Winter Tanka

 Winter Tanka

~*~

From whiskbroom branches

blackbirds drop a watersong

brown rain in their throats

leaf mummies see the moon's face

music-washed night after night.

~*~

Winter's hand strokes wind

across the grain, a dry sea

flat in shades of dust

in time the lost mermaid dies

beached high in the bones of grass.

~*~

Let the smoke go up

pluming on horseheads of clouds

visible for miles;

let the wildfire come starved

to its briar sacrifice.

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Challenge: Why I Write Tanka, Part II

Dr Hisashi Nakamura has generously shared his knowledge and skill with the short Japanese syllabic form known as tanka in this series at The Imaginary Garden. A tanka contains 31 English syllables in a line pattern of 5/7/5/7/7. I find them very difficult to write, but easier than not writing them, perhaps, today. I have used the bare minimum of punctuation, so I beg indulgence for my grammatical liberties.

Process note on the third tanka: Like many areas of the western US, we are having wildfires this winter due to drought, high winds and human stupidity.





Photographs: Oak-Blackbirds-Maple, Prairiewise Seeds copyright joyannjones 2014

Jagsaw

Jagsaw

When the devil cut the puzzle

he used a dull jagsaw.

Some pieces can't ever

be matched as they should;

and so the tale of the meeting of

the incubus and I, each given our shape

by a  notch in the other, drawn close,

pushed away, fretfully shifted, buck-dancing

little hellfire fractals out our asses.

Once owned as a mule

and successfully damned, I was

delicately demolished, knobs crumpled,

voids slapdash split square to circle.

Then it seems he was finished,

Playboy mission

from Leisure Suit Beelzebub 

accomplished, since

it's well known Below only those 

who hang on to their souls have a value.

Good tales have a moral, and my moral is this:
it's impossible to make whole 

what's been jigsawed in Hell,
despite infinite labor in distortion and wish

for the saw is as dull

as it ever was jagged, and what
the Hell is a puzzle
but the fiddling pastime
of the chronically bored?

~January 2014

another of the Incubus poems

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Challenge: Persons of Interest

The tropically inclined Corey Rowley of Mexican Radio asks for  a piece of writing about someone we've met while traveling. I think I have complied at least with this directive of his: "I want you to think of someone you have met on a special trip to your special place and write about them."
Yes, that would be the incubus and that would be Hell.






Image: Puzzle 52, by jjpuzzles on flick'r,
Shared under a Creative Commons Attributions Only License.
I have manipulated this image.

Fish Out Of Water

Fish Out Of Water

I put a

fish on a stick

into the fire

before it could stink

asked for a drink

of wine, of regret

of sailor well met

to eat with me by the side of the fire

blue charcoaled desire

with a fork three-tined,

pulling off the fine

bones  

 the fragrant meat

of the white mind

~January 2014

55 flaky morsels of protein and salt for     the g-man

Yeah, yeah, I had another dream...hey, I can't afford a shrink, so I write. What can I say?

Optional Musical Accompaniment

Top Image: Water, Guiseppe Arcimboldo, oil, 1566, public domain via wikipaintings.org
Footer: Pisces, by Kolomon Moser, 1904, public domain via wikipaintings.org

Lamp Black

Lamp Black

Silence, poisoned with crows.

Jade candles in a porcelain oval, blown out.

Pearls in a blind man's ear, swinging

what can't be seen.

Lamps doored by blue clouds, shut,

freckling  night luminescent;

all these things

kissed by the tongues of wasps

violent then numb

rasped by polar wind 

filing off

sensation

all these

you brought for the offering

altared before me, for the ritual

of unknowing, unmaking,

unwinding

back to blackness

to the first

dividing cell struggling uselessly

to be whole;

unswelled,

like a yew bald of needles,

like an unborn moon.

~January 2014

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Challenge: Get Listed with Brendan: Moon Madness

Brendan, of Oran's Well, has proposed a word list challenge drawn from the poem  The Moon and The Yew Tree, by Sylvia Plath. I have tried to incorporate those images as well as the chosen words here. For the list and the full challenge details, see the article at real toads linked above.

Image copyright She Who Is (Lisbeth Cheever-Gessaman) via facebook

No copyright infringement is intended.