Mayhem Road

Mayhem Road

On the mayhem road

it's a long patrol

down and down,

where the bad seed drops

and lives to grow

where the black oil flows

where the rocket burns 

where the blood gold glows

where the dark star shines

in the falling fog,  cold

where the child is lost,  long

where the old can't find,  spent

where the young must hold
the killer's mad hands,   sprouting

strong

on the mayhem road;

broke down alone

in the monochrome,

their lips are black.

No color leaks

from the grayscale night.

The dun dust glides

a cloudy sheet

across the girl with no breath,

face we can't bear to see

of all we once were,

of the damned we'll be,
companions on the long patrol
to the dead that grow
the mayhem road.

 ~January 2016

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Out of Standard

Official music video for Tis a Pity She Was a Whore, by David Bowie, from the album Blackstar. Lyrics here

Day In January

Day In January

This day

so cold, so grey, its icepoint knife,

its ashen-snowed walk-thru oblivion

where spirit steps freeze on fossil tar, raucous-

haunted by midnight crows, torn curtains of love

gone stiff in mid flutter ironed in sleet

that slants in through the windowed hole,

is a rose-colored palace, mottled red

by Mars, bleached clean by Venus

doored to the infinite city

quarried from stars,

growing up like an oak from

a foundation of rot

where what once lived ripens a

turned-under death for

another month to feed 

the secret green of possibility

with all its peculiar used atoms.

This day

where the ghost steps wander 

like a run-on sentence

under the widening moon,

the wolf moon, the hunger moon

made for the hunt.

~January 2016

Process note: wolf moon and hunger moon are Native American names for the month of January. Thanks to Josh Hart for the picture behind this poem.

Photo © Josh Hart, 2016 

All rights reserved.

SHE

SHE

Her tangled tongue tides infinitely, a stuttering sea

pounding the sense of sand to nonsense.

Her hand is a foot, her pale beak-hook

tears liver from a red-cursed god on a rock.

She sneaks her wings off the mariposa

to discuss the death of a crawling worm

all for a bloody flutter and fall, to pound in our ears

her liver-flecked lie as sweet sufferer's sense,

her mirror eye all on the wrong side, broken

but bright, reflecting the shine of her fracture-knives

cutting deep as she can into watching clay

but clay won't bleed and SHE can't see

that no more will we

ever have what SHE needs.

~January 2016

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Weekend Challenge

 mariposa: Spanish for butterfly

Sculptures by Pablo Picasso, photos by Karin Gustafson
All rights reserved to whoever owns them.

Island of Flowers

Island Of Flowers

I saw it glow

on the next to last wave,

as I sailed in a peashell

that troweled the ocean,
saw light beauty its shores

red, purple and blue

on fire with flowers

soaking in pollen, music'd with bees

and a humming that flew out

netting the sea.

When my trowel-boat
came to port on the loose

sandy beach, a peashell at rest 

donating its pea,

each step that I sank

was wavering a weight

like a drunken bee's legs

with his golden day's pay,

fitful but straight

through the center of day.

I Crusoe'd that isle

for my Fridayish needs,

looking out for a cave or

a hermit's leaned hut where I

might suddenly find thee

dreaming my dreams,

sleeping in flowers,

goat-milking the sun,

singing full chapters

of love to the moon.

But summer moved on

with no footprint at all;

the island grew cold

and still with the change,

brimmed up with bone

and all that I saw as

I dug in my trowel

not to sail but to hollow

my deep sandy bed,

was a sepia suite

of the husked and the bent,

the stems of a twist 

and the nodding head's need

uncolored, uncapped, with

a place to plead

from the wind and the sea

blowing with seed.

~January 2016

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Weekend Challenge

Image:Flowers,by Odilon Redon

Public domain via wikiart.org

Photo: Seeds 2, © joyannjones 2013

Doves

Doves

The blackbirds increase
while the doves softly dwindle
year by year.
The sea is less brine
than acid.
A fatal heat sprouts seeds
that remember better
a long gone downy sun.
The Great Construct is shaking

faltering
transforming
as the plague ship
brings out its black sail.
Change becomes us, as change
becomes murder, an ever-
fluctuating constant in
an insoluble set.

In the soundless hour
before curry-clouded dawn,
the sky is reshaped
by an unfortunate light.

It seems foolish to write of love
of the past
of the breath that fell
from stars to earth

while we are bound
to a maniac god
who asks us to eat chaos
and shit sanity.

~February 2015

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Tuesday Platform

Child with Dove, 1901, by Pablo Picasso. Fair use via wikiart.org Photo: Blackbirds, © joyannjones 2014

Crow Wind

Crow Wind

On the crow wheel, the war wind

black Valkyries ride

when battle's faltered, when red hands are still.

Full of eyes they become,

to see far and know

just how we rise up in the crop of a crow;

so the lost and blind
will learn to fly

with the bright-eyed on wheels of sky.

~January 2016

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Flash 55 Plus

Images: Crow at Sunset.  by F. Lionel via National Geographic Photo Contest 2015
Still from Vikings TV series on History channel, season one
All rights reserved to copyright holders. No copyright infringement intended.