 2016

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Weekend Challenge

Optional Musical Accompaniment

Image: Untitled, by Zdislav Beksinkski  Fair Use
Fall Fade   ©joyannjones 2014

The Fickle Selkie

 

The Fickle Selkie

You came in on the wave

you left on,

dripping sleek and strong 

your secrets wearied in the foam.

You opened wide

your kelp drift eyes 

so I could see 

timelessly

the sea you plowed so long

 without a harvest

richer than sing-song.

We waltzed the wrecks

on dead men's bones,

and of 

the everything we found
we carried
nothing home.

I should have known

you'd leave as quick

as sea fret wrack

without a sound.

You are

nothing to me now---

your joys or griefs,

your warmth that fades

in the windy days

of a landsman's chill,

nothing at all of sea or land

less than the

 fine dust that seeps a sand

between lid and eye

to stab each blink,

an almost-nothing soon gone
in the rub of tears.

You are

nothing to me now

nothing, 

nothing at all--

no scrimshaw kiss

no oceanic salt-lick--

only a bit of bric-

a-brac decor,

the mounted skull

beside the door

of some strayed herbivore

who met its end in heat and thirst,

bleached and white and empty-eyed,

ant-cleaned of all the tasty worst.

Outside the walls

I cannot hear

the wave that crashes on

 your name
circling spray 

in wraithlike wreaths

around my lambent chimney tor, 

the smoke of cedars
 upward taking blind

into nothing

the burn of the soft wet skin
you left behind.

~September, 2015 

"Selkies ...are mythological creatures found in Scottish, Irish, [Icelandic] and Faroese folklore... Selkies are said to live as seals in the sea but shed their skin to become human on land."

~wikipedia

Image: Näcken (The Water Sprite), 1882 by Ernst Josephson, public domain via wikimedia commons

The Politician

The Politician

When you were fresh-born

 in your hummingbird skin,

you fed on flowers, things

of a day, open and gone;

ruby jeweled in all your movements

but that was too small.

In your owl mask

mice were your meat

the scutter and squeak, the rip

and swallow, wide eyes like lamps

with that painted look of the wise

though an owl has a brain

smaller than a walnut.

When you got your spurs

a brash young cock

you learned to jump high, to flap,

stab deep, to hide blood

in exclamations of swirling feathers,

bawling out your bloodlust 

to the dulleyed thirsty crowd.

But you're always most yourself

in your seagull grey suit

that darkens dawn, 

living high on trash, soaring on

 void with your frantic kind,

screaming their circled rage,

a vomit on the waves.

~May 2014, revised June 2014

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Fireblossom Friday: Challenge: Guido Vedovato

The wandering, eclectic eye of Fireblossom (Shay's Word Garden) lights once again on a painter of the Naive Art school, this time the contemporary Italian artist, Guido Vedovato. His official website, full of his unique painting and sculpture, can be found here. The image I have used for this poem is protected by copyright with all rights reserved(as are all his works) therefor I will not reproduce it. It is called  Il Giorno E Il Notte and you can see it at this link.



Optional Musical Accompaniment

Photo: Seagulls At University Garbage Dump, 1954, Seattle Municipal Archives, 

via flick'r creative commons