Pawned

Pawned

or

Lust Among the Chess Pieces

Black knight of the cross

checkered demarcations,

Master of airs above the ground,

you caprioled over my board in full panoply

rattling the table with the

arrhythmic syncopation of

your strabismic stallion's hooves,

lance proudly gripped in fisted mail

as ready to conquer as cavort.

You swept away the pawns

outmaneuvered the Bishop, but

when the rook screeched his mock

from the high castle corner, 

your stiff King of ebony kings

fell dead on the milk blue breast

of the rose white Queen.

July 2012

Posted for   real toads

Sunday Challenge: Photography of Gemma Wiseman

Also, late,

 for A Word with Laurie, who featured the word 'demarcation' in her challenge Friday.

Process notes: 'Airs above the ground"  is a comprehensive dressage term for various jump movements the horse performs with two or all four legs off the ground. A capriole is one such, according to dictionary.com "..a movement in which the horse jumps up with its forelegs well drawn in, kicks out with its hind legs in a horizontal position in the air, and then lands again on the same spot..."

Image: Outdoor Chess Game, © Gemma Wiseman

Used with permission

Undocumented Mist

 Undocumented Mist

The night exhales a coolness

that seems foreign after the

hammering heat of the day,

an alien breath wetbacked across

a dangerous border,

speaking another tongue.

So age comes to me running crouched

across the river, buttons missing,

wearing her threadbaring gown,

breathing lines, bending flesh

to slope and flow at gravity's whim,

calling her wares from the rocktop of

a round calcite egg turned silvered stone, 

grit-pocked and bubbled with imperfections,

dirtied in the hard guttered smut of too many

days blown out, all the soft splattering away

from the sun's falling diamond drops.

She's hungry. She's tired as the hour after birth.

I look at last in her eyes, see only another night visitor,

an undocumented gypsy marched thru a hundred

dry gullies carrying her heavy pack, looking for work,

speaking the language of the cool breeze

that mists itself up from the fall

of a too bright day.

July 2012

Posted for   Poetics   at dVerse Poets Pub

Prompt: Whatever the Weather

Stu MacPherson is hosting today and has asked us to write a poem in which the weather figures in some way.

If you would like to hear a rather unprofessional reading of this poem by the author, who got tired of re-recording after many tries, click below:

undocumented mist by Hedgewitch O'theWilds

Image: Day2: Night Sky, by Jeremy Zilar on flick'r

Shared under a Creative Commons License

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