Cat's Cradle

 

Cat's Cradle

 

 

All that summer you stalked me

with your tiger-flower eyes 

yellow as saffron,

ochre-flecked with 

an unknown pollen,

 

shining

blood-bright in

your weathered face,

and those few words you owned,

more rough than real.

Under the windy moon

light was as fickle and brief

as a glimpse of truth,

a falling star. Fish slid by

like lost ideas

 

dark as omens

beneath the emerald lake

that deepened the closer

I pushed towards shore,

their flat eyes swiveling back,

 

noodled to piscine

laughter;

they waited like me

for the hook

to pull them up.

 

We watched the sun

burn its last amber coal,

and gave back its mirage heat

to the night like the

pave-stones of Babylon,

 

all that jungle summer

when I closed my eyes to time.

May 2020

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 posted for dVerse Poets

Poetics

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

"Noodling is fishing for catfish using one's bare hands, and is practiced primarily in the southern United States. The noodler places their hand inside a discovered catfish hole in order to catch the fish...the origin of the term is unknown." ~wikipedia

My compound words for the prompt were moonlight, starfish and sunburn. I also used an abundance of additional ones not carved to order, just for fun.

Images: Night, 1905 © Mikolojus Konstantinus Ciurlionis    Public Domain

Tigridia pavonia 'Aurea" (Tiger flower) photographer unknown, via internet   Fair Use

In The Still

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 In The Still

 

 

In the still

of the silenced

so deep, I can hear

the gestation of dew, 

the guard-bird's desperate heart

at her nest, the moth's sibilant fumbling

where she lays her last egg;

 

yet not the padding

soft-footed sleep

that carries us empty

into tomorrow.

May 2022

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

posted for earthweal's Lessons from the Wild

hosted by Sherry Marr 

 

 

 

and dVerse Poets'

Quadrille 

by sarahsouthwest

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Images: Night Hill, © Andrea Kowch All Rights Reserved to the Artist   Fair Use

Remember, © Zdzisław Beksiński        Fair Use

 

 

The Little God

 

 

 

 

The Little God

 

 

 

 On,

into the soft-gelled 

distance of a gentled day

after dreams of storm and blood

where war gods walk the night

 

opening every door

eating whom they will.

But it was you, belly-up

who turned the knives

to scraping in my brain,

 

your suffering

that is an offering;

a worship

I can't watch

to a little god

 

who cuts up hearts

to sew his cap 

and boots

and the black mask

that shades

 

his razor smile,

your ever-burning

icon.

 

May 2022

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

posted for earthweal's

Open Link Weekend

 

 

 

 

 

also using words from qbit's list

derived form the poetry of Anna Ahkmatova

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Personal note: I've been having a dead spot, but I miss reading everyone's writing and will be around soon to catch up. Thanks to all of you whose support keeps me putting pen to paper.

 

 

Images: Gentled Day, ©joyannjones, 2016

The Return of the Flame, © Rene Magritte, 1943     Fair Use

Stormlight

 

 

 

Stormlight

Rain-giver, hail-maker, tornado-farmer,

May's black hammer mesocyclone bouquet

falls into the world; 

a twist and wrench

of chaos-stacked air that knows

only one gamble,

hanging its fate,

its otherworld gate

over wheatfields and wiseacres

it will strip down to skin

in a boiling of sky,

where one will be wrecked

and another spared

by the luck

of the drawing wind.

After the storm,

the crash gasp flash drama,

light is softened,

sky-wrapped in puff-clouds

like a newborn in crochet.

Trees stir and push

to their wild/calm lover.

Birds streak back in sepia

down to a world

neither colored

nor monochrome.

 

We ride these last days

between daggers,

between fear and relief,

between the holy

and the unholy,

the quick and the dead

 

watching domestic

disputes of drunk giants

from a mousehole of hope.

 

 May 2022

posted for earthweal's

Spirits of Place

Mesocyclone: A storm-scale region of rotation, typically around 2-6 miles in diameter and often found in the right rear flank of a supercell (or often on the eastern, or front, flank of a High Pressure storm). The circulation of a mesocyclone covers an area much larger than the tornado that may develop within it. Properly used, mesocyclone is a radar term; it is defined as a rotation signature appearing on Doppler radar that meets specific criteria for magnitude, vertical depth, and duration.~NOAA Weather

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Images: Binger, Oklahoma F4 tornado of 22 May 1981. Courtesy of National Severe Storms Laboratory, NOAA Public Domain via wikimedia commons

Stormlight, May 2, 2022 ©joyannjones

 

The Nag

 

 

 

 

The Nag

I try to smile at the morning,

even tho it shambles in

unsure of what to do with itself and 

wants advice. "You're all

the same, " I mutter.

Then you come the way you do,

pulling my hair.

"Look at me, look at me,"you say,

even tho you never see a thing 

except what isn't there.

