The Edifying Tale Of Braxis The Barbarian

 

 

 

 

The Edifying Tale Of Braxis The Barbarian

(a 55)

 

 

Braxis the bold barbarian,

librarian

of axe and bone,

traveled alone.

 

He slayed them all as he mauled Gaul

leaving a pall

of smoke and blood.

(Brax was no good.)

 

Then Fate had him camp in a cave

containing Dave,

barbarous fare

for Dave the Bear. 

 

 January 2022

 

 

 

 

 

 

A minute poem for

dVerse Poets: Poetry Form

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Note: Word count for the 55 includes the title. Total nonsense, I'm afraid.

 

 

 

 

 

 Image: DnD 5E barbarian sketch, artist unknown, via SkullsplitterDice.com Fair Use

The Child As A Postcard

 

 

 

 

The Child As A Postcard

 

 

To the passing postcard written in

the massing uncolored sky, posed

in the medium of ice and flesh surely

my child-self seemed the response,

scribbled head high to the bare lilacs,

a winter blackbird lost in a fragrance

dancing to cold.

 

While the wind was witching, while it was

twitching my skirts, and its white book

came clattering down with the frost on every

page, while the sky snowed down with the pomp

and swagger of a drunken policeman, did the

heft then of my grandfather's arms know me

for myself as I determined,

as everything I determined 

thereafter came to be? Song or catastrophe,

the wide smile of the chimera, or its

diamond mask, the bright white light

of a lilac breaking bare in the snow while

I watched time plow its path

across my life;

not a moon-fair there, not a star to be seen

dropped from the basket of a lover's dream, 

only a stillness of snow haunting the hour

of papier-mache in a maundering dazzle.

 

 

 

 

January 2022

 

 

 

 

 

posted for

Shay's Word List # 10

Wallace Stevens

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Note: I have not tried to emulate Stevens' style. That is far above my pay grade. But I have tried to infuse the poem with some of his moods and fancies as I interpret them.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Image:Snow Effect: Winter In The Suburbs, © George Seurat

Public Domain. I have manipulated this image.

Zebras

 

 

 

 

 

 

 Zebras

(A 55)

 

Remember

when we were two

trout climbing Sahara sand,

two flamingos wading snow,

two zebras

grazing rock, stalked

by an avalanche of clocks

worse than any lion.

Remember

our nights stitched from

oak's blood and violins

torn from the big cat's teeth.

Come home again

before the door breaks,

before memory's last meal

is gone.

 

 

January 2022

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

posted for dVerse Poets

Open Link Night

 

 

using words from

Shay's Word List #9

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Images: Sleeping Zebra, 1959 © Carel Willink  Fair Use

Plant Archetecture, 1962 © Remedios Varo

The Feral Baby

 

 

 

 

The Feral Baby

 

 

In the dark 

before breakfast I dreamed

that the baby fell on its head. It wasn't

my fault. It just climbed up my shoulder

and jumped. I only borrowed it

because you made me. It wasn't mine.

I am not one for babies.

Nevertheless,

it cried, so I put it in my purse

for the gypsy. She offered to give it a casserole.

  (Or was that use it in a casserole?) I said,

"It doesn't like my purse, but it wouldn't like a

casserole any better." I'm not one for babies,

but I know that much.

 

Finally 

I took it back to you 

at the urban university lab. You put

 a ribbon on it, called it Jean, kissed it.

 It was fine then. I was tempted to

sneak it back to its mother, but

you'd turned her into a starling.

 

And that's how

she came to be my child. 

I'm not one for babies

until they learn how

to fly.

 

 

 

 January 2022

 

 

 

 

 

 posted for 

Shay's Word List #9

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Note: No babies were harmed in the production of this poem.

 

 

 

 

Images: Creeping baby doll, 1871   Public Domain

Starling Murmuration © Menno Shaefer    Fair Use

The Night Dancers

 

 

The Night Dancers

 (a 55)

 

The song dreaming night

  is a film over the world

hiding a thousand dancers

painted with

the blood of the moon.

