Cat's Eye

Cat's Eye

In the yellow light of the cat's eye

the night is coiled like a lamprey

winding dark flexes in a corkscrew pulse,

leaving its ripple trail faint on the surface,

incising electric heart's current below

where the crayfish and shiners

pushflip against water

in an agony to escape 

that shock-needled jaw.

Under the pressing black of the cat's paw

vision is blurred and thoughts slow.

The gasp of constriction expels in old voices

familiar but fading, soft as lavender budding,

sharp as yesterday's bones, a rictus

retelling the beads of regret,

a damned catechism 

mantra'd to nonsense

reprising till sunup.

In the amber swim of the cat's eye

sun's boat floats in prismed mirage play,

leaf and limb decoupage round the small world's rim

bowled with still water, green branch ears listening

to the cocking of the crossbow, rapt for the slap

of the next homing bolt, where one spider tree

bares her heartwood alone,

blind as the dead

in the fey catnip woods.

June 2012

 Posted for   real toads

Sunday Photo Challenge: The iPhone photos of Margaret Bednar

Images: © Margaret Bednar

taken from Margaret's photoblog, i and I

Used with permission

Face In The Storm

Face in the Storm

The lantern trees shone,

upturned goblets

of chartreuse shimmering

brimmed over with the pursuing

stormlight loping behind them,

closing fast.

Unremitting as a child witched wild, trolls

of thunder chewed rocks, slouched under

the great cloud bridges sending

sweeping white slash after slash

of electric clapperclaw flash skydown to

consummate their mountain splitting noise.

Then the wind fell upon the world

more ravenous than any March bear, hungry as

the spirit of war, and tore

the lace veil from the branches.

In the dismay of their naked disarray I saw

the face I most long to forget

laughing from too wet lips

light of my sorrow its liquid eye

so with a sigh I rose and closed

the curtains on the rain.

But all night long

I felt the stare.

May 2012

Image: Into the Clouds, by LLudo on flick'r

Photo taken June 13, 2008, Norman, Oklahoma

Shared under a Creative Commons License 

Gemini

IMAGE USED TO ILLUSTRATE THIS POEM REMOVED DUE TO EXCESSIVE SEARCH ENGINE(BOT)ACTIVITY. HUMANS WISHING TO SEE IT FOLLOW LINK BELOW.

Gemini

Antidote to evil is the peace in sleep

that comes when all hope of it is gone.

That resolution of night into light,

the bawdy eye of a grackle

in its ungainly dull body 

glittering

perpetuation.

Surrender to destruction

makes impermanence eternal.

Life many formed and changeful

mounts a fluid resistance,

saying the yes now that will later be no.

You like a burning under the moon,

freezing the sun,

a bonfire burned down

to banked coals of life,

translucent in the fitful frost of death.

Servant tool or instrument of neither,

only the twinned image of a dual contradiction.

September 1988,  
Revised  2010~2012

posted for   real toads

OpenLinkMonday

Had another repost up, but after seeing the Gemini theme at real toads, decided to go with this one in honor of all my Gemini cohorts there. 

Image: (c)  Dean Bertoncelj 

 All Rights Reserved

His Commercial Site

Night Thing

Night Thing 

I see that I’ve become a night thing now,

that even lust burns out, both song and vow.

When candles gutter down too many times,

when stuttering love has used up all her rhymes,

when darkness sucks out colors' hoarded breath;

then I the night thing learn the face of death.

I even put it on to try the fit;

so tight, so stiff, but I’ve grown used to it.

I take it off when daylight pales the sky

but find it needful under night’s ink eye.

Two dogs and I come haunt this vacant lawn

where two fires burned but one of them is gone.

The mouse cries shrill and then the barnowl hoots.

Age clicks the thirty eight before she shoots.

May 2012

Posted for   FormForAll   at dVerse Poets Pub

Samuel Peralta's Challenge: The Clarian Sonnet

The Clarian sonnet is named after 18th century English poet John Clare, and consists of seven rhymed couplets in iambic pentameter.

Image: Owl, by $holydevil on flick'r

I have cropped this photo which is shared under a Creative Commons Attribution Only License

You can see the unaltered original here.

Orion Rising

Orion Rising

Across the coliseum

celestial, Mars blinks his

red eye, battledancing

with the milky chimera.

I‘m caught in a glass twist,

shadow of river blue

fluorescing aquamarine 

afterglow  

where light once was

under a sky 

made before men

threw away

the gift of night.

No New York fortune

buys Orion rising,

tigertail dangling

my lifeline.

October 2011

(The discerning eye will note that this poem contains exactly 55 words,

and immediately realize it to be my entry for

Friday Flash 55 at the G-Man's.)

