Sunday, July 28, 2013

Some Etheree-al Ramblings on The Moon



© Diana Matisz, All Rights Reserved. Used with permission.




Moon Storm
(An etheree)

So
the storm
finally
came. Lightning climbed
the tree backwards, head
to the ground, stars tumbled
down in sweet bright sips of light
and the moon rose, kicking off her
slippers of clouds, indigo heart of
 ocean in her palm, drinking stars for wine.





Dry Ice
(A Double Reverse Etheree)


Thru
clouded
sleet sweet lips
the  moon panting
hung her painted tongue
down    to  the  metal  roof
still  hot   enough to melt  hail
or jump-fry plagues of grasshoppers.
Her  rilling  drops  slicked  it with silver
moonspit,  gleaming blind white: ice for fire.

She made a glacier from a light pool, frost
from dry-iced steel. Skating on the shine,
spidery   light-wiggles   wandered
from  the lick of  moon  over
my clockwork hair, to my
 impatient eye,  so
 ready        to
dream  the
 freeze.


~July 2013



posted for     real toads
Weekend Challenge: Etheree(al)
I'm hosting our challenge this weekend, which is to write an etheree, a ten line poem which begins with one syllable and ends with ten. I've done a regular one, and then I've put two of them back to back, with the second reversed, just for fun.
Thanks, Diana, for the use of your lovely photo.





Image:  © Diana Matisz, All Rights Reserved. Used with permission.

Diana's photography blog is Life Through Blue Eyes, her flick'r stream is here, and her Redbubble store, where prints of her work are available, is here.


Saturday, July 27, 2013

The Unlikely Summer



Phone Struck by Lightning



The Unlikely Summer




It was
an unusual summer.
The heat left town, embarrassed
after a bad opening night.
Sparrows and hummingbirds broke
union rules and danced in the same line-up,
decorating spotlight sunflowers like seeds of glass.
At night, significant rabbits with pocketwatches
came to the back door in top hat and tails, asking
the way to wonderland, but time jumped
upstream wild and fast as salmon in a silver river
and they were ~ always ~ late.

I dialed the broken wheel on the landline
till my digits calloused, to speak long distance to
the empty place where you had been ~  always ~
I got the machine ~ always ~ noncommittally polite
and willing to take a message, but
I knew I'd never hear back, even though
every flower in my garden bloomed
out loud for you in that
unusual summer
where secret thunder on the east
met the lightning climbing out of bowls
of blue cloud, hollow, vast and tortured with swell.

Everything rained and turned to tatters.
I opened my heart to the storm
and it came in,
like Jesus filling a canvas tent,
and the blur and the flicker
fell into my fingers until I became
~all ways ~
dangerous, until
I wasn't safe for birds or rabbits, until
I could touch nothing
alive,
nothing at all.

~July 2013






posted for     real toads
Challenge: Friday Night Raw
Corey Rowley (Herotomost) asks us to dig deep into our toolbox as writers and use technique, different devices and styles to engage the reader, to access and convey the intensity of our emotions. He also mentions some bat guano. I think I got that part down. 



This is also posted for my friend Karin Gustafson's prompt 'a body or bodies of water,' at      
dverse poets 

(She said a rain drop was acceptable, so...)

Optional Musical Accompaniment



Images from Fick'r Creative Commons. Hover mouse for attribution, or click on pic to go to the photographer's flick'r page.



Thursday, July 25, 2013

Moon Eyes


Moon Eyes



The clouds masking mystic
makes the moon gaze strabismic.

One eye, the red one,
ignites the dry sun;

the other, the right,
puts out the blue night.

Rain still falls gently, so why
the blind burning of sky?

Sinlight's cochineal beams,
 bright as your dagger voice in dreams,

are hot as the cellar of murder.



~July 2013







55  blinking wet eyelashes for       the  g-man









Photo  © joyannjones 2012

Wednesday, July 24, 2013

The Age Before Sunrise




The Age Before Sunrise




I watched the tear
begin in the lace
heard the first crack
of the bone that comes
before the tender runner falls

into the shrill crusher
where surface grit is sliced
from blue heart turned to tar,
every factor extracted
sweetly from its bloody root

to a dead center
for the incurious worm
still gnawing
its own circular tomb
in the thing it killed

forever;
what is it
that growling? What
slips its face up so shyly
over the rim of the past?



~July 2013





posted for    real toads
Challenge: Get Listed
Though I seldom work from word lists, I have to admit, lately I'll be happy to shake hands with anything that pries my muse out of her cave. This particular word list, which you can see in its entirety at the link above, was supplied by the poet M, who also blogs as Grapeling.


Optional Musical Accompaniment








Image: The Old Tower In The Fields, by Vincent Van Gogh, 1884
Public Domain, via wikipaintings.org