September Storm

September Storm

Lightning’s not like clouds

full of castles and horses

elephants and eagles;

it’s all skinny fishbones

fish hooks and the

skeletons of dragons

lich lightlines walking and 

no pouffe at all.

So with you light of my heart

just a lightning strike against a
shuttered lid,

so with me just a bunch of

dried rosemary

twigging in the wind, so with
love just a rack of bones to pick
of what once was,

a september 
storm
electric sweet still

sighing, sensed, scented 
on memory's nightblue fingers.

September 2011

Mystery Train

Mystery Train

Montana twilight

train whistle a devil’s lovesong

in the pines, shaking out drowsy owls. 

Fiery hooves ratcheting on the steel rails

clatter against the mountain calm.

Montana boy

distant eyes windowed glacier blue

sun's leather on your  brown cheeks

quiet hands, wild tongue of blarney

dancing your waysong in the deep woods

fey in the campfire light stroking my 

borrowed guitar, gifts given lost or kept

your misfortune my mystery

train ticket in a denim pocket 

pressed flat between us.

You thought you could talk anyone

into anything, meeting your folks on the blue
beyond ranch. City girl, braided gypsy,

I was a sprite, a freak, only your
hallucination there.

So we had a beer at the depressingly

real train station, waiting for John Wayne

with the devil arriving at 12:18. 

Time was overcranked. I remember you 

lifted my heavy barglass, turned it

to drink where my lips

had been, goodbye chipped silver

in the fogged antique mirrors. 
The San Francisco train
took your letters back.

Miles of dust 
down a switched track,

the devil still pulls Montana's whisper

lullaby low in the valley,

train howling to a stroked guitar.

September 2011

Posted for    Poetics   at dVerse Poets Pub

 Optional Musical Accompaniment: Mystery Train by Junior Parker and Sam Phillips, performed by Paul Butterfield and The Band

Beeing in the Woods

 

Beeing in the Woods

Deep deep into the woods today;

don’t look back but only down,

down where roots foxtrot

 cross the padded ground

wearing amberorange gowns 

that once fit green on their branches.

Walking all day, the bow of wind plays

counterpoint on celloed limbs;

 bees’ licorice saxophones drone in the fennel,

butterflies drinking beside them wary

with the flinch and nod

of old men at a pub.

Yellow light fashions its pollen heavy and sweet

filtered through finger-laced trees; 

jazzed up we and the golden-legged bees

turn at last to go back

taking what we carry

to the hive.

September 2011

Posted for Poetry Jam

Image: Photo by Ainslee Allmark

website: Dolphin Visions

Breezy

Breezy,
or

Aeolian cerebrations*

Somewhere out

in the far field

a pissed-off

cow makes her sound

buzzsaw mating a freight train.

I've lived my life

always

asking what’s next;

now I stand

by the opening dirt

and know.

Still the cool breeze comes

living on the air, to

swirl embrace instigate

couplings of leaves

scatter

the waiting seeds.

September 2011

Posted for   Friday Flash 55  at  the G-Man's

*added for the titillation of the grey matter of said connoisseur of 55's

Grasshoppers

Grasshoppers

The grasshopper turns

its liquid opal eye upon the leaf.

Where the eye goes, the bent tripod feet

the grass-shark jaw soon follow.

Where the jaw goes

death dances along

eating alive the tiny green

bodies

down

to

veiny bones

all that celadon succulence

murdered and swallowed

to hatch a hundred

more grasshoppers

begotten only to unbind

each lamina

from petiole

then start 

again.

 There is no end

to the hunger of the grasshopper

staring, staring at the waving

ocean of grass it cannot comprehend

only destroy.

September 2011

Posted for   OpenLinkNight   at dVerse Poets Pub

Join us for 24 hours plus of nonstop poetry sharing, hosted this week by Joe Hesch. Doors open at 3:00 PM EST and link in is live till midnight Wednesday.

