Glass Of Darkness

  

 

 

 

Glass Of Darkness

 

 

 

I see the tall glass of darkness

putting out a pot of cinders and ash

where too many cooks have spoiled

the serenade, sweet high song

of sun's guilt evening

to the kicking horse

that must be shot

before it can be free.

 

I sing along, blind in

this bare attic, but every note

that jumps in my throat

lies, dropping bloodless on the

broken map where cities blur

like stars whose cream light curdles

in a dead sky of greysmoke ghosts;

where nothing is ever free.

But I can't stop.

They say every skull will sing

if the wind blows

just right.

January 2025

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

posted for Word Garden Word List

at Shay's Word Garden

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Images:San Francisco, 1906 post-earthquake © The Atlantic, archives

The Penitent Magdelen ca 1640, Georges De La Tour     Public Domain

 

 

Objectivist Free Will Bootstrap Nightmare

 

Objectivist Free Will Bootstrap Nightmare

Last night I dreamed

Rand Paul walked up to me

as I sat working at my desk,

in his suit and wide red tie,

curly hair oiled

like a delicate machine.

He tipped up my chin, grasped it firmly

and planted a kiss on my lips

while I froze.

"My god," I whispered,

"I've kissed a libertarian."

and sunk my face in my palms.

A wave of shame consumed me,

as I sat deregulated,

more broken than an oil spill;

Mr. Paul smiled a small

bomb-thrower's smile,

and walked on to the next desk.

~ January 2015

slightly revised, July 2023

old jokes posted for the desperate satirists at

desperate poets

Images/memes via internet  Fair Use

The Hell War

 

 

 

 

 

The Hell War

 

 

Hades crowns the flight

of dirty falcons

with scarlet galaxies

spilled by hell's black tusk

 

above cities cracked,

 broken-backed

in that glittering metaverse

where truth wobbles itself

 

into lies, idiots become geniuses

and poets wolves,

their meat

the bleeding revolution.

In the shadows, all that's left

of softness

rocks the experimental child

who cannot cry.

March 2023 ~ a 55

 

 

 

posted for

Word Garden Word List

Images: Untitled (Hell Tower,)  © Zdzisław Beksiński  Fair Use

The Molars of Leviathan, © Wayne Douglas Barlowe  Fair Use

The Nag

 

 

 

 

The Nag

I try to smile at the morning,

even tho it shambles in

unsure of what to do with itself and 

wants advice. "You're all

the same, " I mutter.

Then you come the way you do,

pulling my hair.

"Look at me, look at me,"you say,

even tho you never see a thing 

except what isn't there.

"Do this, do that!" I pry

your centipede legs

off my neck, hundreds of them, each

one shoe'ed 

with crawling demand.

Talk to me," you insist,

adjusting 

your face in the mirror,

deaf as a blue-eyed white cat.

Explosions and tremors

 

make your bed. Rage

and misunderstanding

call you mother.

Peace will

never know you.

 

 

"I am the goat," I say

"who walks alone,"

and turn to ask

the morning

what I can do.

April 2022

posted for dVerse Poets

Open Link Night

Images: The Smiling Spider, 1891, © Odilon Redon   Public Domain

‘Soulmate’ © Księżycolica, via internet  Fair Use

Season's Whisper

 

 

 

Season's Whisper

(A Quadrille)

 

 

Birds falter

from the sky. Kapitans cry.

Bodies lie,

blind eyes on streets

rubbed down to bone.

 

Still

the season whispers.

 

Living wings fly,

buds swell like grief unbound.

The wilding wind 

knows nothing

of our long drown.

 

The season whispers.

Life is found.

 

 

April 2022 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

posted for dVerse Poets:

Quadrille

and 

for earthweals' weekly challenge:

Radical Hope

Note: "..Kapitan is a commissioned officer rank ..in..the NATO officers rank system..[adopted by Ukraine,]used to specify commanding officers of company-sized units..."~wikipedia

Images:Detail of Scene in Bucha, Ukraine, April 2, 2022 after Russian retreat, ©Reuters/Zohra Bemsemra, cropped to sepia,  Fair Use

Magnolia buds against March tree canopy, 2016, © joyannjones

 

Warfire

 

 

 

 

Warfire

In the killing fine fabric

of inflorescent flame

we walk, we burn,

dwindling from kindling

to bullet-bruised smut

alone in a dark

our dying lights up.

  

Murderers in red

boil a soup from the dead

in our hollowed heads

hidden hired thugs move,

their inhalation our blood,

their exhale the air

where the fire fed.

~May 2016

rewritten and reposted for DVerse Poets Pub

OLN March 2022

Image: Ukrainian State Border Guard Service site damaged by shelling in Kyiv region, Ukraine,  handout picture released February 24, 2022. (Press service of the Ukrainian State Border Guardvia Reuters)   Fair Use

On The Bright Turning Page

 

 

 

 

 

On The Bright Turning Page

 (A sonnet)

 

On the bright turning page of spring's uproar

when the ferry sailed from day to dreadful night

with one upon the deck, one left on shore,

an annotation jotted down in stricken twilight,

I heard the winter laugh like truculent swans,

as white lilies bobbed their lovely idiot heads;

I saw a volume could be made of broken bonds,

the long ballad of peace sent hungry to its bed.

 

The bear brings ash upon its ailing breath

when fire flies from frightened children's hands.

When two forces clash in a quarrel to the death

no stone, no garden wall or house can stand;

 

but awash in azure sky, flowers of the sun

grow wild beneath the smell of smoke and guns.

 

 

 

 

 March, 2022

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 posted  in solidarity with Ukraine

for Shay's Word List #15:

Edna St. Vincent Millay

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 Note: many of Millay's poems are sonnets, and she often used the first line as her title. I've borrowed that stylistic aspect here.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Images: Lilies, © Constantin Artachino     Fair Use

Sunflower, 1965 © Georgia O'Keefe           Fair Use

Starlorn

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 Starlorn

(a 55)

 

 

 

The black dog runs

on the wind that

reaps the world.

 

He bites starlorn

at the moon who knows

his teeth will find marrow.

 

Behind him comes

the scythe that cuts tomorrow

down to bone.

 

Moon must learn to bleed,

monkeys to eat snow,

man to live on tears

where the black dog runs.

 

December 2021

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

posted for Dverse Poets

The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Images: Moonrise, 1884, © Stanislaw Maslowski   Public Domain

Wolf-Dog, manipulated, 1976 © Jamie Wyeth  Public Domain