Broken Windows

by alexindigo on flick'r

 

Broken Windows 
24/7

I wake up in the bird loud dawn

and turn on the machines

before my eyes are fully open

the sound of water

turbulent in heat falling

through the cost-effectively
stripped coffeegrounds;

the six notes of the windows sound

drown out the mockingbird

trying to sing through the pane.

Meanwhile, star shoes kicked off,

the sky frittles on the griddle

of the mad cooks who've

taken over her kitchen.

May Global Temperatures Second Warmest on Record

According to scientists at NOAA’s National Climatic Data Center, the globally-averaged temperature for May 2012 marked the second warmest May since record keeping began in 1880. 

May 2012 also marks the 36th consecutive May and 327th consecutive month with a global temperature above the 20th century average
.

Most areas of the world experienced much warmer-than-average monthly temperatures, including nearly all of Europe, Asia, northern Africa, most of North America and southern Greenland.

 Only Australia, Alaska and parts of the western U.S.-Canadian border region were notably cooler than average...   Credit: NOAA:

Monthly climate analysis data from NOAA/NCDC

July  2012

Posted for  Meeting the Bar   at dVerse Poets Pub

Prompt: What's the Buzz? by Charles Miller

Charles has asked us to , among other options, 

"write a poem that describes the fractured nature of the modern world...[or]

write a poem that incorporates newspaper clippings or other non-poetic material.." Which I sort of did, though my clipping is more messed with and appended to than included in the poem.

Image: Untitled, by alexindigo, on flick'r

Shared under a Creative Commons Attribution Only License

I have cropped and slightly manipulated alexindigo's photo; view the original 

here at his  flick'r photostream

The Triumph of Verbosity

The Triumph of Verbosity; 

or Sweeteners in the Surreal Afterlife

Space nor motion

neither can exist

without  a marker, black,

magic, plastically spastic, shooting demarcation

in tommygun spasms.

Without

some point of surety,

love's demise brings flying into the eyes

only cindertears ceaselessly sweated from the worm's

gut of indigo void.

If only I could

measure this stainless steel

tapeworm of loss,

writhing through my night

of sin and scrapple.

No dimensions are assigned

to the bucket of sugar

glimpsed fine balanced on the distant windowsill

until it falls in Icarian flameout,

making a hole in stomach's soft plane.

The plain red coat wore a

perfectly matching blooded scarf, but

there’s a price for every illusion

even a price for words

falling

straight into the twisted lips

of an altered state.

I never answer when you say,

“Are we going to do this

by the book,

or are we just

going to do it?”

There is only one question left:

Bowling with the blind; who

picks the team colors?

July 2012

Posted for    real toads

Challenge: Out of Standard with Izy

The ever scintillating Isadora Gruye asks us to step outside ourselves  and have a bit of fun by writing 'a poem which parodies your own style, structure, or tone.' I tried, but I think it actually reads just like one of my usual poems. :P

Image: The Triumph of Death, by Peter Bruegel the Elder--NOT the younger! circa 1562

Public domain, via Wikipaintings.org

The Unnaturalist

The Unnaturalist

Come to me, my spider-snake

my locust-worm, my vulture-hawk

my hyena-wolf, my caliban-mars.

The experiment ends in the killing jar.

Come to me, my spider-snake;

inside my lab where no lights leak

come close enough so I can crush

your twisting spine, your cambered cheek.

Come to me, my vulture-hawk

to feed on meat already killed

so long ago, so rank, so soft;
duplicity damning as it distills.

Come hyena-wolf, with your needle teeth.

I'll stroke your narrow jewel-eyed head

before I lift my other hand to

stop the pant of your opium breath.

Come locust-worm and build your nest

so near my fever that you grow warm;

starve in the twiggy bed of my breast

stripped by the multitudes of your swarm.

Come my caliban creations all

to the place I've built beneath the earth

where all lies end and none embrace,

where crippled mouths are filled with dirt.

July 2012

Posted for    OpenLinkNight   at dVerse Poets Pub

If you'd like to hear the poem read by the author, click below:

the unnaturalist by Hedgewitch O'theWilds

Header Image: The Crying Spider, by Odilon Redon, 1881
Footer Image: Caliban on a branch, by Odilon Redon, 1881
Public Domain, via Wikipaintings.org

Urn

Urn

What good does it do

to sit and bleed

over all the empty boxes

over all that is not more

than what it is;

I’d as soon play sexton with a spoon

dig my own grave hole

six by six, concrete lined,

as only remember

the bleach and the burn.

When the south wind 
tosses its wild head in the night,

takes the trouble to journey

from that other country where

Aldebaran runs bright behind the Sisters,

all to twist out

a few strands from my braid,

drift them like sailboats

moonracing the dawn on a blue lake face,

dance them on a tickle of its cosmic tongue,

how foolish to yearn for what isn't

when the frogs are singing Puccini

when the red star

is my flower,

the big dipper my urn.

April~July  2012

Posted for   real toads

Open Link Monday 

Process Notes: "Aldebaran...is a red giant star located about 65 light years away in the zodiac constellation of Taurus...it is the brightest star in the constellation and is one of the brightest stars in the nighttime sky. The name Aldebaran is Arabic ... and translates literally as "the follower", presumably because [it] appears to follow the Pleiades, or "Seven Sisters" star cluster in the night sky..." ~wikipedia

Image: Aurora_4592crop_2s, by esapekka, on flick'r

Shared under a Creative Commons License 

Skins

Skins

There is no accord

no affinity the heart's

rough edge can't abrade,

can't peel away bit by bit; as a cook
unbuttons an onion, so I'm unwrapped to the

raw, each lover leaving rubbing off a skin

a thin epidermal sheet clinging ragged,

rucked off his receding back as he runs, 
already shedding my cells.

