Mist

Mist

Those eyes are holes

where

too much

nothing shows

sending me dark,

floating alone

listening to what’s left

when the buzz and traps

shut down:

crow-wing slapping

tap of the living rain

falling in the gingersweet

night on a

ghost's face, marshlight

flickering in the gloam;

chasing you

is all I know of home.

January 2012

55 ghosts in the mist for   the G-Man 

Image: past mist, by Robb North, on flick'r

Shared under Creative Commons License 2.0 Non-Commercial

Chains

Chains

Everything has its thinbeat chain

attached to the torc, an accessory

the tattoo on freedom that shows

off her white paper flesh

binding

flower to root

star to darkling center

bird to sky, you to I

the end is reached

the chain snaps taut

but still we fly as if

the broken neck is nothing much.

Everything is coupled

and so doubled, twinned sun

defined by a shadow;

bee to queen

sea to moon

water to thirst

moon to sea, drifting

mist of pain to condensing pleasure

heart to echo, reflection to real,

ululant yowl and whoosh to song

the restless wind’s loving

chained to a passive speck in space

all forever frantic in the tender rape.

January 2012.

Posted for real toads

No idea if this comes close to what futurism really is, but I did my best, even put in some onomatopoeia, and hope I hit somewhere on the side of the barn.

Cheap Shoes

Cheap Shoes

Before it was a blizzard

there was rain and wind and darkness

but we had word beams to bend

boxes full, a sundrenched attic’s worth, 
enough and more

for any shape we wanted

so I opened the back door

to let the animals in before the storm.

The mares came first fluttering their buttery eyes,

whom the bitter goats tried to hound thru the wildering night

and the geese were lost as sheep, as the braying mule

when the howling finally came to eat the world.

Then we knew it wasn't safe in the filigreed cage.

We let everything fly heartbird from hand 

so that back before it was wind and rain and darkness

and up the stairs of the sunbright grove

bumped the pit wagon---remember? it took

so many---we could still

choose not to board,

and bend and bend instead

these beams of words

to make the half moon

spill over with lovers' night
deep in the snow.

So I wonder if it's true, what I've heard them say,

that death's unbendable in his cheap shoes
and walks the longest way.

January 2012

Posted for   OpenLinkNight   at dVerse Poets Pub 

I'm the ghostess with the mostest tonight at the pub. Come join us and enjoy our unique je ne sais quoi ambiance and poetry au lait. Link in is live from 3:00 PM Eastern Tuesday till midnight Wednesday

Images removed due to possible copyright issues.

Back From The Garden

Back from the Garden

Out in the garden

bent to the earthworks, last

darkening hour over the herbs

I plant to remember

the driftsweet bouquet

that erases December,

fighting the lunatic wind

tugging skin tight

shaking brain loose at

the top of the tower

so it rattles downstairs to

damp dungeon, where you live

forever lost to reason and me

a fact winter can't seem to forgive.

Now slowthump half gelled steps inside

each limb's weight dragged

stiff, eroded stone cyclops clops

sponge brain following behind

a lost but willing puppy’s tail that

wags as nerve endings rewind

radar puzzles, strategic placements

for curling on bed like a grey-faced dog

on torn but precious rug

round and round, trying

to find that sweet spot where

rest will fall like rain

and system shutdown

snows over pain.

January 2012

Images: Header: Thalia and larkspur gestating

Footer: Hare in January, both © joy ann jones, 2012

Off the Shelf Archive~January

I've been most remiss (as usual) at refreshing the Off the Shelf selection,  but again as usual, my excuse is I've had many poems and new-to-me poets to choose from recently and its been hard to pick. What I've chosen this month is a bit of a departure for me, a poem spoken by the author. Myself, I'm a visual person, and poetry spoken is almost always poetry that has less impact for me, and which I frequently misconstrue, but this piece works fine for me in this medium and comes through loud and clear.  Punishment, by the Irish poet Seamus Heaney, is an intriguing piece of writing to me, juxtaposing the distant past and the present for a dubious squint at the progress, or lack of it, we've made as a species.  

If you'd like to know more about Heaney, born in 1939 in County Derry, Northern Ireland, winner of the Nobel prize among many others, there's a short but detailed biography here at the Poetry Foundation.

Just click here to go to the February Off the Shelf Archives for Heaney's poem.

~*~

In order to make room for the current piece, the former selection, two poems by American poet Wallace Stevens, are moved here for a final perusal. Feel free to comment on either selection here, as comments are disabled off the main page. Suggestions of poems or poets for next time are always welcome.