 

They hum

as they spin, but

I never hear them speak.

Dawn's claw-hammer

beats them to dust

 

leaving a flicker

of chamomile and orange,

 ghost breath of a

performance

seen best

 

through

mist-green glass.

 

 

 

 

January 2022

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

posted for

The Sunday Muse

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Images: Blond Nude With Orange,Blue Couch, 1925 © John French Sloan   Fair Use

Glasses, author unknown, via Sunday Muse   Fair Use 

Hatchet Job

 

 Hatchet Job

 

 

Tricks and teases made a hatchet for the autopsy. 

 

You couldn't

just say it was over, oh no. Too many cows

wanted gingerbread. Too many women

in the cellar wanted more time...

Tesla's ghost was on the radio for years

while the black nightingale sang but hardly

anyone listened. 

 

Too much static fuzzing. Too much 

imitation current clogging the waves...

I swear you gave my ear a permanent scar

with all that dizzy disarray, tricks and teases,

bluffs that bragged with musky electric tusks...

 

Put the body

on the table and have done, I said. I'm through

discussing second grade and your mother's

lonesome eyebrows.You don't care about

the cause of death anyway...

 

just the wonderful way

you can chop. 

 

Bravo!

 

January 2022

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

posted for Shay's Word List # 8: 

Russell Edson

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Images :Hatchet, via internet. Fair Use

Moon and Cow, 1963 © Alex Colville   Fair Use

 

Quadrille Of The Star

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Star

 

 

I wrote this for you when

you were the star in my heart

to give back light for light

as we traveled time's tempest

bemused. 

 

Who knew then

you were the last;

 last star before the sunrise,

last ghost spun

from the broken wheel

 

 

 

 

 January 2022

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 posted for dVerse Poets:

Quadrille

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Images: Winter Night In The Mountains, © Harold Sohlberg  Fair Use

Paysage Orangeux, artist unknown, via internet    Fair Use

 

Factory Girl

 

 

 

 

 

 

Factory Girl

 

I remember that midwife year

you found me at the factory

holding the hand of water and

making shadows for the moon.

It was the year of cakes and blood

 

when everything was sharp with fear

waiting to be lost or born back to me

piecemeal in a box of sand.

You had a gambler's gift for tongues; fortune

loved to ripple where you stood.

 

Three times I turned a rose to tears.

Three times I spat your sugar melody

on the ground. Three times I made a man

from fire to fit your form; too soon

I saw the fourth time was no good.

 

Now I have no dreams, just hands

on fire for the work expected by the moon,

and faces in the ash I never understood.

 

 

January 2022

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 posted for dVerse Poets

Poetics:Rimas Dissolutas

and including words from

 The Word List #7

at Shay's Word Garden

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Images: Record Breaking Workers At The Factory ©Pavel Filanov  Public Domain

Lightning and Volcano, unknown artist, via internet.  Fair Use

 

Hues

 

 

Hues

 

 

 He was just 

 

one of too many

born black for the factory

taught to make salt

 

into roses and clocks, just

a sole to spare the parade marshal's foot,

a board for the floor, another pot

 

of coffee for the landlord

but there was something

he got from the moon; that weary

 

knife-smile, a jones for books and

bitter truth, a taste of jazz

in his blood, and so

he became instead

the blister on the heel, the knot

in the plank, the spider in the cream,

the argument for faces.

 

 

 

 

January 2022

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 posted for 

Shay's Word List: Langston Hughes

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Note: The photo above is a snapshot of Hughes with his good friend and fellow activist, Louise Thompson Patterson, both thorns in the side of contemporary white/status quo culture as members of the Communist Party and prime movers in the Harlem Renaissance.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Images: The Shoemaker,  1945, © Jacob Lawrence   Fair Use

Louise Thompson and Langston Hughes, shipboard, circa 1915-1925  Public Domain