Hunter's Wish

Hunter's Wish

I see you in dreams,

arms akimbo clutched one-handed,

a beige on blond bending

two-dimensional distortion,

Modigliani-stretched 

or a cave painting:

Hunter, missing one forearm.

Thin as the spear

you no longer throw,

reluctant to grasp

anything at all, 

or pick up the wish

so long on your table,

staring you down,

sealed or smeared,

perhaps just trash or

scratched in a code

mathematically impermeable.

Yet I with no math,

no science, no separated brain

can read,

flat and open as a daisy,

the plain letters curved as

salmon's backs leaping,

your wish for hunt's end:

only be good, it says,

(in antelope tracks, in burnt bones

in crumbled earth,) 

be good

to yourself.
Don't forget how to use
the hand you have left.

~May 2016

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Challenge: Fireblossom Friday

Image: by SiefkinDR :Photo of outline of a human hand, dated 27,000 Before Present Era, dsplayed at the Musée d'Archéologie Nationale (Museum of National Archeology). in the Chateau of Saint-Germain-en-Laye via wikimedia commons

Goodbye Without An End

Goodbye Without An End

Let me leave where it all begins.

Let me meet you where fires fail.

Let me know you at last as my kin,

where breath is as close as skin,

where we don't know the end of the tale;

where it's better to go than stay

where it's better to dream than wake

tossed on the sparkle and spray

until we dive or break.

~May 2016

My muse seems to be taking a bit of a hiatus, dear readers and friends. As usual, if something comes, I will write it; otherwise I ask you to forgive my absence. Best of summers to you all and as always, thanks for the support over so many years.

Image: Harald Sohlberg, Sea Spray, 1908, pen,ink and watercolor on paper
Fair use.

Honey Is Sweeter Than Blood

Honey Is Sweeter Than Blood

O I know you loved me

like the tiger loves the goat

and that was why we went to sea

in a cask that didn't float.

That was why you talked to me

with jungle in your throat

and crooned so comprehensively

each note the wild things wrote--

but when we broke up in the foam

it was plain I was a bear,

and you--just a heavy honeycomb

I'd pulled from a tree of air.

~May 2016

 (Homage to Dali for title)

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Weekend Challenge

Optional Musical Accompaniment

Study for Honey is Sweeter Than Blood, 1926, by Salvador Dali

Tiger in Love, 1979,  by Corneille(Cornelis Guillaume van Beverloo)

Fair use via wikiart.org

The Broken Gate

The Broken Gate

Tenderness

except in dreams

has dried up like

moon's twin-horned stream,

extinct as Australopithecus

or the seventh kithera string

strummed by the plectrum of Astarte.

Trust mis-grunts the tongue of trolls

nor is it fluent in spirit. It

teaches forests the growl

in the chainsaw's throat,
spreads the dryads' legs,

smiles when the owl

of Athena's beheaded.

Love is a rumored magic

removed from the act,

a legend of the dead,

a plagiarism of runes

marsh-candled on bone

yet brighter in the eyes of the wild
for being lost to sight,

light unfleshed, undressed, discarnate;

ghost-wrack on the high wind

that breaks the last gate.

~May 2016

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Weekend Challenge

kithera--seven-stringed musical instrument of the ancient world, ancestor of the guitar.

Above: Ruin with Head of Medusa and Landscape, 1941, Salvador Dali  Fair use via wikiart.org

Below: "The original complete skull (without upper teeth and mandible) of a 2.1 million year old Australopithecus africanus specimen so-called Mrs. Ples, discovered in South Africa.
Collection of the Transvaal Museum"  Courtesy wikimedia commons

Incognito, Indistinct

Incognito, Indistinct

In the killing fine fabric

of inflorescent flame

we walk, we burn,

dwindling from kindling

to inglorious smut

alone in a dark

our dying lights up.

  

Murderers in red

boil a soup from the dead.

In our hollowed heads

honed hidden things move,

their inhalation our blood,

their exhale the air

where the fire fed.

~May 2016

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Flash 55 Plus

Image: The Return of the Flame, 1943, Rene Magritte

Fair Use via wikiart.org