Today

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Today

(a 55)

 

 

Today is an old day,

leaking

the passed night's rain,

 

almost with its dawn already

yesterday,

faded replicant of another supplicant.

 

I'd throw it away, used-up as

a broken comb, a flared match

fired once to light something gone,

 

except

the birds

greet it with such celebration

 

singing

their soft explosions

above the autumn seeds. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 September 2025

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 Images: Girl Combing Her Hair, 1892 © Edfward Munch   Fair Use

Three Tree Sparrows In A Rain Shower  © Ohara Kosun    Public Domain 

The Sway

 

 

 

 

 

The Sway

(A Love Poem}

 

 

So many years I dripped

your jade-clear love, my absinthe on

a melting sugar dream.

I knew the greenest green

that thrives above the ossuary

sprouting summer flowers made from bone.

Grey birds, their long legs trailing,

flew above the estuary. Water blue as

babies' eyes threw back the light of day

like knives to blind us as we rode upon the Sway.

 

You were born

to sit a wild-eyed horse in panic run

through the rainwater of a subsumed road,

to write the outlines of what never was

across the broken tips of Time's last rhyme,

to pick me like a lily in the dawn

then pass my velvet shadow to the moon,

gone like summer light that winks away

when caught in flagrant congress with the day,

like laughter floating out into the Sway.

 

So rock, sweet night, again tonight

as you have rocked so many times before

across the green expanse of yesterday.

You have a keener eye than bird of prey,

more melody beneath the fallen sun,

more teeth than any soft umbraculum

who tears the coral's painted skin away

and sucks its sweetness from the drying gore.

Rock before I wake and lose the way

just before I follow Love into the Sway.

 

 

 

 

May 2025

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

posted for Word Garden Word List

at Shay's Word Garden

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Notes: Umbraculum umbraculum, common name the umbrella slug, is a species of large sea snail or limpet, a marine gastropod mollusc ...found in tropical to warm temperate parts of the Indo-Pacific and Atlantic Oceans, where it feeds on sponges...It has roughly 10,000 teeth in its mouth at any one time and will go through approximately 750,000 teeth during its lifetime of up to ten years..."~wikipedia  (I have used my recently renewed poetic license to substitute coral for sponges.)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Images: The Green Fairy, artist unknown, via internet     Fair Use

Blue and Green Music, 1921 ©Georgia O'Keeffe        Public Domain

 

 

 

 

Maleficium

 

 

 

 

 Maleficium

 

 

 

 

By dark lantern, by crimson candle, in

an absence floating in wine without bread,

the Necromancer toasts in mandrake hopes

the golden miracles of his dead.

 

His chamber is fumed with dubious pasts, an

offering's smoke where the last choke occurred.

His breath has gone dry as his corpse-woman's eye,

ceremonially opened with a theurgic word.

 

But that eggshell gaze is blind as stone, her

songs of the oriole fluttered away.

The nods of owls and mnemonic howls

work a brittle sequence no cello can play.

 

The final shriek puts grit in the lens, so

it never divines what time's drown erased.

The owl and the oriole dice for his soul;

every spirit that rises wears his own face.

 

In my dream you've left fetches and dust behind.

You stand by the door of a bridge's arc,

the wild blue river in flight from your quiver,

your shades all spent arrows that killed their marks.

 

 

 

 

February 2025

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Necromancy: "..the practice of magic involving communication with the dead by summoning their spirits as apparitions or visions for the purpose of divination.." ~wikipedia

Maleficium: "the practice of malevolent magic, derived from casting lots as a means of divining the future in the ancient Mediterranean world"~wikipedia

Theurgy:".. the ritual practices associated with the invocation or evocation of the presence of one or more deities..."~wikipedia

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 posted for Word Garden Word List

at Shay's Word Garden

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Images: The Necrophile. 1965, ©Jean Benoit        Public Domain

The Blind Man of Toledo, 1906, ©Joaquin Sorolla       Public Domain

 

 

 

Mahakali's Kiss

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Mahakali's Kiss

 

 

I'm told it rained on the day she was born,

a January Sunday on streets of snow

that melted away like the life she wore,

like time's black kiss, like a riot of crows.

She makes each thing with a blind innocence

that starts a smolder in a long-dry field

just to leave an ash that cannot rest

til love itself belongs to the dead.

So fill your mouths with her acid, boys,

that seems to taste as sweet as mead.

Fill your arms with her empty husk

whose midnight touch will make you bleed

and when lips rot and skin weeps red

remember her smile and the charm she said

to reap your heart in her willow bed

where she dies of cold as soon as she's fed.

 

 

 

December 2024

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Posted for the Word Garden Word List 

at Shay's Word Garden

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Process notes:  Mahakali means 'Great Kali,' and is the honorific title of the Hindu goddess of Time, Death and Liberation, Kali, whose name translates as "she who is black" or "she who is the ruler of time." wikipedia: "Mahakali, in Sanskrit, is etymologically the feminized variant of Mahakala or Great Time (which is interpreted also as Death). Mahakali...serves as the agent who allows the cosmic order to be restored.." 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Image: Goddess Mahakali, Delhi Museum via wikipedia   Public Domain

Sabbat

 

 

 

 

 

 

Sabbat

 

 

 

I saw the moon in the devil's eye

when October rode in on her horse of bone.