I should be nothing by now

but the pearl scallion core

that holds the green sprout;

instead like injured flesh I puff

with a pushing fluid, salt and sere

against the naked pain of movement,

the scarlet inflammation of loss, sweating
out a vapor that pulls from the unwary eye
trickling peardrops of aggregated regret.

A shame that having made my peace
with love, surrendered it up

so many times, it's still a cat I can't

call back, my wayward black spirit familiar.

Only its shades will come as they will,
its films of old sensation, soft

memories crackling, cast off voices

crumpled as the papery skins of 
a whittled onion.

June 2012

Posted for   Poetics   at dVerse Poets Pub

 Brian Miller is hosting today, and asks us to write about buttons in any shape or form or association.

Image: onion skin, by ultraBobban, on flick'r

Shared under a Creative Commons license

The Incubus And The Exorcist

The Incubus and the Exorcist
(Incubus VI)

It's been plain for some time now

that the incubus has lost interest

in mixing any pleasure 

with the pain.

He knows how he owns me.

So finally last night I sent for

the exorcist. With bell book and candle

the proud beadle came,

ringing and reading

and flaming at once.

He laid me flat on the hard concrete floor

(no soft beds for god's paladin)

brandished his lash and lustily

began to chant. The scent of

frankincense grew ponderous

and expensive;

mentally I reviewed my purse

wondering how much 

Holy I could afford.

Meanwhile, the face of the exorcist 

reddened with strain

(I thought) 

and he called on his Lord to

purge me, he called on prim-lipped angels 

to witness, he called on the voyeur Devil

to leave.  I lay panting and naked, 

only remembering the dance.

At last, solemnly shaking his head,

he said that

all that remained 

was the laying on of his hands

and that went fairly well

as his cassock slipped off

and the red shiny scales gleamed,

the cloven hoof came down, and

the hard,forked flexing tail

sparked hellfire,

burning away the past.

June 2012

Thou rascal beadle, hold thy bloody hand!
Why dost thou lash that whore? Strip thine own back;
Thou hotly lust'st to use her in that kind
For which thou whipp'st her.

~Shakespeare, King Lear

Posted for   real toads

Kerry's Wednesday Challenge: Very Old School

Shakespeare

Process notes: This poem is the sixth in my Incubus series. You can read the rest of them if you wish, here.

Image: Detail from Death and the Miser, by Heironymous Bosch, 1490

Public domain, via Wikipaintings.org

Walking On The Moon

Walking On The Moon

Since you left

I've been walking on the moon,

in the cold solar shadow, angel- and

demon-forsaken, unmused in a sinless place,

a floating cloud of cosmic diatoms weltering 

in undifferentiated asteroidal algae, working the

eyes of night for some buried beauty, some pandemic

of peace to infect me.

The dark side is

a rock rack, stone bed for the syncope when

white hope exhausts all exits with her rapid retreat.

I undrill in the dustbaths, naked in wallows of comet collisions,

bathed in dunes of ruthless radiance, where stars are

sprinkled in spilled saltgrains over eternity, vague and

sharp on the black velvet tablecloth

I once wore for a dress.

The sun side is harsh, but

even I tire of constant dark at times;

and I know it's the side you see, fat harlequin

croissant of a sickle honeyed with words defying

gravity, toasted in the gold heat of your almondine eyes.

I live on the grilling grid, fancy you making a meal

brioched of dark chocolate void where somehow

I've flavored the filling in dreams.

I walk on and on

light as the dead and sometimes

I find debris; yesterday an artifact

cast from the celestial dig of thee and me,

a vessel that used to glow, pounded to atomic dust, settled

in the flattened shardshape of a heart where I stepped

silent, and stood with the sudden choke

of moon in my throat.

June 2012

Posted for   OpenLinkNight   at dVerse Poets Pub


If you'd like to hear the poem read by the author, click below:

walking on the moon by Hedgewitch O'theWilds

Header image: A Voyage to the Moon, by Gustave Dore, 1868, engraving

Public domain via Wikipaintings.org

Footer Image: Moon @ Utrecht-zuillen, by HSmade, on flick'r

Shared under a Creative Commons License

Cat's Eye

Cat's Eye

In the yellow light of the cat's eye

the night is coiled like a lamprey

winding dark flexes in a corkscrew pulse,

leaving its ripple trail faint on the surface,

incising electric heart's current below

where the crayfish and shiners

pushflip against water

in an agony to escape 

that shock-needled jaw.

Under the pressing black of the cat's paw

vision is blurred and thoughts slow.

The gasp of constriction expels in old voices

familiar but fading, soft as lavender budding,

sharp as yesterday's bones, a rictus

retelling the beads of regret,

a damned catechism 

mantra'd to nonsense

reprising till sunup.

In the amber swim of the cat's eye

sun's boat floats in prismed mirage play,

leaf and limb decoupage round the small world's rim

bowled with still water, green branch ears listening

to the cocking of the crossbow, rapt for the slap

of the next homing bolt, where one spider tree

bares her heartwood alone,

blind as the dead

in the fey catnip woods.

June 2012

 Posted for   real toads

Sunday Photo Challenge: The iPhone photos of Margaret Bednar

Images: © Margaret Bednar

taken from Margaret's photoblog, i and I

Used with permission