Fallow

Fallow

So many times

you’ve been the field where

storms hailed the crops flat,

your task to regrow them--

the cold eroded shingle

where fire died,

you with numb fingers

in a night of frost and ghosts,

the rekindler. 

So 

let me warm you now 
for that brief time

that I’m permitted

as darkness presses.

Turn the cup upside down,

let your hard hours spill out

to pool in a bottomless green.

Sleep for a season with all life unborn

you the fallow field this once

over which the placid plough horse

passes unhindered, breaking clods of years'

compaction, earth's old demands arable

and dropping open under a citrine sun.

Lightly, surely the harrow passes

in the long afternoons, a music

on those plains where ever they sing

of planting, of the green to come,

not freezes, not blight, not backs bent,

where my rain falls like ocean. Let

every tall crop there be your own.

Let me in you at last give back

seed for root

right for wrong

life for death

and make life enough

so

when time is done with us

in the dusk of a long coming gleaning,

there'll be love in the last look back

before we blow away.

~November 2011

A repost to welcome the slanting light of Fall,  and the fallow time to come

for    real toads

Open Link Monday

Images: The Plough and The Harrow, after Millet, 1890, by Vincent Van Gigh

The Old Tower in The Fields, 1884, by Vincent Van Gogh

Public domain via wikiart.org

War Staff

War Staff

You are the stick carved

to support the madman's

stuttering canter,

like the Tablet-Smasher's staff,

often breaking to a snake

for maximum effect.

You are the magus-wand

of moving plague

 pulling each first-born

from the unmarked house;
dipping only your tip turns rivers

bloody at your
unexpected pleasure.

When will it burn,

this crutch of tortured alder?
How understand the pushing thing

that has no shape it can own?

So we lie awake,

we slaves, listening for 

the shifting of the snake.

~September 2014

 posted for Meeting The Bar
at dVerse Poets


Karin Gustafson (ManicdDaily) asks us to follow the metaphor through--for me, that has been rather a winding, even snaky sort of path. I am drawing(and transposing) here from the biblical tale of Moses and The Plagues of Egypt.

Images: Staff, by Nakahara Nantenbo

Public domain via wikiart,org
Snake wallpaper via wallpaper.com
copyright information unknown.

Burned In The Bathtub

Burned In The Bathtub

After his midlife crisis

the incubus has settled down.

He takes a pill now.

He's sold the Lambo 

and grown a beard

grey as gourd rind

mute as dusk. It teases

when he comes up behind

but better of course,

than mere

insincerity of stubble

or truth of the lash;

or so I tell him.

His rage, his acquisitive

lust, his long

hierarchic frustration

with Beelzebub, his angst--

all abated. He's stopped 

going naked except when he's here

though now the light

must be out; the mood

must be clear; the Jacuzzi

has to work, while I burn sage

to make darkness soft lather

on skin cracked and dry

from hellfire and age.

Instead 

of the sweet drip of lies,

instead 

of my fruitful screams,

instead of the  hoof lifted high

to leave a burnt print 

on my spine,

there's only androgynous giggle,

a few sips of  white wine,

a cooling brain,

a voiceless music

the color of ash

falling like misted rain.

~September 2014

posted for   real toads

Challenge: Out of Standard

Isadora Gruye (The Nice Cage) asks us to write a poem about a lie that could have been told better. I have wiggled around with the POV some, but there are plenty of poorly told lies to choose from here.

I've written too many poems to count about the incubus; you can find them  HERE

Top Image: Cialis Logo, courtesy google image search.No copyright infringement is intended.

Footer: The Flautist, by Remedios Varo

May be protected by copyright. Posted under fair use guidelines via wikiart.org

The Snow Moth

The Snow Moth

Carousel of  stars,

revolve 

the mulberry sky

 in midway caterwauls.

Drive spider-silken cars

from sky to eye;

ride high

before the darkling fall,

for the inchworm moon

will chew her hole in night,

spin her fat cocoon,

a knot

from which the snow-moth's drawn

ice-winged and blinding bright;

and what's consumed's forgot,

what's forgotten's gone.

  

~September 2014

 55  crystal snow moths for the ghost of the G-Man and

real toads

Challenge:Flash Fiction 55

 Optional Musical Accompaniment

Photos: Snow Crystal, by Matthais Kabel, shared under a Creative Commons License, via wikimedia commons 

Virginia Tiger Moth Caterpillar, via flick'r,   Some rights reserved by Drriss & Marrionn 

(manipulated)

Worlds Apart

Worlds Apart

In the other world

I have a different shadow

a different myth.

Instead of ravens

skylarks sang my birth

instead of scream and curse,

drunk's wet palms

and hot rank breath,

a father's kiss

there when I awoke, I knew

walking on a world alive with night,

where dark was shot with rose

instead of blue and wind was light,

shining just as much

on me as you--I knew

somewhere this dislocated place

hid the answer of your missing face

unlike the dead moon maze

I stumble through

for if I'm someone else

then you are too;

what couldn't be

might be,

what's been said

was never said,

what's done

has not been done

and we are free.

~September 2014

posted for      real toads

Kerry's Wednesday Challenge: Dichotomy

The ever-inventive and verbally deft Kerry O"Connor(Skylover, Skywriting) asks us to consider the concept of dichotomy. I have tried to do that in this contrast of what is and what isn't, but might be.

Image: Night, 1905, by Mikalojus Ciulioni

Public domain via wikiart.org