Snake Smoke

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Snake Smoke

 

 

An eye is a window,

a window an eye.

I can't tell you any more

so don't ask me.

 

A promise is a lie,

a lie is a promise;

curling smoke from my pipe,

a snake climbing air.

 

Chaos the white bride

for a bridegroom of money,

worst man holds the ring.

Priest eats the flower girl.

 

A promise is a lie,

a lie is a promise;

snake smoke from my pipe,

a garotte made of air.

 

A marriage is a funeral, 

a funeral a marriage.

I can't talk now

I'm late for the wedding.

September 2021

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

posted for Fireblossom

at The Sunday Muse

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Note: Yes, it's a cigar, not a pipe. Poetic license.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Images: Wind From The Sea, © Andrew Wyeth, 1947  Fair Use

Photo of Lakeith Stanfield, author unknown via internet Fair Use

 

 

The Luna Moth Dress

 

 

 

"...Every Morn and every Night

Some are Born to sweet delight.

Some are Born to sweet delight

Some are Born to endless Night..."

~ Augeries of Innocence, William Blake 

 

 

 

 The Luna Moth Dress

In my apple green dress

with my faceted eyes

black as the breeze

from hell's back door

I flutter around

where the blue shadows play,

where my velvet arms

drop the face of the light

deep in a focus

on one bright flame,

no last sweet sip

of the moonflower's wine.

My cheap insect mask

frightens the child.

Dogs bark as I walk

on the edges of bricks

but in my luna moth dress

soft eyebrows all feathers,

I know I'll soon fly on

the breath floating the sky,

welcome at last

in the green wood of life

one with the Fae, one

with the lark, a thing with 

a place, a peace, a time,

 

a laugh

full of giving past

the slow dance of moon,

free from this exile

in endless Night.

 

 

 

 

September 2021

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

posted for Open Link Night

at dVerse Poets 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Note: Luna moths (Actias luna) live 7-10 days and are nocturnal. Adults have no functional mouthparts and live on energy stored as caterpillars.  

 

Images: Luna-moth © sunelixir   All Rights Reserved   Fair Use

Luna Moth © Jessica Mahan   All Rights Reserved    Fair Use

 

Blue Flame

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 Blue Flame

I was the woman who

loved you hotter than a sun

hard as a granite gravestone

once,

but time has chosen to

braid me differently, tying years

into grey knots

behind which the crimson

of memory

coagulates and fails

making it seem as if there

is not, never was,

love as stubborn as a pebble in a shoe

piercing every step.

A parody of a woman

rolled in a circus tent, lurches like

a wheelbarrow when she walks,

from the pebble, from the weakness, from the void.

Her flesh sags like a

campfire marshmallow melting

on the stick.

Yet in the mirror gateway

my eyes avoid, sometimes a flash;

the high snow-swept cheekbones of that girl,

the sunburnt hair longer than winter,

the bell glass body moon-rounded, glowing

a blue flame within, feeling

your touch so

 

fluent in flourishes of stars;

 

 

 love as sharp as thirst

unquenchable.

 

 

 

September 2021 

 

 

 

posted for

The Sunday Muse

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Images via internet, authors unknown    Fair Use

 

 

Dream Trip

 

 

 

 

 Dream Trip

 

 

 

 

 

 After a pipe dream courtship

he married disaster. Six months gone

he woke up to

a quick divorce. He untangled himself

on the road to Vegas, where lies went down

like a cup of strong coffee

fast and black in the tarry night,

lounge tunes bleeding in air 

sharp as snake-eyed desert light, hope

another bad debt to be written off.

The wind's hand shook

like a drunk croupier, fumbling out

aces and eights

before the martinis, sanding the gas tank,

whistling at graves. The car gave out

before he made Tahoe, when

nothing was left but Jack and shit

and Jack left town. Stars sarcastically

 winked when he put his head down

slack on the wheel and slept

dreaming of her, dreaming of then,

dreaming a toffee-striped lizard

and a stand-up owl

laughing their asses off

at punter's luck.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

September 2021

posted for

The Sunday Muse

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Images: Abandoned Car, author unknown, Fair Use

Lizard © Chernee Sutton-Jurutu  Fair Use

Labyrinth

 

 

 Labyrinth

 

I played in the field of the minotaur's horn.