"Do this, do that!" I pry

your centipede legs

off my neck, hundreds of them, each

one shoe'ed 

with crawling demand.

Talk to me," you insist,

adjusting 

your face in the mirror,

deaf as a blue-eyed white cat.

Explosions and tremors

 

make your bed. Rage

and misunderstanding

call you mother.

Peace will

never know you.

 

 

"I am the goat," I say

"who walks alone,"

and turn to ask

the morning

what I can do.

April 2022

posted for dVerse Poets

Open Link Night

Images: The Smiling Spider, 1891, © Odilon Redon   Public Domain

‘Soulmate’ © Księżycolica, via internet  Fair Use

Asylum

 

 

 

 

"..Let the doctor and the lawyer do as much as they can.
Let the springtime begin, let the boy become a man.
I have wasted too much time 

just to sing you this sad song..."~James Taylor, 1971 

 

 

 

Asylum

 

 

 

In the madhouse

on beds of daggers

we slept like crickets

chirping to ourselves

while they tried their best

to make us cannibals.

 

The nuns were worse than

lawyers, praying like accordions,

tracking their sins into our soft 

wax skulls, wheezing like roosters

when one of us cried, laying the greasy ribs

of Jesus on our plates.

They kept you behind

door number six. I'd go to you

with a stolen key, when the noon

smelled bright as carnations, 

when the nights were

more purple than the jacarandas.

 

You spoke of your father

dead of snakebite,

a clockwork marvel with

his million-dollar suit of skin,

and your mother

with the viper between her lips.

I remember your kiss

astringent with reason

as bitter lemons, and the way

your hair blew back from

your dog-brown eyes like poisonous

smoke from the oleanders.

I thought these things

as beautiful as angels

whispering in the dahlias

when I was lost in the asylum,

when the doctors did all they could

to see that we ate each other

down to the bone.

April 2022

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 Inspired by the words of Federico Garcia Lorca,

and a dream.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Images: The Madhouse, 1812-1814 © Francisco Goya  Public Domain

Vase with Carnations, 1886, © Vincent Van Gogh    Public Domain 

 

Wildfire

 

 

 

 

 

 

Wildfire

 

 

 

Time is a wildfire loose in the willows

burning soft-stemmed boughs to hissing smoke.

Their weeping won't save them, or their green hearts,

nor the pleading of oxen, burnt out of their yokes.

It runs its red leg 'cross the suck of the slough

to harvest sheep's breath in its ragged pillows,

to garland the branch with burnt black buds.

Time is a wildfire loose in the willows.

Time races, time flies, time burns the bridges.

It eats church and saloon out of house and hope.

It's tongue licks the moonlight off the moon's mirror

and boils rainy hours to hissing smoke.

Time is a fire, time is a melting

that feeds on the whole and ashes the parts.

Time burns up May-brides into sere widows;

their weeping won't save them, or their green hearts.

And when black-cloud crows show to pick my bones

I'll say come, children come, and don't come slow.

Time's a quick flame, and we are its smoke.

Time was my harness; I'm soon out of its yoke.

April 2022

 

 

 

 posted for Fireblossom 

at The Sunday Muse:

Word Garden Word List #19:A.E.Housman

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Note: This poem is in the cascade form(with a few liberties,) which I felt fit in with Housman's general style, tho since it has been invented since his time, of course he never used it.

 

 

 

Images; Landscape Of Ruins And Fires, 1914 © Felix Valloton, manipulated   Public Domain

Wheatfield With Crows, 1890. © Vincent Van Gogh  manipulated,     Public Domain

Three Tigers

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 Three Tigers

(a 55)

Three tigers by the sea

waiting for my company,

frightened by the gunner's moon;

three tigers hungry soon.

Three tigers in the millet;

artist, lover and a poet

find their game, make it run,

eat the work when they have done.

Two wet tigers in the storm;

 I laugh and keep the good one warm.

 

 

 

 

 April 2022

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

posted for dVerse Poets

Open Link Night

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 Images: Dream Caused By The Flight Of A Bee Around A Pomegranate A Second Before Awakening,1941, ©Salvador Dali  Fair Use

Tiger In A Tropical Storm-Surprised, 1891, ©Henri Rousseau  Fair Use

 

Gifting Of The Birds

 

 

 

 

 Gifting Of The Birds

They say a princess

will have the Fae come to her birth

to make her fate with augury for gifts,

but the peasant dreams in birds

 rainbowed as the sky, as sleek as night,

gathered round her cradle

with a liquid blackbird murmur

with two tumbling raven feathers

with six scarlet cardinal sins,

swarming seven snowy days

with all their gifts and curses, not sure

which to give her, some of this and some of that,

sum of love and losing, morning song

or evening silence, heart of grace,

tongue of willow, green mossflower, desert spine,

 

hard horse apples or sweet blood-oranges

of November moon, all or none of these

before they fly, on to the next accouchement. 