Header Image: Grasshopper eating Eggplant Leaf,

Photo by and (c)2008 Derek Ramsey (Ram-Man) (Own Picture.) [GFDL 1.2 (www.gnu.org/licenses/old-licenses/fdl-1.2.html)], via Wikimedia Commons 

Vessel

Vessel

When the moon

is winking

like the Grey Sisters’ eye

passed from housetop

to housetop, glassy bright

and wide as a fawn’s

I feel your touch

the wind in the night

cool on fever’s summer,

you who can kiss with the taste

of rain and break the drought,

your look slips my skin

wet and terra cotta slick

as the clay on the wheel.

Run your potter’s hand

across my back

reshape my nights, my days

with lover's fingers

pliant as willow.

Fire me where the blaze

burns white.

Paint me with

bard’s colors

blue as the high july sky

rosy, yellow, crimson

with every flower

then take me to the well

where thirst is quenched.

September 2011

The Graeae: old women", "grey ones", "grey sisters", or "grey witches"; alternatively spelled Graiai (Γραῖαι), Graiae, Graii), were three sisters who shared one eye and one tooth among them. They are one of several trios of archaic goddesses in Greek mythology.....~wikipedia






Header Image: Explore #360, posted by  slokaa on flick'r
slokaa's photostream

Bottom image: Italian Glazed Earthenware Vase, 
courtesy wikimedia commons 

Dark Matter

Dark Matter

Love so long my intimate,

my reasonable master

now buffets me with alien force.

Each day a new division

slits my mind, anisotropic splits,

tangled strands, green kindling I leave

to be idly picked apart by your hands,

your hands that dread all work

and all possessing.

Yet I let gravity pull me to

the lightless prison at your heart,

cosmic dust of sin and spin,

a wobbling globe starry with relief 

in your human smile upon me,

your hair the wind lifts, your eager dismay

to absorb me quick as now becomes past,

futureless, floating on the knife-edge

of cold molecular storm

born to be parted in a moment

of repulsive expansion and galaxy shift,

giving up our brief blue light

as darkness births its worlds.

March 1991

revised September, 2011

This copyrighted image was originally used to illustrate the poem and is worth a view:
Dark Matter in a Lamda CMD Universe, 

simulation by Dave Bock, National Center for Computing Simulations

U.of Illinois Champagne-Urbana

Ten Years After and The Sentinel

I've written two poems for the complex topic introduced by Mark Kerstetter for today's Poetics prompt at dVerse--the idea of using our words to explore the wounds of tragedy, with the example of that huge and over-riding tragedy that happened ten years ago in New York City in our minds. The first is a triolet that is probably more in tune with Mark's message, and the second a more cynical and political appraisal. It's a very difficult task, I find, to really turn over something fresh after all these years and all the hype and consequences, but the core of pain is always there to explore.

Ten Years After

A triolet

I searched for you I searched for my best

lost where life became dust and smoke.

Bricks burned and fell in a failing test.

I searched for you I searched for my best

in paranoia, noise without rest

where faith was dark, when reasons broke.

I search for you I search for my best

blackened, lost where life turned to smoke.

September 2011

Sentinel

Watching from the waves

waiting for the night

wavering with the wind

winnowing the sight

taller than the microphone tree

the legless sentinel stands elegantly.

Before the staring sun

beneath the secret stars

beside the heart of fear

beyond the insect wars

blind in black infinities

the eyeless sentinel sees degrees.

Playing the patriot’s game

prowling the profiteer’s alleys

punishing sidecrawling cells

purchasing silicon valleys

avarice plays the same skin flute;

The many-tongued sentinel’s mute.

Crying the widow’s tears

consuming the motherless child

culling the careless earth

crowing the caw of the wild

inhaling each exhaled breath,

the apostate sentinel reinvents death.

August 2011,
revised September 10,2011

Posted for   Poetics   at   dVerse Poets Pub

Image: National Park Service: 9-11; Statue of Liberty & World Trade Center
By US National Park Service emloyee (nps.gov) [Public domain], via wikimedia commons