Yeast of Eden

Yeast of Eden

(A Shadorma)

Rising high

we're slapped down into

the oven,

rolled in earth,

clods shaken off like sugar,

cargo'd naughts of fate.

April 2011

Posted for Poetry Form Monday at the inimitable OneStopPoetry

Annie Welch is this week's host and she explains the form thus:
"The shadorma is similar to both haiku and tanka, yet it is not of Japanese descent.  It is a 6 lined poem (sestet) of Spanish descent with no set rhyme scheme. The shadorma is a syllabic poem with the following structure: 3/5/3/3/7/5."


Image: Whole Wheat Bread Dough Rising - Donna Diegel
source link (with recipe)

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We’ve taken your weapons for

our shinies. They are Art,

looking so good there on the wall.

Not because we needed them

but because you did.

With them, you took

the fleshgift and gave thanks,

clothed by them in the speed of the hare,

the strength of the herd, only culled

lightly by these sticks and blades,

or held them strangled in

sweatslick palms; a silver sickle's flash

in the night meadow of a hidden moon,

harvesting suede-skinned  wives

with pomegranate eyes

half asleep and weeping

in the night.

Some flew, smokesung, charmed

with feathering colors, back to the thrower

magicking  the empty pot,

or were sharpened, adorned, polished,

given names and a will to seek the outsider,

to meet him breast to breast

and drink his life.

But all that’s past and gone now.

Oh pretty yes, but laughable,

adorably primitive, that hand to hand concept

of some sort of personal responsibility.

No match at all for a pinch of black powder,

and the myriad vermicules of filth swarming

from our poisoned pockets.

They look perfect on the wall, don’t they?

They match the lampshades

and paint our power

soulless but infinite

over everything that matters.

April 2011

Posted for One Shoot Sunday at the inimitable One Stop Poetry

Image: Photo by Lauren Randolph

Trois Années du Bloggerie

La Rose du Malmaison, Jean-Louis Victor Viger, 1866: the Empress Josephine, with her ladies    (oh, and that guy.)

Trois Années du Bloggerie

An Italian Sonnet

Josephine made a garden most curious and rare

and regardless of how it enraged her swart spouse

to spend his wargold on a rundown country house

she caused every manner of rose to be brought there,

with kangaroos and emus and black swans in her care

with flowers and llamas and the occasional trained mouse,

while stoves warmed the fragile and wild in her greenhouse.

There she lived until she lived no more, and all was fair.

Three years ago, another feral high flier

came to enliven the shabby bare blogosphere’s domain

with a garden of wild words only she can reveal

where we walk in delight amid blossoms of fire

always watching our backs when we hit the refrain

for it’s not only emus the shadows conceal.

Avril, 2011

Congratulations, Shay, on three years at the 

Word Garden

okay, so I made up the mouse...sonnets are hard, I tell ya...

Two Feathers

Contrary to my usual practice, I 'm not providing an image for this poem due to copyright and fair use considerations. Please follow the link provided below to see the painting by Native American artist Jerome Tiger, Stomp Dance, on which this poem is based. Tiger was an extremely gifted painter born in Tahlequah, Oklahoma, a Muskogee Creek-Seminole, who died tragically at the age of 26, after producing some of the most vivid art depicting Native Americans I've ever been privileged to see.

Two Feathers

When everything is taken from a man,

and there is nothing left,

when his home has been burned 

for someone else's crops,

and his moccasins are gone,

then he must go barefoot,

stop dancing

or learn

to dance in boots.

When a man is made naked and

invisible,

then he must dress

in someone else's clothes

to be seen.

When a man's way has been broken and lost,

if he wants to dance it back, 

then he will dance the dance he knows

as best he can

and fly

with just

two feathers.

April 2011 

Posted for Friday Poetically at the inimitable OneStopPoetry

(Brian Miller's prompt for today was to choose any work of art as subject for a poem. Thanks, Brian.)

This poem may make more sense if you  click here to view Stomp Dance,  which inspired it; you can also read Jerome Tiger's biography.

Friday Flash 55 ~ The Cruel Master

The Cruel Master

A Tale of Love and Fear in Rictameter Form

(sort of)

“Come! Now!”

the stern command

wakes her at dawn’s first light.

