Dreaming: The Snake Act

Dreaming: The Snake Act

It was a day in spring

or the fullness of summer

or a twilight in September

when you took the slug from the rose

and set it on my hand.

 I didn't know that slugs

could bite, but so it was.

While the wind played like pipes

you pulled the green end--so thick so pale--

of the suckering vine from its high dark place

 in the eaves, disappeared in leaves.

It fell for hours, in sweet hissing coils

 til you cracked it like a whip and it

flashed its rainbow fangs.

Then, you gave my snakeskin secrets

to your Kardashian-assed boss

with her eyes white as vodka;

'It's all over,' you said,

as I felt the sickly flush of

being taken for a fool

yet again.

So I took a bus to California

to work the arcades

with Manny and the Batgirl

but on Sundays

I always go down

by the old river graveyard

to water the parched pots

and feed the snakes,

because I still

remember

us.

~December 2015

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The Tuesday Platform

Images: Bullsnake wallpaper, via google image search

The Organic Kingdom, by Wojciek Siudmak. Fair use via wikiart.org

Paella and Pentagrams

Paella and Pentagrams

I'd had enough of your paella and pantomime

and bad wine

in a pretty box, enough of your

buttery tongue and salt pig's cheek,

your pinwheel eyes, your lame surprise.

You filled your moonsaucers far too full

with winks and soliloquies

dug from old grooves

so when light and dark danced,

they slopped over my shoes.

I knew I had almost no time left as I rattled off

the spell:

Fire dog, lap my face.

Fire warden, keep me safe.

Make the melting suit the burn.

Make the black book's pages turn

to the laugh at the end of the line.

Pour out the pentagram from my mind.

But I had forgotten you were what you were.

Now there's a bird in the ashes
who looks for a nest,
a thin woman holding
the one I love best.
There's another long day
without any rest,
another fire to burn up
the unconfessed.

~April 2013

Image: Illustration: The Knave of Hearts, by Maxfield Parrish, 1925
via wikipaintings.org. All copyright belongs to the copyright holders.

Century

Century

A hundred years ago

you came to undo my buttons

throw my calico skirt, my muslin shift

over the moon, unpeeled teal eyes

laid me down in piney night,
exhaled a smokering sigh to drift

around me, knotted with me tight

in deep green black.

I spit this centenary curse:

that we ever came back

to the skins we couldn't shed

on that cabin floor,

from murmuring boards so old

they glowed snake blue, luminous

as the windfall shapes we wore,

dropped apples of a  slanting 

summergone sun.

I walked like a freckled young lioness

before she learns her scarlet roar,

my mane of stars shook out on the jade inflow;

who could know I'd die there

under the gun

a hundred years ago?

~January 2013

Header: Cabin Under the Trees, Paul Gauguin, 1892

Public Domain, via wikipaintings.org

Footer: Jungle with Lion, Henri Rousseau, 1910

Public Domain, via wikipaintings.org

Never You

Never You

A glassfull of repent

a metamorphed eloquent shoe

shirt flannel-and-books' humus scent

but never you

never you, back to take me as I'm meant.

No anise seed kiss bent

by morning's honeysuckle light

from you, my closed room, my lament,

no welcome night,

drinking maté, taking blood sacrament,

corrupting the convent.

A ghost braiding our hands,the blue

notes of your lion taming breaths

but never you,

come back to dance a minuet with death.

~December 2012

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Sunday Mini-Challenge

Kerry has us working with a stanza form taken from Pre-Raphealite poet and painter Dante Gabriel Rossetti's work

 maté: ...a tealike South American beverage made from the dried leaves of an evergreen tree...~dictionary.com

I am not entirely happy with this effort, but am posting it for the prompt, primarily as one of those examples of compressing free verse to form, and how a poem changes and shifts in your hands. Here is the free verse original:

Never

An empty cup

one eloquent shoe

scent of flannel and books

but never you

again, no anise seed kiss

in  honeysuckle light

never you, my closed room,

drinking maté at night

pulling me up on a darkling look

to walk hollow dusk

wordless as wind

closer than breath

the braids of our hands

your lion tamer's voice

calling out the stations

of a backwoods cross,

your snake-handler's grace

in the bittersweet hymn

you gave me to dance, piped through

the panflute you made of my ribs,

never again

this side of the oven

where the bright fire

may or may not

burn as hot

as these embers

remembered of never

never again

you.

~November 2012

Image: Tristan and Isolde Drinking the Love Potion, by Dante Gabriel Rossetti, 1867
Public Domain via wikipaintings.org