Oxygen Vine Dreamscape
a voice was singing
Oxygen vine
sweet life of mine
o how you twine
oxygen vine
You began to turn me leaflike
browsing me in slack moments,
a subscription of yours, a pastime.
I saw a skewed wall in a lunatic jungle,
undeciphered petroglyphs
scrawled over by flaming flower graffiti
dark hands of roots, celladon vineshadows,
utterly unreadable
a nonsense song
Oxygen vine
trace me a line
o how you twine
oxygen vine
I was deaf from the reverberations
of collision when you told me
I was a wall against whose
resistance you built your self, but
I was only flesh behind a wall
etched with the sigils of an unknown cabal,
its vines and shadows
become my skin
in the deep night
Oxygen vine
black columbine
o how you twine
oxygen vine
Love is a cannibal you explained.
His first goal is to kill and eat the other
then make tuneful bells from the bones.
Just so you grew your tensile intoxicant ribbons in me
so hungry and alive, tickling, strangling
composting accommodating flesh till I was friable ooze
root-fractured, absorbed into your sucking shoots
root-fractured, absorbed into your sucking shoots
flensed down to my skull for a drum
sweet notes pulsing
Oxygen vine
razors in wine
o how you twine
oxygen vine
I was wined and twined
cut so quickly
I never knew when my smile lost its lips.
You pierced and numbed me
bubbled my blood out with your own
beads of verdant air, an antagonism of life support
careless of the red drops’ splash
or my cyanic throat
rattling and humming
Oxygen vine
ventilator’s whine
o how you twine
oxygen vine
Autumn brings a bonfire.
Dry leaves and twigs burn tinder fast
thorns and flowers flaring farewell
in a temperature that crackles,
twining flames fed hotter
by an inrush of escaping air exploding
black under the lids into
smoke blown like seeds on the wind
vanishing
Oxygen vine
darkness define
your ashen design
into silence
March 2011
Posted October, 2011 for Poetics at dVerse Poets Pub
Claudia is in charge of the prompt today, titled Call and Response, and has asked for a poem of two voices speaking. This is one which I wrote to have three separate threads, or voices, going on, the single lines make one poem, the non-italicized 'song' another, and the italicized main body the third. Each can be read individually, and each either answers or supports the other. I've used a little color to make it easier to see for the prompt.
Hope this meets the requirements as I had no luck with a new effort today.
(Originally posted for One Shot Wednesday at the inimitable OneStopPoetry)
Photo: Trellised Hand, by joy ann jones, march, 2011
i remember this one....love is a cannibal...makes bells out your bones...ring a ding ding...love the gritiness of this as well as the refrain...hot rerun hedge...
ReplyDeletei remember it as well..the refrain was so haunting that it kept spinning through my mind..Love is a cannibal you explained.
ReplyDeleteHis first goal is to kill and eat the other
then make tuneful bells from the bones... beautifully dark and gritty
Love the interlacing here. Love as a cannibal struck out at me, too.
ReplyDelete"I never knew when my smile lost its lips" - great line!
Love this:
ReplyDelete"You began to turn me leaflike
browsing me in slack moments"
~arbitrarymeaning.blogspot.com
I remember this. There is so much beautiful language, Hedge.
ReplyDeletelove is a cannibal gets my vote too for powerful
ReplyDeleteSo many beautiful lines as always. I kept thinking of oxygen vine, as a tube in a hospital. (Perhaps you meant that). It also cast an interesting shadow. K.
ReplyDeleteSometimes we have no luck with the new, because deep down, we already know we've written perfection. I think this is a fantastic response to the prompt...LOVE IT!
ReplyDeleteOxygen vine. Then why do I feel like I'm choking imagining the images these words bring?! Oxygen is taken from one and one blacks out.
ReplyDeleteThe three voices intertwine -- that's very well crafted.
Fabulous response to the prompt! I like the play of the three voices and the refrain of the oxygen vanquished by fire
ReplyDeleteWow you did in one what I was thinking about for two and I am pretty happy I didn't read this first because I never would have written anything at all. (hangs head)..mine isn't ...at all...this...good...................sigh.
ReplyDeletea very ingenious structure used…very clever and interesting…3 voices…almost a madrigal of several voices singing. Brilliant construction. I enjoyed this and remain impressed.
ReplyDeleteAll the threads are intricately interwoven, and the result is hauntingly macbre.... gave me a real chill.
ReplyDeleteVery well done!
ReplyDeleteIt is amazing Joy! You come with beautiful lines very well structured. The 'chorus-like' repetition is the icing that kept our focus in line. Mesmerizing and excellent!
ReplyDeleteHank
Love this - the language, the conversation is beautiful.
ReplyDeleteAnna :o]
I never knew when my smile lost its lips <-- brilliant
ReplyDeleteThe conversation, the emotions, the interplay of contrasts, the imagery, the vineshadows all work so beautifully together. You have such a gift.
Beth
I'm not playing in the prompt this weekend so I missed this repost yesterday. The structure is well engineered and each stands alone or integrates well. The language is so gorgeous it induced little fits of paresthesia! Then there's the imagery, which is a virtuosity of word painting.
ReplyDeleteThis was such a good read the first time, finer the second - the complex weave of voices -- there are three, aren't here? -- arising, I supposed, from three levels of awareness, cognition, consciousness. There is the rigid image of the oxygen vine --presented, I suppose, by the dream -- then two levels of registry of the image, the one making the simple observation (italics in blue) - and the deeper weave of the poet interpreting the oracle. A hanging plant allows this sort multiple vantage, and is a great way to strain a person (and history) through the dreamscape while the image slowly morphs. I get life support of a slow death. - Brendann
ReplyDeletefor me, it's the beautiful language but it's also that it reads at length so well. it gets better, really, which isn't to say the beginning was weak. it clear is not. but i confess: after the bone bells, i didn't think you could go anywhere but down. then bonfire tinder and smoke seeds, like climbing a vine you can't let go of or something:)
ReplyDeletewow! each voice amazing ~ combined stunning, literally breath-taking poetry! i bow to you, oh Mistress of the written word.
ReplyDeletedani
Beautiful poetry, the voices intertwine brilliantly...great stuff!
ReplyDeletea powerful write, HW...the song now in my head..."razors in wine" yikes. An apt take if taken for as is, but even more contemplative if exploring the metaphors ~
ReplyDeleteAh, and then there's the new audience, as always. New to me and absolutely exquisite. Hard to find a fav line. The whole bloody, sensual, plants and creatures cut and cannibalized thing is just intense, and then punctuated by the variations on a simple refrain. Excellent.
ReplyDeleteThanks all--my apologies to those I haven't visited--had one of those days. But I do appreciate everyone taking the time to stop by and leave their thoughts, and will make up for it when things are better.
ReplyDeleteSpecial thanks to all who read this for the second time, and still left a comment. A new poem will be going up at midnight.
@B: Life support of a slow and lingering death, but a little lime under the floorboards will clear it all up, hopefully. Thanks for re-reading when your brain is banging like a the last piston in an empty crankcase.