Missing Days

Missing Days

I miss those days when things could be fixed   

by rolling a joint, brewing some tea--

when laughing was breath, when loving was quick.

Songs wined the air, hearts shifted and mixed
into the hole with the sign painted 'free.'
I miss the days when things could be fixed

by building with cobwebs, abandoning bricks;
straw was our house, mistral bent the tree--
laughing was breath and stilettos dead sticks.

It took time to learn that mess has its tricks    
deeper than dust, cruel as the sea.
I miss those days when things could be fixed

by dreaming a garden, float-tripping the Styx
feeling the sun stripe the skin of a bee,
breathing the laugh of love coming quick

before the screams started, before the matrix 
burned children in tears, men drunk on disease.
I miss those days when things could be fixed,
when laughing was breath, when loving was quick.

~November 2012

Posted for   real toads
Challenge: Out of Standard
The incomparable Isadora Gruye has us looking at our guiltiest pleasures, the ones we never tell, and dragging them into the light. Mine, as the poem illustrates, is wallowing in self-pity, particularly late at night. Like I'm the first person who ever got old...

photos © joyannjones

The Dominance of Grey

The Dominance of Grey

 A villanelle

The grey veil she wore ate up all the years.
It licked at her grimaces, nibbled her smile.
It didn't pull off, only washed off with tears.

At night she’d spit into its fine woven fears,
proudly wear it next day to hide naked denial,

unavailing shrugs eating flesh off the years.

The veil grew a voice and it talked in her mirrors.
It held her more closely than husband or child.
It didn’t pull off and she needed more tears.

What once would dissolve it now reversed the sheer
wisps to dark masking stiffened with bile;
the grey veil she wore grew fat on the years

as she aged, a blown eggshell, flat eyes, lips and ears,
her features erased like an asphalted mile.
It didn’t pull off and she had no more tears.

No  salt left to wash her old face back with tears.
No mind left to fight for her long-eaten smile.
The grey veil she wore  ate up all the years
It didn’t pull off, only drank all the tears.

~December 2011

Re-posted for   FormForAll   at dVerse Poets Pub

The multi-talented and erudite Samuel Peralta is hosting this week and writes on this classic form as seen through the lens of physics and Dylan Thomas.

I originally was inspired to write this after reading one of Karin's excellent villanelles, so thanks to Karin Gustafson at ManicDDaily .

 

Image:  Young Woman with a Veil, by Pierre August Renoir, 1877

Public domain via wikipaintings.org 

Apologies to the Master for a focal black and white manipulation of his work for this poem.

 

Bending

 Bending, or

The Queen of the Roller Derby

A Villanelle

When the world finally comes to an end

we won't have to drag the work scene.

We'll be able to breathe and to bend

in ways yogis can't comprehend.
We'll be skinned in magenta and green
when the world finally comes to an end

There'll be no more flyers to send        
no enticements for washing machines;
even dirt will be able to bend.

We won’t have to sit and pretend
that the hurting will help us get clean.
When the world finally slops to the end--

no more aps, got talents or #trends,
no more broken glass soup in tureens,
no more shatter before you can bend.

It will be true then that we were just friends;
the Roller Derby will have a new Queen
when the world finally comes to an end,
I"ll remember the right way to bend.

~August 2012

Optional Inspirational Accompaniment

Posted for    real toads

Out of Standard with Izy

Hair-raising wild women(and men) must unite behind the challenge thrown out by the inimitable Isadora Gruye to make something happy from the end of the world as we know it. I can do that, but I need skates...

Image: The Virgin, by Gustave Klimt, 1913, oil on canvas

Public Domain, via Wikipaintings.org

The Dominance of Grey

The Dominance of Grey

 A villanelle

The grey veil she wore ate up all the years.
It licked at her grimaces, nibbled her smile.
It didn't pull off, only washed off with tears.

At night she’d spit into its fine woven fears,
proudly wear it next day to hide naked denial
that just like the veil ate the flesh off the years.

The veil grew a voice and it talked in her mirrors.
It held her more closely than husband or child.
It didn’t pull off and she needed more tears.

What once would dissolve it now reversed the sheer
wisps to dark masking stiffened with bile;
the grey veil she wore grew fat on the years

as she aged, a blown eggshell, flat eyes, lips and ears,
her features erased like an asphalted mile.
It didn’t pull off and she had no more tears.

No  salt left to wash her old face back with tears.
No mind left to fight for her long-eaten smile.
The grey veil she wore  ate up all the years
It didn’t pull off, only drank all the tears.

December 2011

Thanks to Karin Gustafson at ManicDDaily for getting my villanelle juices flowing. Also dedicated to every Mommie Dearest.Grey will eat you, you know.

December Villanelle

December Villanelle

December the snowy white hope firepit

black-iced December, the cold-burning brand
December when ghosts all come back to sit

in stores, streets and houses lit bright or unlit
all along the sharp sleetslipping strand
December the ashen white hope firepit.

December the voice too cold to commit
yelling its annual endless demand.
December when ghosts all come back to sit

beside us around us. They flurry and hit;       
what they wield has no need for a flesh and blood hand.
December’s ghostnested white hope firepit.

