Flicker

Flicker 

flick...flick...flicker the light

pianissimo...adagio...ripple the darkness

You stand at the door

of the elegant ballroom, head covered,

thin gown. You peek in.

Your face says you know

you're not just the maid who empties it,

you are
the chamberpot.

flick...flick...flicker the light

tap... tap... the drum

You are young in the long line of soldiers

your face shiny and new,

your mustache as convincing as

a  chalk mark on your lip.

You will bleed at the first

and die at the second shot;

it's all in the eyes of the woman

seeing you off.

flick... flick... flick...

flicker the light

In the garden of money and sighs

contrived as pom pom dahlias,

your mouth is a larkspur, open and

bending with life, your love is the seed that blows

in the wind and behind the wind

you hide the coming rain,

the storms that break trees.

flick... flick...
                                            flicker the light

At the society dog show packed

with blue ribbon poodles, tiaras and

dandelion tails, you are the bright-eyed,

the little laughing ferret

slinky and soft, let out of her cage by

an innocent, petted and dropped at the bite,

dead in a spaniel's mouth.

flick... flick... flicker

out the light

pianissimo...adagio...finale

in darkness.

posted for        real toads

Kerry's Challenge: Silent Movies

Kerry O'Conner (Skylover, Skywriting) asks us to transform the non-verbal world of silent film into the very verbal one of poetry. As always, the word 'challenge' is completely appropriate. 

Process Notes: This poem just sort of happened, after seeing a video clip at Shay's Word Garden that she chose to accompany her own excellent poem, a montage of silent film stars who died young. I was taken with the face of Olive Thomas, who died in 1920 at 25 after accidentally or otherwise drinking her husband Jack Pickford's syphilis medication, mercury bichloride. Her rags to riches, party girl story is tragic in every sense, and prototypical of Hollywood. Her ghost is said to haunt the New Amsterdam Theater, where she began her career as one of the famous Ziegfeld Girls.

Photos: Olive Thomas, Jack Pickford, public domain

via google image search.

My Silent Valentine

My Silent Valentine

We met in spring and Oh! I loved you well!

Your sweet words sucked me with a magnet’s pull.

Your hands were flags upon a victory wind.

I told you secrets never meant to tell

And crocheted you droopy articles of wool.

My hair for you was grown and kept unpinned.

We parted in the fall with much hot air

Expended in explaining lying facts.

Your lips built a canal; each flatulent word

of ego and self-justifying prayer

floated merrily down in streaming tracts,

written by an inner idiot I’d never heard.

Now I have no love, no heart’s delight

Beyond a rainbow garden and a good dog

That live beside me and are truly mine,

And a solemn headstone clean of praise or spite

Where beneath the earth, beside a crumbling log

you are finally, sweetly silent, Valentine.

February 2011

Posted for A Saturday Celebration, Valentine's Day at the inimitable One Stop Poetry

Image: Les Amoureux (Soir d'automne, Idylle sur la passerelle) by Emile Friant, 1888