Skins

Skins

There is no accord

no affinity the heart's

rough edge can't abrade,

can't peel away bit by bit; as a cook
unbuttons an onion, so I'm unwrapped to the

raw, each lover leaving rubbing off a skin

a thin epidermal sheet clinging ragged,

rucked off his receding back as he runs, 
already shedding my cells.

I should be nothing by now

but the pearl scallion core

that holds the green sprout;

instead like injured flesh I puff

with a pushing fluid, salt and sere

against the naked pain of movement,

the scarlet inflammation of loss, sweating
out a vapor that pulls from the unwary eye
trickling peardrops of aggregated regret.

A shame that having made my peace
with love, surrendered it up

so many times, it's still a cat I can't

call back, my wayward black spirit familiar.

Only its shades will come as they will,
its films of old sensation, soft

memories crackling, cast off voices

crumpled as the papery skins of 
a whittled onion.

June 2012

Posted for   Poetics   at dVerse Poets Pub

 Brian Miller is hosting today, and asks us to write about buttons in any shape or form or association.

Image: onion skin, by ultraBobban, on flick'r

Shared under a Creative Commons license

The Incubus And The Exorcist

The Incubus and the Exorcist
(Incubus VI)

It's been plain for some time now

that the incubus has lost interest

in mixing any pleasure 

with the pain.

He knows how he owns me.

So finally last night I sent for

the exorcist. With bell book and candle

the proud beadle came,

ringing and reading

and flaming at once.

He laid me flat on the hard concrete floor

(no soft beds for god's paladin)

brandished his lash and lustily

began to chant. The scent of

frankincense grew ponderous

and expensive;

mentally I reviewed my purse

wondering how much 

Holy I could afford.

Meanwhile, the face of the exorcist 

reddened with strain

(I thought) 

and he called on his Lord to

purge me, he called on prim-lipped angels 

to witness, he called on the voyeur Devil

to leave.  I lay panting and naked, 

only remembering the dance.

At last, solemnly shaking his head,

he said that

all that remained 

was the laying on of his hands

and that went fairly well

as his cassock slipped off

and the red shiny scales gleamed,

the cloven hoof came down, and

the hard,forked flexing tail

sparked hellfire,

burning away the past.

June 2012

Thou rascal beadle, hold thy bloody hand!
Why dost thou lash that whore? Strip thine own back;
Thou hotly lust'st to use her in that kind
For which thou whipp'st her.

~Shakespeare, King Lear

Posted for   real toads

Kerry's Wednesday Challenge: Very Old School

Shakespeare

Process notes: This poem is the sixth in my Incubus series. You can read the rest of them if you wish, here.

Image: Detail from Death and the Miser, by Heironymous Bosch, 1490

Public domain, via Wikipaintings.org

Walking On The Moon

Walking On The Moon

Since you left

I've been walking on the moon,

in the cold solar shadow, angel- and

demon-forsaken, unmused in a sinless place,

a floating cloud of cosmic diatoms weltering 

in undifferentiated asteroidal algae, working the

eyes of night for some buried beauty, some pandemic

of peace to infect me.

The dark side is

a rock rack, stone bed for the syncope when

white hope exhausts all exits with her rapid retreat.

I undrill in the dustbaths, naked in wallows of comet collisions,

bathed in dunes of ruthless radiance, where stars are

sprinkled in spilled saltgrains over eternity, vague and

sharp on the black velvet tablecloth

I once wore for a dress.

The sun side is harsh, but

even I tire of constant dark at times;

and I know it's the side you see, fat harlequin

croissant of a sickle honeyed with words defying

gravity, toasted in the gold heat of your almondine eyes.

I live on the grilling grid, fancy you making a meal

brioched of dark chocolate void where somehow

I've flavored the filling in dreams.

I walk on and on

light as the dead and sometimes

I find debris; yesterday an artifact

cast from the celestial dig of thee and me,

a vessel that used to glow, pounded to atomic dust, settled

in the flattened shardshape of a heart where I stepped

silent, and stood with the sudden choke

of moon in my throat.

June 2012

Posted for   OpenLinkNight   at dVerse Poets Pub


If you'd like to hear the poem read by the author, click below:

walking on the moon by Hedgewitch O'theWilds

Header image: A Voyage to the Moon, by Gustave Dore, 1868, engraving

Public domain via Wikipaintings.org

Footer Image: Moon @ Utrecht-zuillen, by HSmade, on flick'r

Shared under a Creative Commons License

Cat's Eye

Cat's Eye

In the yellow light of the cat's eye

the night is coiled like a lamprey

winding dark flexes in a corkscrew pulse,

leaving its ripple trail faint on the surface,

incising electric heart's current below

where the crayfish and shiners

pushflip against water

in an agony to escape 

that shock-needled jaw.