The rose trees stretched for twenty miles.

His black eye blinked

my slow heart's beat. I danced all day where

the elephant's hip burned blue in the shade,

where I glimpsed the escape the animals made

before the age had been born.

 

The green grey moor 

was soft as a sponge 

on my cheeks where tears

disappeared in the mist.

I wondered if we'd ever kissed

in the halls behind the labyrinth's door

where the beasts blew their breath on the shadow play.

I saw them come at the end of the day

with all to give and nothing to say. 

Their souls each put in a hazelnut

that sank in ripples of earth's wet heart

covered in time from fire and flood,

from our hands that pull the world apart,

that turn his field from grass to chalk

where roses blow for twenty miles

and the animals at last

have begun to talk.

August 2021

 

 

 

 

 

posted for earthweal's

Open Link 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Images: Minotaur Caressing A Sleeping Woman, 1933, © Pablo Picasso  Fair Use

Swans Reflecting Elephants, 1937 © Salvador Dali  Fair Use

Windfall

 

 Windfall

 

 

 

Fill my glass

and let it be. The night 

moves over the unsodded graves

unquiet between

the roadhouse and road,

seventeen mounds

to home seven sins,

my vanities' bones,

my castaway loves, my old

car-killed cats.

 

Fill my glass

and let it come

at the end of the sky

when the broad brass sun

sets aslant on black apples

wind threw to ground, on

the last summer moths fluttering down,

warming them ripe for the locust's hall

with autumn's endings

packing the rows.

 

Fill my glass;

half empty is full. Let it be

as I drowse on the lawn,

sweet shattered moths and

brown thrushes for company, my

sore eyes wrapped with

a bandage of stars, peace

spilling into the void

where understanding

has flown.

 

 

 

 

 

August 2021

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 posted for

The Sunday Muse

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Images: Apples, Jug, Irridescent Glass, © Paul Gauguin  Public Domain Manipulated.

Night Hill  © Andrea Kowch All Rights Reserved   Fair Use

Photograph of cat and wineglass from Sunday Muse, artist unknown. Fair Use

 

Blue Drown

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Blue Drown

 

 

I've been too long

in the blue drown

to feel again now

 

too long under

the mirrorglass glowmoon

that tides me apart

to answer your voice

 

too many waves

with their concrete hands

on my throat

their sucking salt drench

in my eyes and mouth

to ask who's to blame.

 

There's no pain left

on this sand 

swirled trashed beach

where I've come to meet

 

the last falling star,

the hungry crabs.

 

 

 

 

July 2021 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 posted for Open Link Night at

d'Verse Poets Pub

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Images: Looking For Crabs Among The Rocks, 1905 © Joaquin Sorolla  Public Domain

Two Crabs, 1889  © Vincent Van Gogh       Public Domain

I have manipulated both images.

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Accordion Man

 

 

 

 The Accordion Man

He stands in my head

where the music once lived

like a tongue in a bell

when the ringer is dead,

corroding a little bit more every day.

He came down from the crossroads

with a small spotted dog.

He plays in my ear

til my dreams turn to fog.

The dog wags its tail and then runs away.

His shoes are like blimps.

His face is like claws;

his hands push the buttons

that work the bonesaws,

to slice out a song no one wants him to play.

He won't ever go.

I know that by now.

He plays in my head

and it chirps like a crow

his accordion clatter of skulls on a tray.

He chants all my names. He adds seventy to nine;

but the worst is

his eyes

are sadder than mine.

I could watch them all day.

~August 2021

posted for Fireblossom

at The Sunday Muse

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Image © Guido Vedovato   Fair Use