Photo: Orion, by Walkabout Wolf on flick'r

Incubus II

Incubus II

Tonight the incubus is in

a vile mood.
His pouts are puffs of sulphur
huffed on my walls,
leaving a yellow palled

skin of ill will;

his tail jerks and lashes.

He’ll do none of his tricks

with it, not even the one

with my feet.

He only wants to glare at me

until my eyes melt into runny gold

eggyolks, and carve his

black tattoo again 

upon my back

before he leaves me

to bring a sweeter torment

to another and teach her

one more word than I

in the 

vocabulary of ecstasy.

September 2011

Companion piece to Incubus

Incubus III, and  Incubus IV

Gypsy

Gypsy

I’m closing down the Muse Factory.

Blue collar Aphrodite

is on strike.

The college boys,

they’re all the same.

Walk on the wild side,

then walk away.

That 7:00 AM bell,

that assembly line,

that Monday morning hell,

just ain’t for you.

Sail on, my little honey bee, sail on,

but you wear that blue shirt long enough

the color gets into your skin.

It’s a recession, you know;

people are getting laid off, not laid.

Providing poetry porn for the masses
is a low end

low paid low down job.

I’d rather be a highwayman:

Stand and Deliver.

Identity theft,
poetry default swaps

have left me broke.

Cupid and Psyche best

get ready for

the Big D;

you can talk about it on Nancy Grace,

but I won't be tuning in

because we’re in for a double dip,

and I for one

am running away with

the gypsies.

August 2011

Fever Dream

 Fever Dream

So many nights I go to bed alone

still thinking what I dream is what is real,

your name a vesper on my lips of stone.

The past is just a rind that I have thrown

beneath the churn of time’s unknowing wheel

that grinds the nights here as I sleep alone.

I hear your voice, a whisper made of bone.

I feel ghost arms that shut like traps of steel,

and pray for respite with my lips of stone

to ears made deaf, from which all care has flown,

that heed no word of mine, that will not feel

the burden of these nights I sleep alone.

I send my mind to sail on the unknown,

where fever dreams float ships that dip and reel,

and every seasick night I sleep alone.

The journey that I make can’t end in home

when nothing seen nor felt is ever real.

Yet still each night I go to bed alone

your name a vesper on my lips of stone.

January 2011

 posted at OneStopPoetry, Monday Poetry Form, Villanelle

Image : Golden Galleon by Jacques Moitoret

Just a Thought

Just a Thought

Do you think when you

ignore me

that I cease to exist?

The joke’s on you.

Someday I will.

And you
will still be

wasting all that time

ignoring nothing.

January 2011

Image: Fractal, Cave of the West Witch, Joe Guerin, source link

Milkweed

Milkweed

Late at night awake, sometimes

I wish that with me here I still had you

to stare at the invisiblest rhymes.

I know my dear that if I told you

my mailbox was on some fine days

a folded gnome bent over, painted blue,

or that I saw a fuchsia bird ablaze

hanging beakside down you'd know it wasn't

from the wooden feeder’s trays,

or that music just mustn’t

want to play inside the half

where the bottle wasn’t,

I know you’d let me laugh

I know you’d understand

all these things, this riff and raff.

I know you’d tell me, ever bland

your soup was cubed and smile around

the thorny rose in your mouth’s hand.

You’d draw fishes flaunting pistols, dancing drowned

in salty spotlights, playing out piscine charades

you’d let me cry and let me laugh till I hit ground.

But you’re gone, my dear, in spades

all of you each particle and seed

your face, your cashmere voice, angora braids

your hands and heart and all controls

chestnut hair and snowy bones, afloat like milkweed,

blown in the great diaspora of souls.

Leaving me to let this screed

fly into the gnome’s mouth, freed.

December 2010

For Marsha Rae

Posted for One Shot Wednesday at the inimitable One Stop Poetry

This poem is written roughly in the terza rima form.

Photo of milkweed by Lisa Spangler  

under Creative Commons License 3.0 U.S.

Gemini

Gemini

Antidote to evil

is the peace in sleep that comes

when all hope of it is gone.

That resolution of night into light,

the bawdy eye of a grackle

in its ungainly dull body glittering

perpetuation.

The acquiescence to destruction

that makes impermanence eternal.

Life many formed and changeful

commands resistance, liquid and elemental,

saying the yes now that will later be no.

You like a burning under the moon,

freezing the sun,

a bonfire burned down

to the banked coals of life,

glowing with the fitful cool of death.

Servant tool or instrument of neither.

Only the twinned image of a dual contradiction.

September 1988, Revised November 2010

Posted for One Shot Wednesday at the inimitable One Stop Poetry

Image by Dean Bertoncelj 

 All Rights Reserved

His Commercial Site