Still from time to time she sees them perching,

come back to check their work

cocking tiny heads aslant,

looking but not telling, never saying

more than a bird might say

about the time that's coming

when all gifts will be opened,

all the curses told.

What will you do at last, 

their bright eyes seem to wink,

with what we gave you,

before you can do no more?

 

 

 

 April 2022

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 posted for 

The Sunday Muse

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Images: Birds of Paradise, © Vincente Manansala  Fair Use

Bird in Spectacles, author unknown, via Sunday Muse   Fair Use

 

Aubade Of The Scorpions

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Aubade Of The Scorpions

 

 

 

At night the little scorpions come down

to watch us playing at our poison kisses

to study from the dustbath where we drown

 

the sting that sinks the deepest when it misses.

I found flowers once where you had touched me;

black poppies sown in moon-distempered hisses.

 

Now the sun is crawling through the ivy,

its dawn a flickered fire burning wishes.

You're a green ghost spitting from a tree;

 

promises float away like silver fishes

and Love's a child who suddenly confesses.

 

 

 

 

 

 

  April 2022

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 posted for dVerse Poets:

Meeting The Bar: Aubade

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Images: Crustaceans c.1873 ©Raimundo Petraroja    Fair Use

The Evening Gown, 1954, ©Rene Magritte     Fair Use

 

Season's Whisper

 

 

 

Season's Whisper

(A Quadrille)

 

 

Birds falter

from the sky. Kapitans cry.

Bodies lie,

blind eyes on streets

rubbed down to bone.

 

Still

the season whispers.

 

Living wings fly,

buds swell like grief unbound.

The wilding wind 

knows nothing

of our long drown.

 

The season whispers.

Life is found.

 

 

April 2022 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

posted for dVerse Poets:

Quadrille

and 

for earthweals' weekly challenge:

Radical Hope

Note: "..Kapitan is a commissioned officer rank ..in..the NATO officers rank system..[adopted by Ukraine,]used to specify commanding officers of company-sized units..."~wikipedia

Images:Detail of Scene in Bucha, Ukraine, April 2, 2022 after Russian retreat, ©Reuters/Zohra Bemsemra, cropped to sepia,  Fair Use

Magnolia buds against March tree canopy, 2016, © joyannjones

 

Bluejay's Wing

 

 

 

 

Bluejay's Wing

 

 

The first time I saw the sea, its reaching miles

of life and emptiness that twinned,

I was a barefoot child who thought

herself a woman, made of light

and incapable of sin.

The sea is high again today

with a thrilling flush of wind.

 

By day I scan the amber sky and feel

its cheapjack promise scratched upon my skin.

By night I scout the evercoming storm

with my bareback diamond eye

and heart of tin.

The sea is loud again today

with a spoken word of wind.

 

I see now how a palette rich with sun

bleaches out as monotone, greyscaled and thin,

its broken colors robbed of breathing light

as bluejays pale away on cloudy days,

their feathers keeping all the blue within.

The sea runs high again today

with a humming requiem of wind.

I'll never see again the dazzled tide; 

my age is given to the prairie wind

but I won't believe I'll never see the sun,

or the mottled azure delicately brushed in

to point and praise a bluejay's cunning wing.

The sea is high again today

with a thrilling flush of wind.

 

 

 

 

March 2022

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 posted for dVerse Poets Poetics:

Opening Sentences

 

 

 

Note: My opening sentence appears in the last two lines of the first and final stanzas, and is from Justine, by Lawrence Durrell, the first book in his Alexandria Quartet, which I count among my top ten early influences in writing. And some may sense here another early influence, Emily Dickinson.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Images: Untitled, ©Zdzislaw Beksinski 

Wing of a Blue Roller, 1512, © Albrecht Durer

Song Of The Weavers

 

Song Of The Weavers

 

 

 

 

The Norns speak all they know

in pleaching and binding, in winding

on the spindle green thread from the Northlights,

white wool from the southern sugarmoon

as it sets in blood-orange dustfall.

 

Their rhythm curls out from

the tangleroot nest under the world tree

where they refresh the well

season to season, age to age, and all that was

and is to be is formed in their throats' call.

 

They have grown each feather

on the black raven's backs 

of thought and memory

and taken the Allfather's eye

for their balladry.

 

A hard hand makes a rock-hard life,

but their cloud-boned fingers can weave

hard lives into blooms made to jump up in sheaves

as velvet as rabbits, full-hearted sweet

as the last peach on the summertree.

 

They fire the wicker man's burn

and rain his ash into the fields

to weep for the rye

they will color again

in May's breath-dancing fly.

 

I only sit under the cooling stars

in the holiness of night with the 

owls' down floating, in the bright foundry of day

with the tongues of grass leaning

into the singing of their wild living cry.

 

 

 

 

March 2022

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 posted for earthweal's

Wild Language

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Images: The Three Norns, 1911, © Arthur Rackham    Public Domain

Northern Lights Over Iceland, author unknown, via internet  Fair Use