The Politician

The Politician

When you were fresh-born

 in your hummingbird skin,

you fed on flowers, things

of a day, open and gone;

ruby jeweled in all your movements

but that was too small.

In your owl mask

mice were your meat

the scutter and squeak, the rip

and swallow, wide eyes like lamps

with that painted look of the wise

though an owl has a brain

smaller than a walnut.

When you got your spurs

a brash young cock

you learned to jump high, to flap,

stab deep, to hide blood

in exclamations of swirling feathers,

bawling out your bloodlust 

to the dulleyed thirsty crowd.

But you're always most yourself

in your seagull grey suit

that darkens dawn, 

living high on trash, soaring on

 void with your frantic kind,

screaming their circled rage,

a vomit on the waves.

~May 2014, revised June 2014

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Fireblossom Friday: Challenge: Guido Vedovato

The wandering, eclectic eye of Fireblossom (Shay's Word Garden) lights once again on a painter of the Naive Art school, this time the contemporary Italian artist, Guido Vedovato. His official website, full of his unique painting and sculpture, can be found here. The image I have used for this poem is protected by copyright with all rights reserved(as are all his works) therefor I will not reproduce it. It is called  Il Giorno E Il Notte and you can see it at this link.



Optional Musical Accompaniment

Photo: Seagulls At University Garbage Dump, 1954, Seattle Municipal Archives, 

via flick'r creative commons

Mesh

Mesh

The hibiscus fallen

dropped from her hand,

The key falling,

falling to shadow.

The fence is down,

the door is open

on the moving stairs

ascending in circles

in a house made of knives.

Here is a woman

asleep in a chair.

Here is a woman

watching her sleep.

She has a bed no

sheets will fit

four walls a color

no paint will cover.

She has a man

no one can see

no one can be 

who holds another

as close as she.

Here is a door

no key will fit;

only its own  color

can cover it.

Here is the gleaner

whose face is a mirror

in black rags, in cages,

come for his wages.

She has  a lover

as true as the grave

whose ink never runs

who's an open page;

here is the key

falling into the lock,

the flower dropped

into her hand.

  ~June 2014

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Wednesday Challenge: Maya Deren

Susie Clevinger (Confessions of a Laundry Goddess) introduces us to the work of  Maya Deren, a gifted woman who was, as Susie puts it, "one of the most important American experimental filmmakers and entrepreneurial promoters of the avant-garde in the 1940s and 1950s." After watching her short surrealist film, Meshes of the Afternoon, I can certainly see how innovative and exceptional her work must have appeared back then. This poem is a pure ekphrasis on that film, but I make no claim to capturing its depth or meaning--simply my impressions and response.

Here is the film itself:

Images are stills taken from the film, Meshes of the Afternoon,1943, by Maya Deren and Alexander Hammid. No copyright infringement is intended.

To The Ectoplasmic Man

To The Ectoplasmic Man

Corazón, 

I saw you rise up

exit the mouth as a stir

in the air, the silvergreen breath

of all things impossible to prove.

You were the fox with nine tails

the kindness of strangers

memory's ghost bible

there on the bison-culled prairie

washed by a ruined lake.

I kissed 

your hot mist,

iced smoke-ring lips

unbuttoned my flakjacket

in the bullet rain;

called it the thing

it could never be

in a season of snow blindness,

dancing the spiral skipstep

of time's vertical jump-rope.

I lost you in realtime

in the harsh, in the fail

in the acid dissolve of

day after day, of unwanted things

that come closer with each

unwinding push away.

I lost you to grey

real dark, real stone,

real blood pounding its tempo alone.

Yours, as always, J.

~June 2014

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Friday Challenge: Lost Art

Herotomost(Mexican Radio) otherwise known as Corey Rowley, asks us to indulge in a spot of that lost art, letter-writing. This is one that never got in the mail.

 Image: Spirit of the Forest, 1890, Odilon Redon

Public domain via WikiArt.org

Falling As Flying

Falling As Flying

When I met the devil's dancer

with his train of rainy knaves

too crazy for the kitchen,

too mean to put outside,

I had to choose to dance beside them

or die without the garden

in the riddle of their love.

They had a salve 

they rubbed my skin with

to make a sudden stunning

of the secret self they sundered

from the untelevised quotidian

unknotted skein of childhood's yarn.

Their eyes were drug enough

at first; their skin became

my memory

burning through the now,

using all the oxygen

droning out the antiphone

disharmony of danger,

that intoxicant of the flesh.

And as the bella-

donna kicked my head

they did my favorite thing:

whisked the cloth from the crystal table

leaving everything intact, tossed me high 

through a shrinking skylight

I never knew was there.

They called the falling flying

and I suppose it's as close to that 

as any animal can come.

~June 2014

Process Note: "Atropa belladonna or Atropa bella-donna, commonly known as Belladonna or Deadly Nightshade, is a perennial herbaceous plant... native to Europe, North Africa, and Western Asia. The foliage and berries are extremely toxic, containing ..alkaloids. ...which cause a bizarre delirium and hallucinations... In the past, witches were believed to use a mixture of belladonna, opium poppy and other plants.. (such as monkshood and poison hemlock) in flying ointment, which they applied to help them fly to gatherings with other witches." ~wikipedia

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Challenge: Get Listed

Fireblossom(Shay's Word Garden) has leaped into the breach with a short but pithy word list, from which I have grabbed a few selections, combined them with one of my usual incomprehensible dreams, and totally gone off into the weeds. But, you can only use what you got, right?

 Optional Faintly Related Musical Accompaniment

Image: detail from the Triumph of Death, by Pieter Bruegal the Elder  circa 1532

public domain via WikiArt.org

Gone Girl

Gone Girl

Girl of a summer morning

girl of a falling feather

blue in larkspur weather

girl without a mooring.

Light from a broken candle's

bright as any other flame;

no need to call her name

she's there before you ask her.

Raven on her shoulder,

fox sleeping at her feet,

ruin falls sugar sweet

before the snow enfolds her.

Clouds eat up the starshow,

moon's locked in her pantry,

night puts light in chancery;

girl's gone where summers go.

~June 2014

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Open Link Monday

Image: Summer, 1896, Alphonse Mucha

public domain via wikiart.org