The Night Guitar

The Night Guitar

Sometimes the stars mock the moon,

smaller than a paramecium

swimming in their amniotic cloud,

invisible without

a microscope. Sometimes the night's

guitar is bigger than I am, miles of

twisted mahogany too heavy

to hold.

I stand beside it, 

its ebony frets that reach past

the roofbeam, strings

like bridge cables, its round-windowed keys

bright raptor eyes
looking through me. I stand there

as I would by a trophy fish

hoist swinging up by a pulley

because some nights

are like a bad vacation

full of lousy motels, broken food,

bitching spouses. They take a picture

so all may admire 

the length, the torpid weight of

something huge
and liquid silver made dead

to hang on a failing wall.  
Other nights
the stars are drowned in moonglow,
the neck is a rosary fitting my hands, 
strings bending sweetly against my fingers, 
like the wooly necks of wayward lambs, 
and we play until dawn blows out
the candled moon.

~June 2015 

[from a dream]

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Images: The Guitar, 1895 by Anders Zorn

The Trout, 1897, by Gustav Courbet

Public domain

Moonspit

Moonspit

I
was 

barking mad

under Mother Moon

to think there was a we 

for ye to give,

not that you want

to hear that, posed as you pull

your worms from the fire

to do the old wriggle, 

as if waved in your hand, 

they make you a man.

I
can

make more of a man

from ashes 

and spit.

~June 2015

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Challenge: Words Count 

Mama Zen (Another Damn Poetry Blog) presents us with a list of words common to a slew of languages which suggest a mother tongue once widely shared, and requests a 60 words or less count.. I looked at the list and this came out without much conscious effort--a snarky tale not deep, but perhaps genetically broad as that same mother word-share.

Images: Untitled, 1978, by Zdislav Beksinski   Fair use via wikiart.org

The Cauldron of the Sorceress, 1879, by Odilon Redon   Public domain

To Waiting

To Waiting

All morning by the highway

I waited.

The day was a string with

the bead of you swinging

amber and whole at its end.

Dust lifted my hair;

dust was the way the wind

found its fingers

there where I dreamed the fall

of your hair over me--

a wave, a sigh, a landslide, 

the soft brown roots 

of not one tree

but a fern-tangled forest;

 I waited for this 

without caring how long,

alive as a vine that covers

a dying barn, as an apple tree

whose apples are flowers,

rose-white in clouds;

as the bud on the cane

hides the thorn in the rose

as the rose abides  

in the round hip I gave

to soften the ground

each time we'd wait

for breath to come back

from that place

in the dark where

the storm rides.

~June 2015

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Sunday Mini-Challenge: Ode to the Quotidian

Karin Gustafson (ManicDDaily) offers us the example of the sublime Neruda and his odes to everyday things as a springboard, but as always leaves us some breathing room to slip in something else. This is something else, as I usually think of an ode as something a bit more full of  the blood sweat and tears of form than this--still, what could be more quotidian than waiting?

Image: Apple Tree, I , 1912,  by Gustav Klimt
Public domain via wikiart.org

Pictures of a Failed Exhibition

Pictures Of A Failed Exhibition

From the days of my religion

when men were gods

and trees were prophets

painted tall and straight

till the  witches'-broom showed,

I took nothing in the end

but the relic in the bone box

framed by black velvet,
lid so carefully carved

with all my fables.

I set it on a scarlet altar

with seven priests and seven 

blessings, where canvas cherubim 

genuflected with a smirk.
In times of great need, I took it out.

I overlooked its sour smell,

its shriveled  form, and

fervently adored it as I

prayed its intercession
in my damnation.

But each year it just

grew blacker, crackled, smaller,

till opening the casket one day

I saw only a brimstone dust.

Then the incubus came

to please and torment me,

the spoiled trees

were felled, the priests

unfrocked and the cherubim fled,
never having truly felt at home

All that was left
hanging in the chiaroscuro
at the alter was a memory-shadow
shape of a severed thing decayed

pointing out the way

to dissolution. From these pictures
I learned two things:

that evil is good's bad dream;

that evil is insane

for it cannot dream at all.

~June 2015

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Challenge: Fireblossom Friday

The perpetual framer of original challenges, Fireblossom (Shay's Word Garden) asks us to write a poem on any subject, her sole stricture being that the title begin with the words 'Pictures of..." 

Optional Psychedelic Garage Band Accompaniment

Process note: "...witch's broom or witches' broom is a disease or deformity in a woody plant, typically a tree, where the natural structure of the plant is changed. A dense mass of shoots grows from a single point, with the resulting structure resembling a broom or a bird's nest..."~wikipedia

Iamges: The Relic, 18923, by Joaquin Sorolla

Public domain via wikiart.org

Witch's-broom on Birch, via wikimedia commons

Shared under a Creative Commons license 

Cave Light

Cave Light

Darkness is safety

when the eye won't shut;

what can be seen

in the dark warm

where pillars of salt

turn ebony and

 the far sound 

of ocean licks

at time's feet?

Without fail

 I see two

you

myself

the 

twisting meet 

of  stalactite 

and 

stalagmite;

the fallen

also raising

a bridge from 

dissolution,

conduit and 

collapse 

columned, fused, 

shadows in the light 

at cave-mouth that sends us

its  own soft arms as we span

the rock room and shelter night.

~June 2015

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Challenge: Caverns of Thoughts

Corey Rowley (herotomost, at Mexican Radio, and  recently published author of On Hunter's Wash ) takes us spelunking in the caverns of the mind, our quest to report back on what we see. This was a quick and spontaneous write, so thanks, Corey, and all my patient readers for putting up with whatever happens when there is not the usual excruciating editing process.

Images: Cave Dwellings Near Sperlinga Sicily, 1933, by M.C. Escher
Magic Grotto, 1942  by Remedios Varo
Fair use via wikiart.org