Fish Out Of Water

Fish Out Of Water

I put a

fish on a stick

into the fire

before it could stink

asked for a drink

of wine, of regret

of sailor well met

to eat with me by the side of the fire

blue charcoaled desire

with a fork three-tined,

pulling off the fine

bones  

 the fragrant meat

of the white mind

~January 2014

55 flaky morsels of protein and salt for     the g-man

Yeah, yeah, I had another dream...hey, I can't afford a shrink, so I write. What can I say?

Optional Musical Accompaniment

Top Image: Water, Guiseppe Arcimboldo, oil, 1566, public domain via wikipaintings.org
Footer: Pisces, by Kolomon Moser, 1904, public domain via wikipaintings.org

Lamp Black

Lamp Black

Silence, poisoned with crows.

Jade candles in a porcelain oval, blown out.

Pearls in a blind man's ear, swinging

what can't be seen.

Lamps doored by blue clouds, shut,

freckling  night luminescent;

all these things

kissed by the tongues of wasps

violent then numb

rasped by polar wind 

filing off

sensation

all these

you brought for the offering

altared before me, for the ritual

of unknowing, unmaking,

unwinding

back to blackness

to the first

dividing cell struggling uselessly

to be whole;

unswelled,

like a yew bald of needles,

like an unborn moon.

~January 2014

 posted  for    real toads

Challenge: Get Listed with Brendan: Moon Madness

Brendan, of Oran's Well, has proposed a word list challenge drawn from the poem  The Moon and The Yew Tree, by Sylvia Plath. I have tried to incorporate those images as well as the chosen words here. For the list and the full challenge details, see the article at real toads linked above.

Image copyright She Who Is (Lisbeth Cheever-Gessaman) via facebook

No copyright infringement is intended. 

Off The Shelf Archive~January

We are halfway through the month and it just occurred to me that, other than online, I hadn't even read any poetry since before the Xmas horrordays. So last night I got out my Lorca, and lost my connection to reality for several hours in his ability to visualize the minefield of the subconscious in all the colors and tastes of surrealism. Then I realized it was, coincidentally, time for an update  of my reclusive and little read feature, the Off the Shelf thing, and I just was not in the mood for any more Poe right now, soooo...you will find one of the poems that I enjoyed, Qasida of the Prone Woman, by Federico Garcia Lorca,  here, in the Off The Shelf Archives.


Here is a short bio of Spanish poet Federico Garcia Lorca at The Poetry Foundation for those interested, and they have several of his poems there also..

~*~

Last month's Poe selection, for a final read before it disappears into the archives:

Alone

~by Edgar Allen Poe

From childhood's hour I have not been
As others were; I have not seen
As others saw; I could not bring
My passions from a common spring.
From the same source I have not taken
My sorrow; I could not awaken
My heart to joy at the same tone;
And all I loved, I loved alone.
Then- in my childhood, in the dawn
Of a most stormy life- was drawn
From every depth of good and ill
The mystery which binds me still:
From the torrent, or the fountain,
From the red cliff of the mountain,
From the sun that round me rolled
In its autumn tint of gold,
From the lightning in the sky
As it passed me flying by,
From the thunder and the storm,
And the cloud that took the form
(When the rest of Heaven was blue)
Of a demon in my view. 

Top Image: Detail from The Death and Ascension of St Francis, 1300, by Giotto.

Footer Image: The Demon, 1909, by Mikalojus Konstantinas Čiurlionis

Both Public Domain, via wikipaintings.org

Birds

Birds 

It was before golden morning

when the bird in my belly flew out

and tried to sing. 

The snake in my head

swung up from the shadow,

 a scaleback s-curve of mirrors blurring,

blackberry eye hinged like a pocketwatch

unblinking till the bird dropped

a split seed of candlelight for

the wolf in your belly

biting for blood.

It was full moon dark

when the owl in my wilderness

woke hungry to fly.

She was

 tied to a string

black banding her leg, hanging

a pendulum in feathery vertigo

trance-trapped, back and

forth, up and down,

out 

of focus.

The snake in my head asked to be fed,

curled in the moon pool

where light lost its way, a

reticulated rebus hissing the metafizz, 

while the wolf in your lab coat 

unwrinkled the dazzle 

where ice-glamour hid, 

crushed in his paw

the prism that blinds.

 With one ivory bite

he sliced the black band

and the birds

the birds were 

gone-colored light.

~February 2013, 

revised January 2014

posted for    real toads

Sunday Feature Artist: Elisabetta Trevisan

This is an older poem that appeared on a defunct anonymous blog to very limited readership, which I have revised and reworked for the prompt.

Artwork (Chimera/The Sound of Thunder)  copyright Elisabetta Trevisan 

Used with permission.

Ms. Trevisan's website:  here
Her fine art prints site:  http://betta.redbubble.com/
You can also find her on Facebook. 

Wakeful

Wakeful

Without this pain

that wakes me before daybreak

there'd be no ochre night sky

in my eyes, no shooting stars

welcome as windfall apples, heady as cider;

without this stabbing ache

there'd be no tombstone bones

put up and steeped with flowers

for the hard-pressed, sweet-voiced men

who made these ghost-town hips their resting place.

~January 2014 

kristin hatgi sink

55 petals and headstones for     the g-man

Top Image: Forest, by Mikalojus Ciurlioni, 1919, public domain   via wikipaintings.org

Bottom photography by Kristin Hatgi Sink, via facebook.  No copyright infringement is intended.