Old Lace

 Old Lace

"I am small, like the wren, and my hair is bold, like the chestnut bur, and my eyes like the sherry in the glass that the guest leaves."

~Emily Dickinson*

The banner was large but she was small,

and near as a girl's blue-gowned doll--

but still-- big enough to be

picked up and thrown down, so she

made herself small as poppy seed

blown away before she'd bleed

blackened snow

on another knot of dough.

Age began to twist-- and clutch--

to spot the careful square of lace with such

delicate blotted tears--

cindered brown the daisy years

to ecru tracery drawn of voids defined--

cool cotton-- on the cheek that pain refined

loss stretched shapeless, damp sheets rucked

by a called back touch.

It became her business only

to grow flowers for the lonely--

behind a closing door, a dreaming eye--

to listen-- in the wildest night 

to a pen scratching black on white

the buzz of bees in reverie--

to never see the sea--

to never see-- love be.

~August 2012

*in a letter to Thos. Wentworth Higginson

 

Posted for   Poetics   at dVerse Poet's Pub

where Brian Miller is hosting a prompt about what might be hidden in the folds of that faded lacy hanky known as history.

Process Notes: I have made uncharacteristic and liberal use of the dash in this piece, my clumsy tribute to Miss Dickinson's iconic form.

Header Image: Emily Dickinson's grave in the family plot, photo by MidnightDreary

Shared under a Creative Commons License, via wikimedia commons
Footer Image: Cover of Poems, by Emily Dickinson, 1890
(archive.org) [Public domain], via wikimedia Commons

Double Shot of Drought

Drought I.

(55 dustdevils for the G-Man)

When it's hot 

as the devil's kitchen

week after brazen week,

grass fires with a sigh at spark's 

lightest touch, ash tornadoes fly;

fields' green finish turns to 

crackled glaze, the bones of the corn

 soften and flop, emptied by

a marrow-sucking sun;

oh

it's too late to pray for rain

but still 

you do.

~July 2012

[Those playing the 55 game, feel free to stop here. Toads, continue on.]

 Drought II.

The heat came when the fear of it had passed

and made the land bleed dust. Dry coughs, fretful nights.

Often we sat drinking with the bees till past dark, laughing crazy

our faces rolling with the stars and the night more blue than black, and your
eyes fever bright.

Days, the hot southern wind lapped on our cheeks but it was too dry to spit. Hungry as a deer, it licked the boiled-out salt our bodies gave in the sun's long leathering. 

I remember that August the full moon came twice, like a young man or a ripe woman, and it was called blue, still round and silver as a coin. No reason why.

The green fingers of the hills put on gloves of red drought, leaves paper trees brown. Their scent tastes copper flat as blood, dead as stone. Work always, but the baby laughs.

I don't know when the last rose faded, when my face changed with the dry earth. Skin crackled like glaze on an old cup, and I was painted in place with all the colors of forgotten weather.

~August 2012

An attempt at an okyfied  zuihitsu exercise for Kerry's Wednesday Challenge at   real toads

Process Notes: August 2012 will contain two full moons; this is relatively rare, and is the origin of the expression, 'once in a blue moon.'

I've grouped these two pieces together because the second grew directly out of the first, which I had written earlier this blistering hot week for G-Man's Friday 55 prompt. Then I tried to do the same subject with a 'running brush,' random-style, and it escaped and went all over the place. I don't know if I've really fulfilled Kerry's prompt properly with the second piece, but this is what happened when I tried--thanks, Kerry, this was challenging for my very non-oriental, non-prose-prone brain, but it was fun.

Image Credits: Drought I: Drought, by arby reed, on flick'r

Drought II: Unknown Found Vintage Photo, Tulsa, OK, by imarcc, on flick'r
Footer: Crackled Rose, by Big Gray Mare on flick'r
Shared under a Creative Commons License

The Wizard's Gift

 

The Wizard's Gift

It came in a box.

Death wrapped in red foil

and silver ribbon

glowing with night's own light,

the dark knowing of its nature.

