Moment Of Doubt

Moment Of Doubt

“Life changes in the instant. The ordinary instant.” 

~Joan Didion

 

Blur is what we are/not

what brains breathe

too fast/slow on the pillow where

each eye-catch lingers,
vain cauliflowers
rolled behind what must

distort itself in
change after change.

Lance/lined hips

get stuck to the star lip

 moving pillar by pillar
to stairstep

a dead instant

down

to the atropine dream;

real to/day/yestermorrow, REAL we think/say

as cheeks/lashed wet that fall dustily

open 

are beacons

or only a dimming

of color

to shadow

what blinks us

on/off

one hundred years/tomorrow. 

 ~April 2015

posted  to     real toads

The Poetry in a Quote

where Susie Clevinger (Confessions of a Laundry Goddess) asks us to write to a quote by Joan Didion (I found this one on the internet and it seemed to go well with the modernist theme.)

and

National Poetry Month with Magaly Guerrero

Peoticizing The News...of 1913

Write a poem to a headline from 1913--

Mine(below) all concern the Armory Show, or International Exhibition of  Modern Art of 1913 in New York City, Chicago and Boston, where 'modern art' which we now tend to see as classic, was most controversially introduced by the Association of American Painters and Sculptors. 

I've tried to write in a complimentary sort of style to that time and occasion.

For more details on the Armory Show and the painters and sculptors who exhibited there

 see wikipedia

Top image: The sensation of the Armory Show, Nude Descending a Staircase, No. 2, by Marcel Duchamp. Fair use via wikiart,org

Newspaper images from 1913 concerning the Exhinbition, various sources, afaict, public domain

Numinous

Numinous

The white flower dreamed

and I dreamed with her

a dream unclouded

tight woven, teased out,

tied in intention;

a landscape of alabaster designed

by the dark fingers of sleep;

a dream made to trace

our own face, our place.

I don't remember how

or why or who we were

only that it was most

important 

that we be, that if only

 we moved together, she 

her numinous lumed petals and I

my levers and iron devices, all

all in the right order,

the whole yawing cosmos--

the gasp and sizzle

the drag and fly--

would shudder itself right

and we would have at last

the world that never was.

~March 2014

posted for      real toads

Interpretations with Margaret: Flowers

The gifted Margaret Bednar (ArtHappens365) asks us to examine both 'the hidden and obvious' inner world of our favorite flower, about what its meaning to us might be, and explore it in writing. I seem to be still somewhat lost in my Jungian mesh of dreams, but when I looked, I did find a flower or two.

The header is a photo of the plant I love most in my garden, the narcissus Thalia, 'the joyous, the flourishing,' named after the muse of comedy and idyllic poetry, daughter of Zeus and the goddess of memory, Mnemosyne. The lower photo is of our native jimsonweed, whose leaves are poisonous to livestock and whose seeds are hallucinogenic.

Header: Narcissus 'Thalia'

Footer: native wild datura (jimsonweed)

Photos copyright joyannjones 2012-2014

The Moment

The Moment

In the flying moment

a wisp of smoke

fast twisting and gone  

a book of lost patterns,

pages blown away

In the silent moment

the bartender pours a river

between opening

and closing time,

unheard by the crowd

In the changing moment

room for everything

time for almost

nothing  before

the door swings shut

In the turning moment

light perfects an angle

shows a  golden texture

hones reality to a turquoise dress

two cigars and a laugh.

In the perfect moment

there’s only time to

breathe it in and exhale it,

catch the random and be it,

in the moment.

January 2011

Posted for One Shoot Sunday at the inimitable OneStopPoetry

Photo by Mike Roemer