The Music of Birds and Lions

The Music of Birds and Lions

If I had to say something about it

I would just mention

the way your eyes

moved through me
like fever through a lion,

like the brown-soled boots

of a Victorian explorer

walking lightly

with ownership, a dominion

powered by steam

careful to always
keep an echo

map of the outback

in beige buckram binding

firmly gripped in your mind,

referencing page dogeared,

recording the reasons

not to fall behind on

a dangerous journey;

or that your hands

were always sliding in

a slipstream of tasks, were

water, embracing stones smooth

in their blue satin beds,

leaving behind a geologic

Alexandrian library

of lithic messages, codes;

languages of a few extinct

species of birds, envoys and diplomats;

that your long fingers on the stops

were your flight feathers,

playing a recital of calling macaws

that come at nightfall to color

shadow-fronds of sunset palms

with their rest;

but there's no need to

talk about what you stored
under my skin, or tattoos in birdsong

that can't be forgotten

so I only strum the music of it

where the lions rise

in the mauve gauze of
the jungle dark.

~December 2014

posted for    real toads

The last Get Listed for 2014

Process note: I wrote this earlier in the month, when I was undrugged, and it already had several of Michael's words embedded in it. I put a few more in today as I tweaked it, using

 in one form or another music, few, grip, feather, steam, embrace, rise, fall, water, shadow, bed. 

Images: The Sleeping Gypsy, 1897, Henri Rousseau

The Moment of Truth, 1892, Paul Gauguin

Public domain via wikiart.org

Update

Having a bit of post-holiday malaise, connected to the meds I take for my wonky back, which chose Christmas Day as the time to self-destruct this year. However, this too shall soon pass and I am just fine, other than walking in a chemical fog, feeling NO pain except when I move certain extremities too abruptly,  and hope to be able to do some visiting soon. Thanks again to everyone who reads and supports me here at Verse Escape, and hope everyone had a wonderful holiday and is bracing for yet another bloody and depressing---I mean, Happy New Year.

Reposts for Christmas, Finale

Yule Goat

In December’s dark descent

across crackled breaking sky ice

slivered with dagger snow,

bells ring in whitened night, sharp

hooves stamp on the cloudcloth

shaking pearl dust stripes on

viridian spruces, candelabra arms

turquoise and white pinwheels

circling their wands

of bitter bark raven haunted.

The god of thunders 

pulls the sun's shadow,

flickering hammer tucked

in his brace of clouds,

drives his twin goats

toward the time when day

and night are strait, equals at last

as Odin's wild hunt 

passes damned, mad,

howling overhead

the Snarler and the Grinder

fleet of foot, heedless of fate
run on; tonight's feast, tomorrow’s

feat, killed for meat this starveling
night, raised at dawn.
Spread the skins and 
let each bone 

fall with care so

those here reborn may

race again on the solar wind.

O bright black eye

split with too much knowledge

devil’s mask, canting voice

of the abyss, god's bearer, hunger's enemy

come bless us this Yule with your
yellow stare, ignite yourself

against the hag’s winter storm,

flute your flames through a straw ribcage. 

Watch us make the old dance new again

under the reckless stars.

The Gävle goat

~December 2011

I have reposted this little Yule tale for Christmas the last few years, and don't see any reason to stop now. ;_) 

A very happy Yuletide to all my readers, and a bright and beautiful New Year.

Notes: In Norse myth, Thor was not only provided with his mountain-shattering hammer Mjölnir, his magical, strength doubling belt Megingjörð, but a chariot in which he traveled through the sky pulled by two goats, Tanngrisnir (Old Norse "teeth-barer, snarler") and Tanngnjóstr (Old Norse "teeth grinder") spoken of in the Prose Edda, who could be slain for food at Thor's discretion then resurrected with the power of Mjölnir and returned to the traces.

