October Light

 

 

 

 

 

 

October Light

 

 

 Many things 

are called lilies

which are not, yet these are,

still lilies

by October light

 

these graceless stalks

brown shriveled sticks

reaching dead hands

for the gone

 summer sky.

 

Time has burned them

the dry wheat's color,

taken their sundance of petals

scarlet and gold

yellow as morning,

 

even the memory of

that feasting scent

that 

drunked the bees.

Still lilies grow  

 

for October 

is the cup earth has made

 for midsummer's wine.

Seeds and stem

bulb and root, burnt or bright,

still lilies, alive by October light,

out of sight, and it's best you know

for pulling hands

always

kill what they sow.

October 2021

 

 

 

 

posted for Sherry Blue Sky's

Collateral Beauty at earthweal

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Note: While it may look "messy," leaving the ground undisturbed in fall and the dead stalks of lilies and other flowering plants in the garden during winter is important in providing habitat for beneficial insects and certain pollinators like miner bees,which overwinter in the stems. See  Fine Gardening's Provide A Winter Home For Beneficial Insects  and Nesting and Overwintering Habitat for Pollinators: "While flowering plants provide pollinators with food, insects also require suitable shelter for nesting and overwintering. Most bees and wasps create small nests beneath the soil or within dead plant stems or cavities in wood."

 

 

 

Photos ©joyannjones,  2021

 

Stone Alive

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Stone Alive

 

 

Deep 

in the night-colored morning,

far from your 

gravitational pull, your need, 

your wailing hustle that

flickers like sleet,

 

I dream

the lives of stone,

the green

absolute monotony

of warmth.

 

I drift

in the memory of

their breath,

alive among the 

sleeping.

October 2021

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 posted for Quadrille #137

at dVerse Poets

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Images: Stones, © Ivan Shishkin    Public Domain

Colonial Graveyard at Lexington, 1891 © Childe Hassam   Public Domain

 

 

 

Mirror Moon

 

 

 

 

 Mirror Moon

 

 

 

There wasn't much left of the moon

when they got done with her.

They walked on her face

turned her rock and dust

blood and bone

to specimens and souvenirs.

Only her bright eye 

stayed open, and her broken lips

still formed the oldest words.

 

She was seen

because she'd learned to

give back light, heat, the radiation

bombarding her, her severed mouth

buzzing at the mad, at poets and priestesses.

Split between fire and ice

shadow and sun, she made a mirror for

silver darkness, perfectly alone

in an array piercing infinite night.

There was not much left of me

when you were through;

a circled eye half blind,

a mumble of separated lips

lost to reason. I found myself

sistered by the moon; she knew me

still despite the shatter

and with her borrowed light

she let me shine.

 

 

 

 

October 2021

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

posted for

The Sunday Muse

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Images: Untitled, author unknown via Sunday Muse Fair Use

Night, 1905 © Mikalojus Konstantinus Ciurlionis Fair Use

Mantis In The Kitchen

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Mantis In The Kitchen

 

 

"A name is the shortest form of a spell."

~Anonymous

 

 

 

The mantis in the kitchen

knows my name. He

stares with ice eyes glistening,

watches me

watches me

tilts his mild triangular 

faceted face

as if to say, I'm busy,

but later..

 

I'm never alone for 

the things you've possessed

surround me,

watching me

watching me,

mingling our names

in an insect clatter.

 

The ice eyes meet the fate

of all our glaciers. The mantis 

pales and shrinks as

we liquefy in the heat

where even names melt,

leaving a duplicitous aquavit;

the honey of sweet

 

oblivion

or

the vinegar

of change.

 

 

~August 2021

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 posted for Open Link

at dVerse Poets

 

 

 

 

 

 

Note: Akvavit or aquavit..is a distilled spirit that is principally produced in Scandinavia, where it has been produced since the 15th century. Akvavit is distilled from grain and potatoes, and is flavoured with a variety of herbs. ~wikipedia

 

 

 

 

 

Images: Praying Mantis In Morning Light With Chai ©3D Storyteller All Rights Reserved Fair Use

Cannibalism Of The Praying Mantis Of Lautremont, 1934 © Salvador Dali    Fair Use

 

The White House

 

 

 

 

The White House

 

 

Fall is sky

of milk and water, of

sand and blood, a field of ev'ry fruit

and folly, gathered around the slant white house that

rocked its boards like a boat and took in

the moon's footloose orphans.

