The Envoy

The Envoy

Out of the nothing

of night a blur

of bright came

winking, shining, sly;

some lost lamp

burning the homing call

or only a mimic'd

mechanized reflection, dead

as Pan's gone goat-eye,

a dream twisting in the glass

holding the hanging seeds.

Does it matter what it really is,

when I know exactly

what I saw and why?

Though I do nothing,

soon the sun will rise,

day find my eyes,

rainclad wind unwind

the weave and wave of every tree.

Though I do everything,

soon the calling light will shine

on a place I cannot find,

where I will neither dream nor see.

~May 2015

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Weekend Challenge: The Poetry of Jane Hirshfield

Grace (everyday amazing) gives us the poetry of American contemporary poet Jane Hirshfield to write to or from. I found her style elusive; though I did try for a simple voice,  this is merely taken from a title of hers, called  The Envoy 

Image: Street Light, 1909. by Giacomo Balla

Fair use via wikiart.org

The Empty Quarter

The Empty Quarter

In the dry slaughterhouse

of time imperative,

where blood disappears
before it stains the dune's
granular face, change has let

a fragment of me live

without your empty kiss

inhabited by insistent teeth,

your cold clay lips' crumble,

uncomfortable with truth,

your eyes that claim

no color of their own,

dead leaves on the green

and formless sea adrift,

always traveling away.

Change has let me live

here in its hot and proper suburb,

on the dunes that sting and shift,

where you loved me once

as much as you could love

before you thought

you'd found out what I am, where

in the sliding sand the sentence began;

the jailor's bored withdrawing bit by bit

of all on which a prisoner might live;

however skilled the hand, cruelty is

yet another loss, worrying bones 

and flesh, spitting out

the dirty artifacts of

fallacy and reality. 

So keep your empty kiss

to gnaw yourself to sleep.

Brush off the fossil bones of the extinct,

reconstruct exhibits of your conceit, 

so large and dead.

Where I have gone, where I

have still to go, no shows are held,

no knife can bite, and change has let me live

where I will never need again

the dwelling of your caress.

~May 2015

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Get Listed: Pablo Neruda

The viceroy of vocabulary, grapeling (it could be that) delves for this month's word gold into the incomparable poetry of one of the finest original poets of the 20th (or any) century, Chile's Pablo Neruda. See the link for the words listed, all of which I have used here in this feeble attempt to touch a little of Neruda's duende, (not autobiographically especially.)

Process note: The Rub' al Khali or Empty Quarter is the second-largest sand desert in the world, encompassing most of the southern third of the Arabian Peninsula. ~wikipedia







Images: The Gift, 1921,  and Rayograph--The Kiss, 1922, by Man Ray
Fair Use via wikiart.org

Nightvision

Nightvision

May-wind shakes

the apple tree

and birds drop like windfall

fruit, ripened in tints of feather.

The rabbit shakes

restless in his fur

not knowing why he freezes

in the hawk's shadow.

Walking in the foam

of  moonlight

every color is cooled

from a world that prefers hot red; 

for one night, guns are silent.

~May 2015

posted for    real toads

Flash Fiction 55 Plus

This month, Kerry chooses Zen for the plus--not much of a Zen mind or beginners mind in this skull, but I've written anyway.

Image: Nightvision, copyright joyannjones 2014

A Friend Of Order

A Friend of Order

(poem for the last day of April)

To raise the gentle dead

to tap home the lost in their blind night

of grey flowers, to wake and go walking

blown by the east invisible wind,

least to the hummingbird jar

wide to the mockingbird's wire

in the secret swing of the sickled moon;

this is the place I come to make love

where love makes me in a displaced whisper.

This shadow-speckled earth,

this creaking four-poster of the old gods' altar

stained sheets bloody-red from the sacrifice

but ruffled with stars, padded

with seeds, wrinkled with earthworms

who lie down smiling.

I sprout all my old visions under wet paper--

an order burned new by corpse-candle, an unplanned heist

from the resurrection-man's wagon--

to sing when there is no song,

pull close old lovers' bones

on these greensick hips, unstoned.

~April 2015

Poem 30 for April

posted for

National Poetry Month with Magaly Guerrero

Poetry Gone Wild

The  wise and resourceful mind of Magaly G. graciously gives us permission to write about anything we wish on this last day of a long, long month. I have tried to also incorporate an earlier challenge of hers, to write about three things we hoped to accomplish by writing thirty poems in April.

 Gratitude to Magritte for the art and title, and to all brave and dear readers and writers who have companioned me on this April journey, one that was harder and better than all the previous five. Many many serious thanks.

 

Greensickness:  a benign type of iron-deficiency anemia in adolescent girls, marked by a pale yellow-green complexion.

Images: A Friend of Order, 1964, by Rene Magritte
Memory, 1948, by Rene Magritte
Fair Use via wikiart.org