Hallows Moon

Hallows Moon

The hallows moon was orange,

a popcorn ball surprise

floating in blue cider

with dawn hard in her eyes.

The clouds were secret-keepers

that knit up all the spaces

with merle-snarled fishscale detail,

chainmail veils for silent creepers

come on the comet's tail,

fat things with bony faces

waiting

watching 

from the fence rail.

~October, 2013

55 things that might go bump in the night for       the g-man 

Late but here, my insomniac's take on the full halloween moon above the haunted cowyard this morning.

Process notes: merle, or blue merle, is a bluish grey color, often used to describe the speckled coats of collies or other dogs.

Image: Me and the Moon, by Arthur Dove, 1937

May be under copyright. All copyright belongs to the copyright holder.

via wikipaintings.org

Sleighride

Sleighride

When the night was dark as a burnt-down barn

and the young moon hung her sawblade overhead

we stood together lost in the ringing bell, letting the lies line up

like sleeping lemmings where the ocean kissed the cliff.

Under the mince of stars, in the salt-pillared  cathedral,

harsh darkness saw our fingers arch in a mockery of prayer

never real until the sacrificial smoke, the cinder-heart slowburning

at the altar of remorse, the drowning man's communion of vanity and shame.

From the manger where the newborn thing is safe to cry, the blessing

comes still bleeding as each flimflammed shoddy spear begins to break

in the lunatic captain's hand; on the last Nantucket sleigh ride

scarred whales may live to fight again, and killers die.

~October 2013

 

posted for       real toads

Fireblossom Friday: Redemption

Never one to shy from the larger elements at play in our world, the inimitable Fireblossom has chosen redemption as her challenge today. Specifically, she wants us to write about 'renewal and hope.' Not my strong suit, but I did my best.

Process Notes:  from Wiktionary.org: Nantucket sleigh ride: (idiomatic) An obsolete and dangerous method of whale hunting in which a small boat manned by rowers and a harpooner, or a series of small boats tied together, would be attached to a whale by means of a harpoon and would then be towed by the creature at high speed across the water's surface, until the whale eventually became exhausted [*or broke free.] *bracketed addition mine






Images: Top: An engraving from "The cruise of the Cachalot"
Footer: 1902 illustration for Herman Melville's Moby Dick via wikimedia commons

The Lathing Song

The Lathing Song

Turn us,
turn us on the lathe,

from our shape
a new thing make.

Take our flesh to fray and break,

 clay no more

 but soft as pine,

peeled of before,
a ragged door

hung on curving spine.

Plane away
the slivering split,

spin us against the Cutter's bit

until we're either broken
 or defined.


~October 2013




 my  Friday 55  for      the g-man...




...and I also wrote this thinking of Dave King, a fine poet I met through the dVerse Poets community who has recently passed. I enjoyed his often witty, always well-constructed poems, and his thoughtful comments and know he will be missed.  With Dave in mind, Brian has asked us to write about friends, and losing them, maybe even, as here, mortality itself,
for  Meeting the Bar today.

Photo by Siebuhr.  Hover mouse for image credit, or click on pic to go to photographer's flick'r page.

Mimosa Afterburn

Mimosa Afterburn

After thought after hope

after pink and blue divide,

after the rain, after the slide,

twilight remains

light washed from the sky,

a grey tide dyed. Curled

in leaf and branch,

unbutterflied,

alone,  heads bent,

mimosas finely drawn,

pulled as purse strings,

gather dawn; autumn

bagged in a crumpled
Escher sketch.

Mimosas, like the old

already feel the cold;

chilled closed as yellow

bedsheets

in a house about to fold.

There used to be a paper made

for typing when I was young,

crinkled, nubbled, stiff,

translucent, easily torn; now that's

my skin, not parchment

made from sheep, 

but the overworked

soft detritus

of trees.

~October 2013

posted for     real toads

Weekend Mini-Challenge: Denise Levertov

 Kerry O'Connor has given us the poetry of Denise Levertov, born in October, to work with today. This is not particulalrly written in her style, as I'm fairly sure she seldom if ever used rhyme, but comes from the mood she left me after reading several of her poems, linked above.

Photo: mimosa yellow,  © joyannjones 2013

Shards

Shards

I still look for you

wrapped in sequined night,

breathing green

between the trees

though it's long

since ceased

being you

that's there to find

and I don’t,

there or

in the greywreck shed

where my  hammer

smashes speckled pots;

still ,       still

behind my rocksalt eyes

a clean sky hides,

a blue wind sighs.

~October 2013

55 oddly shaped bits for      the g-man

Hover mouse for image attribution, or click on pic to go to photographer's flick'r page

Off The Shelf Archives~October

Fall is blowing in, and for once, it is cool and crisp even here in the Dust Bowl. My favorite season, Halloween (yes, for me it is an entire season) is here, and with it all the haunting music of the end of summer and the beginning of change. So I am not dithering about this month, but changing out the Off The Shelf selection to match the impending onslaught of fall colors with a short, brooding  poem by Emily Dickinson called by it's first line "The name of it is Autumn..."

In other news, I will once again be keeping with an All Hallows theme this month, as I have for the past few years, so you can expect a bit more of the dark to be showing up. My muse has been absent without leave a lot lately, but I will post whenever she deigns to cooperate.

~*~          ~*~          ~*~

Without further ado, then, here is Emily Dickinson on the Off The Shelf Page, and below, last month's selection Personal Helicon, by Seamus Heaney, for a last persual:

Personal Helicon

for Michael Longley

As a child, they could not keep me from wells
And old pumps with buckets and windlasses.
I loved the dark drop, the trapped sky, the smells
Of waterweed, fungus and dank moss.


One, in a brickyard, with a rotted board top.
I savoured the rich crash when a bucket
Plummeted down at the end of a rope.
So deep you saw no reflection in it.


A shallow one under a dry stone ditch
Fructified like any aquarium.
When you dragged out long roots from the soft mulch
A white face hovered over the bottom.


Others had echoes, gave back your own call
With a clean new music in it. And one
Was scaresome, for there, out of ferns and tall
Foxgloves, a rat slapped across my reflection.


Now, to pry into roots, to finger slime,
To stare, big-eyed Narcissus, into some spring
Is beneath all adult dignity. I rhyme
To see myself, to set the darkness echoing.

~Seamus Heaney

Image: Fountain in the Garden of Saint Paul Hospital, 1889, Vincent Van Gogh
via wikipaintings.org