Mask Of Aphrodite

 

 

 

 

 

Mask Of Aphrodite

 

"There is no cure for love other than marriage." 

~Irish proverb 

 

 

Love's an old wolf who howls when she pleases,

her black lips drawn back in mock of a grin.

She's made me her meat for chancers and losers,

to open the locks and let anyone in.

 

Her yellow teeth are blunted with winters

but her fevers burn hot as melted brass.

Her eyes are flat-white as Attic marble

rolling behind Aphrodite's mask.

Her promises drift like leaves in October.

Her vows of fidelity make the stones laugh.

There's never been one she ever was true to

except the ones who died too fast.

Since I was that child who was used as a woman

since I was that woman who thinks like a child

I've run with her pack. The crows find my dinner;

there's a price to pay for being born wild.

I never whore for playthings or money

but three times it saved my life.

I never lie for the sake of loving,

only to play at being a wife.

I never was called to be a drunkard,

but I've ever been every drunkard's best friend,

to drop the mask when I see it coming;

 

the black-lipped snarling

bitter end.

September 2023

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 posted for Illicit Encounters

at desperate poets

 

 

 

 

 

 

Images: Wolves, © Andrew Wyeth

Head of Aphrodite, via Brittanica

 

 

 

 

 

 

Après La Révolution

 

 

 

 

Après La Révolution

 

 

After the revolution we

became the aristos.

 

I fell in love with a

prince of the butterscotch castle

but I could never get past

the guillotine in his head, the wolf

hissing in his flock of noise,

the glitter-ship in his bottle

waiting each day to sail him away.

 

All the devils of summer

came to our parties, flashing

their ruby eyes in the dark, stealing

my stockings, hiding the postman,

eating the silverware. I made a centerpiece

from applecores, black horns and tail-spikes

and called it art diabolique.

 

When the winter night

finally flapped its starstained carpet

over the horizon, its patterns worn

and indistinct as we were, all

the stardust beaten out of us, I knew

we wouldn't make it to the end,

or even to France.

 

La révolution est morte.

Vive la révolution.

 

 

 

March 2022

 

 

 

 

 

posted for 

Shay's Word List #17

Joni Mitchell

Images: Study for the Spanish Dance, 1879, © John Singer Sargent  Fair Use

Charlotte Corday, 1860,  ©Paul-Jacques-Aimé Baudry   Fair Use

Pumpkins, Hornets and Dinosaurs

 

 

 

 

 

 

Our Trance

 

There he was, drunk as Baudelaire

and twice as fishy when

he unbuttoned the pearled rain from

my shoulders. I'd eaten stars

for dinner, so I didn't care

if it was a trance. 

That night

we were happy as pumpkins.

 

 

 

 

 

Archeology In The Dark

After millions of years, archeologists

found the dinosaurs

playing poker and spinning poems

in the tar. "We never knew we were lost,"

said the dinosaurs, "but thanks

anyway."

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Funeral At The Old House

The old house was full of hornets that morning.

Hornets cooked the breakfast( ham and eggs

and mealworms.) Hornets washed the dishes

and went out for funeral groceries.

Hornets paid the bills and mailed them

with the correct postage. They mean well

but they sting.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 Lucky

 

I keep wondering how

I got shut in with Frankenstein

and the old blind man

who ceaselessly 

lights candles while Frankenstein

smokes all his cigars.

Just lucky, I guess.

 

 

February 2022

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

posted for Shay's Word List #12

Richard Brautigan 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Bonus: My favorite poem by Brautigan:

 

 

 

 

" Lions are growing like yellow roses on the wind

and we turn gracefully in the medieval garden of their roaring blossoms.

Oh, I want to turn.

Oh, I am turning.

Oh, I have turned.

Thank you."

 

 

~from Rommel Drives Deeper Into Egypt, by Richard Brautigan 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Images:Pumpkinhead Self-Portrait, 1972, © Jamie Wyeth  Fair Use

Illustration of dinosaurs from the Late Cretaceous.© Jorge Gonzalez Fair Use

Vielles Maisons, 1920 © Helene Guinepied    Fair Use

Still from Bride of Frankenstein, 1935, Universal Pictures  Public Domain

Roses and Beetle, 1890, © Vincent Van Gogh   Public Domain   

Driving With The Incubus

 

 

 

 

Driving With The Incubus

(Incubus VIX) 

 

 

 

When I first saw you, neither man

nor woman, flesh nor fowl,

you'd brought round the car; a wisp

of sulfur fog hung from the grill.

It snaked up your shoe to your 

black and white smile

 

neither corrupt nor immaculate,

misting my face like tomorrow's shadow.

 

You held the sedan door wide;

I might have walked away but I was young,

and you were the best chauffeur

the devil could find, with

that changeling's face, the hellpit's flare,

 

black peacock eyes and velvet hands

for the gears. You put them

 

over my fog-wet lashes;

 through the holes

in your skin I saw pinpoint stars

as you smoothed the rucked sheets

of my cheek to finger 

the bed of skull so soon to be yours.