His eyes, relentless, follow her.

She cringes and whines and rolls belly up.

“Fetch!” say the eyes. She tries  to hide

but she has no choice, it's

obey or else.

“Come! Now!”

She gets up, gets dressed 
and gets the leash.

It's walk time.

April 2011

Rictameter is a syllable-counting form, where syllables per line are as follows: 2 4 6 8 10 8 6 4 2  and the first and last lines must be identical. I’ve added twelve words at the end to provide the requisite 55 for a certain cranky old man.

 

posted for Friday Flash 55 at G-Man’s



Hey--you can't be serious all the time.

Photo: The Pitiful One,  by joy ann jones

Getting Clean

Getting Clean

You found me at a party,

somebody else’s drink

unclaimed.

I fit your hand.

I could never have been a junkie.

My veins are too well hid,

like thin filaments of ore 

running deep beneath stone;

besides, my flesh shies

from the puncture, from the loss,
rolls away.

I could never be a junkie

except for you.

The first time it was free,

spooned at a fire of smiles and skin,

kind words, hot words in tongues

to me unknown, 

and hands.

 I 

got so

high.

After that, I paid.

The disease of you I learned

to live with, crave the dirty needle,

but the withdrawals

contracted, racked me; in  nightsweats

malarial waves of wanting left me

twisting, hanging

fever hot;

you baked my bones,

waited for the crack and sucked the marrow,

let them cool in your indifference till

I screamed 

to have the fire back

again.

And you would burn me then

with such delight,

lick me with blue flame and sweet pain,

then 

doctor me,

         read to me

play for me,

                 tell me your

                          way

but I

could never be your junkie

in the end

because I couldn’t

pay for it

any 

more.

April 2011

Image: Flaming Cocktails, by Nik Frey, courtesy wikimedia commons 

Valkyrie in the Sand

Valkyrie Helm, by yigitkoroglu

Valkyrie in the Sand

She stood on the last hill and looked down.

From here he was only

a supper for crows

blind and fast faceless

spread out a dark blur on the rocks,

blood around him like a fine sauce

calling the fourlegs to come and eat.

His weapon lay beside him 

broken

in a place of broken bodies

pressed into bloody earth.

Splayed limbs in the last breath of lust

give a red drenching to the land

they fought to own

that now owns them.

Mad scarlet, flickering firelight;

women white and wounded rave and weep,

children go hungry, silent and still

as the soft sound of never

comes too close,

and fills its belly.

Below, in the darkness

his spirit twists a banner thin as smoke

planted on the wind. He sighs

waiting for the last ride

home to the high hall

glory with the companions

name forever blest

certain dues for death.

Yet her strong arms 

are empty as

she feels the fade come on her.

Backwards in a

shimmering mirage

through the blowing sand

each step unties her.

Home

in the place of frozen gods, 

of clean cold, 

of the long wait

for the end of things,

the sighs of the dead 

disappear.

The desert is no place for a valkyrie.

April 2011

will be

Posted for OneShotWednesday at the inimitable OneStopPoetry

Image: Valkyrie Helm, by yigitkoroglu, courtesy deviantArt

yigitkoroglu's gallery

Rainy Day Trip

Rainy Day Trip

I’m on a journey in the rain

where destinations are

scarce as kind words in hell, with

too many out of state dreams.

Lovers and others get lost in the dark,

tarry and black as truckstop coffee.

Not far enough

behind me comes a dog, 

a hound of the basketcases,

so I don’t travel at night

any more.

In the day my car is the knife

I take to the buttery sunlight

But it softens and runs

streaky yellow and then liquid away

down the ditch at the side of the road

buttercup yellow with new flowers.

Jewel spots dancing

like glare become

blindspots of grease in the  rain

on my windshield.

While I drive I wonder

things, like

“would coffee taste as good without a smell?”

and 

“is this hard wind a politician,

pushing air for a job?”

or

“does time fly because it's a lost balloon,

or a deer before the wolfpack?”

The answers are

scarce as jokes from an undertaker,

ruffles

on a machine gun.

April 2011

Posted for Magpie Tales # 60


Uncredited photo provided by Magpie Tales removed