Disarray
Even from here, shut out
in the wheeling year's disarray,
I can feel your fear of what you know
you will never have again, even
of knowing that; I can see you place
your dead planet moonfast without revolve
cratered, axis horseshoed tight round
your ruined heart,
that great magnet of a failing past
that sucks to it the bright shavings of your soul.
Your pale eyes shine with a torment of self
a salty torrent turned back, reverse
engineered to pantheistic rivers of
phantom flint flowers, rilling rains dammed
by the fisted hand open only to strike
fear by day, fear by night. Your alembic
slowdrips fading physic; others' words,
wine mulled to medicine, swallowed
then vomited up, poison
in a leviathon's deathroll.
Of course a nymph the size of
a rosemary needle
could never be enough
to soothe the stomach of such a beast,
to move again
the frozen moon,
to heal or to charm with
my forget-me-not blooms,
my memoried fragrance.
~November 2012
Wednesday Challenge
Kerry introduces the South African poet Ingrid Jonker, and asks us to write from the experiences of personal relationship as she did in her work. I was unable to capture at all Jonker's style in this, I'm afraid.
Words and images © joyannjones