 

It was a black car without a brake

made to run the asphalt years

when the heart 

was a cindered highway,

each crossroads a Celtic knot

the devil my driver

til we stood at journey's end,

 

neither man nor woman

nor flesh most foul,

 

incorruptible corruption

tipping at the edge of the wailing abyss

where all I can see

are waning stars,

sulfur skin steaming fog, your

sharp teeth scarlet through

a feral smile.

June 2021

Posted for Fireblossom, at

The Sunday Muse 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Process Note: I've written many poems for the incubus over the years. He's always changing his face. You can find them by searching the blog or by clicking on the label "incubus" below.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Images: top via the Sunday Muse Fair Use

Bottom Untitled, © Zdislaw Beksinksi  Fair Use

 

 

 

The Brightening

The Brightening

In the brightening

before the crooked pinch on the wick,

the good were fragile~

 the best, blind bonfires

 soon scattered to ash

around which we danced

til wind and time,

hate or the authorities

blew them away

 

to give us  blood and stormlight, 

the blister of wildfires, 

firebombed ruins

 burning jungles and napalmed skin.

Blame us because

we had to burn;

but first

you

put out

one
flame.

~March 2017

This summer will be the 50 year anniversary of the summer of love, 1967. Photos show what else just happened to be going on back then.

For Kerry's Annotations

I have used photographic annotations, but also include some textual ones below.

Images of the 1960's courtesy of google, public domain: 

Two young women at a Viet Nam war protest; Robert F. Kennedy shortly after being fatally shot, lying on the pantry floor of the Ambassador Hotel in LA, heard asking, "Is everyone alright?";  Headlines in the NYT, April 4th 1968; Young woman dancing; Young men burning their draft cards; Students at U.C Berkeley demonstrating against Dow Chemical, manufacturer of napalm, used in Viet Nam to burn jungle areas, often resulting in high civilian casualties.

Some results of googling "how baby boomers destroyed everything' 

Including

A Generation of Sociopaths: How The Baby Boomers Betrayed America by Bruce Cannon Gibney

Alexander S Balkin at Salon:

We can thank baby boomer[s]... for a nation that has no sound policy on foreign affairs, the environment, energy, social welfare, human rights, terrorism, technology development, education, debt, etc.  

Bruce Cannon Gibney in the Boston Globe:

The body politic rests on the slab because boomers put it there, because decades of boomerism produced the problems and disaffection of which 2016 was merely the latest expression.  

Baby Boomers Ruined America at marketwatch:

".. Though these circumstances are new, making the argument that a generation -- particularly boomers -- are to blame for society’s ills is part of a storied tradition, said Jennifer Deal, the senior research scientist at the Center for Creative Leadership..."There are a lot of people who like to blame the baby boomers for stuff and this has been going on for as far as I can tell since the late 60s,” Deal said.

Gene Weingarten in the Washington Post

"Dear millennials:I’ve been reading articles about how we baby boomers suck. And how your generation is going to fix everything mine screwed up.If you Google “baby boomers are bad,” you get hundreds of hits, including these: “Baby boomers ruined America.” “ ‘Disgusting, Selfish, Immature’: 10 reasons baby boomers are the worst generation.” “Who destroyed the economy: The case against the baby boomers.” And my favorite, “Boomer scumbag.”
Most of these articles were written by millennials.Their argument, in general, is that boomers are responsible for all of the ills of the past 30 years, including unnecessary wars, political gridlock, economic recession followed by economic stagnation and, finally, that they are responsible for creating the toxic, miasmic ideological swamp out of which crawled the malevolence that is Donald Trump.."

Yeah, right.

The Beach

The Beach

Here in the dry constellations,

Orion winters in the blue west, the

Drinking Gourd spills silver on the void, and

the Seven Sisters crowd together, 

quilting the smothering night.

I miss the beach.

I miss the salt, I miss the sweet

curled wave that rolled the wind

in a gestured wand

of air and water,

joining two lurching things

ungainly in their solitary progress,

shelled and crabbed in solitude

into one smooth moving beast

hip to hip, stride for stride

tandemed untarnished

because you chose to throw

your arm around my neck

and let us spin

in the eddy, as the tide

ran out, till we were dizzy

and all the slipping stars

cleared the boards and moved

their heavy banquet

to our eyes.

~December 2016

Images: The Enchanted Beach with Three Fluid Graces, 1950 Salvidor Dali, Detail. Fair use

Elenita At The Beach, Asturia, 1903, by Joaquin Sorolla Public domain

Honey Is Sweeter Than Blood

Honey Is Sweeter Than Blood

O I know you loved me

like the tiger loves the goat

and that was why we went to sea

in a cask that didn't float.

That was why you talked to me

with jungle in your throat

and crooned so comprehensively

each note the wild things wrote--

but when we broke up in the foam

it was plain I was a bear,

and you--just a heavy honeycomb

I'd pulled from a tree of air.

~May 2016

 (Homage to Dali for title)

posted for     real toads



Weekend Challenge

Optional Musical Accompaniment

Study for Honey is Sweeter Than Blood, 1926, by Salvador Dali

Tiger in Love, 1979,  by Corneille(Cornelis Guillaume van Beverloo)

Fair use via wikiart.org