Fireblossom's Silent Movie Poem: The LDR Of The Silent Movie Queen

A power outage in Fireblossom's vicinity has forced her to revert to pre-internet tech by having me transcribe her response to the Poetics prompt at dVerse  and surrogate-post it for her here. Any mistakes in punctuation or inconsistencies are entirely the fault of her stenographer's poor hearing over the telephone, and should not be attributed to the poet herself. Here is her  inimitable Fireblossom take on the Silent Movie era:

The LDR Of The Silent Movie Queen

The silent movie queen

drops her parfait spoon,

and up comes her arm,

bent at the elbow,

delicate fingers curled

at her cupid's bow mouth;

a single tear

falling from her fabulous raccoon eye.

Who should be watching this—

Who should be riveted by this—

but the talk show radio host.

Given a mobile of microphones

by his parents

as a baby,

his mother cradled him, drenching him in her love,

and whispered,

“We’re on the air.”

The radio talk show host

dreams of surrounding the silent movie queen

with his mellifluous devotion.

Above their bed,

a red light;

next to their bed,

a bank of telephones,

all off the hook.

He believes that she

can teach him not to fear being seen.

He believes that she,

enraptured by his kisses,

might express her joy

on a charming sepia-toned

dialog card.

The silent movie queen

tilts her head,

seems to laugh, almost child-like

though she must now be over a hundred.

Her curls,

her dress,

her wide-brimmed bouquet of a hat;

all of these fill the radio talk show host with longing,

and strike him dumb with desire,

just as the ending credits come up.

In the dark, no one can see him.

In the dark

he hears her calling him

from across the years.

Calling,

calling,

caller,

( he whispers )

Don’t hang up.

by Fireblossom, 

normally of Shay's Word Garden

where you can now read this, (power having been restored to the benighted area in question) much improved and more Fireblossomy in her own font and blog style:
 

The LDR Of The Silent Movie Queen

(Note: LDR = Long Distance Relationship)

Posted for   Poetics   at  dVerse Poets Pub

Image: Mary Pickford,  
By Moody, NY [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

Musical Interlude~Murder Ballads

Nothing says holiday like delving into the dark side, and I'm in a mood for the darkest tonight. The first music I ever felt was my own was the folk music I heard at the No Exit Cafe and Gallery in Evanston Illinois (now relocated to Rogers Park, I believe) when I was a mere stripling--if girls can be striplings--and some days, despite everyone in my immediate family making fun of me, I have to hear it again. Tonight, it's murder ballads, and there's a rich heritage of them to pick from. The ones I've chosen were collected and written down from oral tradition by Francis James Child in the late nineteenth century.They're bloody and often melodramatic, and full of the death that is the wages of sin. I guess before Casey Anthony and O.J., we were still fascinated with these things.

I'll start with Ian and Sylvia Tyson, a Canadian folk duo (Tyson wrote Four Strong Winds, which Neil Young later covered) with about as gruesome a tune as the mind can imagine--Greenwood Sidie-O, or The Cruel Mother. This is an old Child ballad dating back to 1638 of Scots origin:

There are a lot of versions of this one out there, House Carpenter, or The Daemon Lover, also one of the many traditional folk songs collected by Child, this one English, but widespread in American folk tradition as well, especially Appalachia. It's true there's no actual murder in it, but the woman dies for her sins anyway, so it amounts to the same thing. The Joan Baez version is the modern classic, and Natalie Merchant does a decent version, but I have a weakness for Buffy Sainte-Marie's take because of her eerie vocals:

In case you'd prefer the more tradional version, here's Joan Baez doing the same tune a bit differently with a few additional verses about rich attire, cloven hooves and hell and stuff:

No compendium of murder ballads would be complete without Matty Groves, yet another Child ballad of adultery and death. This one dates back to the 17th century, sung here by the immortal and long gone Sandy Dennis with Fairport Convention(vocals are over at 4:46--the rest is a crazy psychedelic folk jam):

I suppose we ought to have an American entry, with an indisputably American theme, and what could be more so than Duncan and Brady, based on  the shooting of police officer James Brady in 1880 at the Charles Starkes Saloon in St Louis, Mo, breaking up a bar fight. I'm using a contemporary bluegrass version  by the great Johnson Mountain Boys, but it's been recorded by everybody from Leadbelly to Tom Rush to James Taylor. It fits the Labor Day motif, with it's sardonic chorus: "been on the job too long...":

Phew--feels good to get that out of my system! Back to poetry soon.

Jazz Age

Jazz Age

Take it from the steal

take it from the street

take it from the speakeasy

the deck tossed under his feet,

swaying drunken flower in his

flannel bags, fedora, 
pipestem clenched,
teeth grating, another
Fitzgerald whored to
the Post. Glass raised,
posed amidships
she's an indigo nonsense,
a mad moondanced Zelda
traveling in night, losing life 
gin-draped in felt folds,
white wealth of self, 
pointed toe
broken starfish arms.

Drop it in the deep
drop it in the well
drop it in your sleep
hard to say when he fell,
drank the last bottle
smoked the last fag
wrote the last script,
oozed over the side
without making Paris, Riviera,
Antibes, never reading
Papa’s last laugh
just a sink and sigh 
in the peace blue 
sea, looking up going down
at the dancing starfish
in her tulle shroud gown
wings barely showing 
in the dark.

September 2011

Posted for    Poetics   at dVerse Poets Pub

Loosely inspired by the Fitzgeralds and some fragments of dream

Friday Flash 55 ~ Dehiscence

Dehiscence

 The fruit that’s bruised

under the skin

sits in the sun.

