Moon Fluff

 

 

 

 

 

 

Moon Fluff

 

(a 55)

 

 I found the moon last night

thrown down in a puddle,

kissing with clouds, a peppermint undone

fished from your pocket-fluff, 

sticky

but still sugarsweet, 

still shiny

with its two-toned jewel-jazz glaze

like that one clean note you'd hit

in your sax-fiasco blues,

tasting of 

lemon and light and

 cold

December 

rain

in the night. 

 

 

 

December 2024

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

posted for Word Garden Word List

at Shay's Word Garden

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Images: The Moon, 1929, © Salvador Dali     Fair Use

 

Flambeau

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Flambeau

(a quadrille)

 

 

I don't want to write poems

fiddle while Rome's monde nouveau

becomes a flambeau.

They're a medicine-show elixir

a too-loose wrapping

on a fountaining vein.

 

But I have nothing else

as Arcadia burns

but this glittering salt

to seed rain

on a grassfire wind.

 

 

 July 2022

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

posted for earthweal's

Sacred Glimmers

 

 

 

and

 

 

 

dVerse Poets

Quadrille #156

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Arcadia is a region in Greece, historically designated as the home of the god Pan, and synonymous with an unspoiled, pastoral wilderness. (Many towns across the world have been named after this spot, usually--tho not intentionally--ironically. I live not far from Arcadia, Oklahoma, a self-conscious tourist trap on Route 66 near an eponymous manmade lake. So far, it has not burned down.)

 

 

 

Images: Torch, 2008, © Wu Guanzhong    Fair Use

Media photo of grassfire, Beaver County, Oklahoma 2022   via internet  Fair Use

 

Friday 55 September 29 2017

Welcome, fellow travelers, to this weekly journey of 55 verbal steps which can lead to any destination. Times seem only to get crazier and more disjointed around us, so perhaps walking this path through the wilderness with the muse can bring some comfort, or at least a means to express how we feel, or maybe just the knowledge we're not alone. The rules are simple--this is a writing prompt which asks you to put your thoughts in 55 words of poetry or prose, no more no less. Leave a link to the result in the comments section, and I will be by to see what has been born. The keynote here is having some no-strings fun, but of course you may be as serious or unserious as you like. (The history of the what and why behind this meme and the G-man who began it (and to whom I tip my inadequate witchy hat) can be found here.) As always, comment moderation is on to keep the  trolls and suchlike under their bridges.

So let's get the show on the road:

Amethyst Circle 

I remember your hands

building the rain that is wrapped in morning

soft as grey feathers

not yet reshaped with the chill

that changes its nature,

not yet hard white knives

that open the veins

of fall's leavings

to rime and shrivel,

but alive, wild and strong

as the pushing seed

that cracks the stone.

~September 2017

Postscript: The title says 'Friday" but of course the 55 always stays up through the weekend to accommodate anyone dropping by.

Images: Fairy Circle, 1895, by  Carlton Alfred Grant, Public domain  (Manipulated)

Silver Maple Seedling in Chimney Bricks, ©joyannjones 2013

Landfall

Landfall

(Harvey at Corpus Christi)

Launched from the center

of the sweaty swayback

of the dustbowl

driving to the sea

Texas is endless; brown, olive, bone

hills and beige flats,

griddle hot

a country of dead hours

of creosote bush and yucca

city sprawl, void and suburb eternal

before the silvered rim of Padre

shows hazy in the wave-trough,

a glint in the dead eye of

the Body of Christ.

How many times did we

drag the corpus of our

cross-nailed marriage over the plains,

one desert passing over another,

with what relief to leave that

four-wheeled cell

and feel a living air.

Then, bottle in hand, already lost,

you'd sit in your folding chair on a beach

 so bright and primeval all
such things, like us, were anachronisms.
The boy would run from the war

to the waves, freed and blazing delight

to slip into a salty blue singing that

drowned the sound of failure.

I'd walk up and down, in

and out of the surf, gripping shells'

nacred lifelines, finding a washing of watery
peace, transitory and recurrent

as the sky-swallowing

shadows of gulls cawking above.

I had no god then, and none

tonight,
yet I pray for that country

as the vast weeping Eye crawls across it 

with death and rage in its tears,
spilling blood or toy refineries

to soil and poison that white beach

where grace so waywardly hides 

giving her kiss to all flawed things.

~August 26, 2017

Optional Musical Accompaniment

 

Photos © joyannjones  Corpus, Gull Shadows, circa 1986

The Love Life of Water

The Love Life Of Water

The land's an old lover

of this water,

the bold blowsy flame who

blows into town
on the back of a riot.

The land's not really sure

he wants her back,

at least so much of her,

but after a wild night

he finds her seaweed hair

on his pillow anyway,

grey eyes bloodshot with lightning

 devouring his face,

her dirty dissolving fingers

exploring every fissure.

 Everything moveable here is hers,

and she will take it;

the land knows

all about that, because

she's been this way before

too many times.

The  last kiss is roughest, the overflow

 that leaves him drowned and gasping,

with the hard morning of living coming on,

while she smiles and makes a sound
like bells exploding

and moves her mirrors, her floods,

her funnels down the road.

~May 2015

It's been raining here for forty days and fifty nights--or so it seems. 
Listening to rain hit the walls as I write.









Optional Musical Accompaniment

Image credits: Frontyard flood, copyright joyannjones 2015
Street Flooding, Oklahoma City      courtesy KFOR News source
No copyright infringement intended

Night Scene

Night Scene

Night came and gave day

the color of water;

mothwing grey, contrarian light

reversing the mirror,

drowning sight

in sky fragments;

dropped ravens falling

or shadow's pollen.

Boughs smudged black

shake down clarity

 small as a pea, rarely seen

as  the pleasure

that comes without pain.

Night picks its soft measure

through blue rain

to me.

~May 2014

55 shadows of night for the ghost of the g-man and

 real toads

Weekend Mini-Challenge: Flash Fiction 55

The Imaginary Garden now hosts G-Man's former Friday 55 on the first weekend of every month. Yes, that would be this one. I'm stepping in for Mama Zen today as host, so please come join us with a 55 of your own.

Photo: Darkwood, copyright joyannjones, 2011-2014