Portal

Portal

In the harlequin forecourt

of  geometry and bones,

the  red lacquer peonies

were placed, broken and missing

half their petticoat petals, stiffened

and formal as a used pelvis,

encrypted as effigies,

but the florist still wanted more

than a month's pay for them.

Take the rosemary road

through the wavering maze, you'll

see blocking the way an opened

sardine-can portrait, face frozen

framed in the fishbones. The woman,

escaped turquoise diamond

from a square black and white

 hole, runs for the flowers, 

breaking the straitjacket

of the last Italian  garden.

She wraps angora fingers

round each balloon-string stem,

cocks the carnival of pistils,

rising rosily on their lightness

all the way to the top,

shaking out her wild

red lacquer clown hair,

laughing at closed clipped faces

that could never afford her.

~November 2013








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Sunday Challenge: Art of Mike Worrall
Grace introduces us to the amazing work of Mike Worral, and asks us to write a poem related to one of his pictures. Thanks to him for so generously sharing his work. You can view more of it at his website: Mike Worral

Image: The Portal of Intoxication, oil on canvas, 2011, by Mike Worrall

Nightmare Of The Leaf

Nightmare of the Leaf

I've forgotten how to dance.

In that panic freeze

something's wheezing behind me,
ponderous but light

on its feet
as a fat man
who dances like helium.

Big-Belly bumps me
 into a darkroom

whose unlikely window

displays a maple-leaf,
red

rhymed with diamond grief

just past my  hand,

a moment away

from falling

forever.

~November 2013

55 deciduous dream dilemmas for       the g-man

Image: Leaf Motif 2, Pattern of Leaves, both by Georgia O'Keefe
via wiki-paintings.org
May be protected by copyright. Posted under fair use guidelines.

Medicine For Melancholy

Eugeny Kozhevnikov

Medicine for Melancholy

With these drops

I absolve you of blame.

Taste---I've spent weeks
straining the river

mixing  honey and rue

steeping laudenum 

cinnamon,

to hide the strength

to cover the bite

of salt and
broken stars.

I'm the intruder
the stranger on the flow

harmless or dangerous

as you, let in from the trenches

in a downhill moment

of melancholy truth;

you should do as I say.

Taste---nobody cares

what we do here

splashing like dolphins
in the dark of a dream.

~November 2013

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Challenge: Get Listed with Ed Pilolla

Ed Pilolla, one of the most ingenuous, genuine, and gifted young poets in the blogosphere, provides us with a list of words today having to do with rivers and love. For a complete recap of the words, see above link. Thanks, Ed--this poem was only an embryo before your suggestions.

Optional Musical Accompaniment

Image: Eugeny Kozhevnikov, via Mindtripworld2  on facebook

Off The Shelf Archive~November

Greetings and salutations, dear reader, if reader there should be. Since this little self-indulgent feature of mine gets almost no attention anyway, I've decided to just have some fun with it.

For the next few months, I'm going to be pleasing myself by pulling out all the poems of Edgar Allen Poe no one reads, or sees distorted in ubiquitous memes of varying, often dubious anachronism. The Raven is indeed a fine poem, but it's only a sort of condensation of Poe's ever restless soul in one particular place. So I'm opening the time capsule of my angst-ridden teenage poetry devotions, and putting some of my favorite Poe up on the Off The Shelf page. This will continue until I get tired of doing it, so bear up or pass along.

Many of these poems will be extremely lengthy by our modern standards--surprise! Poe was not a master of haiku or micropoetry, and the concept of less is more had yet to be discovered in literature, sometimes to his detriment, but often to our pleasure. Many will be sentimental, as only that age could be, unashamedly so. All of them will use a language we no longer have the time or inclination to employ, but that is an un-editable, infinitely rich component of why the poems work.