Holes leak in dreams drilled by memory’s hard bit
as pine drips red drops in a bucket of sand.
December when ghosts all come back to sit.

Pull off the holly and break up each bit.   
Build a new fire that flares on command
in December’s dead dreary white hope firepit
and burn all the chairs where the ghosts come to sit.

December 2010

revised 2011

This is a repost of a villanelle I wrote last December, slightly tweaked. 

Posted for   OpenLinkNight   at dVerse Poets Pub

Exercise in Repetition~Two Poems

For Poetics at dVersePoets Pub this week, which I have the fun of guest-hosting for Brian Miller (who is off celebrating his wife's birthday) the prompt is repetition. Here are two short poems, one in free verse and the other in form (a villanelle) which use repetition to structure and drive the piece.

A Simple Chimney Song

When the moon comes over the chimney
calling calling
bits of stars come tumbling
falling falling
the wind blows diamond voices
singing singing
and the bell of night’s brass bright
ringing

a lover’s lullaby
moonshine in your eye;
come sit beside me love,
let grief pass by.

When the dark comes over the chimney
breaking breaking
bits of heart come tumbling
aching aching
the wind blows diamond razors
raining raining
and the racer in the night is
gaining

lovers say goodbye
moonsmoke in the eye;
the house is empty love,
and time to cry.

 

September 2011

Blood and Sand

A villanelle

Blood in the sand where no waters run;

words  grow tall where crops all fail.

God hides behind a burning sun.

Robbers go and robbers come,
centuries turn in the hot wind’s tail;
blood in the sand where no waters run.

The desert eats what the heart’s begun.

Blood is drawn like oil from shale.
God hides behind a burning sun.

The crow will pick when the jackal’s done
and leave the bones to mark the trail;
blood in the sand where no waters run.

Prayers come from the end of a gun.
The dervish whirls and  women wail.
God hides behind a burning sun.

It ends and then it’s just begun.
The crop of words will never fail.
Blood in the sand where no waters run;
God hides behind a burning sun.

April 2011

(originally posted for One Shoot Sunday at One Stop Poetry, 
Photo by Rosa Frei  
Used with permission, courtesy of OSP)

Posted for   Poetics  at dVerse Poets Pub
 

Come share a new or older poem that showcases repetition with us. 
Link in is live til midnight 9/25/11

Anvil of the Sun

Anvil of the Sun

The land is an anvil made for the sun to beat

green grass, gold grains, and working heart to dust

when July brings out the hammer of its heat.

The fields are silent but for the combing feet

of locusts’ need. The dancing wheat is hushed.

The land sighs beneath each hot percussive beat.

All blistered day air flaps in a shimmering sheet.

The sun pounds dry the seed beneath the crust

when July brings out the hammer of its heat.

The weapon shop of drought becomes complete;

dead spears of reed, firebombs of grass combust.

The anvil's red and burns with every beat.

Black soil is dead and void as old concrete,           

wind arranges the dried flowers with each gust

when July brings out the hammer of its heat

The rain’s run beyond the place horizons meet.

Life does nothing that it wants, just what it must.

The land is an anvil made for the sun to beat

when July brings out the hammer of its heat

July 2011

Posted for   Magpie Tales  #72

A somber take on Van Gogh's sunny fields, but where I sit today we're well into a streak of triple digit heat and no rain, with 15 of 21 mostly dry days 100 degrees or over since June 14th.

Image: Wheatfield with Rising Sun, by Vincent Van Gogh

provided by Magpie Tales 

Blood and Sand

Blood and Sand

Blood in the sand where no waters run;

words  grow tall where crops all fail.

God hides behind a burning sun.

Robbers go and robbers come,
centuries turn in the hot wind’s tail;
blood in the sand where no waters run.

The desert eats what the heart’s begun.

Blood is drawn like oil from shale.
God hides behind a burning sun.

The crow will pick when the jackal’s done
and leave the bones to mark the trail;
blood in the sand where no waters run.

Prayers come from the end of a gun.
The dervish whirls and  women wail.
God hides behind a burning sun.

It ends and then it’s just begun.
The crop of words will never fail.
Blood in the sand where no waters run;
God hides behind a burning sun.

April 2011

Photo by Rosa Frei

Posted for OneShootSunday at the inimitable OneStopPoetry

This poem is written in the villanelle form.

Fever Dream

 Fever Dream

So many nights I go to bed alone

still thinking what I dream is what is real,

your name a vesper on my lips of stone.

The past is just a rind that I have thrown

beneath the churn of time’s unknowing wheel

that grinds the nights here as I sleep alone.

I hear your voice, a whisper made of bone.

I feel ghost arms that shut like traps of steel,

and pray for respite with my lips of stone

to ears made deaf, from which all care has flown,

that heed no word of mine, that will not feel

the burden of these nights I sleep alone.

I send my mind to sail on the unknown,

where fever dreams float ships that dip and reel,

and every seasick night I sleep alone.

The journey that I make can’t end in home

when nothing seen nor felt is ever real.

Yet still each night I go to bed alone

your name a vesper on my lips of stone.

January 2011

 posted at OneStopPoetry, Monday Poetry Form, Villanelle

Image : Golden Galleon by Jacques Moitoret