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

Judas Hand

 

 

 

 

Judas Hand

( a 55)

 

March howls its broken promise

to erase the extra decades in your bones;

 

you're spent in bed still feeling

the burn that made the ash.

 

The ghostwind cuts

your lips with a dead man's kiss.

 

You forget hummingbirds are coming

like children cured by the sea

 

and wish you'd never bet

on that judas hand.

 

 

 

 

March 2025

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

posted for the Word Garden Word List 

at Shay's Word Garden

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Notes: a poker hand of black aces and eights with a card in the hole is called a dead man's hand, after the hand held by Wild Bill Hickok when he was shot in the back of the head in Deadwood, Dakota Territory 1876. It's also known as the judas hand. Alternatively, a judas hand can be three tens, representing the thirty pieces of silver Judas Iscariot received for betraying Jesus Christ.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Images: Landscape in Stormy Weather 1885 ©Vincent Van Gogh  Public Domain

Display in Deadwood, South Dakota with the dead man's hand (here given as A♠ A♣ 8♠ 8♣ 9♦) Vidor at English Wikipedia.Public Domain

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

 

Fairy Tale Of The Moth

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 Fairy Tale Of The Moth

(a 55)

 

 

 

In the Amazon there's a moth
who lives by drinking the night-tears
of sleeping birds.

By day she's folded asleep
in deep green chambers where purple frogs
sweat pearls of poison.

If she dreams, it's only by accident.
At dawn the birds fly up, eyes
open for song, tears given

without intent or knowledge
as I give mine, silver life
to the mouths of memories.

 

March, 2024

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Posted for WGWL at Shay's Word Garden

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Process Note: Gorgone macarea is the moth referred to here, one of several species of Lepidoptera who pratice lachryphagy for survival.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Image credits: Blue Morpho Butterfly, 1865 © Martin Johnson Heade 

Great Peacock Moth, 1889 © Vincent Van Gogh 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Countdown to the 55

Just a reminder,  as stated earlier this month, next Friday I will be reviving the Friday 55. The 55 is a form I learned of from a great-hearted and generous man named Galen Hayes, also known as the G-Man, who in the earlier days of the blogosphere posted a writing challenge every Friday: to link a poem, piece of prose, prose poetry, or anecdote on any subject expressed in 55 words, no more, no less. He welcomed all comers, and all forms, though his own posts were usually humorous asides accompanying photos. 

 

After he passed several years ago, he handed the torch
to The Imaginary Garden poetry site, now archived, where it was continued as an alternate prompt. Then I took it up for awhile, til my personal situation made it difficult to continue, and Kerry O'Connor held the fort. Now that things are calmer here, I hope to be able to host this challenge again. 

It will appear on the last Friday of each month, starting next Friday, January 31st, beginning at 12 midnight CST, and lasting through Sunday. I invite anyone and everyone to have a fling with it (in exactly 55 words, no more, no less.) The challenge is for writers, and the form can be prose, poetry, non-fiction or fiction.

Look forward to seeing you next Friday!

Watch This Space for the Return of the 55

Greetings, all. 

I would like to welcome you to the revival of the Friday tradition of the Flash Fiction 55, the first of which will take place January 31st. The challenge will post at Thursday midnight and be good thru Sunday, on the last Friday of every month. Your entry can be in any style or form, prose, fiction, non-fiction, and of course,poetry, so long as it consists of 55 words, and 55 only.

I had been hosting this challenge for awhile in honor of its originator, Galen Hayes and his form that never fails until my husband's illness accelerated and I became unable to do so. Kerry O'Connor generously took it up and continued it as a once a month prompt at the now archived Imaginary Garden with Real Toads. Since that forum is no longer available, and Kerry has indicated her approval, I hope to continue in that format now that my life has calmed a bit. 

For many of us who spent years regarding the Garden as our own favorite site for poetry, with its uniquely intelligent and multitudinous prompts and features, and its inhabitants as our cohorts in literary crime, its retirement leaves a bit of a blank spot. Other sites, new such as earthweal, and  old, like d'Verse will surely help to fill that spot, but it's a large hollow space, and it seems to me there is room for this challenge as well to keep us writing and to keep our community together. Plus, I am a huge fan of the 55, and often when I feel I can't write anything, it will prove me wrong by popping 55 words up for me. So here's to Galen, the 55, and all of you whom I hope will participate.

See you on the 31st.

The Haunt Collector

The Haunt Collector

A bit of a skull's snipped sonata,

notes hemorrhaged in saffron and gold,

starved ribs on a pumpkin piñata,
carved smile where the next loss unfolds;

in a basket, the wheel'd sigh of summer

broken down to a cracked clod of clay;

all these and more I've put in store,

dry wood for the auto-da-fe.

~October 2015 

posted for real toads

Flash 55 Plus

O Fortuna! indeed...

Image: Mischief Night, 1986, by Jamie Wyeth fair use via wikiart.org

Mulling The Sunrise

Mulling The Sunrise

When 

the sky's afield

in dandelion-dead stars

shot faded pink from

 a peony moon,

you petal-drop down

with your cardamom eyes.

Your 

reaper's scythe sighs

full of cut, rubbed like nutmeg

on the rasp of night,

spicing sunlight for day

each cider-stitch from was to is

stabbed gapped and rough

but strong,

strong enough.

~September 2015

 posted for    real toads

Flash 55

Image: A Study of Talliores, 1939, by Leon Dabo 

Fair use via wikiart.org