Fire of Imaginary Origin

Fire of Imaginary Origin

We lit a bonfire

of lies on the earth

where we burned

not vanities

but sanities,

not tree parts

but peace, hearts,

flesh and bone,

blood and stone;

and whatever we learned

as planets were turned

we watched

fall to ash, and were glad that it burned.

Winter Solstice

December, 2019

It is with sadness and great gratitude that I post to Marian's Imagine prompt at the vanishing

Imaginary Garden with Real Toads

Image: The Ladder of Fire, © Rene Magrite, 1939. Fair Use

Image of fire, author unknown, via internet. Fair Use

Pinball Christmas

Pinball Christmas

The wind remembers the snow spirit

when the hunger moon paints clouds

flaxen with pearl.  Christmas is out

somewhere knocking

against lamp-poles like a steel ball

in a Jotun's bar machine

looking to clang a bell

over a red kettle with slit lid

past which a clamor of people

pass quicker, suddenly stiff,

fever eyes cast down, wary of any

expectation to give

here in the Land of the Take.

Christmas is nowhere, I say,

 in music or mind, only perhaps

in the rebound of blurred lights that fight

against the black buffer of December night,

striking their sparks where the heart is least bright.

~December 2019

Images: Salvation Army Bell Ringer, author unknown, manipulated, fair use

Christmas tree, 12/13/19, © joyannjones

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