Postcard at the Beach

Postcard at the Beach

Through 

the open window

white sand shines in a naked

raked garden of dreams,

tattooed and ruled beneath the palms in

 green dream energy, aqua sea bordered in an order of light.

 Nightmares quartered and crossed

fill up the black room's cage 

dancing above that tourmaline dream, gliding wall

to wall sleepless, betraying me with

a vaguely pulsing mind

an old and brittle life

too fragile, too cumbersome, chipped

yellowed posterboard not winged postcard

enough to pass

through that beckoning slot,

mailed to the beach

with no forwarding address.

Only a peeled off scrap

[stiff lifted script of 'Wish I was there']

 pulled to that framing of light

by hooks of birdsong,

crams in sideways as shadows play

on a riffing surf, delivering

everything that's alive

outside.

April 2012

Posted for   real toads

Open Link Monday

Susie Clevenger's photography was too good to have just one, so I did an encore with her shot of The Lighthouse at Punto Sur from Sunday's Challenge and hooked up with it here. Thank you, Susie. I see why they call you Goddess.

Image: The Lighthouse at Punto Sur, by Susie Clevenger

Used with permission.

Blue Bridge

Blue Bridge

How is it when

I only see the bridge

made from letters

of your name

the struts that string

the macrame of your steel weave

in a starpoint net

tying shore to vagrant shore

my heart tumbles

my lungs fill in panic

as if I were hung

on the edge of a plunge

sudden, deeper

into blue oblivion

where high on another scale

I hear the hum of traffic the sound of

horns fading to ghosts singing

their roadsongs to each other

inaudible as dolphins save to

themselves and my thrumming ear,

the vibrating membrane all

that moves in a softening organism

going dark,

drinking time's river wind 

sweet on my face,

every traffic

in  metal and noise 

vanishing in a

sudden slap of light and

scent of salt.

January 2012

revised April 2012 

Posted for   real toads

Sunday Challenge: Photography of Susie Clevenger

Many thanks to real toads and Susie for this photo, whose logos helped to bring this poem from graffiti lost in the file to some sort of solid form here. 

Image: Baytown Bridge, by Susie Clevenger

Used with permission.

Thanks, Susie!

Windblown

Tornado Alley is expected to be a busy place for the wind today, so the odds are I'll be offline--we had the sirens wake us last night at 3:00 AM, for a twister that passed a mile to our north-northeast, and people south of us were not so fortunate, where an F2 hit in the middle of another town (sending thoughts and concern your way, those who live there.)

Still, close only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades, and all is well here at Castle Hedgewitch as of now, but today is supposed to be worse than yesterday once all the factors wake up and come together later this afternoon. Therefor I'm posting my poem for the day early, as should it start seriously storming, the PC will be turned off. 

Never a dull moment, folks. This is one I've had in the files, and worked up a bit for this particular theme.

Windblown

Climb the long hill

up from the cradle

hear the mockingbird

play out his fraud, the

idiot squirrel savant clattering speech

to put the mushrooms and acorns to sleep.

Fly the long wind

that blows through the years

needled with pine and regret

making clouds mountains, pretzeling trees, 

and tired grow wings that wear it from birth

above the hard calling spin of the earth.

Ride the long wave

that comes in the night

sorcerer’s hand disappearing sleep.

Wrap up in the foam and dig in the sand

try to breathe try to float, try turning to rise

from the pull, heart full of what reason denies.

Take the long chance; today is tomorrow.

Live in the wind where love crushes sorrow.

February/April 2012

Image: Windblown, © joy ann jones 2012

Knowledge Fail

Knowledge Fail

History is buried

in a shallow grave,

coffin

suspended 
on cords

of a half heard tune

hauling, hauling it up.

Reason critiques God.

Poetry critiques

Reason.

Such a lot

of writing, talking, thinking

Einstein and Abelard

Hawking and Kierkegard,

all to extrapolate

the darkness

and tell us

we can’t remember

what

any of it's

about.

April 2012

55 drops echoing in a vat of ignorance for the G-man

Header Image: Gravestone by Squeezyboy, on flick'r

Footer Image: Unsourced via google image and hopefully public domain

The Science of Forgetting

Troops patrol outside Marjah, Feb 11, 2010 David Guttenfelder  /  AP

The Science of  Forgetting

Sympathy for the Memory

There are three stages of processing information into memory

(1) encoding small branches crossed with green light whose shadows

surround ten birds and a fallen object(indistinguishable)under a sand dune

(2) stored in a permanent record whose name rank and government issued identification number is responsible for the

(3) retrieval of seasons dropped accidentally, and unhatched robin eggs

rolling under the articulated track mechanism

where sensory memory has found a picture of a child’s toy

left beside a bomb crater tied with dripping ribbons and rain.

An iconic facet of aftershock can see the places where the plush

has been rubbed off the ears.

