Tiger In The Abstract

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 Tiger In The Abstract

 ( a 55)

 

 

"Forgiveness is the fragrance the violet sheds on the heel that has crushed it."

~unknown, attr Mark Twain

 

 

 

 

 

 

Tiger walks a crumbling flow

stippled with blood, scratching scree.

 

Wind is crying in the dead-branched tree

tears of a fatal innocence

while the lamp of moon burns low. 

 

Soft sharp paws in avalanches

are pacing out his pestilence;

rocks fall like raindrop lances

in fragrant inundations,

 

dry waves of murder-dances

upon the crushed carnations. 

 

 

 

July 2025

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 posted for Word Garden Word List

at Shay's Word Garden

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Images:Fifty Abstract Paintings..Three Lenins..Head Of Royal Bengal Tiger,  1963, © Salvador Dali Fair Use

Carnations, 1891, © Joaquin Sorolla  Fair Use 

 

Canned Tulips

 

 

 

 

 

 

Canned Tulips

 

 

 

There was deep night asleep behind your eyes

black as the moon's turned face that lives

cold and dead behind her shine

but still like her, you smiled the sky.

 

Our vices were soft clinging things

pink and innocent as a child's clean hands

petulantly pulling at the dolls of our virtues,

lead angels falling on their sparrow wings.

 

We drove to Texas for the secret stones

but we only found the hardrock end.

The Gulf rains erased our cartoon faces,

the sharks circled in and ate our bones.

 

When the ambulance came you stood alone

with no can-opener for all the tulips you'd canned,

peeled like an orange to your soft sweet core,

while I cried a pool in the sand's sucking bowl

 

for the sky to come down

in your smile and make us whole.

 April 2025

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

posted for Word Garden Word List

at Shay's Word Garden

 

 

and

 

 

D'Verse Poet's Pub

Opening Lines

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Images: Tulips in a Milk Carton, 1989 ©Paul Wonner   Fair Use

Sharks, ©Utagawa Kuniyoshi    Public Domain

 

Philosopher By Moonlight

 

 

 

 

 

 

Philosopher By Moonlight

(A quadrille)

Life is a crinkle in the matrix

lapping at my edges while

ghosts browse the tombstones

eating names. Night covers me

with her firefly illusion

and her singing moon.

At daybreak we fold

like painted fans 

of Shaolin warriors, all

landscapes

and paper-covered blades.

May 2022

posted for dVerse Poets

Quadrille #153

Process Note The Steel or Iron Fan: The Chinese have a saying regarding weapons, “The shorter it is – the more dangerous.  The more ordinary looking, the deadlier it is.”...The steel fan is ...easy to carry and is inconspicuous.  When the weather is warm, you can use the fan to cool yourself and chase the flies away.  When you are in danger, you can use the steel fan as an effective weapon for self-defense because the ribs are made of steel...The fan is considered an “internal” weapon, because it uses the “soft” to overcome the “hard” and the short to overcome the long...”

Images: Philospher Illuminated by the Light of the Moon and Setting Sun, 1939 © Salvador Dali 

Fair Use

Shaolin Iron Fan, artist unknown, via internet Fair Use

Flowers Of The Moon

 

 

 

Flowers Of The Moon

 

 

 

The moon rocked in its cradle

hunched down on its paws

reluctant to rise

 

while the sharpened stars stared

and ice fell like blades

on the night she was born.

 

She wanted flowers,

hands to hold, a round-

bellied pony with liquid eyes

 

but they gave her knives, so

she learned to juggle.

There was plenty of work.

 

 "Stand back." she said,

"I could put out your eye easy

as breathing. I could and I might." 

The moon crept up to

the crossroads.The stars fell asleep.

The knives rose and spun

 

whirled and glittered like

blue ice flying

til one by one they fell

 

from her scarred hands.

"I've no time for this trade," she said,

"where every mistake bleeds,

 

where every hit frightens.

The moon needs a gardener

for roses to grow."

 

March 2022

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 posted for

The Sunday Muse

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Images; Sunset at the North Pole, author unknown,     Fair Use

Girl Juggling Knives, unknown source via Sunday Muse,   Fair Use

Will O The Wisp

 

 

 

 

 

 

Will O The Wisp

 

 I walk tonight

and wish to be

the burn in a lantern;

I walk tonight

in the darkness.