Under the pressing black of the cat's paw

vision is blurred and thoughts slow.

The gasp of constriction expels in old voices

familiar but fading, soft as lavender budding,

sharp as yesterday's bones, a rictus

retelling the beads of regret,

a damned catechism 

mantra'd to nonsense

reprising till sunup.

In the amber swim of the cat's eye

sun's boat floats in prismed mirage play,

leaf and limb decoupage round the small world's rim

bowled with still water, green branch ears listening

to the cocking of the crossbow, rapt for the slap

of the next homing bolt, where one spider tree

bares her heartwood alone,

blind as the dead

in the fey catnip woods.

June 2012

 Posted for   real toads

Sunday Photo Challenge: The iPhone photos of Margaret Bednar

Images: © Margaret Bednar

taken from Margaret's photoblog, i and I

Used with permission

Virginia Eliza

Portrait of Virginia Eliza Poe, painted shortly after her death.

Virginia Eliza

She died so young

and yet she lives,

a dark strawflower
pressed in poems,

paper stronger

than ever she was, than 

mind or flesh of brother, cousin,

spouse and spirit who

wrote her, dreamed her.

She was a child

who never changed

innocent, faithful as leaf

to tree till her autumn came.

Then she bled; all women bleed,

but she from her heart

though they said her lungs,

still her harp rang sweetest
when she came to sing 
farewell in the freezing night.

Her cheap dress hung 
from a nymph's frail frame

yet she was wise and wide with love,

a shield, a guardian host,

a black-eyed garden walled in one;
after, a pale fire burning in the brain

a raven crying forevermore.

She still walks the House

where the Ushers fell,

haunts the dank tarns of Wier

where Psyche failed, not strong enough

to keep him from her dead arms

or sing louder than the memory

of her child's high tenor, 
face ice white, dianthus eyes

brimming with a care

that could find no fault

nor feel a lack

though her brief pained life

was lived in ruin;

it ended, after all, as it began, warm

in the haven of a madman's arms.

June 2012

Acrostic valentine written for her husband when Virginia was 23, 11 months before her death from tuberculosis.

Posted for   Fireblossom Friday   at real toads

Process Notes: Virginia Eliza Clemm was Edgar Allan Poe's first cousin. They met when she was seven, when Poe moved in with her widowed mother, his invalid grandmother and their extended family in Baltimore. There was considerable disparity in their ages; their marriage took place when she was 13 and he 27, but the evidence suggests it was her own choice, that they were a loving, happy and devoted couple. Friends at the time said the Poes were more like sister and brother, and the marriage was not consummated till some years later, though some scholars suggest it was never consummated. Regardless, Poe did his best to support and care for her and her mother throughout their lives.  His work was little respected during his own short lifetime, and the couple lived in grinding poverty on handouts and the pittance he earned as a peripatetic journalist. Virginia Eliza Poe died of tuberculosis in January, 1847 at the age of 24. Much is made of the macabre nature of Poe's genius, and the theme of the 'death of a beautiful woman,' which plays a large role in so much of his prose and poetry. One wonders how much of his finest writing we would have had without Virginia.

Images: public domain, courtesy wikipedia & wikimedia commons

The Message

 The Message

On a windblustered day in a landlocked clime

we walked, the dog and I

the beach of the rainwashed mind,

her smell-prance a dance of anticipation

unquenchable, my drag-walk the sum

of slow disintegration.

Dry air faked the sigh that couples with ocean,

fish-fluid, flying fluent and fulgent

with forgotten emotion.

The flotsam thrown up there was viscid and dark

but in a floating smoked bottle

I found a mark

a notation neither flesh nor sublime

no lovenote, just the tedious plea

to make something mine:
 

If only I could know

what I only see receding.

Knowledge is mean

as alcohol, burning what it cleans

killing what needs to die,

bitter as aloe tasting black, 

soothing on charred hide,

but knowing is the thing we lack

most when we are needing,

only gotten after bleeding.

I looked to the signing to see who divined

this notification pricked out in prime

saw my own name, the only thing mine.

June 2012

Posted for   real toads

Challenge:Ella's Edge

Ellas has asked us to write a poem about "saving one's soul.  A life lesson, a view of your journey..." or a message that might be found in a bottle. 

Image: Miranda, by John William Waterhouse, 1875

Public domain via Wikipaintings.org

Dancing On The Tombs

Dream, M.C. Escher, 1935

Dancing On The Tombs 

By day

she's sane enough

though often the alpha in the herd will lift

a muzzle and sense...something off.