For a period of several seconds short term memory

imprints the harsh sandpaper sound of a grackle’s  static

as Classic 107.7 introduces a man of wealth and taste

who’s been around for a long long year but still is watching

the acoustics go out into the central executive around the burial

of a second lieutenant who’d met him in Marjah after the 2007 clearing

while riding a tank without a general's rank every day

where the bodies stank, more scratching
on the visuospatial sketchpad

feeding the  phenological loop.
Odors reactivate

but are lost again somewhere in the episodic buffer

before entering long term memory where

his parents are bravely not crying or numbly not crying

as gold braid salutes and a stiff arm raised 

provides a mnemonic harmonic of Lucifer

behind a red wind 
arm reaching

still in need of some restraint

and all the semantic cues creep

into the working memory

of two who will pray to forget

the temporal order in which information has

been received to source memory tasks

which require specific context

Pleased to meet you,

hope you guess my name…

April 2012

Transposed italicized lyrics from Sympathy for the Devil are by Mick Jagger and Keith Richards,
 1968 © EMI Music Publishing
Memory terms drawn from wikipedia

Posted for   Meeting the Bar: Tripping the Cosmos   at dVerse Poets Pub

hosted by the inimitable Chazinator (Charles Miller) of Metanoetic Poetics,

who asks us to explore the relationship between science and poetry.

Two Poems

I have been behind since April 1 on my purely voluntary and self-imposed goal of writing a poem a day in April for National Poetry Month,  but this is the day I catch up, posting two short poems that visited me yesterday afternoon after a hectic day, while sitting bemused in a daze drinking tea. I love those kind.

Batik Ghosts of Spring

Tied dyed iris, chrysoberyl
 speckled mauve

and palest pink, has not

become the rich purple brown and

bruised gold of its cameo’d face
nor grown its startling beard orange

because the soil I build them with

 is wrong; the taste

of alkali and dusty dinosaur bone

bleaches them pale as newborn spirits,
heads floating ghostly above

their corporal vase
soft beacons

while outside the blood black kale

throws its sulphur bouquet

wild wild into the prairie wind,

 laughing to be flower bride instead of

dinner, teasing the gnats

that feed the bluebird.

April 2012

~*~

Unspoken

The words I still have

are barely holding together

their delicate shells cracked

their bones broken

marrow sucked and chicks

destined never to fly

empty rattles good

only for

making

noise.

Come closer

closer

here

where lips are warm

and not for talking

and there are things

needed

that
words can’t do

April 2012

Image for Batik Ghosts of Spring: Iris Throat, by discutant, on flick'r

Images for Unspoken: mystery eggshells, by weshook, on flick'r
god bless the daylight, by sevenworlds16, on flickr

All shared under a Creative Commons License

Personal Myth, Part One

Personal Myth

 Part One

The house is white. The poppy is red, growing

crooked up through a crack in time, red as

my new skirts, bright where the whitewashed wall drips 

light from the morning’s basting,

gripping the cliff like a child where it walks

swung between adult hands of sea and sky

above the gibber laments of gulls

where the heart has bricked itself a dream

and the still soul rises in smoke

from the terracotta belly 

of the fire god on the piazza

burning his ruddy mandate, 

midnight to opalescent midnight.

The moon is bright enough to write

saga, storm or singing, but holding the pen

in my love lax hands is an effort 

too great so I sit murmuring

my devotions while the careful lips of night

move celestially in response, 

and your white shoulder 

mirrors a cup of moon 

too sweet to drink.There in blue shadow

I feel what is too thin to see

through the window of the room 

rounded plum as an eggshell

painted acrylic on white, electric

with all the roses of Persephone,

flirting from every table.

The green hand of a potted dryad taps taps

alabaster skin seven times and seven again,

to crack the womb’s door where

the worlds are kicking to be born.

Open one turquoise eye; you'll see 

the woman with a naked face

in a crowd of ten thousand veils

bell in the valley, wave on the sea

harvest of  fog and forgotten seed 

pierced by Merlin's pointed staff, 
one red poppy

on the mistletoe shaft 

growing full-leafed 
through my breast.

April 2012

Posted for   Open Link Night   at dVerse Poets Pub

Joe Hesch has the apron on at the pub tonight, folks, and he's holding the doors open to all comers. Come join us. Link in is live till tomorrow midnight.

The myth part of this personal myth is only partially exposed here, because this excerpted draft is Part One of a much longer poem,( the result of answering the question, what would you like to have if you could have anything?) which I am mercifully sparing my longsuffering readers tonight. I don't think this will be the final form, and the rest is not even this ready and may never be, but thanks all, for struggling this far with me anyway.

Header Image: The Crystal Ball, by John William Waterhouse, public domain

Footer Image: The Red Poppy, by Odilon Redon, public domain

both via wikipaintings.org

Hawk Passing

Hawk Passing

I can’t help but wonder what I’ll see

in the last flare

before the fire goes out.

I imagine the waif, the siren, the falconer

displayed in my prism, 
that sepia fata morgana,
with blade between my teeth, dancing

stiff arms extended, slashing away

at whatever angel or devil

has come to fetch me that day

hung on the fluttering

blue wing of the unknown.

One with the Carolina parakeet 
and the Great Auk, the dodo

and the passenger pigeon je me sauve, 

and sauve qui peut at last, 
transformed in peregrinations
of feathers, kestrel soaring

in my own spirals of raptor desire

impaling passerine phantasms

with immaterial claws

leaving nothing to save

from the acid breath

the blistering heat, the hungering wolf teeth

come to eat me up, bone white

gleaming in the last flare

before the fire goes out.

April 2012

Posted for   real toads

Open Link Monday

My eighth poem for the ninth day of April, National Poetry Month. Still behind. I need to write more haiku!

Header Image: hawk, by nats, on flick'r
Footer Image: Hawk Soaring through Winter Woods, by Rachel Ford James , on flick'r

Both shared under a Creative Commons 2.0 Generic license