The white house 

grew a child;

it seemed safe there by the

warm muddy lake,rough beach of red dirt,

trees bent over brown water by the weight of locusts'

spell chanting out the night, the old gods'

didgeridoo. There were

always dogs

 

in the yard,

toys on the floor, music

in the hall, food in the kitchen, bells

of laughter rung on blue sheets, your bright virgin eyes

umber as winter oak, wild as wine,

alight in the white house.

Now the child

 

is grown, you

are gone, and nothing is

safe. The white house, drifting in its trees

by the clouded lake, is a slow rocking boat un-

manned but full; October's hand turns wind

 to firelight for moon's

last orphan.

September 2021

 

 

posted for 

The Sunday Muse

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Process Note: This poem is written in the triquain form, consisting  of seven line stanzas with lines of 3,6,9,12,9,6,and 3 syllables respectively.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Images: Old house, author unknown, via Sunday Muse  Fair Use

Autumn Day circa 1986,  © joyannjones 

 

Snake Smoke

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Snake Smoke

 

 

An eye is a window,

a window an eye.

I can't tell you any more

so don't ask me.

 

A promise is a lie,

a lie is a promise;

curling smoke from my pipe,

a snake climbing air.

 

Chaos the white bride

for a bridegroom of money,

worst man holds the ring.

Priest eats the flower girl.

 

A promise is a lie,

a lie is a promise;

snake smoke from my pipe,

a garotte made of air.

 

A marriage is a funeral, 

a funeral a marriage.

I can't talk now

I'm late for the wedding.

September 2021

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

posted for Fireblossom

at The Sunday Muse

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Note: Yes, it's a cigar, not a pipe. Poetic license.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Images: Wind From The Sea, © Andrew Wyeth, 1947  Fair Use

Photo of Lakeith Stanfield, author unknown via internet Fair Use

 

 

The Luna Moth Dress

 

 

 

"...Every Morn and every Night

Some are Born to sweet delight.

Some are Born to sweet delight

Some are Born to endless Night..."

~ Augeries of Innocence, William Blake 

 

 

 

 The Luna Moth Dress

In my apple green dress

with my faceted eyes

black as the breeze

from hell's back door

I flutter around

where the blue shadows play,

where my velvet arms

drop the face of the light

deep in a focus

on one bright flame,

no last sweet sip

of the moonflower's wine.

My cheap insect mask

frightens the child.

Dogs bark as I walk

on the edges of bricks

but in my luna moth dress

soft eyebrows all feathers,

I know I'll soon fly on

the breath floating the sky,

welcome at last

in the green wood of life

one with the Fae, one

with the lark, a thing with 

a place, a peace, a time,

 

a laugh

full of giving past

the slow dance of moon,

free from this exile

in endless Night.

 

 

 

 

September 2021

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

posted for Open Link Night

at dVerse Poets 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Note: Luna moths (Actias luna) live 7-10 days and are nocturnal. Adults have no functional mouthparts and live on energy stored as caterpillars.  

 

Images: Luna-moth © sunelixir   All Rights Reserved   Fair Use

Luna Moth © Jessica Mahan   All Rights Reserved    Fair Use

 

Blue Flame

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 Blue Flame

I was the woman who

loved you hotter than a sun

hard as a granite gravestone

once,

but time has chosen to

braid me differently, tying years

into grey knots

behind which the crimson

of memory

coagulates and fails

making it seem as if there

is not, never was,

love as stubborn as a pebble in a shoe

piercing every step.

A parody of a woman

rolled in a circus tent, lurches like

a wheelbarrow when she walks,

from the pebble, from the weakness, from the void.

Her flesh sags like a

campfire marshmallow melting

on the stick.

Yet in the mirror gateway

my eyes avoid, sometimes a flash;

the high snow-swept cheekbones of that girl,

the sunburnt hair longer than winter,

the bell glass body moon-rounded, glowing

a blue flame within, feeling

your touch so

 

fluent in flourishes of stars;

 

 

 love as sharp as thirst

unquenchable.

 

 

 

September 2021 

 

 

 

posted for

The Sunday Muse

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Images via internet, authors unknown    Fair Use