Made In Hell

 

 

 

Made In Hell

 

 

Her face was one-way glass

blank-innocent as a child's mirror,

her baby-blues welling soft,

winking not revealing

the opposite who watched

from the other side. She made her play

in a liar's crimson night where rain

greased the sidewalk smearing neon light

on the moon-hidden passage she shaded in her wait,

cigarette drooping smoke like San Francisco fog

above her golden gate.

 

His eyes matched her lipstick, hard as bathtub gin,

clear and extinguished as only eyes can be

that have seen the life go dead too many times,

suckered by patriotic chords that march

the rotting feet of war with tunes

suitable to aim your bullets by.

All that was over now 

or always here to stay; a grin

is only smoke 

curling in the shadow 

of a tipped fedora's brim.

The kiss was never meant to be a trap,

but it snapped her leg and crippled him for life

neither able to ever run again, tangled in

booze and the dicey bed spread with ice-cold aces

and eights. And when the children came

they never could make the change;

just learned they had to

pretend to be

someone else.

June 2023

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

posted for I Wake Up Screaming

Desperate Noir at desperate poets

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Images: Still from Secret Beyond The Door, 1947 Public Domain 

Manipulated photo dated 3-7-1949 from personal collection ©joyannjones

 

Fairy Tale

 

 

 Fairy Tale

Princess Moonzumi and Prince Heart-of-Ash

were betrothed as children through a looking glass.

She never knew him. He never saw her,

just a shadow that moved in the mirror's blur.

Prince Heart-of-Ash learned bard song and sword,

to jest with a blade and kill with a word.

Princess Moonzumi went out every day

to dance with the Sidhe where the dogwoggles play

 

down in the mud, up in the scud,

around the green tree that sheds no blood.

She knew every fae in the wild dark wood

and they taught her to fear the evil in good.

 

Princess Moonzumi and Prince Heart-of-Ash

were married in autumn when the east winds thrash

as the leaves fell like fire on earth's mirror-face,

and they loved each other for a year and a day.

 

Then Prince Heart-of-Ash took his sharp bright blade

down to the wood where the dogwoggles played.

The princess died like a mouse in the leaves

for a lie in the heart only ash could believe.

 

 

September 2022

posted for earthweal's

Ekphrasis Earth

 

 

 

and 

 

 

 

dVerse Poets'

Poetics: The Good and the Evil

Sidhe/SHē/noun, plural noun: Sidhe: the fairy people of Irish folklore, said to live beneath the hills and often identified as the remnant of the ancient Tuatha Dé Danann.

Note: I wrote the seed of this poem while running a fever a few weeks ago, but the prompts shaped it to final form. Apologies if I have stretched the boundaries a bit on what was requested.

 

 

Images: Mammal in Leaves, author unknown, courtesy of earthweal   Fair Use

They went hand in hand in the country that smells of appleblossoms and honey,  © Arthur Rackham, Irish Fairy Tales

 Fair Use

Snake Smoke

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Snake Smoke

 

 

An eye is a window,

a window an eye.

I can't tell you any more

so don't ask me.

 

A promise is a lie,

a lie is a promise;

curling smoke from my pipe,

a snake climbing air.

 

Chaos the white bride

for a bridegroom of money,

worst man holds the ring.

Priest eats the flower girl.

 

A promise is a lie,

a lie is a promise;

snake smoke from my pipe,

a garotte made of air.

 

A marriage is a funeral, 

a funeral a marriage.

I can't talk now

I'm late for the wedding.

September 2021

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

posted for Fireblossom

at The Sunday Muse

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Note: Yes, it's a cigar, not a pipe. Poetic license.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Images: Wind From The Sea, © Andrew Wyeth, 1947  Fair Use

Photo of Lakeith Stanfield, author unknown via internet Fair Use

 

 

Modern Times

Modern Times

Fighting for air

 droplets of mist

rich lipids of coagulated moonlight

wax smooth cheeks furrowed against the

assassin blank stare of the moon

in a night given over

to grief's predator jackboots

streaked marks on brainwork pavers

a night black as Lamia's eyes

when no good can be done no thing

left whole no ghost laid

no purpose served 

a night when

the dream will have its way

for nightmare devours down

to what it must have

 nothing left but to wait

weighting hours in wet clothes

for the drowning

man half rescued, blue lips still dripping

the clean chloride kisses

of commodious death.

