The Kitchen Mouse

The Kitchen Mouse

You're in my dreams like mice in a kitchen

when the cooking's over, the cook

is sleeping, the stove is cold.

You make a skitter under the fire-crackle,

shadow warm,

at a noise
gone.

I hear you eat through sacks

and wrappings, small brighteyes;

working your delicate bones

behind blue-painted plates,

alive in the crumbs, stark
on the stones, always

hungry.

Everything's spoiled in the morning

where your dirty feet have

danced, but there's no poison

here, no baited iron jaw. Live
and let live, I say, for
in my kitchen I will have
no death.

~September 2013

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Challenge: It's All About Place

The ever-sharp eye of the multi-talented Margaret Bednar saw some inspirational potential in a series of  exquisite historical miniature room exhibits at the Art Institute of Chicago, and  kindly brought back pictures for us(see link.) She has asked us to write about the kind of place they might be.

Process Note: No actual kitchens were infested in the research for this poem.

Photo by Margaret Bednar,  used with permission.
(To suit my theme, I have cropped and manipulated her original photo for the header here, so blame me not her for that.)

Moondust

Moondust

My body was deep

breathing

all god's cast up

references

when it caught the last

dusty angel

in its lungs, hacking till

I finally

coughed her out.

The feckless moon

spent her last coin  

above the hill

where red stars twinkle; I

wonder why it is

nothing

twinkles here

but stars and
your dark eyes.

~September 2013

55 dusty moondrops for     the g-man

Hover mouse for image attribution, or click on pic to go to photographer's Flick'r page
Shared under a Creative Commons license.

Remember To Forget

Remember To Forget

I remember things
that never were
in dreams,
in every dark room
your laugh the nightlight;
no need to promise
what's in plain sight.

I forget the things that are
in dreams.
Doppelgangers know
to hold me slow, tell me fast
words too low to hear.
Love that isn't there 
comes home at last 



~September 2013

55 recurrent dreams for     the g-man

Photo © joyannjones 2013

End Times Of The Cailleach

Untitled, Zdislav Beksinski

End Times Of The Cailleach

The world winds down,

the spirit seeps

out in a steam of boiled bones,

my bright bones that once

danced up the sky.

I look for you still

in the wheel of rain,

the bruise-smoke of rosemary's skin

burnt on the licorice black
forehead of night.

I see you in the wind-made wave

that is not blue but running ochre

sand through my sleeve,

pooling strontium drifts,

calcified dunes.

The idiot roar

from the gun's dead mouth

kills the walking flesh

but never me. Hands so busy with gold

make a snake around the throat.

Come stroke the white knives

in my ebony hair;

of all I've lost in faith or fire,

the last blessings, these few

I've saved for you.

~September 2013







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Kerry's Wednesday Challenge: The Old Gods 

Kerry O'Connor offers a hard-to-refuse challenge today over at the Garden, to select a Celtic or Roman Deity…"…and write in the first person perspective of the god or goddess, but as if he (or she) were contemplating existence in the present era. Allow your imaginations to dictate what has become of the gods' personalities and relationships with humanity." I have chosen my old friend, the Celtic figure of the Cailleach, who is also one of the other faces of Brigid or Brighde, the goddess of fertility, poetry, spring, high places and all high endeavors.

Image: Untitled, 2004, by Zdislav Beksinski

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