All the housewives

pass it by;

( they know it by its look

its feel )

until the fruit-man takes a loss

throws it spoiled away,

rolling in the alley

opening a sweet meal

of decay,

bee’s endearments,

treetop dance,

long forgotten

August 2011

Posted for  Friday Flash 55  at the G-man's

(Yes, Galen, the title is purely to bug you and drive you crazy, since none of the other words required a dictionary this time.)

Okay, I'll cut you some slack:

Dehiscence is the opening, at maturity, of a plant structure, such as a fruit, anther, or sporangium, to release its contents. Sometimes this involves the complete detachment of a part. ~wikipedia (This can by my head, if you want. ;-)  )

HAPPY LABOR DAY WEEKEND, ALL!

Interview at Poet's United

POETS UNITED

Writer, blogger and raconteur of all things Nature, not to mention one of my most longstanding and supportive readers, Sherry Blue Sky,  of Stardreaming, has done me the honor of interviewing me for the community poetry site Poets United. 

Normally I would be blushing modestly and leaving a link in the sidebar, but I wanted to give Sherry the shout out she deserves for this entry in her continuing work, the "Life of a Poet" series, an entertaining and professional read that provides the opportunity to get to know a wide array of online poets of all stripes and styles.

She's worked tirelessly for the last two weeks, asking the most interesting questions and encouraging me to plum the depths of my collection of dusty, ancient photographs and memories, and has assembled a piece which, as always, gets down into the real details of why and how an individual poet writes, and where s/he is coming from, and for sweetener, also has some nice pictures of the dogs and garden. I hope you'll stop by and read it at the link below, as well as check out the many prompts and features Poets United offers. They have one of the most extensive memberships in blogdom, and a blogroll that includes some of the best poets and writers online.

My pedestrian life story, made all sparkly by Sherry, is here:

Life of a Poet: Hedgewitch

Thanks so much, Sherry, for all the hard work, (and my dogs thank you for their shot at stardom as well.)You did a great job. And thanks to everyone at Poet's United for having me. Please feel free to wander through the digital Castle and explore all the dark hallways and cobwebbed dungeons. Just don't feed the gargoyles--they tend to get a bit cranky.
 

Mirror

Mirror

The soul within, smooth, reflective curve

glossy with the sheen of old smokes;

Something about the light, he said

There is a wild piece of it in the dark.

It winks in the corner of the mirror,

an absent flame, the memory of a flame

whiskered by the haze.

Reaching out to touch it you feel

first the illusion, then the fingertips finally

the smooth cold feel of the mirror

asking which is real.

It’s over, the light show,

Peace and love 

take your pick which is

only a curve reflecting forward,

which some piece of light

kindling the backward glancing eye

January 1988

slightly revised August 2011 

Image: Mirror in your eyes by ~h318 (Harshita) on deviantArt
Shared under a Creative Commons 3.0 No-Derivatives License

Tenement Blue

Tenement Blue

There’s not much room in a tenement blue

three room fourth floor walkup, but legs can run.

Cover's in the slum-dirty dystopian streetscape,

ghettoed too thick for the grab of garnet-nailed fingers

gifting purpleblack coins, too far to hear names.

Vacant as a rubbled building, feral as wind

she plays birds all day, thin arms flapping.

On the very next jump, she’ll go up,

a rising speck of sparrow in fields of sky,

not the drying embryo in a fractured brick egg.

High in her masted nest of broken glass

she chirps until the giant’s stick knocks her out,

drunk’s acidsweet breath flooding her lungs,

learning  the freeze, missing the center

as he pulls her harder than he has to

down to the big bed

where her mother is always blind

missing, nowhere, in three rooms

raptor eyes shut so all of the girl

can be invisible. 

Little bird isn’t minding

the neon patterned bed that wavers

in the windowlight; too small, tiny hands

no wings, just the falling to show

for cheeps hushed to silence. 
On the floor cotton feathers, yells

gone to whispers, rustling wind sounds

inchoate touchshadows all

in that hungry fishgrey belly of

a deaf ocean, of a ship rolling.

She boards up her eyes

against the day-blink, engine off,

charts lost, course unplotted

boxing the compass, drifting
from the thick tillering fingers,

pressed small as a diatom

taken in salt waves of

tenement blue.

June 2011

Posted for   OpenLinkNight   at  dVerse Poets Pub

Day-blink – Moment at dawn where, from some point on the mast, a lookout can see above low lying mist which envelops the ship

Boxing the compass – To state all 32 points of the compass, starting at north, proceeding clockwise. Sometimes applied to a wind that is constantly shifting.

~Glossary of Nautical Terms, wikipedia

Thanks to Fireblossom, Anna Montgomery and Brian Miller for their help and encouragement in writing this poem.

Sea Change

Sea Change

I saw the sea

for the first time in

San Francisco

one of many first times.

It bewitched me to it.

I’d leave the sleepers

ride the buses, meet the gulls

at the beach for breakfast

or go with whoever had

a car or a microbus

to Point Reyes

all of us young as caterpillars

capering fools in butterfly motley

in another endless California day,

tidepools of life

myriad and interlocked

shafting back sun and illusion

wandering the rocks

dancing naked round a bonfire

with colored ribbons for eyes.

I loved the sea till I went there

with you in the pelting rain

deep into your silent labyrinth

at the far northern edge of west

close to the border, one of your many

forsaken homes, shuttered buildings

dirty piers, failing fishermen, mist wrapped

cold, salt mazed with melted iceshelf

mixing up sullen rolling breakers

poured bitter from a cloned infinity.

I should have paid attention then

to how the sea changed itself

in your presence. Instead I took your hand

turned my back, and now I live

where no wave will ever break

August 2011

Image: Storm Clouds on the Washington Coast, 

posted by roaddog52 on smugmug