In the darkness

with a black moon

on a path you can't see,

in the darkness

following me.

 

Following me: all

 the days and the years

in bright dresses

swallowing Orion,

coming to me.

Coming to me

with the twist of a moon

gone black in the sky,

coming to me with

wishes and bones.

 

Wishes and bones

are all I am,

and lantern's burn.

Wishes and bones and

fire in darkness.

 

 

 

 

 October 2021

 

 

 

 

 

posted for

The Sunday Muse

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Note: This isn't a form per se, tho it's something like second cousin once removed to a cascade. I just made it up.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Images: Deadlight, 2010 ©joyannjones 

Lantern photo via Sunday Muse   Fair Use

 

The Invisible Man

 

 

 

 

 

The Invisible Man

 

 

To know you is

to never know you, closed

in your dead moth coat,

last century's hat

and shades, mummy's face

empty when unwrapped as yesterday' cup,

all feeling spilled on ground that sucks it dry.

To know you is

to live life in the dark

to look but never

find, feeling forward,

reaching, slipping, hands

fumbling out to nothing as if I'm blind;

to know you is to know the mirror's lie.

October 2021

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 posted for Poetics

at dVerse Poets

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This poem is written in the duodora form. See above link for description.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Images: Claude Raines as The Invisible Man, 1933    Public Domain

 

 

Guillotine Moon

Guillotine Moon

The moon cuts constant

even as her yellow face

sizzles off electric wind to

 spade-black void,

digging

 the dark day's shadows.

No wandering

in mist or star's orison

takes me far from loss.

No color seems to belong

to empty steam.  The last rain

bent my back like a bow,

mocking the horns of

her pale cipher smile; the moon

knows me better than you.

Our  mirror solitude

overflows with light,

her cratered face

the teacher, her absence a gift

of sapphire night, the pill of

her roundness a febrifuge

for folly's cache of nightmare. In

 this moon-blade guillotine

no one sees, I have placed

the eyeless head

of all my desires.

May/August 2020

posted for earthweal's weekly

challenge, Strange Worlds

Images: Moon and Trees, artist unknown     Fair Use

Memory, 1938, © Rene Magritte               Fair Use

Homeless Warrior

 

Homeless Warrior

Born refugee in a gypsy's flight

to mismatch love for wherever I might be:

flowers in the pavement, lakes behind brick,

gnomes at a cotillion, cobalt sea spilling

in dunes at the sun's yellow forge

til my heart was rolled flat

to cut out round moons

with a steelsilver punch

so light passes through me

without shadow or reflection.

If tears fall, it's a petaldrop

of old flowers passing, of dust devils, gliding

unimpeded and small through

the moon-shaped holes

where the red warrior glow

of an eon's earth blood is

just a waver in that dark

where the sword falls to rust

and time takes the trowel

from the gardener's hand

whose broken her legs, her back and her heart.

The bowl wants its dust

the wind wants its wildfire

and what I might want is their last desire,

but the heat of the fight, the miles in the eye, 

the pilgrims of roses proclaim what they form--

warcries, or lovesongs still riding the storm.

February 2020

posted for earthweal's weekly challenge

Solastalgia

Images: Trafficking in Human Beings, 1894, by Joaquin Sorolla Public Doman

Joan of Arc kisses the sword of liberation, 1863, by Dante Garbriel Rossetti, Public Domain manipulated.

Nostalgia of Old Things

Nostalgia of Old Things

Old things like a pattern; blue

willow on china's bone, Celtic knot,

rune 

on moss-faced stone,

cross in the weave,

thunderbird in the beads.

Old things want

to fit a picture,

outrun the mirror, last forever

linger

in an eye's reflection, the

part that made it real.

Old things work

to make a picture, liver-spot

hands around the needle,

brush, pen, bead, hook,

the cursive book

of counted dreams.

Old things like a pattern

dog in his bed,

crow on the fence rail,

solsticing sun and feckless moon

flickering

timeless;

not the bed empty,

night rioting,

tea set shattered, not

the bloodsign on the door

where chaos has knocked

as the end.

~February 2019

Images via internet, no copyright infringement intended