Violet Queen

Violet Queen

Empress of the endosperms

mistress in the chancery of purple,

ruffle-seamed, the violet queen

in her inverted artichoke gown

feeds the wind her bee-stained crown.

Though I've been for years

 a wildeyed raving socialist,

I've found I can't cut her down

to see her dead trophy head

spiked in the vase instead.

 

Let her run while she can 

ruinous wild, steal magenta from dawn,

loll wide-eyed bossing butterflies,

secure in a monarchy fitter,

checked only by the parliament of winter.

~September 2013

posted for    real toads

Challenge: Hungry and Haunted

The ever-warm, evergreen Hannah Gosselin asks us to  examine the contrasts of Japan's Hitachi Seaside Park, as a starting point for some poetryfying--I wandered a bit offtrack to the zinnias in a backyard in Oklahoma, but hope I have still stumbled into some version of  "...contrast and climax ."

 Images: ©joyannjones 2013

Sinking the Titanic

Sinking the Titanic
(after meticulously rearranging the deck chairs)

Politics from a distance

appears flat as a sea

ironed to the horizon,

shallow 

as a saucer of soup.

Closer to 

the skull-strewn shores,

we see a bottomless

tossing mass

of shit and blood. 

Some think

a good boat will cross it

but each Titanic always

finds its own

excremental iceberg.

~September 2013

55 floating fecal fragments for        the g-man 

Optional Musical Accompaniment

Image (slightly manipulated): After The Shipwreck, by Ivan Aivazovsky

Public domain via wikipaintings.org

Glass Ring

Glass Ring

Let 

me

ring like 

a bell of

glass, one clear sweet note

before I break into silence.

~September, 2013

posted for   real toads

Challenge: Words Count with Mama Zen

The often sparsely syllabular Mama Zen has asked us to write a poem which somehow reflects the number eight. This is a fibonacci poem(1/1/2/3/5/8) with 8 syllables in the last line (and also, eight lines counting title and date.)

Image: bells1 by rhubarbncustard on flick'r

Geisha

Geisha

He put her in a cage of words

so she could sing to him every night.

She lost the tune, her notes grew blurred;

she jigged in place in a cage of words,

peeping the tentative softness of birds

in the manic pluck, the mirror's bite.

He kept her in a cage of words

so she could weep for him every night.

~September 2013

posted for    real toads

Weekend Mini-Challenge: Dr Mouse Is In The House

Lolamouse makes Rorshachs for us and asks us to " choose an inkblot and write whatever comes to mind." She also said "If unstructured, free form thought causes you to become anxious, use your associations as a stepping stone to a more structured form. " This is a triolet, more or less.

Inkblot by Lolamouse

Time and Mercy

Time and Mercy

Do you remember when

we sat pretending

to read, numb

in the merciful place

that had been made

as comfortable as possible;

coffee blooming, warm lamplight, soft seats

in an ersatz home, (torture cell

foyer to hell)

where looking past the glow,

grotesque swinging doors

muffled in rubber

buffered the place

where love breaks us,

where the bodies were

explained, numbered and named,

confusing sacks tubed and tangled

in the hopeful rape of machines.

Pain, gasping for air, amnesia of coma

walked up and down across the beds

while we watched helpless

those who came to help but

couldn’t care. The round clean clock

jumped at my face, a monocle

filtering, 

focusing the white waste

through its ticking lens. 

Do you remember? I'll

never forget, or how I thought

I saw us then the way

we really were

and was so wrong.

~September 2013

 posted for     dVerse Poets

Poetics: Try To Remember

Karin Gustafson (ManicDDaily) hosts today's session at the pub, and asks us to follow the winding trails of memory wherever they may lead, or where they get lost. This one took me somewhere I haven't thought about in quite awhile.

Image: Time Transfixed, 1938, by Rene Magritte

May be protected by copyright. All copyright belongs to the copyright holders

via wikipaintings. org

Escape from Bugtown

The inimitable Fireblossom has provided a crackling challenge over at Real Toads, and supplied us with a list of words from which we may assemble the title of a poem, which of course, we then have to write--details!. I felt a deep affinity for some of the words, but was also confoundedly attracted to others--the result is a pair of efforts--does this make me a Terrifying Prodigy, or just an Obsessive Docent of the various circles of Hell? Not sure, but here they are, and please don't anyone feel they have to read them both:

The Unexpected Ecclesiastic

(or: Escape from Bugtown)

I thought it odd you

blessed the home

where even a lost dog wouldn’t stay,

where the manger was lined with such nettled hay

no ox could eat, no saviour lay.

I didn't see the wrinkle

of  robe beneath your shell

in the worm holes we crawled

to find the Big Haul

when I was your doll.

I still didn't guess

when tunnel turned catacomb

the clicking wheeze of your true occupation,

the insectile calculation of my twice-damned station

in your holy equation.

When I found my familiar,  

you fought me, of course,

with the bell and the book

the withering look, the Fisherman's hook

the sinkhole, the black hole, the brass cross that shook

till I ran from the grinding

hallelu, from the sermon of you,

your structural integrity beltlessly down

wrapped in noise, blood and crowned

a bug on its back, the Bishop of Bugtown.

~September 2013

This is the poem I feel I was intended to write, so I did:

The Minuscule Incubus

Here inside the lacquered box

of scar and pretend,

only the smallest of devils still fits,

the one with the key,

adroit as a nosetwitch rat

every bit as strong

as a lion till dawn,

tiny as the tip of

a red hot wire

passed with a hiss

through the gray matter

laid over mountains of char.

His muzzle is a mask,

his tail bobbed like a Rott,

his torment an ashen tickle

no longer sweet

not even forbidden,

oblivious

compulsion missing the point.

Somewhere

past this place

where the worst has already happened

and is waiting to happen again,

there's a hole made in a dream

through which I may wiggle,

a worm waiting wings,

if only it were possible

to make myself

smaller than he.

~September 2013

(The other poems in my incubus series are    here )

posted for     real toads

Challenge: Fireblossom Friday

Build A Title

Thanks to all who read  either or both, and apologies for completely giving in to the dark side of my verbose tendencies.

Images: The Reprimand, circa 1890,  by Jehan Georges Vibert, 

Detail from Death and The Miser, 1490, by Heironymous Bosch

Public Domain via wikipaintings.org