The night began to weave the sky

dark and darker, cold and high,

in deep black strands from a witch's comb.

The heart of a bird pierced on a knife

hides a ferric flute and a rusted ladle.

Her blue feathers dropping, her downy white,

leave her butterfly bones to the freeze in the night

while the moon shines bright in the devil's cradle.

Nine shadows come and then three more

to swing five times round the balefire's flare.

The wind robs the roof and opens the door,

puts a wet salt skin on the bedroom floor,

slips on a sorrow too old for despair.

Wash him with blood and dry him with silver.

Float him away on a lye-thick river.

Cross his red forehead with your gnostic brand

but the moon still shines from the devil's hand.

 

 

~October 2024

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

posted for Word Garden Word List at

Shay's Word Garden 

where she asks us for a bit of rhyme this week

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Images: Walpurgisnacht,© 1923 by Heinrich Kley  Public Domain

Skullshot © joyannjones

 

Fairy Tale Of The Moth

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 Fairy Tale Of The Moth

(a 55)

 

 

 

In the Amazon there's a moth
who lives by drinking the night-tears
of sleeping birds.

By day she's folded asleep
in deep green chambers where purple frogs
sweat pearls of poison.

If she dreams, it's only by accident.
At dawn the birds fly up, eyes
open for song, tears given

without intent or knowledge
as I give mine, silver life
to the mouths of memories.

 

March, 2024

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Posted for WGWL at Shay's Word Garden

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Process Note: Gorgone macarea is the moth referred to here, one of several species of Lepidoptera who pratice lachryphagy for survival.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Image credits: Blue Morpho Butterfly, 1865 © Martin Johnson Heade 

Great Peacock Moth, 1889 © Vincent Van Gogh 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Earthbound Fish

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Earthbound Fish

 

 

It wants to fly

it does

or at least swim

but melancholy never made 

a path to waves or sky

any more than 

Escher's tessellations made

a living

school of fish. They only made

wallpaper

or a fish-dance of replicated cells

that might be somehow the

mute components

of a self-eating brain.

 

It needs wings

that want to be brushes,

that will refresh the distempered

canvas from black

to floating clouds.

Feathers are only clouds, after all,

air things clipped and pressed

into Icarus-wax, 

so why not?

But the paint is caked and dry,

feather-breaking,

and the staggered beating

 like an old heart

that stumbles itself into silence.

Meanwhile ten thousand starlings

live in their moving mosaic, 

a matrix of cloud,

a canvas

of pure flight

from earthdark to light;

 

it wants it wants

 so much

to fly.

September 2023

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

posted for

desperate poets

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Images: Fish wallpaper by M.C. Escher, courtesy of  Etoffe

Starling murmuration over Scotland, no attribution given. Via internet  Fair Use 

The Silver Song

 

 

 

 

 The Silver Song

(a 55)

I don't remember when

the Black Fear came; it seems

it's always been here, a broken

rotted smell under the floor,

invisible but disruptive

as catching on fire.

Bright-piercing in the night-oak,

a bird too small to see

sings quicksilver notes.

 

Which more unexpected,

that it sings at all,

or that I hearing it

rejoice?

September 2023

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

posted for Fireblossom's Desperately Different (the unexpected)

at desperate poets

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Images: Untitled (Blurred Figure) ©Zdzisław Beksiński   Fair Use

Blue Tit, ©Karl Martens  Fair Use

 

Murmur Of Flight

 

 

 

 

Murmur Of Flight

There is a murmur in the roost.

There is a rumor in the mist

and a feather in the dust,

a drop, a stall before you fall

into the long flight away

far from the silver cage of the rain,

far from the river that spies on the moon,

far from the shudder when wings are torn

by ruby traps and diamond rats

who gnaw soft parts of dreams away.

There is a tremble at the lock;

there's an assembly under the wind,

a memory at doors the sparrows tend

whose lintels are stars and whose handles, hearts

turning to open the musical sky.

August 2023

originally written for In the Footsteps of Our Feathers

and posted for Open Link Weekend at

desperate poets

Images: Three Sparrows In A Rainstorm, ©Ohara Koson  Public Domain

Ornate Door in Fez, Morocco  via internet author unknown   Fair Use

The Feather Seed

 

 

 

 

 The Feather Seed

(a 55)

There was a feather;

it grew from my eye until

it was my eye.

There was a word.

It grew from my quill until

it was a wing.

There was a seed;

it grew from the soil of

every word decaying, until

it was a tree where 

quilled birds sang

like candles in the dark.

August 2022

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 posted for 

The Sunday Muse

hosted by Carrie Thackery Van Horn

and 

 

 

Sherry Marr's 

Rewilding challenge at earthweal

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Burning Tongue

 

 

 

 

 

The Burning Tongue

 

 

 

There is a burning that

makes the same smoke

from flower or flesh.

 

Air is dead.

Sound will not carry.

