Night Words

Night Words

Darkness teaches
a thousand words for night

singed velvet obsidian sky
charcoal calico curtain

closing the lavender gloaming
ebony backed beast

with star reticulated hide

rolling the white of its moonshot eye

leaking quicksilver drops

of migrant meteors,
streaking stitches

to sew up wounds of void.

The absence of your voice

the wind murmur of the stalks

the rustle of your silence settling,

plucked notes of the owl inquisitor, plangent

from a puzzled branch, the old music
snowsoft on my lips;

I number the noises of night

until I lose count.

~September 2012

posted  for  Meeting the Bar   at dVerse Poets Pub

Claudia hosts tonight, and asks us to write about a moment of solitude. 

photo: drops,  © joyannjones

War Dogs

Zdislav Beksinski

War Dogs

Guns barked at guns in the burnt blue alone. 

We heard them (sounds travel) breaking the glass night,
(fast as the dead)  smelled flags burning, 
the sour pant through fat teeth, white bundles

stiff in rows on the street, white lies turned 
to black tapped human sap. The fires screaming set 

money fed, ranting blew. The babies cried

while the fur tried but never flew.

It was just me and the rest of the dog-people

heeling carefully on our hind legs,

when the panic door slammed down

and cut off our feet. Arms out

flung, It appeared, spit flying
bright, ky-aye-ayeing,

pale shirt pressed untattered

beard shaved but dirty where it mattered

eyes mad, mad as a flying trout. Its

syncopated air-suckling mouth

coughed up god like

bits of lung. Darkness too
should have poured infected

to color Its masked face 

but there was only a dancing 

blind eye of blue laser trace,

when the white ran out exhausted from the light;

when the fight exploded in piss and blood night

It was gone. 
They said It never was.
Darkness came then but the fire burned hotter

rockets ate walls, guns brayed faster

and  we all hunkered down hard
howling

on all fours for the bare

mercy that wasn't there.

~September 2012

If you'd like to hear the poem read by the author, please click below:
war dogs by Hedgewitch O'theWilds

Posted for   OpenLinkNight   at dVerse Poets Pub

Process Notes: Sometimes I have bad dreams.

~*~

Header Image: Untitled, by the Polish symbolist and Surrealist Zdislav Beksinski,

born in Sanok in 1929, killed in Warsaw in 2005

Copyright may apply and is the sole property of the copyright holders

via wikipaintings.org

Footer Image: The Apotheosis of War, 1871, by Vasily Vereshchagin

Public Domain via wikipaintings.org

From the Spiral Jar

From the Spiral Jar

The blue moon came and went

like you, my love, like you

but no wine wet enough 

was ever pressed

to wash away 
the taste of days sliced stale and

burnt bitter dry, pointlessly

buttered with memory.

~September 2012

Posted for   real toads

Sunday Challenge: Poetry for the Firefly Jar 

Kerry's challenge was to

 "...write a poetic fragment, which could be printed out, or scribbled on a post-it, or torn from a notepad and preserved in a jar of words..." 

I do most of my writing on the white screen and have no such jar, but I do keep many spiral notebooks in which I scribble down bits and sayings, and seeds I hope to someday grow into poems, as shown here.

Photoo of lines used in recent poems  ©  joyannjones  

Every Color

Every Color

Man in black

is every color you said

scrawling your beaten poetry 

in my sophomore 3 ring, messy and dark

as the purple glyphs on my neck;

walk a child's skip 
so proud so lost 

dreaming down the narrow halls 

of a madman from Odessa

drawling southern meltwords into

Chicago snow.

You thought first times

were a gift;  I who

thought you were the giver
found out soon after 

what all the free really means

first drug there and gone

before needle finds arm.

You called me Angel

which only goes to show

we know nothing of angels

on this earth

only devils 

who know us

too well.

~September 2012

Posted for   Poetics   at dVerse Poets Pub

Fred Rutherford makes his first appearance as host today, appropriately asking us to write about First Times

Optional Dylan

extra-optional texas hillbilly music

Image: Hermits, by Egon Schiele, 1912
Public domain via wikipaintings.org