Ice Blue /Your Ways

Ice Blue/Your Ways

Two Variants on the Rhyme Royal

Ice Blue

How can  the sky be so fire-orange true,

as if the horizon burned time red and gold

in a winter when wind blows trees ice blue,

and night screams as it comes in fear and cold?

Not much is sure of what we hold,

not why nor how nor any way back,

least of all the white road that's striped with black

or the peacock colors of who we are

that change as the sail trims light or dark,

just your wrist that burns with the pulse of a star,

that laid under my breast holds down the heart

made wild to fly, then fly apart,

a snake of smoke to the bonfire sky

blown on the wind of you and I.

Your Ways

Your leg lifts a sail gone slack on my thigh,

your wrist knocks its pulse beneath my far breast

holding down the heart you made wild to fly,

and fly apart, with each chamber pressed

each moment peeled, each beat undressed

blind with the shine of this folded hour

drunk with the moon in her swaying tower.

Nothing is certain, not life nor days.

Nothing is certain in dark or bright.

Nothing is certain except your ways

when you come to me here, to summer the night

on the road stark black but waved with white

against a peacock sky so fire-orange true

in a winter that blows the trees ice-blue.

~February 2014

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Fireblossom Friday: Rhyme Royal & W.T. Benda

The ever devious Fireblossom (Shay's Word Garden) who is known for her allergic reaction to haiku, has chosen to tantalize us with a form challenge today, the rhyme royal. The form is written using a seven line stanza with a rhyme scheme of ababbcc, or with either of two variants: 
a quatrain and tercet,  abab  bcc  or a tercet and two couplets,   aba bb cc.  
For full details, see the Toads link above.
I have written the same poem twice, reversed, once for each of the latter two ways. I also worked a word or two in derived from the illustration below by W.T. Benda.

~WT Benda

Photos: Scruboak Sunset, Darkwood, by joyannjones copyright 2012,2014

All Rights Reserved.

Bed And Breakfast

Bed And Breakfast

Stones in the bowl

breakfast of nails,

sun on the roof,

time off the rails.

Flies in the soup,

bright knife in the back;

you can sell your soul but

your bones turn black.

Dust for your tea, 

tar sand in your bed;

it's too late now

to sleep or get fed.

~February 2014

55 dessicated environmental disasters for     the g-man

(count includes title)

California is currently in a state of severe drought, something we dustbowl refugees can always relate to--there's a storm headed their way this weekend though, so hopefully things will turn out to be less grim than this poem, which reflects a larger state of dysfunction.

Image, Folsom Lake, by Associated Press, via Huffington Post

Incriminated

Incriminated

There was a pain that came

that changed me like rain

and I was thankful to have it

when there was nothing else

engineered to maintain

the shape of a self.

Your eyes were all purple

lie-bruised and encircled;

your hand shook at the plug

where you took your last charge

for the strength to go hurt-culled

to not cry when it buckled,

when you had to go large.

The room was as empty

as a January pantry

when Christmas is ghostly.

You wore me over your clothes,

my skin protection mostly

from the strontium flu, plastic froze

to the blue while you stayed prime

and when I dissolved in time

you burned me, love

like a pair of blood-stained gloves

still wet from the scene of the crime.

~February 2014

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Open Link Monday

Images: Untitled,  by Zdislav Beksinski

May be protected by copyright~posted under fair use guidelines via wikipaintings.org

Love Story

Love Story

I.

He lives alone

with her

and I suppose it suits

them both

for each a given room

built for something shattered 

long ago, patched, imperfect

hanging stiff, a prosthetic

to protect
from the pain

of being touched.

II.

But together

things get done.

The long illness of life

is a fog they

navigate with muted beams,

brassy horn of a crabbed

autonomy fussily sounding,

while traffic doctors mumble,

 there should be a lane change here;
less sideways, more forward,

some turn

toward recovery.

III.

She lives alone

with him

in carved out rooms

that never touch,

her music mute before

it drifts too far,

his face obscure behind print, the

picturebox that swallows his couch.

She only comes out

when he sleeps,

to look at the stars

to blind herself 

with the fire, the moon,

a glass of cold stone-flavored wine

its petrichor the ash of auto-da-fé
on her  tongue.

IV.

In the mornings,

they laugh at cats,

penguins, politicians, fools;

make their way to town

for words and bread

point at the house for sale, 

talk about the weather domed

over the chaos where independent

a delicate mechanism

still whirs, clicks and

joins the invisible

 revolving

wheels.

~February 2014

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Sunday Challenge: Play it Again,Toads
Margaret Bednar once again brings three vintage toads' challenges out from the vault and asks us to reconsider them. I have chosen to write more directly than in my first attempt to the old Fireblossom Friday prompt  called Lights!Camera!Love! where Shay asked us to tell a love story of two people that might be a movie.

Top Image: February, by Michael Sowa
May be protected by copyright~posted under fair use guidelines, via wikipaintings.org
Footer: Caravan, by Remedios Varo
May be protected by copyright~posted under fair use guidelines, via wikipaintings.org

Northern Lights, Southern Cross

Northern Lights, Southern Cross

I was there when you asked

What kind of love have you got

and thought O you don't
want to go there, down under the trestles,
darkness on the edge.

Just a poor girl

in a rich man's house

the day the night man kicked us out

of  California, I dreamed

you were the fortunate one.
I screamed

it ain't me 

with the star spangled eyes,

but it was, opal silver

not red white and blue---that

was our curtain over the cannon,

the wave that hid the room 

where tears of rage

tears of a thief
soaked postcards of the hanging

with rain no one could stop,

panned a heart of gold no one

could bend, chromed it

to a wheel

on a broken glass frame

rolling toward the trades

outside on
the long
downhill run.

~February 2014

Process Note: The title of this poem is the title of an old mixed tape of mine. If the words are familiar, it's because I have sampled freely here from lyrics of the following recordings :

Victim of Love /Hotel California, the Eagles

Darkness on the Edge of Town, Bruce Springsteen

Emotional Rescue, The Rolling Stones

Fortunate Son,/Who'll Stop The Rain, Credence Clearwater Revivial

Tears of Rage, The Band

Desolation Row, Bob Dylan

Heart of Gold/Long May You Run, Neil Young

Heart Like A Wheel, Linda Ronstadt

Southern Cross, Crosby Stills and Nash

All copyright (and gratitude)belongs to the original authors of the words I have borrowed

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Challenge: All Mixed Up

The tropically inclined mind of Corey Rowley (Herotomost) lures us into the tempting world of mixed tapes. He asked that we write about love in a cheesy, real, non-ethereal way--I did my best,but the only cheesy stuff I really feel is authentic here is my miniskirt, above, almost covered by the outsize security guard coat I loved back then for some reason. 
Thanks, Corey--I had fun with this one.

A couple of the tunes, for optional rocking :

Photo:  American Flag, Me, Eddie Sneath & A Sixpack of Bud, San Francisco, circa 1971, 
copyright joyannjones, 2014
All Rights Reserved.