Sailing Away

Au revoir, friends and readers. It's time for another voyage away from the shores of blogging. If I come safely to the other side, perhaps we'll all meet again. Till then, best of luck to all, and much gratitude to those who have supported and cheered me through the shoals and reefs of the past.

Image: Guests from Overseas, Nicholas Roerich, public domain

Fatal Charm

Fatal Charm

Untie the leaf and let it drop.

Shrivel each wing of the stuttering moth.

Shrink the sun, let loose the dark

to stripe the sky-beast's paneled heart

heavy with more than it can hold;

let the rain come hard and cold,

each death's-head drop a memoir told

of summer's wasting, long-winded decline.

Freeze the fruit and kill the vine

that can't be mine. 

~September 2016

posted for     real toads

Weekend Challenge

Optional Musical Accompaniment

Image: Untitled, by Zdislav Beksinkski  Fair Use
Fall Fade   ©joyannjones 2014

Left

"Don't you leave me here

don't you leave me here

but if you  must go sweet baby,

leave a dime for beer."

Left

The first time I was left

I was unborn

before I knew to flip myself

and swim upstream

to shadow's
shifting shelter in the reeds.

Leaving after leaving

set the hook,
so many hands to pull

 the finished fish out of the drink.

All that's left:
a  silver glimmer and a stink

among the weeds.

~September 2016

posted for   real toads


Flash 55 Plus 

 Optional Musical Accompaniment

Image: Golden Fishes in a Dark Sea, 2006, © Twins Seven Seven

Fair use.

Mistakes

Mistakes

Dark flutters

words melted like butter

burn the tongue, her hand on your shoulder 

on a night from which every dream has been wrung

I looked for your face but it was wrong,

wrong for me to come here

with my snakes

wrapped around

the sad mistakes truth makes.

posted for   real toads

Challenge: Micropoetry

Note: This is a triquain, (a seven line poem with syllables of 3-6-9-12-9-6-3) to which I have arbitrarily added a final couplet (3-6.)

Optional Musical Accompaniment

Image: author and title unknown, fair use via the internet.
No copyright infringement intended.

Chaos Spoon

Chaos Spoon

The figures made the clock work

or were made of clockwork

themselves on a flat plate desert

burnt umber with hunger

where anaplasia is served

with a big chaos spoon.

Fried eggs through the window

shells crushed to dust:

They knew the time

They built the place

where the Handmaid of Fire

and the Blinded Face

kiss with the long drawn

howl of Fate under a black-holed sun

on a scoured afternoon in July.

Those who live by the Lie

will die by the gun, but not before

they make us a bed,

too hard, too long

in  the dreamkiller's cell

feed us rotten red meat

from a toxic pail, pour us

too much dry air from

the poison well. It's a nightmare in time

to lose the door,  but it's better by far

to have a dead fire than to make

the world burn for a dime.

 ~August 2016

posted for     real toads

Challenge: Fireblossom Friday
I only wish ALL of this was a dream.

 Optional Musical Accompaniment

anaplasia : n.Reversion of cells to an immature or a less differentiated form, as occurs in most malignant tumors.

~The American Heritage® Stedman's Medical Dictionary
Copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Company.

Image:The Meeting of the Illusion and the Arrested Moment - Fried Eggs Presented in a Spoon, 1932, by Salvidor Dali  Fair Use via wikiart-org