Two Poems by Wallace Stevens

Disillusionment of Ten O’Clock

The houses are haunted
By white night-gowns.
None are green,
Or purple with green rings,
Or green with yellow rings,
Or yellow with blue rings.
None of them are strange,
With socks of lace
And beaded ceintures.
People are not going
To dream of baboons and periwinkles.
Only, here and there, an old sailor,
Drunk and asleep in his boots,
Catches tigers
In red weather. 

~by Wallace Stevens

The Snow Man

One must have a mind of winter
To regard the frost and the boughs
Of the pine-trees crusted with snow;

And have been cold a long time
To behold the junipers shagged with ice,
The spruces rough in the distant glitter

Of the January sun; and not to think
Of any misery in the sound of the wind,
In the sound of a few leaves,

Which is the sound of the land
Full of the same wind
That is blowing in the same bare place

For the listener, who listens in the snow,
And, nothing himself, beholds
Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is. 

~by Wallace Stevens

Header image: Winter Coats, by Jose Clemente Orozco, Oil on canvas, 1932

Bottom image:  Woodland Stream in a Winter Landscape, John Henry Twachtman, Oil on canvas 

Both images courtesy of wikipaintings.org

Epona's Dream

 Epona’s Dream

In eons’ life my white-lashed eye has caught

consuming cross the goldgreen grasslands' wave

the endless star broomed dance of come and go;

generations of ravens laughed 

as cactus centuries passed, yet

one short wishful glance, only once

a glimpse of you, the dark stallion in 

a sunmist I’ve seen prancing, seen you stand

more than horse and less than man

fiery four legged totem, dolmen jawed

pounder of the white wolf’s skull.

Never have you come to graze

the pastures I have wished and wayed,

hooves flying to me under the sickle moon. 

I dream you still as your high red eye

rolls white, sleepless on your

gravid seraglio.

Do you likewise dream of me, once only

glimpsed, the fleetly fading stippled stray

stranger, maverick mare whose mane unbound

that gold and silver ribboned sleet

stretched on prairie air with the tossing wheat;

do you ever think we might

outrun the wind that blows behind the stars,

feel again grey muzzles nudge up dawn, 

hot blow of breath, trembling flank, equine

hammering heart be all our wealth

of soul, of singing, all of rest?

Or  am I the one that wandered a step too far

in the moon of slipping tides

the one you fed just once in the hungry night

content to watch the shadows swallow back

the  empty chalice of a symbol

when the wine’s poured out?

A dreary jog a weary winding fate 

bound to go ahead of you and wait

for journeys end, the last low luminous gate.

January 2012

Posted for    real toads

Prompt: Photography of Margaret Bednar

Process Notes: "In Gallo-Roman religion, Epona was a protector of horses, donkeys, and mules. She was particularly a goddess of fertility, as shown by her attributes of a patera, cornucopia, ears of grain and the presence of foals in some sculptures suggested that the goddess and her horses were leaders of the soul in the after-life ride..."~wikipedia  

As usual, I have taken a few liberties with the mythic elements.


Image: photo by gracious permission of  Margaret Bednar

Harmless

Harmless

Harmless, she is, so they say.

She used to know her name

and write it too,

knew fruit from flame.

Useful she once was

in every way

now harmless is

the highest praise, they say.

The worry came when

she locked herself away

alone in a red-ribbed room one Saturday

all the better to parley and to play 

with what had bordercrossed the air

hungry for her firefly flick'ring care.

The voice that was 
its far fey self declared

within her voice, answered

its sudden, unoccluded prayer

with her mad laugh

her tousled hair;

but she's harmless,
even happy

so they say.

January 2012

Posted for   Poetics   at dVerse Poets Pub

where Claudia gives us the prompt today to write of crossing borders, and what we find there. Link in is live till midnight Sunday.

Image removed due to possible copyright issues.

White Widow

White Widow

Light stained amber, carmine, jade

sapphire, citron and amethyst

in drifts and beams makes a searchlight prism

that gilds over faded faces framed in faith

with a radiance banked;

in the far corner banished by

the clerestory where she sits 

in a phosphorescent white dress

with her black sin clutched tight

there is only blanked shadow 

of no color

no color at all.

January 2012

Posted for   Meeting the Bar:Imagism  at dVerse Poet's pub

Process notes: Horribly hard prompt for me, (!) but I think this may come close. I'm not big on the Imagist movement, though it was an important one in that it began to free poetry to explore other more spontaneous forms of expression, and supported the emergence of vers libre. I've also been trying to work up a poem to go with that very odd moody painting by Hacker for a long time, so this serves a double purpose.

Image: The Girl in White, by Arthur Hacker, ca 1895

By Arthur Hacker [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons