New Year's Sonnet

New Year's Sonnet

Will New Year come to my garden with his sharp secateurs

to deadhead with zest all my brightest elflock flowers,

unfinished blooms of crimson damask, fleurs
du mal et bonheur alike, the columned hours

clipped carelessly, tossed in a loathesome braided trug

of blades, a compost forgotten in the dryrot heat?

Or bring a plague of wasps to buzz in my mug

so each sip is a sting to a thirst so long incomplete?

But I dream that he comes, his arms overladen with days

his pale star eyes sailing lucent in a white-sickled sky;

with a quirk and puff of dawn’s breath, her seducing ways

to raise the blood wine in the flute, a kiss without goodbyes

a song on the moon, a sigh you can’t conceal

that opens the flower, feeds and makes it real.

December 2011

Optional mellowness  to start out the new year:

donovan--sunny goodge street

Posted for    Poetics   at dVerse Poets Pub

Mark Kerstetter is hosting Endings and Beginnings on this final day of 2011, and invites reflection and speculation on the changing of the year. Come join us, and Happiest of New Years to all reading.

Disclaimer: I'm horrible with sonnets, and though I've tried very hard here to make iambic pentameter work in this, it's a hard voice for me, and I may have improperly scanned or forced it, because I never hear it properly--apologies to all purists of the form.

Header image: Ridiculous Bird, by ~Neural Disarray on deviantArt
Shared under a Creative Commons 3.0 Non-Commercial License 

FURTHER COMMENTING DISABLED ON THIS POST DUE TO SPAMBOT ACTIVITY

Butterfly

Butterfly

In out out in without disruption

warding the shell's inevitable corruption

in billowing sighs where the Master sits

the apprentice is peeking with eyes like slits

blind to a logic of infinite drops

in out out in till the raindance stops

each moment alone in a trance of calm

a butterfly netted in the silent palm

in now where his fingers play

out now already flying away

December 2011

Some nursery rhyme styled couplets for 

Gay Cannon's FormForAll prompt at dVerse Poet's Pub 

Chalkboard

Chalkboard

A lesson in stars,

night's orderly arithmetic

chalked on darkness,

shines on the tired skin

that covers me

once blank, babysoft 

then work calloused

life enscribed

roughened with  sun

now sueded soft again

erased blank as night sky

where nothing's written except

the chalkmarked numbers

of old dreams

the blue moon is  

tidily

brushing

away.

December 2011

An equation in 55 integers for Professor G-Man, to close out the last semester of 2011

The Dominance of Grey

The Dominance of Grey

 A villanelle

The grey veil she wore ate up all the years.
It licked at her grimaces, nibbled her smile.
It didn't pull off, only washed off with tears.

At night she’d spit into its fine woven fears,
proudly wear it next day to hide naked denial
that just like the veil ate the flesh off the years.

The veil grew a voice and it talked in her mirrors.
It held her more closely than husband or child.
It didn’t pull off and she needed more tears.

What once would dissolve it now reversed the sheer
wisps to dark masking stiffened with bile;
the grey veil she wore grew fat on the years

as she aged, a blown eggshell, flat eyes, lips and ears,
her features erased like an asphalted mile.
It didn’t pull off and she had no more tears.

No  salt left to wash her old face back with tears.
No mind left to fight for her long-eaten smile.
The grey veil she wore  ate up all the years
It didn’t pull off, only drank all the tears.

December 2011

Thanks to Karin Gustafson at ManicDDaily for getting my villanelle juices flowing. Also dedicated to every Mommie Dearest.Grey will eat you, you know.

Rán's Road

"...With fearful might the sea surged

Methinks our stems the clouds cut,-

Rán's road to the moon soared upward..."

~The Prose Edda

Rán's Road

Back home

from nowhere

on the sundown road again

out beyond the ending

after the wildest wave,

a light floods

sunfallen scarlet in seastream.

Feeling stops, mind in

memory’s mooring

no longer finds netted

maritime eyes of pearl
rippling sundrops

chained shells of silver

to barnacle the heart.

Still, far inland

a spring wells

dripping from the split rock

a dribble, compared to that

vast redstained road flowing

from white Rán's mouth, yet

quenching, sweet not salt;

time stops the oarsmen,

the twin bladed hands

are still in the dark.

Alone becomes

a mooncell, it’s centromere

suspended, each joining
separating identical
chromotids, a whole

from division’s drilled duality

a sensate totality

light made from shadow.

When

the soul returns

from her long journey

impossible not to know her

under the silver hair

the shabby close

the smile unchanged

December 2011

"...The stormy breast rain-driven,

The wave with red stain running,

Out of white Rán's mouth..."

~Ibid.

Posted for   OpenLinkNight   at dVerse Poets Pub

Note: In Norse Mythology, Rán was a sea goddess.She was the wife of Ægir, a sea giant and god of the ocean, known also for hosting elaborate parties for the gods ~per wikipedia


Image: English Channel at Night by Aaron Phelps on flick'r

 

 

In Clara's House

In Clara’s House

In your house

Christmas was always kept

my grandfather getting the tree

from the VA lot, cheap and scrawny,

you and I making it fit to be seen

before the sisters and the cousins came

to eat.

In your house

a discard was an ornament

something broken could be fixed

and used again

something ugly could be cleaned

and put in a place of pride

unique.

In your house

African violets ruled in fertile hosts,

as big as geraniums, green guards with mauve caps

or cobalt, protecting every table, every window,

grown from microleaves I watched you cut and

place on soil like rows of crops from the farm 

you couldn’t have.

In your house

you set the table

carved and heavy, massive made,

covered with lace where all the family came 

for groaning meals, where on off days

a child could hide between the legs

and be a lion.

In your house

a child with one mother lost

could have another found, 

in tales and talk, in times

smelling of coffee cardamom

and soap, mother hands brushing princess hair,

braiding it into dragontails.

In your house,

Christmas was always kept.

The tree star watched while we sang

and the casual blows and formal fear,

the hidden anger and secret prisons

of that other house

were nothing for awhile.

December 2010

Clara & Ragnar with african violet, 195?

This poem was originally posted last year at the inimitable One Stop Poetry, reposted for dVerse Poets Pub 

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year, and Happy Holidays in all shapes and forms to my friends, fellow poets and all reading this.

Header Photo of Clara Mathilda Carlson taken by Robert Studio, Chicago, Ill, 195?

Glass of Stars

Glass of Stars

Whirl in whirl in

in the dance of stars;

Spin the table or

let the table spin you,

say the warding words

better, write them faster

deeper, in something bitter

and sweet as the old Widow's

fizz, her finger dipped

in larceny, lime and sugar,

a yeasty effervescence flourished
like a lacy bubbled flag of air and stars,

the press of love in the heavy glass

a vintage stood on its head

in the riddling rack, troubled

and twisted day by day, until

the acidulated dregs 
of its primitive self drop
like galled stones

rolled away when that last
bit of sweetness comes

that floats the vessel
finally full.

As  I dip my finger

to write your name on my heart

an empathy of shooting stars rattles down

filling my glass in the cold night.

December 2011

The riddling rack is an invention for the proper fermentation and mass production of champagne, credited to the formidable Widow Cliquot and her cellar master in the 19th century, per wikipedia: "...Composed much like a wooden desk with circular holes, the rack allowed a bottle of wine to be stuck sur point or upside down. Every day a cellar assistant would gently shake and twist (remuage) the bottle to encourage wine solids to settle to the bottom. When this was completed. the cork was carefully removed, the sediments ejected, and a small replacement dose of sweetened wine added."



Header Image: Meteor Shower, by Nilo Merino Recalde on flick'r
Footer Image: Label, Veuve Cliquot Champagne
via google image search 

 

The Yule Goat

Yule Goat

In December’s dark descent

across crackled breaking sky ice

slivered with dagger snow,

bells ring in whitened night, sharp

hooves stamp on the cloudcloth

shaking pearldust stripes on

viridian spruces, candelabra arms

turquoise and white pinwheels

circling their wands

of bitter bark raven haunted.

The god of thunders 

pulls the sun's shadow

flickering hammer tucked

in his brace of clouds,

drives his twin goats

toward the time when day

and night are strait, equals at last

as Odin's wild hunt 

passes damned, mad,

howling overhead

The Snarler and the Grinder

fleet of foot, heedless of fate
run on; tonight's feast, tomorrow’s

feat, killed for meat this starveling
night, raised at dawn.
Spread the skins and 
let each bone 

fall with care so

those here reborn 

race again on the solar wind.

O bright black eye

split with too much knowledge

devil’s mask, canting voice

of the abyss, god's bearer, hunger's enemy

come bless us this Yule with your
yellow stare, ignite yourself

against the hag’s winter storm,

flute your flames through a straw ribcage.

Watch us make the old dance new again

under the reckless stars.

December 2011

The Gävle goat

In Norse myth, Thor was not only provided with his mountain-shattering hammer Mjölnir, his magical, strength doubling belt Megingjörð, but a chariot in which he traveled through the sky pulled by two goats, Tanngrisnir (Old Norse "teeth-barer, snarler") and Tanngnjóstr (Old Norse "teeth grinder") spoken of in the Prose Edda, who could be slain for food at Thor's discretion then resurrected with the power of Mjölnir and returned to the traces.~ from wikipedia: 'The Yule Goat is one of the oldest Scandinavian and Northern European Yule and Christmas symbols and traditions. Originally denoting the goat that was slaughtered during the Germanic pagan festival of Yule, "Yule Goat" now typically refers to a goat-figure made of straw. It is also associated with the custom of wassailing, sometimes referred to as "going Yule Goat" in Scandinavia.' As always, I've taken a few liberties with the letter of the myths.You can read more about the folklore of the Yule Goat here  and the Wild Hunt here.

Happy Wassailing to All!

Get back to Meeting the Bar:Contrast, hosted by Victoria at dVerse here

Terpsichore's Lovesong

Terpsichore's Lovesong

Lay your head

upon my breast

 let mending fingers roam,

yesterdays, regrets long fled

on the dancing journey home

Kiss me here

before we part

never to meet again,

freed from life as freed from fear

broken before we could bend.

Still the heart

is sent for song,

voice on the skyblue wind;

still I feel we’ll never part

unless it's to meet again.

December 2011

This is a companion piece to Thalia's Nocturne 

Image; Terpsichore, by Jean Marc Nattier, 1739 Oil on canvas

courtesy wikimedia commons

In the Wilderness

 In The Wilderness

My last night in the wilderness

I wrote your name

the name that can’t be spoken

in deep blue ink on black paper

block letters in knots and swirls

lewd bulges and constrictions

a child’s idea of a  rune of power

half drawn heiroglyph of some

ibis headed god with a

truthful feather, balanced

weightless where stars were

first conceived to ornament

the arching body of night.

Beside it I drew encircled

a kindled heart in luminous blood

heavy as iron for you my love

the raw red beating thing

to shock you into breathing

the slap across your infant cheek

I painted in silver star water

the tilting scales, the sword cross-hilted,

driven through. Above I put Dian’s crescent

webbed in cloudy lies

pink as the dawn’s toes

walking in her silken slippers all 

around us in night's shrinking pit.

Then I kissed and laid it low, whisper soft 

where the dying fire sighed

fed the smolder with curled needles

of rosemary, corpse tallow of dead hope

and bits of bone. By its sulphur light

the ghostsmoke steamed straight up

in the tomb still air, grey and rank

till the east wind blew you away.

Perhaps when your next priestess

arrives, she’ll make a rune ink from this

char and sleet and tattoo you

a poem you’ll like better

on her wavering skin

but it will never be half as true

as what I wrote by witchlight for you.

December 2011

Posted for   Open Link Night  at dVerse Poets Pub

Header Image: Magic Circle, by John William Waterhouse, 1886, oil on canvas
John William Waterhouse [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

Undelivered Letter To the Moon

Undelivered Letter to The Moon

from a shooting star

Dominitrix and nocturix

how you punish the night with flicks

of your white whip and rhythm sticks,

handcuff us to black and perform your rape

make us jump from the void in ecstatic mix

of  surrender and escape.

This is in response to Kerry's      Mini Challenge at real toads     today, where she discusses both the Burns Stanza, and the  poetry of Rhina P. Espaillat entitled "Undelivered Mail". I've tried to combine the two here, though perhaps not as purely as I could have, but this is what came. Below is the free verse fragment that I worked into the stanza, just for fun. 

To the Moon

Dominatrix and nocturix
how you punish the night
make it curl its toes and scream
handcuff the stars to a flat black table
delighting most
to make them writhe and jump
out of the sky in an ecstasy
of surrender and escape.

December 2011

Lead Balloon

Lead Balloon

Zeppelin among

red balloons

maraschino'd 

in a whip cream sky,

buffoon baboon among

soft-eyed lemurs

graffiti’d wall above

wavesmoothed

pebbles

puddled jellyfish

on the white beach

she knows

no one looks at

her face

she knows

fat girls

have to put out

she knows

all she has

is between her legs

or in her purse 

she knows 

it doesn’t matter

in the ten minute funhouse

mirror of their eyes

she can see

bent, elongated, fuzzy

what she could have been

if she were real.

December 2011

Posted for    Poetics   at dVerse Poets Pub

Brian's hosting a prompt this weekend featuring the graphic art of  Tera Zajack

Come join us.

Image provided by Tera Zajack

of olive hue designs

Used with permission

Long Distance Blue Moon

Long Distance Blue Moon

If  I could call--

and feel you answer--

even if only

when the moon is blue

or in total eclipse

or when Jupiter aligns

with certain unlikely

sections of

the Crab Nebula,

that would be

enough

but the air's

too thin there

for sound

to carry,

So enough will just

have to be

imagining it.

December 2011

 55 for the G-man 

Image: Blue Moon, by~ghosttigereyes on deviantArt

For My Son

December 15th was my son's 38th birthday. He's working through many trails in his life right now, and there seems to be very little I can do, but if you are reading this son, know I love you and think about you every day, and that I know you have what no one else can give you to win your battles. Someday things that seem impossible now will all be alright, one way or the other, so whatever's going down, try to laugh to keep from crying. This last year's  poem (slightly revised) isn't much of a birthday present, but I hope you can read between the lines.

For My Son

When he was a baby

he knew the language of birds

in his carrier under the trees.

looking up with blurry eyes,

waving fat hands

And speaking.

When he was a child
he wrote poetry
drew us the shine
of surreal suns;

he laughed 
into hollow tubes,

dressed in paper armor,

coughed and cried

and trusted

without speaking.

But somehow he wandered

away

into the tangled forest of his life

love a treacherous chase
full of hunters,

wary of pursuit,

under the falling arrows,

the ones I fired into the air

that hit and made him bleed,

the ones I never fired,

running far and fast

away where I

can’t follow.

In that forest

may he be safe

from hunting at last

from me, from himself.
May the light of his laughter
burn bright.

May he still be

speaking to birds

and finally

hear them answer.

October 2010

Comments are disabled on this post but there's some music. Thanks for reading.

All photos  protected by copyright. All rights reserved.

December Villanelle

December Villanelle

December the snowy white hope firepit

black-iced December, the cold-burning brand
December when ghosts all come back to sit

in stores, streets and houses lit bright or unlit
all along the sharp sleetslipping strand
December the ashen white hope firepit.

December the voice too cold to commit
yelling its annual endless demand.
December when ghosts all come back to sit

beside us around us. They flurry and hit;       
what they wield has no need for a flesh and blood hand.
December’s ghostnested white hope firepit.

Holes leak in dreams drilled by memory’s hard bit
as pine drips red drops in a bucket of sand.
December when ghosts all come back to sit.

Pull off the holly and break up each bit.   
Build a new fire that flares on command
in December’s dead dreary white hope firepit
and burn all the chairs where the ghosts come to sit.

December 2010

revised 2011

This is a repost of a villanelle I wrote last December, slightly tweaked. 

Posted for   OpenLinkNight   at dVerse Poets Pub

Off the Shelf Archive~December

Yes, the month is almost half gone, and incredibly, 2011 almost completely over, and I suddenly realized I had not as yet had any Wallace Stevens up this year. Blasphemy! So I am going to make amends for that by having two of his shortest poems, one I think very accessible and the other, not so much, but both illumined in a prismatic fashion by his own particular radiant intellect and vision. They are from his first published work, Harmonium (1923.) The first, Disillusionment at Ten O'Clock is in his most whimsical voice, the second, The Snow Man, more elemental, and very appropriate to the season, which anyone who comes here much has by now figured out I hate.

You'll find them here, in the Off The Shelf January archive.

If you'd like to know more about my favorite and most admired poet, his bio at poets.org is here:                              

 Wallace Stevens

~*~  ~*~  ~*~  ~*~  ~*~  ~*~  ~*~

To make room for the Stevens selection, last month's fine poem by Louise Bogan is moved to the front burner for a final perusal before going to rest in the Archives. Feel free to comment on either selection here, as comments are disabled off the main page.

Song For The Last Act

Now that I have your face by heart, I look
Less at its features than its darkening frame
Where quince and melon, yellow as young flame,
Lie with quilled dahlias and the shepherd's crook.
Beyond, a garden, There, in insolent ease
The lead and marble figures watch the show
Of yet another summer loath to go
Although the scythes hang in the apple trees.

Now that I have your face by heart, I look.

Now that I have your voice by heart, I read
In the black chords upon a dulling page
Music that is not meant for music's cage,
Whose emblems mix with words that shake and bleed.
The staves are shuttled over with a stark
Unprinted silence. In a double dream
I must spell out the storm, the running stream.
The beat's too swift. The notes shift in the dark.

Now that I have your voice by heart, I read.

Now that I have your heart by heart, I see
The wharves with their great ships and architraves;
The rigging and the cargo and the slaves
On a strange beach under a broken sky.
O not departure, but a voyage done!
The bales stand on the stone; the anchor weeps
Its red rust downward, and the long vine creeps
Beside the salt herb, in the lengthening sun.

Now that I have your heart by heart, I see.

by Louise Bogan

Image: The Hibiscus Tree, by Paul Gauguin, 1892, Oil on canvas
courtesy wikimedia commons

In My Dream

 In My Dream

in the style of Emily Dickinson

In bed of rock I laid me down

Time’s sand beneath the sheets

I fled the day through that First Watch

dark ends and want completes.

My headcage swell’d with pricking thought

sown in obsolete hour.

Sleep plowed me with her feeling hand,

Dream bloomed my dark flower:

A message of you, writ on skin,

flared up in onyx  flame:

The solitaire took a woman!

On her brown face--your name.

Dreams are ever a house in pain.

Certainty can’t win back

the vision slain, the drab of hope

is lost to bitter luck.

For there your letter waited--Lead,

envelope crackled blue.

Your words affirmed Calamity

And from the folded pages flew

Two tiny skulls that kissed and kissed,

two ivory figures twined;

where bone met bone and rib hooked rib

two skeletons aligned.

Dawn clattered in, face filmed in doubt--

meaning  I never knew.

Dream twisted the path before us--

death to me, life to you.

original work, November 1986

substantially revised 2011

Posted for  Sunday Mini Challenge   at real toads

Kerry's challenge today is to attempt the ballad form as used by one of my favorite poets, Emily Dickinson, without parody, intentional or unintentional. I can only hope.(!) This is quite an old poem, not much of a mini at seven stanzas, but much changed and shortened now from the abab tetrameter eleven stanza original.

Mending the Doll~Quilt Patterns

Mending The Doll

The 
doll is old,

old-fashioned,
old hat, vieux jeux,

yellowed soft cloth, not

cold plastic bitchslapped 
with a painted

smile.
 She doesn’t talk, model skintight skirts, wear tiny

rhinestoned stilletos, cry, wet or

do anything really.

She just 
shapelessly

is.

Seams 
split open
stuffing spilt

naked doll, who

will sew you closed?

Take up your own needle.
Try to pull yourself together. 

Use a red thread; never mind how

it glares against the yielding white cloth,

that scarlet vein caught in the chrome tooth.
Pull it through where the limp twin edges of hope
and fear no longer meet; should it accidentally pierce

any pouffes of cotton where a heart should be, Doll who
makes no sound, be grateful just to keep, however raddled
  or unraveled, those few soft bits of woolly innards you have left. Ah

     what a joke. The doll gives up. Her button eyes are blind, her fat hands are empty and do more harm than good  

yet still 

something has pushed the needle, pulled the thread, sewn her up and on her head set a fine new 
purple feathered hat.

December 2011

two for one:

Quilt Patterns

After you

find all of

the sparks

that make

a blinking

dawn’s eye

cut a square of unwrinkled indigo night

to lay down behind it, tips triangulated 

with squares of dusty sun seen through

 red clouds.

Sew  it up

 with stars'

needlings

pointilled,

each one

a

dot;

voids

that make

the lace exist,

holes through black velvet

that define what patterns are seen;

find for me next the rolling paisleys of ocean

silver blue crossed and starred, but never bottomed that

 backflow this quilt of brownpatch worked land

bound in woolly green, roots to anchor

batting of cotton moonshine,

connecting all the nodes

not just six of ten

for the easy fix.

Then please

cover me,

keep me
from
the

 cold.

December 2011

Posted for   Poetics   at dVerse Poets Pub

Victoria hosts again today with a prompt focused on the fabric of our lives. I made these concrete poems to simulate the piecing and stitching together that goes into all the painstaking needlework of a quilt, or a life. 
Sew up a poem and join us. Link is live till Sunday midnight.