The Winter Door

The Winter Door

We sat together in the cold starmelt

close as blackbirds murmur in a leafless tree
or spaced high and still on a windy staff of wires,
when you brought out the wine that opens doors

and thawed my throat enough so I sang it all,

as if it were the last chance secret freed;

everything you'd want in words or need

witch-written jade in a moon white snow-- I sang it all,

curving in its loop the necklace for
a much softer pillory than the one I wore.

After the seventh glass, you gave out a flame

that threw its sulphur flicker on the deep,

flew your bright oriflamme of crippled grace

that shivered as it blew, and turned your face.

I had to guess it all from one lowered glance,
what hard secret hid below ones freely told
shadowed on a window where behind
some changeling moved---before it turned its face;

still, words are not a thing that blackbirds know

who pose no avatars in jade or snow.

When we sat in the light that fell

before it rose, in a country

cobbled crazy from a broken spring

to float its leaping green on silver ice;
when we laughed

to watch the way it is time bites

the coldest decade down to a burning drop

star-beaded for Orion's gut bowstring,

we were then as we are now, translated stark:

two who find their doorways in the dark.

~January 2015

posted for     real toads

Fireblossom Friday: Winter

The ever-blazing Fireblossom asks us to examine winter without any naturalist's delirium, and of course, absolutely not with a haiku.

Image: Blackbirds, © joyannjones 2013

Cactus Eye

Cactus Eye

The cactus eye is watering

watching, thinning,

its saving all in vain.

The needed day is now;
unindemnified, unsanctified

the indifferent sun will magnify,

will dry the drops of living

at its root,

and the bulge it held so long, life

parsed from long-fingered air, will shrivel

split the skin and spit the spines,

consume itself the nectar 

hidden in its wounds. The hungry dark

will fall like sharp-faced birds

and the cactus eye will close

at last dried blind.

~January 2015

posted for     real toads

Weekend Challenge: The Poetry of David Huerta

Grace (Everyday Amazing) brings the work of the Mexican poet David Huerta to us for inspiration. Reading  the poems she shared, as well as some of those in her linked translation of Before Saying Any Of The Great Words, led me here, though I'm not sure how.

Images: The eye like a strange balloon goes to infinity, 1882 by Odilon Redon

Public domain via wikiart.com  I have slightly tinted this image.

Photo of the northern lights seen from space, author unknown.

For The Road

For The Road

He bought me a car

so I could drive it for him,

the Drunken Master, the Blind Buddha

high school wrestler with a karma

stronger than the Eight Immortals.

So I worked for my license,

drove my teacher (Eddie Sneath) to drink

with the stickshift stall and rollback of 

 San Francisco hills,

learned the caress and nudge of a tight clutch

the tap of foot/ hand glide/ accelerator slide,

but still, I always knew

it was easier

than learning to fly.

~January 2015

posted for    real toads

Challenge: Road Trip!

Corey Rowley (Mexican Radio) asks us to travel back in time to our first ride.


Process Notes: 'Eddie Sneath" was an alias and alter ego of a friend. The car was a '64 VW microbus named Ruby, purchased by my first husband. (She had the white and turquoise paint job pictured above, so Ruby described her personality, not her color.)When I was put behind the wheel one foggy morning on Van Ness, I had never driven a car in my life, but I learned. 
The flying, that was harder.

Optional Pop-Psychedelic Musical Accompaniment

Images: Authors unknown. I have slightly manipulated both. 

Source.

Birthday Moonsong

Birthday Moonsong

Born  in the wolf moon,

at century's half-crack,

before the moving shadow box

before the singing pocket, the talking hand--

disjecta  membra of a war and peace,

nuclear snowflake crystaled in the cold aftermath,

fallout caught and whirled up

by black arms of concrete

into the sweet dance of chemical fog;

all around me

blackbirds falling

from the sky like almanacs

pages open to the gift of silent prophecy

and in the mirror, a white raven

solitary,
a meal, a target, a danger

to the flock, burning the eye like
a scarlet poppy

on a gravemound, or

a working girl unbuttoned

waking up hungover 

in the convent.

* * *

In the house

at the edge of the world,

with the wolf moon low in the west,

its yellow eye on the scattering stars,

its tongue longing

for the fat white hams of Venus,

the north wind sleets the window glass

bitter green, rattling the taste

of old snow and bad design; the wolf moon

the hunger moon,
stops to lap

pooled pink from blood-red Mars,

swells its belly 

with faltering stars, the small and weak
gnawing them out one by one as I hum

dusting the ape statuettes, the

flat smiles, perplexed still

that the empty chair

stays empty another winter, that

the bed made every morning

is unmade for one more night,

while the fire throws white shadows

where ghosts can fall like snow.

~January 2015

posted for    real toads
Tuesday Open Link


Optional Musical Accompaniment










Process Notes: The term "Wolf Moon' is an adaptation by Colonial settlers from the name for January in the Algonquin tongue. White ravens carry a genetic mutation which prevents melatonin from accruing in their feathers. They are rare, and other ravens generally shun them.

Images:

Snowstorm, by Maurice de Vlaminck

May be protected by copyright. Fair use   via wikiart.org

The Snow Queen FliesThrough The Winter Night, by Edmund Dulac

May be protected by copyright. Fair use   via wikiart.org

Angelcake

Angelcake

In the too-bright color-kill light

across the brittle border

lies Cellophane Angel-land,  

 everyone 

sugar-free, fat-free, deliciously

plastic, without

awkward organs, hot

or cold running blood.

Lifting sacred brand names to the sky

they sigh,

dying in fracture-fall

from old spork wounds.

It's fragile in the land of cellophane angels

with too much nothing to be.

~January 2015

posted for    real toads

Challenge: Flash 55 Plus

Kerry O'Connor (Skylover, Skywriting) remembers the incomparable Mr. Know-it-all, the G-man, Galen Lee Haynes, who left us last month, with his 55 meme continued, plus; or as she defines it: "Each month there will be something extra, an option to consider in your creative process. The one thing that will remain the same is the word count: 55 words no more, no less." This month's added element, appropriately for the man with the Harley, is a biker phrase from the 50's, 
'Man, you gotta go.' 
Might be a little of that in this, maybe.

Top image: High Noon, 1949, by Edward Hopper
May be protected by copyright. Fair use via wikiart.org

Footer: An Angel of The Last Judgement, 1911, by Wassily Kandinsky
Public domain