Philosopher By Moonlight

 

 

 

 

 

 

Philosopher By Moonlight

(A quadrille)

Life is a crinkle in the matrix

lapping at my edges while

ghosts browse the tombstones

eating names. Night covers me

with her firefly illusion

and her singing moon.

At daybreak we fold

like painted fans 

of Shaolin warriors, all

landscapes

and paper-covered blades.

May 2022

posted for dVerse Poets

Quadrille #153

Process Note The Steel or Iron Fan: The Chinese have a saying regarding weapons, “The shorter it is – the more dangerous.  The more ordinary looking, the deadlier it is.”...The steel fan is ...easy to carry and is inconspicuous.  When the weather is warm, you can use the fan to cool yourself and chase the flies away.  When you are in danger, you can use the steel fan as an effective weapon for self-defense because the ribs are made of steel...The fan is considered an “internal” weapon, because it uses the “soft” to overcome the “hard” and the short to overcome the long...”

Images: Philospher Illuminated by the Light of the Moon and Setting Sun, 1939 © Salvador Dali 

Fair Use

Shaolin Iron Fan, artist unknown, via internet Fair Use

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