Words will not form

 

on a tongue blackened by 

summer's brass palm, for weeks

held radiant over earth's dry mouth.

Heat is a cloud-killer, builder

of invincible domes in steelmelt

sky. Dust catches fire.

 

Only the insect machines

still rattle. Yet every morning

in the stillborn dawn

 

there is a gasp of birdsong,

begging and faint, staccato, sharp,

freezingly sweet. 

 

In fever dreams

I gasp along, for every note,

for any word, for a charm

 

to make this yield

of burning tongues

sing out

 

in oldest music, 

wilder words,

the sparking chant

 

that death-heat kills even itself,

that someday it might

still be worth the parch

of trying to keep living.

July 2022

posted for earthweal

Wild Language

Images: Dead Woman's Crossing, Oklahoma  by Nathan Gunter   Fair Use

L'oiseau blue,© Marc Chagall 1968     Fair Use

Crow Call

 

 

 

 

Crow Call

(a 55)

 

We always wear black

the crows and I,

call our skies

with a half-born crack,

shadow nests where our treasures lie,

 eat skeleton suppers with glass-star eyes.

 

Never look back.

Never look back

 

at bones we've picked

bleaching dry,

at red we've beaked

with black tails high,

dead in the darkwood

with summer's sigh.

June 2022

 

 

 

 

posted for dVerse Poet's Pub

Open Link

Images: Satellite 2014 ©Bryan Holland, via internet, Fair Use

Antlers, author unknown, via internet, Fair Use

 

Breaking The Stone

 

 

 

Breaking The Stone

 

 

When I left the forest for a wilderness

of pillars, hexed by a tinsel covenant,

the moon cried for me. Pines sparked with

white gems of her longing. Minerva's owl

called my name three times; still

I chose the thrown shadows of a fire

that burned just out of my sight.

 

Sixteen years I followed shadows,

ate them, dressed in them, became

what was cast in front of me instead of

its birthing light. Stone I owned held no fire,

only chill when my foot left its face.The

pulling promise that scorched my hand

never could be grasped.

At last like a widow's first laugh,

there came the reaping breath of what is,

carousing down columns to lift

my short hairs with the brush

of owl's wings above me,

spread wide to carry me home.

Then the orphan moon

put away her tears

and blazed in the lavender sky.

Pine-wind recited in the meter of stars,

and I was their matchstick,

Gaia's fuse for a flameless firework

filling the amaranthine wood

against the dark end.

 

In my hand

I took the gift-feather

from the owl that called my name

and with it, wand and talisman,

without any heat at all,

I broke the stone.

 

June 2022

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

a draft poem for

The Sunday Muse

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Note: This poem could use some additional work, but I am posting it in its infant form til I can find what else it needs.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Images: Owl and Pillars, author unknown, via Sunday Muse Fair Use  Image source 

Owl and Moon, ©Alan Perry, via internet Fair Use

Gifting Of The Birds

 

 

 

 

 Gifting Of The Birds

They say a princess

will have the Fae come to her birth

to make her fate with augury for gifts,

but the peasant dreams in birds

 rainbowed as the sky, as sleek as night,

gathered round her cradle

with a liquid blackbird murmur

with two tumbling raven feathers

with six scarlet cardinal sins,

swarming seven snowy days

with all their gifts and curses, not sure

which to give her, some of this and some of that,

sum of love and losing, morning song

or evening silence, heart of grace,

tongue of willow, green mossflower, desert spine,

 

hard horse apples or sweet blood-oranges

of November moon, all or none of these

before they fly, on to the next accouchement. 

Still from time to time she sees them perching,

come back to check their work

cocking tiny heads aslant,

looking but not telling, never saying

more than a bird might say

about the time that's coming

when all gifts will be opened,

all the curses told.

What will you do at last, 

their bright eyes seem to wink,

with what we gave you,

before you can do no more?

 

 

 

 April 2022

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 posted for 

The Sunday Muse

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Images: Birds of Paradise, © Vincente Manansala  Fair Use

Bird in Spectacles, author unknown, via Sunday Muse   Fair Use

 

Advice From The Fortune Teller

 

 

 

Advice From The Fortune Teller

 

 

"Look up to jump," the gypsy calls.

"It's how you fly instead of fall.

It's a long way down, that last bump,

so fly your eyes like starlings brawl.

That's how you miss the awkward thump,"

the gypsy calls."Look up to jump."

She's jumped before. I try to trust

my heavy wings of wax and rust,

the sky my boat, the wind my oar,

my feathers eyes above earth's crust

cast floating up and sent to soar.

I try to trust. She's jumped before.

But then I see she smiles and smiles

at birds stitched high on cloudy miles

at knifing rocks that slice the sea,

carving waves like bladed turnstiles.

"Just look up and finally be free."

She smiles and smiles, but then I see.

February 2022

posted for dVerse Poets

Poetry Form: Sparrowlet

(for a complete description of this quirky little form, see above, where Grace is hosting)

Images ; The Fortune Tellar, 1933, © Brassai   Fair Use

Floating Woman, photomanipulation © Phillip Igumnov  Fair Use