The Wait

The Wait

For so long,

hope has been only the

party dress of a woman

naked underneath, but one night
I know you'll find me, take me

off this skewer in the southern heat.

I'll fetch a sizzled sigh when I feel

your hand on mine, warm and dry

as summer peaches, your eyes

browner than husked pecanshells

earthed and softened by rain.

I'll see you again

through the listless curtain breath

where you walk in puddled shadows, a speck

of substance, flesh of my flesh cut on the

blade of the horizon, 
parted from me only by

the last sigh of the day

coming closer.

I'll go to the mirror

remake my face in fewer years

take away the new fear from the eyes,

the acquired acid behind the soldered lips,

run a quick feather over the pain you left too soon to see
before I blow light into my cheeks and wick

the old roundness for you to globe

in the lantern of your kindling palms.

All that's left now

is the wait.

~August 2012

Posted for   Fireblossom Friday    at real toads
Shay asks us to write a love story for the inner movie lover.

Optional Musical Accompaniment:

Image: Sunset over the Haunted Cowyard, © joyannjones

Disconnect

Disconnect

He was the kind of man

who got off on talk,

preferring a woman apply

deep massage with dirty words

as if words were safer, cheaper

than an unscripted act, 

a kiss

some bill too much to pay.

She didn't mind

a little wordplay

but there's a place

where words

and he

will never go.

~August 2012

55 words of long distance wisdom for

the G-Man

also

Posted for    Meeting the Bar:Writing Characters   at dVerse Poet's Pub

Image: Photo of  Aphrodisiac Telephone(Salvador Dali, 1938) by jpellgen on flick'r

Shared under a Creative Commons License

Optional Musical Accompaniment

Gris-Gris, Revisited

© Margaret Bowland

Gris-gris

(Revised August 2012)

Rising with the night wind, 

Legba’s misused servant sculls her makeshift boat

across the jagged template of the swamp 

looking for a sign, a water mark of Li Grand Zombi,

His serpent Self fat with knowledge

she must borrow from black night.

The humming song on her peach lips

is deep with the umber pulse of Africa,

in a language no one knows here. It

builds magic out of bondage, grows charms

from fear and want, weapons from shed blood

that turn against the holding hand.

The gris-gris sack around her neck

ties the struggling spirit to her body

for the will to resist is strongest after all;

it chills the child away from her womb,

the child she can’t keep or bring herself 

to give her master

no matter how often he comes 

like a levee breaking in the muddy dark,

hard fingers prying her open like a mussel

sharp teeth seeking

her wide mouth thin as a knifepoint,

tongue tied tight as a noose.

In time she finds it all, here and there, from

rummy sailors off ships stinking death,

from altar boys bribed with her breasts.

She mashes the small bones of a lizard

caught by a seventh son in a graveyard 

under a full moon

and all the other secret things, 

each one just so

stirs them together 

with a broken crucifix

to the singsong mantra of

the Lord’s prayer

and older prayers in her honey voice, calling

the spirits of air, crooning to the Snake of

heaven and earth, arched as a lover.

Under her bed the curse breathes, newborn in a bag

slung round the neck of the vacant doll

with the lock of yellow hair.

On that black night of endless nights,

blowing into the hut with the rush of storm,

the master is surprised and pleased

to see for the first time

she is smiling 

really smiling at him.

~February 2011

(revised August , 2012)

 

Posted for   OpenLinkNight   at dVerse Poets Pub

Process Notes: I originally had something else in mind for tonight, but recent political events in this country brought this old poem to mind, full as it is with the issues of absolute ownership and power over women's bodies, what people will do to each other when they can, and voodoo as science.

If you'd like to hear the poem read by the author, with apologies for sound quality, click below: 

gris-gris by Hedgewitch O'theWilds

Image: Another Thorny Crown, painting by Margaret Bowland

All copyright remains with the artist. The picture is reproduced here for non-commercial purposes only, for sake of the art, and with all respect to the creator. If there is any objection by the copyright holder to this use of the work, please contact me via email (see profile link) and it will be withdrawn immediately with full apologies.

Snuffing Out the Dead

© John Edwards

Snuffing Out the Dead

Parched, head in the dust,

coughing out the hairball past,

the summer passed in a sequence

of hearses, rolling

black, dead brown, zebra striped with

love and loss

and the scent everywhere

of the burning dead.

The choice of what

would live or die was left

to the old nixie, fighting for

a drop of wet, picking which

would green and which would wither

her rheumy eyes lifted to a sky 

that mocked her with

the blue of endless rivers.

Every day a sugarwater war buzzed

between hummingbirds and strafing wasps

till at last the killing fever dropped, the bright ball

bounced over August's wall and autumn's coat of clouds

shook out her rain. The charred fields were sponged

with jade light, snuffing the dead in malachite,

the soft breathing of grasses stronger, deeper 

than the blackened ash they consumed.

~August 2012

Process notes: 'nixie; noun, German Folklore .a female water spirit.' dictionary.com

and credit to Ross MacDonald, for the Zebra-Striped Hearse in stanza one.

Posted for    real toads

Sunday Challenge: Photography of John Edwards

John writes under the name of Scriptor Senex and has generously shared some of his photographic work with real toads. Thank you, John.

and also for

Poetics   at dVerse Poet's Pub

where Karin Gustafson hosts the prompt, Dog Days of Summer

Image: Photo © John Edwards

Used with permission.

Song and Dance

Song and Dance

The Monk's Tail (Chasing) a huitain

The milk and water monk got saved so strong,         

red rosary clutched to repent each sin,       

he scourged his back for his stained glass god's song

yet ev'ry howled word he sang high and thin                      

exalted the idol he'd raised within,

his mouth in the mirror a round black hole     

through which each paean of praise would begin

in pure worship of his own handsome soul.

The old nun who had no religion rose,

leaping high to a midnight jumprope chant

held to the earth by the skin of her toes,

she turned in the sway of that sweet descant 

heard by the innocent and aberrant

who drink the water and taste summer wine

who love and endure till the last star shows

for a heart of earth and a dance divine.

~August 2012

 

 Posted for   FormForAll   at dVerse Poets Pub

I first learned of the huitain adaptation of the ballade stanza from Kerry O'Connor at Imaginary Gardens with Real Toads, so I dedicate this one to her and that excellent site designed to challenge writers to write in all kinds of ways. Gemma Wiseman hosts this prompt at dVerse Poets, and the form is great fun to revisit.

Header image: Portrait of a Carthusian, by Petrus Christus, 1446

Footer image: Dancing Woman, by Ilya  Repin

Both paintings public domain, via Wikipaintings.org

She Moves

She moves

in mysterious sways

ruffling the feathers

under a hawk,

correcting for axis tilt, slightly

vibrating kisses through tectonic plates,

whooshing a small boy on a swing

0.6096 meters higher

till he throws his head back

and laughs.

On her long journey

being the star sewn void,

she has time
for no more.

~August 2012

An interplanetary voyage through 55 very small galaxies

for the G-Man 

Header Photo: Demone delle Nuvole, by Paolo Avezzano, on flick'r
Footer Photo: Dragon, by michelle.fanucci, on flick'r

Shared under a Creative Commons License