So, suspend your disbelieve, get out your black mourning bands, cameos, bottles of laudenum, rings woven from locks of hair from the dead, and most importantly, your linen handkerchiefs to soak up a solemn tear or those beads of a fearful sweat, and enjoy or ignore, as you so please.

We will begin with Spirits of the Dead, by Edgar Allen Poe,

here, on the Off The Shelf Page.

~*~

As always, last month's selection is presented for a final perusal--The Name of it is Autumn, by Emily Dickinson:

The Name of it is Autumn

 by Emily Dickinson

The name—of it—is "Autumn"—
The hue—of it—is Blood—
An Artery—upon the Hill—
A Vein—along the Road—

Great Globules—in the Alleys—
And Oh, the Shower of Stain—
When Winds—upset the Basin—
And spill the Scarlet Rain—

It sprinkles Bonnets—far below—
It gathers ruddy Pools—
Then—eddies like a Rose—away—
Upon Vermilion Wheels— 

Image: Lake George, Autumn, by Georgia O'Keefe 1927

May be protected by copyright. All copyright belongs to the copyright holders.

via wikipaintings.org 

Dona Nobis Pacem ~ Blogging for Peace

The World

(a Fibonacci )

A

life

without hate

each head bowed

flowering to its own work

each hand open letting go what it can

to accept what's given, what's asked in return

when the need is strong

because the tribe

has become

the

world.

~November 2013

 This post is for     real toads

This Monday, Kerry O'Connor has asked us to join  a "...special day for bloggers around the world. November 4 marks the annual Blogblast 4 Peace. This initiative was launched by Mimi Lenox in 2006 and has grown to an extraordinary degree, spanning 6 continents and 182 countries. Her theme this year is "What do I want my world to look like?" and she invites bloggers to join together today to spread the message of peace as a single unified gesture..." 

This is a spur of the moment reverse Fibonacci poem where the lines follow the Fibonacci sequence of 1/1/2/3/5/8 and then reverse.

The photo is by Frank Serritelli, and is called The Fall of Peace

Hover mouse for image credit, or click it to go to his flick'r page.

Shared under a creative commons license.

The Cry

The Cry

The quick sun-sigh spreads

over a rusted land, bed turned down for the long sleep,

and a whisk-brush wind pushes

through the bare attic of dawn.

With a hawk-swooped

aching cry the rabbit dies

sapphire night still jeweled in

his daybreak eyes, but
for one nest today, the hunger's gone.

Far away in the great salt-dance

the plankton fall, the feathers blacken

into glue, the tendrils of  the kelp begin to fray,

weaving darkness deep in the carbon flux,

the foxfire flicker of disappearing grace

receding as the moonwife calls it home

down to the deep forgotten mud

where the stew of the millioned dead

breaks up the bones,

 

where none except the crab will

know its  taste, where none

will see its face except the drowned

in light that falls as shallow as a breath

through a day like this that began with a tiny death.

~November 2013

 Photo: Oil Slick in the Gulf of Mexico, NASA Goddard Photo & Video

 "On May 24, 2010, the Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer (ASTER) on NASA’s Terra satellite captured this false-color, high-resolution view of the very tip of the Mississippi River Delta. Ribbons and patches of oil that have leaked from the Deepwater Horizon well offshore are silver against the light blue color of the adjacent water. Vegetation is red."

To learn more about this image go to: earthobservatory.nasa.gov/NaturalHazards/view.php?id=44078

 via flick'r creative commons

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Sunday Mini-Challenge:The Poetry of Marianne Moore

 Kerry O'Connor once again offers us the definitive example of 'challenge,' to write a poem which replicates the concept behind the title of Imaginary Garden with Real Toads, a line written by Marianne Moore, by creating an idyllic scene and injecting a disruptive, toad-like element. I did my best with the concept, though I'm not sure how idyllic nature really is, with or without the toad of a poisoned environment, but the syllable count had to fall by the way--I have gotten into a habit of using stresses, and un-using them is almost impossible, though I did try.