No one wants to come too close

because of the wild so poorly

concealed under the makeup.

Still, by day she's sane enough.

At night, she prowls on Escher stairs

turning back and back among the tombs

dancing to sharps in the Inquisitor's song,

to green voices in trees, nacreous hums in fishscale

clouds skinned over the moon, red yells in demon winds;

her head bobs rhythmically at these, her kin.

She sings to the unquiet dead, adds interrogation

to conversations of chaos, invents answers

too blue to believe, too black to weave

the color she wants. She keeps her ears

out far on their stalks, seeking the Beast

let loose in the moon marbled night.

She has a bed, a sanctum's space, a nun's cell where 

his angelus sounds, yet each night she spins out the

door, dry seed in a whirlwind, clawed half-made from her pod

trying to climb the stars, falling, calling, explaining, wanting

owl hoots for a voice so she can cry without being found.

But by day

she's sane enough.

June 2012

Posted for   OpenLinkNight   at dVerse Poets Pub 

If you would like to hear the poem read by the author, click below:

Dancing on the tombs by Hedgewitch O'theWilds

Image: Dream, by M.C.Escher, 1935

May be protected by copyright of which no infringement is intended.

via WikiPaintings.org

Shadows

Shadows

Shadows' prism refracting

gives only a black rainbow.

Scar-eyed, dead rocks impacting

make the wink of the moonglow.

Needlepointed charity

echoes in pity's hollow.

Truth devoid of verity

sneaks in where sense can’t follow.

The music of November

frosts on forgotten meadows.

The harpist sings Remember;

rash words no action shadows.

June 2012

Posted for   real toads

Sunday Mini-Challenge: the Celtic Quatrain

Kerry has chosen a form that may be sheer music in the Gaelic, but in English is truly, as always, challenging in the extreme. Rhyming three syllable words is one thing, but doing it in lines of only seven syllables is quite another. (For a full explanation of the form, follow the link above.) 

Still, this was a very creative exercise for me. Thanks, Kerry.

Image: Shadows.Moonlit Night. Isaac Levitan, 1885, watercolor

Public domain, via Wikipaintings.org

Chimera

Chimera

When I left all I asked was peace 

of the starry void, that

every shrewish hope be finally silent 

yet after me you sent one white bird

only marsh cloud singing,

too soft, too frail to fly far.

I dreamed of you last night--

did you call me?

No, it was just my broken eyes

wanting to see the old calligraphy

strong and alive on the blank page but

that will never be again.

You were dream's pale clerk

troubled, frowning at the paper

on which many things were written

none of them my name.

I stood by your shoulder;

you turned, walking through me.

Waking, I couldn't say

if you or I was the ghost.

The gift of sleep

is taken back and I sit staring

at the perforated day, at walls falling

in this helpless place of the dead

where I've washed up

already chewed by the chimera

stung by the manticore,

wondering what white wings will come

out of the siren darkness, 

what ghost bird is left.

June 2012

Posted for   Poetics   at dverse poets pub

Karin Gustafson is hosting today and asks us to voyage away from the known and explore the theme of exile. 

If you would like to hear the poem read by the author, click below:

Chimera by Hedgewitch O'theWilds

Image: Chimera, by Gustave Moreau, 1884, watercolor

Public domain, via wikipaintings.org

The Absence Of The Bee

The Absence of the Bee

A Triversen

The bees have gone away;

the heavy absence of their humming

matches the blossoms' wither.

On shrinking stems

flowers petal-fall closed parasols

and pink petticoats peel away.

Black beetles are blind

to orange-anthered hats,

preferring unseemly chewing.

The attention deficits

of waggish bustling wasps

and dizzy moths puzzle pollination.

The tickling of an occasional ant

wandering from his pheromone trail

can't trump a bee's tumble.

The silence of life

without bees

is intense.

June 2012

Posted for   FormForAll   at dVerse Poets Pub

Prompt: Triversen

For a complete and proper explanation of this simple and eloquent form, see the article Gay Cannon has written for this prompt at the pub, and catch some poetry by Wallace Stevens at the same time.Win-win situation.

Process notes: The metaphor used in this poem is that of Colony Collapse Disorder, a term applied to the mysterious disappearance of worker honey bees which disrupts agricultural crop pollination and causes bee colonies to fail. We are experiencing a high incidence of this throughout the United States right now. No one is quite sure why, but disease, parasites and genetically engineered crops containing pesticide seem to be the dominant factors.

Image: Photo manipulation of the herb borage,  a bee attractant.

© joy ann jones 2012