Cactus Flower

Cactus Flower

Under that barnacle eye,

dawn and sunset are one light

in the union shop of the sky.

Sand is hazed into growing

blazing flowers, dusty fruit;

bright lame colors hopping

on a desiccated foot,

steamed cloud-melt to water

needle thorn and starry bloom;

but sand's a giver of glass

the sun's tribe breaks too soon.

~March 2013

55 grains of sand for   the g-man

posted for    real toads

Challenge: Out of Standard with Izy

(Chew Through Your Chains)

The incomparable and tortuously-minded Isadora Gruye asks us to envision the worst job we ever had, list three words that we associate with it, and write a poem that is nothing about work. (!!!)
 My three words were : union shop, hazing, and tribes.

Hover mouse for image attribution, or click on pic to go to photographer's flick'r creative commons page.

Pentas

 

 

Pentas

The harder the times,

the 

more

I stretched

and dried,

the 

more, 

the brighter

you grew.

You were the color

in landscape burnt umber,

I the drab hill-coined

sunflower wilder than fire,

origin unknown.

You were the wrought iron

sun, the shadow soft

traceries of midnight

candle against

 monsters

under the floor.

You filled nothing,

yet the emptiness

slipped away 

in your

 tumbleweed kiss.

 In the

 dryheat storm

you brought the rain

that carried inward 

to the bone.

 You were 

my five pointed star

symmetrical in chaos

flaring flame-blushed coronas 

of uncatchable peace

above the dark soil 

of the heart.

Now there's nothing

in bloom

but words that plump

in acid petals behind my eyes

and cerise memories

even drought 

can't burn down.

~July 2012

revised August, 2012

Process Notes: Pentas lanceolata, also known as Egyptian Star Flower, is a tough and durable bedding plant for climates with extreme heat, and blooms better and more profusely the hotter it gets. It is usually seen in a cherry red or lavender color, though there are pink, white and two toned cultivars also. It has a vivid, lush green leaf and clusters of star-shaped blooms which are attractive to butterflies and hummingbirds. I grow it every summer.

Posted for   Poetics   at dVerse Poets Pub

Stu MacPherson of Poems of Hate and Hope  hosts today and asks us to try to find the Beautiful Sadness. (His photos are better than mine, but not of flowers.)

Images of wild sunflower and Pentas lanceolata  © joyannjones

Sign of a Storm

Sign of a Storm

The flies are biting.

My grandmother always called that

sign of a storm.

In another town, reason yields her

lifeblood, torn in the mandibles
of locust men.

Pushed, fretted by the exhaust of south wind,

abandoned by north, mad forms

sweat and twist in a dance

for rain but only the dry thunder

of promises never meant to be kept

rumbles through the dark.

The golden cup is filled

ever more full, overflowing

while the deepest well runs dry.

I sit and wish for a charm

more potent than this clumsy

necromancy, a charm

for the living rain, lightning, change

banked in clouds’ vault,

no key in my hand while

on my cheek black air blusters and

rubs its stale breath,

quaking hot as a rat’s belly.

In the distance only a hermit darkness

pinches at the eye, packed inside a shell of night

from whose void the inmate has long fled.

Later the dog wakes me, her claws

furrowing the door, afraid

afraid to the core

of her simple soul

as the far away

thunder nears.

July 2011

Posted for  Poetics  at dVerse Poets Pub

Sheila Moore is hosting today, and her prompt is to write on the subject of water.

Anvil of the Sun

Anvil of the Sun

The land is an anvil made for the sun to beat

green grass, gold grains, and working heart to dust

when July brings out the hammer of its heat.

The fields are silent but for the combing feet

of locusts’ need. The dancing wheat is hushed.

The land sighs beneath each hot percussive beat.

All blistered day air flaps in a shimmering sheet.

The sun pounds dry the seed beneath the crust

when July brings out the hammer of its heat.

The weapon shop of drought becomes complete;

dead spears of reed, firebombs of grass combust.

The anvil's red and burns with every beat.

Black soil is dead and void as old concrete,           

wind arranges the dried flowers with each gust

when July brings out the hammer of its heat

The rain’s run beyond the place horizons meet.

Life does nothing that it wants, just what it must.

The land is an anvil made for the sun to beat

when July brings out the hammer of its heat

July 2011

Posted for   Magpie Tales  #72

A somber take on Van Gogh's sunny fields, but where I sit today we're well into a streak of triple digit heat and no rain, with 15 of 21 mostly dry days 100 degrees or over since June 14th.

Image: Wheatfield with Rising Sun, by Vincent Van Gogh

provided by Magpie Tales 

Dry Spell

Dry Spell

The drought is a dead mother, all silence and negation.

It breathes the void and makes inaction action.

It gathers up possibilities and reduces them by fraction

to a still cipher that sucks the multiples from creation.

The drought owns nothing but the dead empty and a name.

As green falters and begins to change its mind,

the bright is bleached out grey, limping down a stony wind.

The sky is stripped. There’s no giving left to find,

except the gift of wind not breath, just scorch, the whip of flame.

Serial and sere, Ceres surrenders, hushes and renders

her variegated voice silent that sought to sew the cloud

to earth in her soft singing seaming, terrestrial to celestial.

Instead the steel wind has dry lightning on its fenders;

it drives the wildfire down the highway, smoke impenetrable

and all the still or wavering things are burned up in that shroud.

As I’m burning through this empty coughing dream

of nothing where your song once sewed the seam.

April 2011

Image: Texas Wildfires, 2011, courtesy CNN video footage,   source link