To The Ectoplasmic Man

To The Ectoplasmic Man

Corazón, 

I saw you rise up

exit the mouth as a stir

in the air, the silvergreen breath

of all things impossible to prove.

You were the fox with nine tails

the kindness of strangers

memory's ghost bible

there on the bison-culled prairie

washed by a ruined lake.

I kissed 

your hot mist,

iced smoke-ring lips

unbuttoned my flakjacket

in the bullet rain;

called it the thing

it could never be

in a season of snow blindness,

dancing the spiral skipstep

of time's vertical jump-rope.

I lost you in realtime

in the harsh, in the fail

in the acid dissolve of

day after day, of unwanted things

that come closer with each

unwinding push away.

I lost you to grey

real dark, real stone,

real blood pounding its tempo alone.

Yours, as always, J.

~June 2014

posted for     real toads

Friday Challenge: Lost Art

Herotomost(Mexican Radio) otherwise known as Corey Rowley, asks us to indulge in a spot of that lost art, letter-writing. This is one that never got in the mail.

 Image: Spirit of the Forest, 1890, Odilon Redon

Public domain 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

Tale Of The Nine-Tailed Fox

Tale of the Nine-Tailed Fox

Tale of the Nine-Tailed Fox

A Terza Rima

There is a fox, a kitsune cunning,

prowling the world I‘m dreaming unbound.

No hunter on earth can keep up with his running.

He hides and he smiles. He seldom is found.

His feet are soft sheathes for his adamant claws.

My fox has dark wisdom and tails that abound.

In the east he’s a seer on fleet spirit paws.

In the west he’s a trickster of convivial drifts.

In the snow he’s ice white until the world thaws.

Sometimes he’s a she, a vixen who shape shifts,      

who marries or buries her blind mortal spouse,

leaves a pup or a throat-bite and takes the man's gifts,

but always in dreams there’s a fox in my house.

Remote like all wild things from pity’s remorse,

my skin is his shelter, my heart his caught mouse.

My hounds all pursue him but can’t stay the course.

The red-coated Hunt fast becomes a wild rout

where dog falls on dog, and the fox beats the horse.

In his covert of flesh he hides safe from the clout,

then he grows a new tail and chews his way out.

December 2010

“...In European folklore, the figure of Reynard the Fox symbolizes trickery and deceit. Chinese folk tales tell of fox-spirits…that may have up to nine tails. In Japanese mythology the kitsune are fox-like spirits possessing magical abilities that increase with their age and wisdom. Foremost among these is the ability to assume human form…The more tails a kitsune has…the older, wiser, and more powerful it is. “  ~Wikipedia

Posted for OneShotWednesday at the inimitable One Stop Poetry

Image: Daji, ill-fated concubine of King Zhou of Shang, portrayed as a fox spirit, from the Hokusai Manga, courtesy wikimedia commons source link