Armor Spellsong

Hanna, by Kristen Hatgi Sink

Armor Spellsong

Armor of flowers

work of my hands

protect me.

Songs from twig ceilings

silver shy shadows

break me in.

Green love in glass bottles

medicine  blue sky

open over me.

Badlands bitch burnout

acid alkali wanting

come 

fall on the sword.

Armor of flowers

work of my hands

light of my heart

abide.

~January 2014

Kristin Hatgi Sink

55 rose petal helmets for     the g-man

This time, I include the title. (I saw you counting, G.)

Inspired by the photography of Kristin Hatgi Sink, Denver, CO.

Images copyright Kristin Hatgi Sink via Facebook, and Phinest. Her website is linked above, and here is herTumblir site as well.

No copyright infringement is intended. Posted with gratitude under fair use guidelines.

Ghost In The Machine

Man Leaning On A Parapet~Georges Seurat

Ghost In The Machine

 “The best portion of a good man's life: 

his little, nameless unremembered acts of kindness and love.”

~William Wordsworth

When the morning's a veil of grey

and the gold is still a closed fist,

the sighing comes over the fields

spilled in a tickling mist

from a silver pail of silence

before the anxious birds

begin their nervy chorus,

before the softshell world

uncracks itself before us.

That's when you seem to turn,

breath of lilacs panting

just behind my ear,

whispers in an old planting;

all you were and weren't

a music changed to noise,

all your fading fragrance

feeding till it cloys.

So shade, take coffee with me here

where the night and light collide,

and tell me what became of

the man who could be kind. 

~April 2013 , lightly revised, January 2014

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Open Link Monday

This was originally written for a challenge Kerry gave us last April:to take one of three quotes from poet William Wordsworth as our jumping off point. It's a favorite of mine, so I dusted it off for another trip around the block.

Winter Tanka

 Winter Tanka

~*~

From whiskbroom branches

blackbirds drop a watersong

brown rain in their throats

leaf mummies see the moon's face

music-washed night after night.

~*~

Winter's hand strokes wind

across the grain, a dry sea

flat in shades of dust

in time the lost mermaid dies

beached high in the bones of grass.

~*~

Let the smoke go up

pluming on horseheads of clouds

visible for miles;

let the wildfire come starved

to its briar sacrifice.

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Challenge: Why I Write Tanka, Part II

Dr Hisashi Nakamura has generously shared his knowledge and skill with the short Japanese syllabic form known as tanka in this series at The Imaginary Garden. A tanka contains 31 English syllables in a line pattern of 5/7/5/7/7. I find them very difficult to write, but easier than not writing them, perhaps, today. I have used the bare minimum of punctuation, so I beg indulgence for my grammatical liberties.

Process note on the third tanka: Like many areas of the western US, we are having wildfires this winter due to drought, high winds and human stupidity.





Photographs: Oak-Blackbirds-Maple, Prairiewise Seeds copyright joyannjones 2014

Jagsaw

Jagsaw

When the devil cut the puzzle

he used a dull jagsaw.

Some pieces can't ever

be matched as they should;

and so the tale of the meeting of

the incubus and I, each given our shape

by a  notch in the other, drawn close,

pushed away, fretfully shifted, buck-dancing

little hellfire fractals out our asses.

Once owned as a mule

and successfully damned, I was

delicately demolished, knobs crumpled,

voids slapdash split square to circle.

Then it seems he was finished,

Playboy mission

from Leisure Suit Beelzebub 

accomplished, since

it's well known Below only those 

who hang on to their souls have a value.

Good tales have a moral, and my moral is this:
it's impossible to make whole 

what's been jigsawed in Hell,
despite infinite labor in distortion and wish

for the saw is as dull

as it ever was jagged, and what
the Hell is a puzzle
but the fiddling pastime
of the chronically bored?

~January 2014

another of the Incubus poems

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Challenge: Persons of Interest

The tropically inclined Corey Rowley of Mexican Radio asks for  a piece of writing about someone we've met while traveling. I think I have complied at least with this directive of his: "I want you to think of someone you have met on a special trip to your special place and write about them."
Yes, that would be the incubus and that would be Hell.






Image: Puzzle 52, by jjpuzzles on flick'r,
Shared under a Creative Commons Attributions Only License.
I have manipulated this image.