The wind brought her stiff broom

to sweep the air clean of brimstone stink

but you stood and laughed and reeked

in the midnight sun.

You wore those solemn robes

like stiff wings freshly feathered.

A pretense of hooded eyes cerulean blue 

smirked compassion through the snarl of

each jetblack lash, yet under your

velvet calm was a constant rustling.

Anyone not spellbound in tranced oblivion

would see the barbed tailtip of your starved familiar

thrashing with a scorpion's steel sharp sting.

You held the ocean out in a crystal cup,

tiny hearts tied to the mast, a thousand ships

set sailing in the devil's brandyglass.

Windtossed I watched the mousemaid's fallen tear

grow the deepest pool in a black moon-strangled grove

where the winking fox set the crippled rabbit free

and one absent swipe rang the raven's dinner bell.

Down down went the chambered shell

to the scarlet aquifer;

you curved your fingered claws over my white hand 

until they twined

and flowed together as grains of sand

merge in a dune indistinguishable

and we pulled the fullness up

to our glittering husks from the butcher's well

to drink together the bloodred wine of hell.

~July 2012

Posted for   OpenLinkNight   at dVerse Poets Pub

I'm the host tonight at the pub for our usual poetic festivities. Come join us in the cool and bring a well-chilled word or two to cut the summer heat. 

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

the wizard's gift by Hedgewitch O'theWilds

Image: The Wizard, by Edward Burne-Jones

Public Domain, via Wikipaintings.org

Waltzing on The Cross

 Waltzing on the Cross

 A Dizain

You, my sweet drifting feather dipped in lead,

faun's startled glance in the soul pool mirror,

piped a masque of muted dancers dressed in red

swirled in a beggar's ballroom bright with fear;

reflections drowned in glass were never clearer.

Our bloodless puppets linked their inkstained hands.

I jumped and posed and waited your commands;

you ground me up and used the paste as balm         

to seal the leaking wounds the heart remands:

stigmata where the ego pierced your palms.

~July 2012

Posted for    real toads

Open Link Monday/Sunday Mini-Challenge

Kerry's form challenge this weekend was on another aspect of the ballade stanza, the dizain: 'a decastich, a whole poem made up of a single Ballade Supreme stanza, a 10 line stanza...' 
with rhyme scheme a b a b b c c d c d .

Image: Bust of a Satyr, by Jacob Jordaens, 1621

Public Domain, via Wikipaintings.org

Off The Shelf Archive~July 2012

The archivist has been most remiss of late, plus under medication, but no excuses. It's more than past time for a new selection for the Off the Shelf Page, and it's a good time for one, as I still am a bit groggy and not up for much in the writing department. 

This month, what's left of it, I've chosen a moody and bizarre poem from American novelist and poet Stephen Crane called On the Desert. It makes heavy use of repetition, without rhyme or a true refrain, and for me is one of those poems that give the effect of being in someone else's nightmare, a sensation of grue and creeping darkness. There's a bio of Crane here at The Poetry Foundation   for those who'd like to know more about him.

You can read On the Desert here:  Off the Shelf Archive for September 2012

And to make room for the current offering, last month's selection, Beyond Love by Octavio Paz, is archived below for a final reading. As always feel free to comment on either poem here, as comments are disabled off the main page :

Beyond Love

~by Octavio Paz

Everything menaces us:

time that divides into fragments

who I was

from who I will be,

like a machete does a snake:

consciousness, transparency transfixed,

the blind look of watching yourself look;

words, grey gloves, mental dust on the grass,water, skin;

our names, that rise up between you and me,

walls of emptiness that no trumpet can fell.

Neither dreams peopled with broken images,

nor delirium and its prophetic foam,

nor love with its teeth and claws, suffices.

Beyond us,

on the frontiers of being and time,

a greater life than life beckons us.

Outside the night breathes, it expands,

full of great hot leaves,

of mirrors in combat:

fruit, talons, eyes, foliage,

backs that glisten,

bodies that push their way through other bodies.

