The Keeper's Dream

The Keeper's Dream

Wild darkness grows tame lightning

blue light from wrinkled hands;

 St Elmo's fire, stormscream, water

pushed into a weapon,

air's hysterics

my mates in this dark place.  

From the dead sailor's dream I know

your cry, snaking

up the spiral spine of things,

to warn the time is here

when even fishes will need wings.

~December 2019

For Kerry's Art FLASH 55 at real toads

A quick and dirty 55--forgive if my tools are still a bit rusty--with thanks to Kerry for all the glories, past and present, of The Imaginary Garden, and to the G-Man for the form which never fails.

Images: Pharos and Pacifico Oracle cards, © Kerry O'Connor
Attribution Link

Another Fall

Another Fall

It's a cold cascade through time,

from the strip mall of memory

to neon horizon,

from green waves of forest

to the needle's eye of the heart,

through which the rich, misshapen

moon must pass like a camel,

before the mimes and jokers

intervene. That tumbled road

from the crack in my back

to the crack of your indecision,

Oh I've walked it many times,

chained to my cane

with the Milky Way lambent above

and flat below the putrid detail

of those thousand lies, illusions

masks and false affidavits

that came with your smile.

Now it's time to fall again, in

the beam of your death ray eyes,

an Icarus returned without wax

to  original components,

a thing of feathers and sky

far lighter than either air

or these dark whims, to learn at last

the language of goodbye and bury

 with the bones the syllable why

~December 2019 

Written to Kerry's skylover word list for December:

 

Images: What A Human Being Is, copyright Hilma F Klimt, Public Domain

The Fall of Icarus, copyright Marc Chagall, Fair Use

via wikiart.org

Spirit Apocolypse

Spirit Apocalypse

Entropy dreams of its Creator

under the burning blanket

of wild horses slaughtered

of eucalyptus torches slow

roasting marsupials,

of its enemies hogtied helpless

if not as yet quite mastered,

all things of beauty bent

to the wheel of avarice

as the spotted pony runs

as the devil drowns

in sympathy

in sycophants

in syncopated strategies

of the smallest minds now

suddenly somehow successful.

We wait for the tide

to rise, the Earth to speak, 

for the wild appaloosa 

with our handprint

on its flank to find us, 

for the ash

to heave up the white buffalo,

the soul we weep for

to race oblivion

of wave and fire, drought and famine

to bear us

where we may buck and strain

to cut the cords that

crack the bone

of this ravaged

rock on fire

calling to the spirits

for the spotted pony

the white buffalo

the avenging angel

as if we know them,

with only the death's head grin

of the four bleached horsemen in sight.

~November, 2019

Images: War Pony II, by Sarah Lyn Richards. All Rights Reserved to Artist
White Buffalo, by Cuzco. All Rights Reserved to Artist

Star Bright

Star Bright

A little star

blown on a crinkled wind

comes to the Deadhouse.

It pushes open a window

darts a beam

between cobweb cities

and empty night.

The Dead and the

Apprentice Dead,

mummified

mute, are of course

indifferent but

the ragged prisoner,

the Almost Dead,

lifts her darkened eyes

and suddenly

begins to breathe

 in the swelling rhythm

of the living firmament.

~November 2019

Personal Note: For those who may not have heard yet, my husband passed into the solar wind on October 18th, after months of quietly enduring as much pain and indignity as a human being can suffer. I think of him as released, and of the rest of my life as totally unknowable, but at least the wild dark-eyed muse seems to be back, vague in the shadows, teasing me with her throaty whisper.








Image: Untitled, by Zladislaw Beksinksi

Sea Trash

Sea Trash

You've never known you carried

that force

which breaks the idea's skin

with no time for

an aftertaste

neither regret

nor understanding;

that you made love

 a leaf lightly spinning

already dead but flying

laughing to be

no longer itself

only something falling

into the old gods' wide arms;

that the moment they were born

your words were

my  million separate siblings

fluttering, full from eating light

then put to fire's smoking

neither regret

nor understanding

for something changed and burning:

a life you never saw

that broke the brown wren's shell.

And now

sweet noise and dust-light sparkles

sea trash in the soft salt tide

of heartsblood oceans,

bobbing from here

to gone.

 April 2019

for my dear friend Shay's final Fireblossom Friday, where she asks us to "write about love for someone who does not know you love them."

at real toads

Images: both Untitled, by Zladislav Beksinksi via internet. Fair Use.