Lacunal Dialectic

Lacunal Dialectic

They gave the wide-eyed eccentric

the wild electric

because

there's a  price for every metric,

every loggorheic epic

showing we pull from world-bone

a hole

that goes systemic,  

and fill it,

anthropocentric.

So they made

his dialogue enteric,

scaled to monosyllabic

microbes:


hurt            love           scream          want

                           dead

changed everything he said

and killed his head.

~August 2016

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Flash 55 Plus

Notes: I often used to add abstruse words to my 55's to tease the G-Man, who would pretend he didn't get it, but of course, we knew better. So this one in particular, despite its rather grim subject matter, made me remember him.

"Ernest Hemingway, American author, committed suicide shortly after ECT at the Mayo Clinic in 1961. He is reported to have said to his biographer, "Well, what is the sense of ruining my head and erasing my memory, which is my capital, and putting me out of business? It was a brilliant cure but we lost the patient...." ~wikipedia

Electro-convulsive therapy (electro-shock) is still considered a valid treatment for depression and other mental illness, despite mixed evidence of its effectiveness, and can still be administered without consent in some situations. You can find a list of other famous people who have undergone it HERE.





Top image: Brain, author unknown,  source
Footer: 'A Bergonic chair, a device "for giving general electric treatment for psychological effect, in psycho-neurotic cases", according to original photo description. World War I era.'~ via wikimedia 

Bells And Bars

Bells And Bars

In the grey cellblocks

of the circus maximus

there's a mad girl listening

to a bird singing,

a soft wind-ringing of lily bells.

The notes are trickled

from a carillon throat

in a dark made of rock;

the crowd flickers its shadows

at the last hour of day.

Outside the barred columns

the notes of the thrush

candle the dusk

like glow-worms signaling stars.

Nothing moves 

but the sinking bright pillars

of burnt-out sun, prison-harsh, and the

wing-blurr of a thrush to show us

what now is a ruin

once was a song.

~August 2016

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Challenge: Voices, Spaces & Songbirds

Bird Singing In The Moonlight, 1939,  © Morris Graves, Fair Use via wikiart.org

The Heart Moth

The Heart Moth

There was

a heart that hatched

out a moth that landed

on my mouth, to burn; burn and fly

and die.

Too long

I've waited for my lips to cool,

to live, and missed the moth

because it was

my heart.

~July 2016

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Kerry's Mini-Challenge: Micropoetry 

Process Note: This is a cinquin, a short, usually unrhymed poem of twenty-two syllables in five lines arranged 2, 4, 6, 8, & 2 per line.  In the second stanza, I have reversed the order.

Images: Queen of the Night costume design, 1922, by Leon Batsk,   Fair use.

Moth, 1900,  by Albrecht Bierstadt,  Public domain.

Postcard From The Moon

Postcard From The Moon

We met in the dark

at the end of the world,

the last moonhunter and I.

In the melting evening's whisper-light

we raised our glasses high.

He'd come round the Horn

in a hot air balloon

he propelled with a treadmill of fish,

and when he stretched up for me fondly

I felt inclined to grant his wish.

I held his hand

when the fever rose,

I sang nonsense songs while he bled.

I poured out when he asked me to give him

a pool of moon for his bed;

but when I was a sliver

devoured by night,

he went to the sun for a shadow.

'So, this is the end of the hunt for the moon...'

 ~ my postcard pinned to his pillow.

 ~July 2016

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some nonsense for Kerry's 

Postcard Challenge

Top: Man Drinking With The Moon, vintage postcard, c.1910

Footer: Man On The Moon, via steampunk tendencies on pinterest

Hekate

Hekate

I've stood at the crossroads

for a thousand years, triple faced, staring

down the choice of roads; a goddess, a witch,

one third a woman, till the times revolved

and made me a ghost.

The curse of a god's eye rests upon me

and the curse of birth sits upon thee.

What once was rare now is common;

what once was common has gone

beyond recall, the library of the ocean

emptied scroll by scroll, the old light lost

and sweetness of air. 

I split the directions to give my visions,

six eyes to see forward but none to look back.

What once was rare now is common

the blasphemy of waste, the apostasy of wealth:

the constants which confer the cruelty of power--

and at the last turning, the helplessness of love

consumed in cold fire--

what once was common is only a tale. 

But the dead past behind me I cannot see

and so, poor mortals, I give you witchery.

~July 2016

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Challenge: Play it Again

(Kerry's God's in Nature)

Optional Musical Accompaniment

Iamge: Triple Hecate, 1795, by William Blake  public domain via wikimedia commons