Worlds Apart

Worlds Apart

In the other world

I have a different shadow

a different myth.

Instead of ravens

skylarks sang my birth

instead of scream and curse,

drunk's wet palms

and hot rank breath,

a father's kiss

there when I awoke, I knew

walking on a world alive with night,

where dark was shot with rose

instead of blue and wind was light,

shining just as much

on me as you--I knew

somewhere this dislocated place

hid the answer of your missing face

unlike the dead moon maze

I stumble through

for if I'm someone else

then you are too;

what couldn't be

might be,

what's been said

was never said,

what's done

has not been done

and we are free.

~September 2014

posted for      real toads

Kerry's Wednesday Challenge: Dichotomy

The ever-inventive and verbally deft Kerry O"Connor(Skylover, Skywriting) asks us to consider the concept of dichotomy. I have tried to do that in this contrast of what is and what isn't, but might be.

Image: Night, 1905, by Mikalojus Ciulioni

Public domain via wikiart.org

Octaves Under A Full Moon

Octaves Under A Full Moon

The moon hadn't come past the chimney yet

slow sailing the night like a laden ship.

An unquiet woman worked to forget

the line of a leg, the rock of a hip;

no rind's so empty as that of regret,

no cup so full into which it can't slip.

She drank, she sipped green leaves and December,

tried to forget, or hoped to remember

till the moon came over the chimney at last

till wind combed her hair from front to back

till night had its way with today, with the past.

the stars snuffed out, the clouds gone black,

the white hot spotlight marked over the grass

its honey and lamp oil, fancy not fact,

dust storm desire runs ravenous red

not to blow out the fire but flare it instead.

~June 2014

posted very late, a short ottava rima for Kerry's  Sunday Form Challenge: Yeats' Octaves

 at    real toads

 Images: Moonlight, The Old House, 1906, by Childe Hassam
Landscape of Ruins and Fire, 1914, by Felix Vallotton
Public domain via wikiart.org

Un Bee Leafable

Un Bee Leafable

If

you were here

and we were young, if

time twitched and turned inside out,

but

bees

can't pollinate coral reefs,

you'll never be here

and we’re not

young.

October 2011

Posted for  Sunday Mini-Challenge at  Imaginary Gardens with Real Toads

This is my attempt at a mirror oddquain, described as : A two stanza form with syllable sequence 1-3-5-7-1    1-7-5-3-1 = 32 syllables, with some kind of opposition between the two parts.

And this is the poem before it was formed up, just for comparison:

Nonsense Song

If you were here

and we were young

If time would twitch

and turn inside out

If bees could pick pollen 

from coral reefs

If water were chocolate

and chocolate lovesongs

If birds sang Puccini upside down

If the night went on an extended cruise

and learned to samba, in red

ruffled dress and heels,

if bats could talk and tell how it was done, that

they left their mouseholes and learned to fly

then you’d be here my love,

and we’d be young.

September 2011

IF

IF

If I were not

not here, not me

not hungry, not cold not dismantled

defective, diminished not

a cipher in endless columns of living integers,

I wouldn’t need this blanket womb, this soul

dustcover, this tented mask that makes me

formless, this my solitary success 

to strip myself of

that self that can feel

at all,

that subtracts my presence

and keeps away

something some fear, some knowledge

some sign that those who won’t look

now can’t see

how much I need them

not to turn away their eyes.

November 2010

Written for One Shoot Sunday 11/14/10  at One Stop Poetry

 

Photo Credit