The Bluebird

The Bluebird

In yesterdays of peppermint 

and temps perdu, you lived with me in

the longhouse, grasshopper thin from fiddling, 

a silversmith of backspin. You carved me

a primitive bluebird

put it rounded in my hand

sitting drawn down

on its toes, fledge-etched in cerulean

soap-smooth, autumn-colored circles

at its too-wise eyes.

You smiled when it stirred,
flipped up

a stopsignal tailfeather,

gaped its open throat

for a worm-friend mother.

I set it among the other birds;

no thing of mine, your gift

but wild its own.

Oracle crows, inquisitor cardinals,

insipid chickens pecked it--

but the bluebird rose in

flutterform arpeggios,

and flew

not to me,

not to you.

~April 2016

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Kerry's Get Listed: Compound Words

(I have used some from the lists and made up others.)

temps perdu: Fr. for wasted time, lost time

Image:  L'oiseau bleu, 1968, Marc Chagall, via wikiart.org

April

April

Just a note to thank all my readers and visitors for their time and support, many of them over the course of the blog's life, and through the gates of many poems, good bad and indifferent. 

I will not be doing anything for National Poetry Month this year, but wish everyone who takes on the challenge of writing a poem each day all the luck in the world.

If I am able to write or even read, two things that are unfortunately becoming increasingly hard, I will certainly do so, but know that you all have made a great difference in my life, and provided me with vital encouragement over the years, for which, again, I sincerely thank you.

~Joy       3/29/16

 Shadows touch the sand and
Look to see who's standin'
Waitin' at your window
Watchin', will they ever show
Can you hear them callin'

You know they have fallen
On campfires cold and dark
That never see a spark burn bright

photo: Ghostoaks, © joyannjones 2016

Notice

Once again my material has been linked without permission to a blog I will not name. This practice is rude and unethical, and while there are no tools available to stop it, I wish to strongly condemn it. I therefore am putting this notice up more prominently at the top of the sidebar for anyone who may come here and think they can do whatever they want with my copyrighted material.

I DO NOT ALLOW  LINKING, REBLOGGING OR REPOSTING OF MY WORK WITHOUT MY WRITTEN PERMISSION. ALL ORIGINAL MATERIAL ON THIS SITE IS UNDER MY EXCLUSIVE COPYRIGHT, WITH ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. PLEASE DO NOT LINK, REBLOG OR REPOST MY MATERIAL WITHOUT ASKING. 

THANK YOU.

~Joy Ann Jones

The One-Legged Pilot

The One-Legged Pilot

When the trip begins the shore

is decorated with shipwrecked sunspots,

round mirrors of messaged bottles

I save from their cold blue exile,

and littered with rags of the rescued

I've replaced with nothing 

but the silken silver whisper

of my hair on salt-splotched skin.

The sirens call us, shrieking,

arabesque on their wayward rocks,

to sing us the torment of flesh,

of which there was never enough;
They curse

each plank we walk, and

even the death below

so nothing can really save us,

yet the peg-leg pilot 

steers us onward. The beach rears up at last; 

dry sand drinks our tears

while the sweet hormonal sea,
its tidal pulsing

the sirens' operatic hypnotic, even the grace

of salvage itself
abandons ships and sailors and

I am what washes up

alone on an arctic rim, hollow 

as a rind of frozen shell.

But the demon in the song is always full

and he is true still.

He's watched at the drydock of my bed

as decades rolled themselves up

like razor wire, tangled and untouchable

drawing blood at the slightest move.

He's seen the candle lit

and blown out
lit
and blown out
til the stump is smaller

and flatter

than even the look in your eyes.

A faithful sea-dog, my demon pilot

strong on a single leg, old but hot as pitch

his ivory teeth bigger, brighter--

a white flash in the liquid night

that only shows when he smiles.

~March 2016

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Weekend Challenge


Note: This poem has been edited since the reading



If you'd like to hear the poem clumsily read by the author, click below:

The Siren, and
Ulysses and the Sirens(Detail), by John William Waterhouse.

Public domain

Gravity

Gravity

"when I do fall/I'll be glad to go..."
~Jesse Winchester

Gravity

is not a friend

to planets in shards

to mud-sided hills

or its opposite,

frivolity.

It's a cliff-pusher, 

a  shrinker, a compressor

 able to blow every ruffle out

even as it rucks skin into pleats

 and blind alleys, an old sack under

its shuffled foot.

When hunger 

looks out of your eyes

seriously smiling,

there is always a force
behind the aspect

opposing

that works to make

me faceless,

out of nourishment;

one final bounce
of the deflated ball

landing after its long fall.

~March 2016

posted for        real toads

Challenge: Get Listed 

Photo: Personal Moonscape, © joyannjones 2015

Sunflower In Winter

Sunflower In Winter

Bent

at the rust-wire fence

as a sunflower dried

grey, prickled winter head

tossed in tepid wind,

 blown after bloom,
crooked as doom

consumed, folded
stemmed
of air, hollow;

dangling like a dead hand,

grey fingers
on grey to follow;

my landscape

of lost

 extremes,

where winter

is only

a way the light falls.

~March 2016

 posted for   real toads

Flash 55 Plus

Images: The Garden With Sunflower, 1887, Vincent Van Gogh, public domain

Winter Sunflowers, © joyannjones 2014

 

The Cambion's Tale

Dear  Readers: I had intended to take this month off anyway, but after some setbacks in the lumbar department, it really looks like it may be some time before I am well enough to manage much here. Please bear with me as I mend, and eventually I'm sure I shall return. I'll leave you with this little favorite of mine to chew on, and thanks, as always for everyone's concern and support. It means a great deal to me.

The Cambion's Tale

The wind rolls in the wildwood

tonight, teasing the last 

specklings of summer’s regret

from the moon-dripping trees,

fragmented friable tongues of 

henna and ochre milled to a dusty haze

that blots future and past, dead voices

rustling the leafsong that calls me to you

my hell born babe, heart’s delight

soul’s inquisitor.

Changeling and demiurge,

furred with frosted moss and mist

horned with bone, poised always 

to run; you regard me blinkless,

hermetic as a wild thing, gaze of

opals burning through the veil where

I pretend to be protected invisible

as Niniane, everlost instead

fate-tangled and resistless to 

the beckon of that blue unicorn eye.

So I come out of the night

for your lichen'd kiss, rain

cold, a drenching draft of rust

yet sweeter than any vintage

pressed from the sun's full flaunt. We're

as fallen as Rome remembered, love,

all my smooth green weight leaning

on the colonnade of whispers

you pull from some pocket in
the heart’s shallow grave.

My breath is gone again;

you’ve whistled for it. Lost

dog of my hollowed lungs,
it lopes at your heel, leashed 

tighter than the strangled chest

that knows its next gasp for last.

The night wind blows brimstone

around us, where the idol burns a

fading sandalwood smoke

bolted with blood, spiced with loss.

O there’s nothing wrong with us, love

that reincarnation won’t cure.

~October 2011

revised, February 2016

cambion: According to the Malleus Maleficarum, the offspring of a human male and a succubus, or a human female and an incubus. Caliban and Merlin are both assigned this dubious distinction.

*The last two lines are extrapolated from an anonymous saying passed around in the 60's.

Image: The Bathers, 1904, by Odillon Redon    Public domain. Manipulated.