Snakes Across Monet's Last Lilies

Snakes Across Monet's Last Lilies

Memory, the circled snake

is a hoop that binds 

the rolling barrel even as 

it smashes on the rocks.

Love I tell you

is a grape that's dried

into a raisin, twice as sweet

but nothing like it was.

Everything is shining

with a light of blurs and halos,

each pinhole star enlarged

and yet more vague;

a wash of blue-green shadow

floating fingered bolls of cotton,

meant for water, gardens, lilies:

all Monet's last brush, blind color on

the ghostly dregs of form.

So time has had its way

with these and every thing

a wrecking that becomes uncertain rapture

for every shape that's salvaged

for every bird-note sharpened,

pulled loose in one fuzzed-peach 

piece from dawn

disintegrating

at our feet.

~November~December 2014

Images: Water Lilies, 1899, by Claude Monet
Water Lily Pond, Evening, 1926, by Claude Monet
Public Domain via wikiart.org

Blackbird's Funeral

Blackbird's Funeral

In the silent dower house

the lodging by the gate

through which

the black-plumed horses passed

so little and so late

a toll to pay
for all the clumsy

years lived as a wraith

in charity's cribbing walls,

for charity's careless fate,

no mourner stirs.

No handler comes

to crate the funeral meat.

Only the small ones gather and talk

in the clatter of wings and beak

of fur claw-thrown and heart-thud break

down in the windy bracken

of stone crust taken/never forgiven

of winter's hunger acorn bleak

of blue water gone dead dry

in summer's intimate heat.

In a moment's stare

the bare-handed tree 

made for small-clawed feet

will deafened reach, 

above will be blank

star eyes gone vague

in the shape of a face
random as clouds,
that instant she burns

in sheets of fire
thru the dower house gate;
a flutter of smoke,

an ash of a cinder

suddenly awake.

~November 2014

Image: december sky, copyright joyannjones 2014

Reposts for Christmas, #2

As this posts, dear readers, we will be somewhere in the wilds of Oklahoma, hiking with the dogs through a strange, season-less landscape hung between summer and winter, with warm sun and cold cold winds. And no internet. Hope that all who celebrate it enjoy Thanksgiving, and also this flashback from August 2013 which I've exhumed for your interim diversion. See you soon, and thanks again to everyone for your support.

 

The Farewell Book

"..High above the mast the moon
Rides clear of her mind and the waves make a refrain
Of this: that the snake has shed its skin upon
The floor. Go on through the darkness. The waves fly back.." 

~Wallace Stevens

I always keep the Book of Order

close by my chaos bed, my flag

at the masthead of longing, where

the brush of a half-numb hand upon 

its sleeping lover's cover lets me think

I'm not alone.

The Book has first and last page

but only a hole in the center, infinite,

secret, full of talismans, gauds and baubles,

wrack and whatnots, bones and blood,

astrolabes and artifacts of

someone else's life that is my own.

 

I sang out the genius from the cavity;

a wild shadow marked with your name.

I found for you the kiss long lost

in the dusty centrifuge, and made

the sickle wand that was
all the moon on a stick.

There atop the crease

you were born to lie,

to slither up and slide

your bendable spine into

the hammock of that crescent, to

murmur with flickering tongue

divine

the language of mind to mind,

but when at last I put

my feet to the morning's board,

I felt only the pricking crackle of

a skin shed on the floor.

Still I go on, a lunatic singing apart

flying waves of darkness, hook'd
on a used moon and a hollow book.

~August 2013

 

originally posted for     real toads

Challenge: Fireblossom Friday:

 the book within the story within the poem 
 Fireblossom asks us to think of matryoshkas, to pick a favorite poem and nest it in a story (see above link for a more coherent exposition.) 

I've chosen not one but two of my favorite poems by Wallace Stevens to nest here, using various words and phrases from:

The Idea of Order at Key West
(text and reading by Stevens)

Farewell to Florida

(text)

Photo © joyannjones 2013

Reposts for Christmas

Hello again dear readers. We are getting ready to go out of town, and I'm not quite ready or able to come out of my hole, but I feel strongly, as I read your poetry, that I should have something here for you to read in return until I get back. So, I am going to post an old poem once a week or so, not linked to any prompt, or with any expectations. Feel free to comment or not, read or not--just my attempt to give back to those of you whose work gives me so much comfort right now. Here is one from last June.

Incubus VIII

Untitled, by Zdzisław Beksiński

Incubus VIII
(Bloody Hell)

Hell is lonely without my demon--

my personal one, I mean, because

there's no shortage here of devils.

 

Basting on the liquid lava's lips,
I'm alone in brimstone sunscreen,

no ruby pitchfork's flip

 

when one side gets too burnt,

no serpent sapient tail to scale me,

just the brisk popping of my cookery.

 

I thought my demon knew there's no

vaccine for the maenad's bite, that

nothing says forever like damnation.

 

I was killing more than willing

to lie griddled on bloodred coals

and call it love; but I missed his

 

listening kiss in the hissing steam.

Hell is lonely, bloody
empty without my demon.

 

I thought this blistered blaze might power
his blade-heart's forge, and this hammer pain

might twin us bright as living never did

 

yet after the first in-twisting, after

first blood spilled

he disappeared

 

and that is Hell for you.

 

 

 

~June 2013

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[ This was originally posted for       dVerse Poets, where Karin Gustafson (Manicddaily) challenged us to write of twins, twining, combining or uncombining. Though I thought I'd finished with him, as I've written many little scribbles about my twin the Incubus, still he seems to linger somewhere at the back of Hell's waiting room.  If you'd like to read the others in this series, you can find them  here.  ]

 

 

 

 

Urge For Going

 

 Dear blog friends and readers, 

 

I believe I have come to the end of the trail here for awhile. 

~*~

Thanks for everything you have given me through your own creative gifts, and to the few who have stayed with me throughout this journey, through your most generous gift of all, consistently reading and giving me feedback on my poetry. I can never thank you enough for that.

~*~

If circumstances permit I will be back, and no matter how empty the chair, there will always be a candle burning for you and this place.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Image: Paul Gauguin's Chair, by Vincent Van Gogh