Black Apples

Black Apples

I was a daylight shadow,

a bride of drought

cast over the mounded world like

a prophecy of night,

living on dandelions and dead leaves

until you gave me,

sour and hard on the flat 

of your incubus palms,

a dozen black apples. Keep them,

you said, for a year. I only ask

that you throw the bones

far away from this dry country

from the death dance of wheat

the victory of locusts

the smoke of the Beast.

Disappear us too close

to the rifting abyss

where the wind's sullen heat

turns the Catherine wheel of change,

show me the hiss of

the scythe in the clouds,

the minarets folded in sand
whose pierced towers pour out

the last blood of solitude sung by
the owl. All our ghosts will join hands.

There's the crack of your laugh;

a ragged breath of earth

to bend and break the dead trees;

the witch-year's burnt up. You and the

drought have gone and I

sit tasting unmourned

the twelvefold sweetness of 

black apples of the storm.

March 2020 
This poem has been slightly revised since first posting.

posted for earthweal Open Link

and Shay's prompt at the Sunday Muse

Arkansas Black Apples

Catherine wheel:a firework that revolves on a pin, making a wheel of fire or sparks; pinwheel.

~dictionary.com

Images: Untitled photo, by Horst P Horst for Vogue Magazine, 1930   Public Domain

Arkansas Black Apples, ©sweetsandlife via Atlas Obscura   (see link)   Fair Use

Green Rose

Green Rose

A scarf of silk night,

green smell of stars;

I spilled

my  flourish of runes,

 flashing thru the tarnish of life

a quick pierce of joy

 from the scatterboned grave

that what was did exist;

that the heart did once grow 

a green rose in the stars,

fragrant and foolish 

before time lost its rhyme

January 2020

an anticipatory 55 for earthweal

OpenLink

The Friday 55 will be back on this blog the last Friday of every month, beginning January 31st.

Images: Emerald Green Rose © Jennie Marie Schell

Rune, wunjo, from the Elder Futhark, meaning joy. Artist Unknown. Fair Use

Friday 55 January 26, 2018

Despite a frazzled brain and an uncooperative Blogger dashboard, I have (hopefully) managed to get this Friday 55 up and running, so welcome! This little hidden backstreet of the internet is a place for practicing the writer's craft--in 55 words of prose or poetry, no more, no less--and sharing it in memory of a unique soul named Galen Hayes, who has since passed on to a larger horizon. So if you're in the mood to turn your thoughts on a lathe of 55 words, please link the result in the comments below and I will be by to contemplate it.

Please note that blogger is being difficult lately, and comments may take longer than usual to publish--if you can't get yours to come through the interweb hoses, email me at the link on my profile, which you can access from the sidebar, and I will see that it gets included.

My own 55 follows here...

 

Some Random Fancies

Memory's mirror steals tomorrow.

Thought gates in

 comfort or torture, hauled

in the wheeled heart's freight.

Hope's a midnight dancer with

masks removed at dawn. Fate

flies like a drunken raven;

jealousy poisons the lawn.

.

Lust has scars and flowers

for those who call it love;

death's an infinite kidnap

where no ransom is enough.

~January 2018

Image: Girl with Death Mask (She Plays Alone) 1938, © Frida Kahlo   Fair Use

Friday the 13th 55

Welcome to the Friday the 13th edition of the Friday 55, where 55 words of prose or poetry, no more--no less, will takes us on our individual journeys, each one as unique as the writer, and some no doubt, imbued with the spirit of the day and season, to some quite unhallowed spots. Or so I hope. All the rules remain the same: we do this in memory of the G-man, as a writing exercise for our own enjoyment, and for fun and friendship. There are no strings or commitments, and comment moderation is on to keep things real. As always, the prompt remains alive from Friday to Sunday.

So, in the Halloween spirit, let's begin...

The Mistake

We cursed the dark

but woke the cold plague wind,

cracked summer's crypted spell,

talked the pretty into hell.

 And the show begins.

Black cat's-paw on bleeding-stone;

two speakers in a field of bone

bite down a forgotten kiss.

Whispers from the too-full skull

tongue the pumpkin's cut-out hull,

but never the voice I miss.

~October 2017 

Image: Lies and Persuasion, and detail thereof,  ©Kris Kuksi, 2007 All rights reserved.

You can find more of Kris Kuksi's amazing work and his bio here at his website.

Hex

Hex

When night is black

and miles deep

packed around the sleeping sheep,

when stars hang, turning

on the gallows breeze,

past the witchwood, past the reavers

come the shadows, come the hexers.

When steel blade breaks,

when there is no hammer,

the weak must make do

with the flames of summer

to burn the curse in with red and yellow,

with living swords

with poison murmur.

There where the ivy

chokes the oak

old ones fall in the unraveling work

the young complete, for

cradle-cloth ends in a winding sheet.

Hands that bake bread

will dress the meat

and black night will come

neither swift nor slow

to lay kings low.

   

~April 2017

Images: The Sheepfold by Moonlight, 1856, Jean-Francois Millet, public domain

Photograph, via the internet, author and title unknown. Fair use.