The One-Legged Pilot

The One-Legged Pilot

When the trip begins the shore

is decorated with shipwrecked sunspots,

round mirrors of messaged bottles

I save from their cold blue exile,

and littered with rags of the rescued

I've replaced with nothing 

but the silken silver whisper

of my hair on salt-splotched skin.

The sirens call us, shrieking,

arabesque on their wayward rocks,

to sing us the torment of flesh,

of which there was never enough;
They curse

each plank we walk, and

even the death below

so nothing can really save us,

yet the peg-leg pilot 

steers us onward. The beach rears up at last; 

dry sand drinks our tears

while the sweet hormonal sea,
its tidal pulsing

the sirens' operatic hypnotic, even the grace

of salvage itself
abandons ships and sailors and

I am what washes up

alone on an arctic rim, hollow 

as a rind of frozen shell.

But the demon in the song is always full

and he is true still.

He's watched at the drydock of my bed

as decades rolled themselves up

like razor wire, tangled and untouchable

drawing blood at the slightest move.

He's seen the candle lit

and blown out
lit
and blown out
til the stump is smaller

and flatter

than even the look in your eyes.

A faithful sea-dog, my demon pilot

strong on a single leg, old but hot as pitch

his ivory teeth bigger, brighter--

a white flash in the liquid night

that only shows when he smiles.

~March 2016

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Weekend Challenge


Note: This poem has been edited since the reading



If you'd like to hear the poem clumsily read by the author, click below:

The Siren, and
Ulysses and the Sirens(Detail), by John William Waterhouse.

Public domain

Day In January

Day In January

This day

so cold, so grey, its icepoint knife,

its ashen-snowed walk-thru oblivion

where spirit steps freeze on fossil tar, raucous-

haunted by midnight crows, torn curtains of love

gone stiff in mid flutter ironed in sleet

that slants in through the windowed hole,

is a rose-colored palace, mottled red

by Mars, bleached clean by Venus

doored to the infinite city

quarried from stars,

growing up like an oak from

a foundation of rot

where what once lived ripens a

turned-under death for

another month to feed 

the secret green of possibility

with all its peculiar used atoms.

This day

where the ghost steps wander 

like a run-on sentence

under the widening moon,

the wolf moon, the hunger moon

made for the hunt.

~January 2016

Process note: wolf moon and hunger moon are Native American names for the month of January. Thanks to Josh Hart for the picture behind this poem.

Photo © Josh Hart, 2016 

All rights reserved.

The Sorceress

The Sorceress

You were more to me once

than the meal the moon-mad maenad makes,

more than the jewels burning cold on my breast

strung blue-banded on the skin of snakes,

when I laid you out there in the poppy field

in the shape of a star,

in the shape of a wheel

on which we could travel far.

I cared more for you then

than the hummingbird could

for its whip-wire tongue

that loves out in a flash the lily-juice,

than the dead hawk's hen in her nesting roost,
brooding unfed, for life in the shell

till it comes true
for that's her ward,

the yoke of the spell:

to love too much,

to love too well

so when the egg cracks

and the heart goes to hell,

she's grown wind in the feather

for the endless hunt, 

for the sky as brother.

~July 2015

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Challenge: Finding the Poetic Voice

Kerry O'Connor (Skylover, Skywriting) asks us to consider the true melody of one's poetic voice, of how, when, why one addresses the reader, the self, the other, in verse. Fascinating, and truly challenging, reaching for that, though I'm not sure how successfully, here. Thank you, Kerry.

Note: I am not at my best, healthwise atm, but will do my best to visit as I can.

Images: The Magic Circle, 1896, by John William Waterhouse
News, 1906, by Mikalojus Ciurlonis

Public domain via wikiart.org

The Whole Of The Moon

The Whole Of The Moon

In the whole of the moon

there was only one poem

last night. Her floured face was

matted with clouds. Nothing was bright

but your eyes

and her faint outline

a circle in amber solitude

chasing a night of saturated silver.

A matrix of stillborn memories glowed

with her, waxing and waning 

willfully as your smile when

you wore all the rings of Saturn,

caped the cloth of filmy nebulae

at your throat

with Orion's dagger brooch,

posed for a sideshow slot

in a world that thinks magic

comes in a plastic package

mechanical, chemical,

insoluble in water.

Meanwhile the murky moon looked down

as senescent she slivered away

and made herself young again

in your eyes.

~December 2013

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Open Link Monday

Image: Untitled, by Zdislav Beksinksi

May be protected by copyright. Posted under fair use guidelines

via wikipaintings.org

The Kitchen Mouse

The Kitchen Mouse

You're in my dreams like mice in a kitchen

when the cooking's over, the cook

is sleeping, the stove is cold.

You make a skitter under the fire-crackle,

shadow warm,

at a noise
gone.

I hear you eat through sacks

and wrappings, small brighteyes;

working your delicate bones

behind blue-painted plates,

alive in the crumbs, stark
on the stones, always

hungry.

Everything's spoiled in the morning

where your dirty feet have

danced, but there's no poison

here, no baited iron jaw. Live
and let live, I say, for
in my kitchen I will have
no death.

~September 2013

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Challenge: It's All About Place

The ever-sharp eye of the multi-talented Margaret Bednar saw some inspirational potential in a series of  exquisite historical miniature room exhibits at the Art Institute of Chicago, and  kindly brought back pictures for us(see link.) She has asked us to write about the kind of place they might be.

Process Note: No actual kitchens were infested in the research for this poem.

Photo by Margaret Bednar,  used with permission.
(To suit my theme, I have cropped and manipulated her original photo for the header here, so blame me not her for that.)