~July 2015

Process note:" In ancient Greek mythology, Lamia ...was a beautiful queen of Libya who became a child-eating daemon..a mistress of the god Zeus, causing Zeus' jealous wife, Hera, to kill all of Lamia's children and transform her into a monster that hunts and devours the children of others...In later stories, Lamia was cursed with the inability to close her eyes [and]Zeus then gave her the ability to remove [them]. ...[some] versions state [this] ability...came with the gift of prophecy."~wikipedia

posted for     real toads

Weekend Challenge: The Poetry of Paul Celan 

Grace (everyday amazing) introduces us to the work of the 20th Century Romanian poet and translator, Paul Antschel (whose pen name was Celan.) For full details of his remarkable and harrowing biography, see her post at the link above. His poetry is, perhaps inescapably, quite dark--but brilliant. This is only a shadow of that, as our times seem sometimes only a confused shadow of his.

Images, both Untitled, by Zdislav Beksinski

Fair use via wikiart.org

The Fox And The Moon

The Fox And The Moon

A dream ballad 

The four-headed moon, the nine-tailed fox

came by last night and they didn't knock.

In at the doormouth, down through the flue;

what they had to tell me I can't tell you.

The fox was sleek as an August mare

that rolls off her back and outruns the bear,

but the blood on his lips ran Malbec red

and he ate the thing a mare's not fed.

Then the moon shook the wand with her shrunken heads

in the place where she had me four times trapped

with her eyes sewn shut, all her tongues cut out--

so I don't know why I still heard her laugh.

The four-headed moon, the nine-tailed fox

came to my house with the broken locks.
There was no running then, nowhere to wake;
there was only the wish that I wished too late.

~April 2014

posted for     real toads

Challenge: The Ballad Form
Kay Davies(An Unfitttie's Guide To Adventurous Travel) asks us to write a poem of at least two four-line stanzas in the ballad form. I am pretty sure this falls into the 'literary ballad' category, if it falls into *any* category, that is. The rhyme scheme is rather arbitrary, and includes traditional AABB, a stanza with only one rhyme, and chained rhyme, in no particular plan.

Process Notes:  I've written about the nine-tailed fox  before, in this terza rima. He or she is generally a demonic sort of shape-shifter-being in several Asian mythologies. The fox, or kitsune, in Japanese myth can kind of go either way, but when it is bad, it is very bad. The four-headed moon I made up, though I did hear something about a tetrad of lunar total eclipses this year, a rather unusual celestial line-up which we can go centuries without seeing. In fact, I just came in from looking at what some are calling the first 'blood moon.'

Top Image: Fox in the Reeds, cica 1930, by Ohara Koson
May be protected by copyright. Posted under fair use guidelines via wikipaintings.org
Footer: Untitled, by Zdislav Beksinski

May be protected by copyright. Posted under fair use guidelines via wikipaintings.org

Sleighride

Sleighride

When the night was dark as a burnt-down barn

and the young moon hung her sawblade overhead

we stood together lost in the ringing bell, letting the lies line up

like sleeping lemmings where the ocean kissed the cliff.

Under the mince of stars, in the salt-pillared  cathedral,

harsh darkness saw our fingers arch in a mockery of prayer

never real until the sacrificial smoke, the cinder-heart slowburning

at the altar of remorse, the drowning man's communion of vanity and shame.

From the manger where the newborn thing is safe to cry, the blessing

comes still bleeding as each flimflammed shoddy spear begins to break

in the lunatic captain's hand; on the last Nantucket sleigh ride

scarred whales may live to fight again, and killers die.

~October 2013

 

posted for       real toads

Fireblossom Friday: Redemption

Never one to shy from the larger elements at play in our world, the inimitable Fireblossom has chosen redemption as her challenge today. Specifically, she wants us to write about 'renewal and hope.' Not my strong suit, but I did my best.

Process Notes:  from Wiktionary.org: Nantucket sleigh ride: (idiomatic) An obsolete and dangerous method of whale hunting in which a small boat manned by rowers and a harpooner, or a series of small boats tied together, would be attached to a whale by means of a harpoon and would then be towed by the creature at high speed across the water's surface, until the whale eventually became exhausted [*or broke free.] *bracketed addition mine






Images: Top: An engraving from "The cruise of the Cachalot"
Footer: 1902 illustration for Herman Melville's Moby Dick via wikimedia commons