All The Things That Kill

Linen towel with drawn threadwork accented with embroidery in stem and satin stitch

  

All The Things That Kill

All the things that kill

are beautiful tonight

sleek with purpose

come to end promises

sworn in diamond dust;

the poison drop, the  quick

metal bee, the slick sharp edge;

all beauty's finality shining

under a flawless moon.

In my sleep I hear

the spell of no more

lifting the weight of life

beautifully

boiling the clinging

off into black:

Let us unpick
the pulled-thread smockery;
return us the
whole cloth we were.

Let the light bend

beautifully

into our blinking eyes

blinded by tiny needles'

broderie-anglaise tasked

to make order out of holes,

whitework fine-stitched over

vacant years by galled fingers 

in candled rooms 

too dark to see,

so at last we

are no longer terrified

by the corpse march

of  dawn after dawn

where we imagine

the uncaring dead

dance around us

potent,  grasping,

more alive

than our own blood.

~November 2013

 

broderie-anglaise detail, Broken Vows by Philip Hermogenes Calderon

Process notes: I mention in this poem three types of embroidery, described here:
"Whitework embroidery refers to any embroidery technique in which the stitching is the same color as the foundation fabric (traditionally white linen). Styles of whitework embroidery include most drawn thread work, [as well as] broderie anglaise...[which is] is a whitework needlework technique incorporating features of embroidery, cutwork and needle lace that became associated with England, due to its popularity there in the 19th century." via wikipedia

posted for     real toads

Kerry's Wednesday Challenge: Black and White

Kerry O'Connor asks us to think of the composition methods in black and white photography, and transmute them to a poem. I attempted to work with some of the concepts she presented, including high-key and low-key images, and her key words of" contrast, tone, mood, atmosphere, focal point, highlight, patterns, textures."

Images public domain via wikimedia commons

Mending the Doll~Quilt Patterns

Mending The Doll

The 
doll is old,

old-fashioned,
old hat, vieux jeux,

yellowed soft cloth, not

cold plastic bitchslapped 
with a painted

smile.
 She doesn’t talk, model skintight skirts, wear tiny

rhinestoned stilletos, cry, wet or

do anything really.

She just 
shapelessly

is.

Seams 
split open
stuffing spilt

naked doll, who

will sew you closed?

Take up your own needle.
Try to pull yourself together. 

Use a red thread; never mind how

it glares against the yielding white cloth,

that scarlet vein caught in the chrome tooth.
Pull it through where the limp twin edges of hope
and fear no longer meet; should it accidentally pierce

any pouffes of cotton where a heart should be, Doll who
makes no sound, be grateful just to keep, however raddled
  or unraveled, those few soft bits of woolly innards you have left. Ah

     what a joke. The doll gives up. Her button eyes are blind, her fat hands are empty and do more harm than good  

yet still 

something has pushed the needle, pulled the thread, sewn her up and on her head set a fine new 
purple feathered hat.

December 2011

two for one:

Quilt Patterns

After you

find all of

the sparks

that make

a blinking

dawn’s eye

cut a square of unwrinkled indigo night

to lay down behind it, tips triangulated 

with squares of dusty sun seen through

 red clouds.

Sew  it up

 with stars'

needlings

pointilled,

each one

a

dot;

voids

that make

the lace exist,

holes through black velvet

that define what patterns are seen;

find for me next the rolling paisleys of ocean

silver blue crossed and starred, but never bottomed that

 backflow this quilt of brownpatch worked land

bound in woolly green, roots to anchor

batting of cotton moonshine,

connecting all the nodes

not just six of ten

for the easy fix.

Then please

cover me,

keep me
from
the

 cold.

December 2011

Posted for   Poetics   at dVerse Poets Pub

Victoria hosts again today with a prompt focused on the fabric of our lives. I made these concrete poems to simulate the piecing and stitching together that goes into all the painstaking needlework of a quilt, or a life. 
Sew up a poem and join us. Link is live till Sunday midnight.