Empires' Sum

Empires' Sum

Chantilly's lace of words

adorned a million men

with war's black bands. After July

she got no letters from the front; even

the green calligraphy of trees was mute

foddering the feast of fire and gun;

just a telegram to say they both would know

how the moon delivers a thousand nights of snow.

~July 2016

posted for         real toads

Flash Fiction 55 Plus

Notes: per wikipedia: The Battle of the Somme ...was a battle of the First World War fought by the armies of the British and French empires against the German Empire. It took place between 1 July and 18 November 1916 ... It was the largest battle of the First World War on the Western Front; more than one million men were wounded or killed, making it one of the bloodiest battles in human history.

The French and British had committed themselves to an offensive on the Somme during Allied discussions at Chantilly, Oise, in December 1915

Images: public domain via wikimedia commons:

Somme, showing field kitchen [from an album of World War One-related photographs of William Okell Holden Dodds. Brigadier General of  the Canadian Expeditionary Force in 1914]

An abandoned German trench [in Delville Wood near Longueval, Somme, France during the Battle of the Somme, from the British Imperial War Museum collection, manipulated.]

Wing Of A Moth

Wing of a Moth

Your kiss

hangs like a moth's wing
on the wet cheek of night,

a flight interrupted, a life

separated from its whole.

It knows

all the tyranny of gravity,

this caress you cloak in air;

the past is loudest when it whispers,
aching where it smiles.

Miles after dreams

I walk soar swim,

miasma'd in a sigh, stumbled

at a stile thrown across the

pasture-path 

where pink-nosed ruminants pull

and chew your weedy lies, sluice

them stomach to stomach

til they drop to show
the truth they always were.

Bright bell of the sun,

ghost of a moth's night shadow,
wild bloom and weed

flower, fly and ring;

between we two wings
let us have lift once again.

 ~June 2016

posted for    real toads

Challenge:Weeds

Moth  © Amelia Fletcher, via internet

Weeds and Flowers, by John Henry Twachtman public domain

Dreamless

Dreamless

We don't discuss which one is blacker

the starstrewn night or sister death

balanced here on living's edge.

Death has no moving moon

no firefly's strobe,

still we say she

comes all this

way with

sleep.

~June 2016

posted for   real toads

Weekend Mini-Challenge

Images: Untitled by Zdzisław Beksiński, fair use
Deadlight, © joyannjones

Weeklings

Weeklings

Monday's child consumes her face,

Tuesday's child is lost in space.

Wednesday's child's not what he seems,

Thursday's child's a drug that dreams.

Friday's child works hard for her money

so Saturday's child can steal it on Sunday.

And the child that's born on Black Sabbath day

buys the blind bride a ring, then walks away.

Banker, oilman, Blackwater sniper

dance before the unpaid piper.

~June 2016

posted for   real toads

Weekend Challenge

Optional Musical Accompaniment

Image by Edward Gorey, via the internet
No copyright infringement intended

The Bastard

"Hey babe, what's in your eyes?
I saw them flashing like airplane lights.
...What's that laughing in your smile?

...If that's your love, just leave me blind..."
~Jagger-Richards, You Got The Silver



The Bastard

It wasn't enough

performing for the

shell-game professors

and small-time grocers

you called family.

O no.

It wasn't enough

to scrub your drawers,

peel your cow's-tongue,

wait graveyard tables

to feed the child.

O no,

you had to call me

'an authoress.'

A bastard could never

belong in your world

unless it was you.

 ~June 2016

posted for real toads

Flash 55 Plus

Image: Tables for Ladies, 1930, by Edward Hopper  Fair use via wikiart.org