Lie down here on the edge of so much foam,

of so much life that does not know and surrenders:

you too belong to the night.

Stretch out, whiteness that breathes,

throb, oh portioned star,

cup,

bread that tips the balance to the side of the dawn,

pause of blood between this time and another, without measure.

From El Girasol, Poems 1943-1948

© Octavio Paz

Image: Blue Dahlias, 

© joy ann jones 2012

Offline Notice

Thanks all who've been by lately despite knowing I might not be able to return your visits--I greatly appreciate it. I'm afraid I'm in for a more serious than usual time with my back. I reinjured it yesterday and all movement is painful. I am following doctor's orders and staying flat on my back till things improve.

So, I will not be posting anything or joining any prompts for awhile. These episodes usually take about two weeks to wear off and return to normal, so see everyone then.

Wish I could leave you a poem but my brain is out of order as well on the required meds, so I'll leave you a picture from my garden.

Oriental Lily 'Casa Blanca'

Asteria

Asteria

All sun's length she sits

nested high in the world tree

alone, surrounded by

the howling, blue

painted greenwitch

oracle of the ward songs

in her iceglass

barelimb chapel

keeping vigil.

 

At night when the moon

hangs heavy and hunger

sings to the tides,

she flirts her feathers down to

probe the chambered nautilus

and fetch the glitterfish

called to her

rattling net hung

with bone charms.

She's felt his questions

pressing on her

all day so heavy

the singing

so heavy for something

made of air

the sword unsheathed 

so red cutting from

the southern ocean’s rim.

She can hear him reading

from the old gods’ psalter

feel the sigh as the pages

slip to almost dawn,

till he finds

the leaf forgotten,

the star fallen

just before

the world ends

and the kingfisher flies.

June 2011

revised August 2011 

Asteria was the name given, variously to: " the Titan of nocturnal oracles and falling stars," and mother of Hecate, "the ninth Amazon killed by Herakles when he came for Hippolyte's girdle,"  "one of the Danaids...who, with one exception, murdered their husbands on their wedding nights.." and "..one of the Alkyonides [who, after Herakles slew their father] along with her sisters...flung herself into the sea and was transformed into a kingfisher.."  ~wikipedia 

All in all, a name with plenty of room for poetic interpretation. 

Posted for   OpenLinkNIght   at dVersePoets

Note: Having back problems, so I've posted an old one tonight, and may not be able to do any visiting, but will try to as soon as my body cooperates. I just couldn't miss the one year anniversary party. Thanks, Brian, for linking me in.

Image: ireland's fangorn(Yew woodlands at the Killarney National Park, which is located beside the town of Killarney, County Kerry, Ireland,) by Justin Gaurav Murgai

Justin Gaurov Murgai's photostream

Shared under a Creative Commons 2.0 Generic License

Iseult's Song

 Iseult's Song

A Huitain

How used I am to all this weeping

this solitude, this douce tristesse.

How softly emptiness comes creeping

to meet its new petite maîtresse,          

who cries the more and laughs the less

under god's silent black stardome;

where once were the towers of Lyonesse

now only fishes make their home.

~July 2012 

 Process Notes: "Lyonesse is a country in Arthurian legend, particularly in the story of Tristan and Iseult. Said to border Cornwall, it is most notable as the home of the hero Tristan, whose father was king. In later traditions Lyonesse is said to have sunk beneath the waves some time after the Tristan stories take place, making it similar to Ys and other lost lands in medieval Celtic tales..."

~wikipedia

 Posted for   real toads

Kerry's Sunday Mini-Challenge: The Huitain

Kerry explains this old French form in detail at the link above.

also posted for   Poetics   at dVerse Poets Pub

 Karin Gustafson hosts and asks us to get our French on in honor of Bastille Day. I went a bit further back.

Note: I'm under the weather a bit this weekend and so there may be a delay in returning visits.

Image: Tristan and Isolde, by Salvidor Dali, 1944

All copyright remains with the owners

courtesy Wikipaintings. org