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 

 

Ballad Of The Earwig

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 Ballad Of The Earwig

(a 55)

 

He was the earwig come up through the drain,

she the rosebud ruined in rain,

 

she the actress losing her looks,

he, strutting hero of unreadable books;

 

they a brainstorm dying in rage,

they, two monkeys shaking a cage.

 

I am the pony who runs with the storm,

you, blue fire that burns without warmth. 

 

 

April 2025 

 

 

 

 

posted for Word Garden Word List

at Shay's Word Garden

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Images: Earwig, metal sculpture, artist unknown. via internet   Fair Use

Blue Fire Wallpaper, artist unknown, via internet,   Fair Use

Dancing With Crabs

 

Dancing with Crabs

Little crabling bastard

what makes you think
you matter

 

a million like you

hatched a day

for the chef to batter.

You chase what you can’t have;

you get what you won’t own,

a tin can for a hat

 

a scuttle down the sand

sideways slow alone

to lose what you never had.

 Little crabling baby

you know that you’re
half crazy

to want what women have

to love what makes you mad;

to dance, a hermit crab

 

in a white parade of swans.

Little baby crabling

ballet's not for crustaceans.

So borrow from the oyster

loneliness the pearl

that adorns any station.

Last Day of November 

2011, revised August 2023

posted for Lonely Town

at desperate poets

Header Photo: Black Eyed Hermit Crab by Dan Hershman on flick'r

Footer Photo:  Swan Lake by Bella Lago on flick'r

Both shared under Creative Commons 2.0 Generic License

Axe, Maul And Wedge

 

 

Axe, Maul And Wedge

 

When you first brought me to the farm, you taught me how to

turn wood into fire. 'To part firewood fiber from fiber, to

 make it small,' you'd say,'you think you need an axe. 

An axe is sharp and  showy; an axe has blade

and bite and swings like the

pendulum of god, but

 

 what you really need to split the wood is a wedge.'You

smiled your wisdom-imparting smile, 'after all a

wedge was the first machine.' Where the

axe falters, beaten, the maul with blow

 after blow pushes the wedge deep

between the weave of atoms

til wood breaks,

 

 forced away from itself, no longer looking like anything

that was once alive, dryads' home, birds' harbor,

just kindling meat. And then is the time for

the axe, flying abrupt and wild as

 a silver moon of cyclone through

 the dry strings of bark and

 heartwood.

 

And when it came time for the

 splitting of us, you might say

you were the maul, she

was the wedge and I

the gaudy axe

 

attacking the last

tough fragments

of what we

 were

 

to provide for

the next

 fire.

 

 

 

February 2022

 

 

posted for

The Sunday Muse

Images: Wedge, by user Shakespeare, public domain via wikimedai commons Fair Use

Photo of axe via Sunday Muse Fair Use

Sprite

Sprite

Once 

you were

close to me as flesh to bones

light to day

moon to dream

flies to honey.

Not really you, was it

that amber heart

glittered across my dark,

that voice, that breath

offering perplexing comfort

but just a sprite of you

ungrasped like a child's balloon

sent out to sail to

disappointing freedom--a popped prop,

bright red scraps, then dead-forgot

forever

yet here I stay

bud-eyes to the sky

immutable twisted root

hosting the symbiotic 

froth of fungi, the frozen nymphs,

underground and secretly

altering, 

or

flailing out a tendril, celebrating a twig,

rediscovering my wedding

of  worms, finalized at last

after a long engagement.

Old balloons still may sail 

on paper;

I stay here 

everspent but evergreen.

~April 2018

for Magaly's  Thirteen

the 13 words: 

flesh bones alter amber paper flies frozen breath voice comfort perplex memory rediscover

Image: The eye like a balloon sails to infinity, 1898, Odilon Redon      

Public Domain

Mole Run

Mole Run

Time has made me a mole.

A thrower of dirt, a rebreather

defined by my runs;

blinking in the occasional dazzle 

of that other world

then head back down in the blanketing dark,

swimming through earth with my

double thumbs, sniffing and

pushing with my starburst nose,

living on whatever I find

that thinks itself safe underground.

This poem is a tunnel,

a simple device through which

the wriggling earthworm falls,

 stunned and saved in my black pantry,

where I keep all the juiciest creatures

just for you.

~October 2016

Note: Moles have a special sort of hemoglobin which allows them to absorb more oxygen while above-ground and reuse it later. They have two thumbs per paw, and construct tunnels in order to 'trap,' devour and store wandering earthworms, which they paralyze with a toxin in their saliva. You can find out more about the lifestyle, physique and habits of moles here on wikipedia: 

Images: An Egyptian Poppy with a Water Mole, 1912, by John Crome; Public Domain via wikiart.
Star-nosed Mole (Condylura) by the US National Park Service; Public Domain via wikimedia

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