~ from wikipedia: 'The Yule Goat is one of the oldest Scandinavian and Northern European Yule and Christmas symbols and traditions. Originally denoting the goat that was slaughtered during the Germanic pagan festival of Yule, "Yule Goat" now typically refers to a goat-figure made of straw. It is also associated with the custom of wassailing, sometimes referred to as "going Yule Goat" in Scandinavia.' As always, I've taken a few liberties with the letter of the myths.You can read more about the folklore of the Yule Goat here  and the Wild Hunt here.

Humbugged

Humbugged

The bug is humming

humming to itself

and the blood is drumming

in the numb tied hands

and the faces are laughing

pale hands prodding, slapping

the man in the sack who

hangs from the hook

who hasn't slept in a

hundred hours

whose legs have swelled

like sausage balloons

who knows nothing

and tells it all

to the shaved baboons
in Armani suits

while the bug

is humming

an American tune
inside our heads
inside our phones
in the dollar we use
for the death we buy,
in the lie
the bug is humming,
no price is too high.

Barely hidden under the drones,
we tilt the forbidden;
the humming bug, the perfect slave

for this abattoir, this decorated grave
where we kneel in fear of what we've made

of the land of the free

the home of the brave.

~December 2014

posted for    real toads

Out of Standard: Humbug Origins

Izy Gruye (The Nice Cage) asks us to use the word humbug in it's original meaning, that of a sham or hoax, in a poem that has nothing to do with winter or Christmas. I have been wanting to write on this topic--the recently released Senate report on torture of detainees during the Bush administration--but have not been able to until today. This poem is just a shadow attempt at expressing that horror, with my apologies to the Talking Heads, for borrowing their line "I hope you're happy with what you made/from the land of the free and the home of the brave." as used in the song below:

Process notes: The word 'bug' here refers to insect life and electronic surveillance, as well as the challenge meaning.

Image" Cover page of the U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence Study of CIA Detention and Interrogation Program, public domain via wikimedia commons

The Burnt Angel

The Burnt Angel

Following the jesus of absence,

flying on the defunct

pegasus line,

will the angel come again

when the moon walks through the pines

or under the yolk of sun

frying unbroken above, or

on the dancing floor

where  flying leaves have one last waltz

before they're dirt and leaves no more?

Will the tongue

that was a biting worm

push deep into the shifting worlds

to eat the wide silence

of the last legends ever heard?

How will the hands

that broke down stone by stone

each road and arch, bricked bridge and hall

pile up that rampart place at last

without rafter or wall?

The icewind says nothing

in her bully brief run;

nothing to the questions

the coming dark

asks the sun.

Pegasus flies, but

Icarus tumbles

burning

down.

~December 2014

posted for    real toads

Kerry's Weekend Challenge: In Other Words

Kerry O'Connor has been doing a series of prompts focusing on word replacement in the titles of various works. This week she turns us towards some Christmas-oriented titles--yes, this is about Christmas, of the hedgewitchian kind. I have been out of action for awhile, but couldn't miss Kerry's last prompt of the year.

Image: Pegasus, by Wojciech Siudmak

Fair use via wikiart.org

Emeralds For Breakfast

Emeralds For Breakfast

Once you gave me

emeralds for breakfast,

moonstones in the afternoons.

You set gold rings into each ear

each one a twist of  jade-apple sun

summer, inhaled from the calyx chalice

to the hot noise of bee-breached flowers.

Somehow the bright green

spilled; the gilt light dulled

gives way to silver

in the cold-hag's time

when earth sleeps brown

and billowing in surrender

and  there is only winter

staggering to me

my lost lamb, her snow

thin and matted, pulled sleet-grey

lean with a gift of famine,

delicate ice diamonds shivering

cold, cold, around her neck

begging for the garland

of  even my

freezing  arms.

~December 2014

Image: Angelina stonecrop (Sedum rupestre 'Angelina')

Ice Blossoms

copyright joyannjones, 2013, 2014