Birthday Moonsong

Birthday Moonsong

Born  in the wolf moon,

at century's half-crack,

before the moving shadow box

before the singing pocket, the talking hand--

disjecta  membra of a war and peace,

nuclear snowflake crystaled in the cold aftermath,

fallout caught and whirled up

by black arms of concrete

into the sweet dance of chemical fog;

all around me

blackbirds falling

from the sky like almanacs

pages open to the gift of silent prophecy

and in the mirror, a white raven

solitary,
a meal, a target, a danger

to the flock, burning the eye like
a scarlet poppy

on a gravemound, or

a working girl unbuttoned

hungover 

in the convent.

* * *

In the house

at the edge of the world,

with the wolf moon low in the west,

its yellow eye on the scattering stars,

its tongue longing

for the fat white hams of Venus,

the north wind sleets the window glass

bitter green, rattling the taste

of old snow and bad design; the wolf moon

the hunger moon,
stops to lap

pooled pink from blood-red Mars,

swells its belly 

with faltering stars, the small and weak
gnawing them out one by one as I hum

dusting the ape statuettes, the

draped clocks, perplexed still

that the empty chair

stays empty another winter,

while the fire throws white shadows,

while ghosts fall with the snow.

~January 2015

A repost for my birthday.

Images:Wolf Dog, 1976 © Jamie Wyrth  Fair Use

The Snow Queen Flies Through The Winter Night, by Edmund Dulac  Fair Use

Glow

Glow

Ruby glow of a living heart,

light bleeding oceans in the dark,

me hellfire low and hot as spark,

proud of Cain's jagged mark

for all the murder left behind--

never you but just the glow

how I wished that it was mine--

how I tried to call it close

from the place where it was lost.

How you loved to make me scream.

I told no one ever then;

people hate to hear your dreams.

Such things all pass to cold

and in the dark I see no glow

around the pixelled ending fuzz.

There's no crying need to chase 

for the thing that lays me waste,  for

filaments of  was, for rubies in the maze.

No, it's the pushing, tedious circuit

nagging, whining me to work it

that's relentlessly replaced it;

and my pleasure is to shirk it.

My secret's not to face it,

to flinch, to hide in smoke,

faded sequins and repose

till it slips away undone

till someone else must take it up--

but so seldom shirking works,

and secret loves despited

go mostly unrequited.

~July 2016

 posted for     real toads

Challenge:Fireblossom Friday

Images: A warmth, A lightness, A glow, and then, 1968 by Sam Gilliam

Fair use via wikiart.org

The Nap, 1877, by Gustave Caillebotte

Public domain via wikiart.org

The Ravens' Cotillion

The Ravens' Cotillion

There was no place to hide

eyelid to eye

so I wore black instead

when the three fetches came

to take my basket of berries.

They weren't looking for me;

 only for  

refreshments

only the black 

acrid taste they love best

of mold along the stem, and the

sweet eight-day folly of the tulip;

canapés and crudités

for the ravens' cotillion they'd planned

on the night the gargoyles sang.

~April 2016

posted for   real toads

Challenge: A Poem Of Our Own

Note: I actually included five titles here but did not link Eyelid to Eye, or The Folly of the Tulip. All were taken from more prolific past Aprils.






Images: Photo: © joyannjones
Dead Tulip Petals by Lisa Benemelis, all rights reserved, no copyright infringement intended

April

April

Just a note to thank all my readers and visitors for their time and support, many of them over the course of the blog's life, and through the gates of many poems, good bad and indifferent. 

I will not be doing anything for National Poetry Month this year, but wish everyone who takes on the challenge of writing a poem each day all the luck in the world.

If I am able to write or even read, two things that are unfortunately becoming increasingly hard, I will certainly do so, but know that you all have made a great difference in my life, and provided me with vital encouragement over the years, for which, again, I sincerely thank you.

~Joy       3/29/16

 Shadows touch the sand and
Look to see who's standin'
Waitin' at your window
Watchin', will they ever show
Can you hear them callin'

You know they have fallen
On campfires cold and dark
That never see a spark burn bright

photo: Ghostoaks, © joyannjones 2016

Pete and Repete's

 Pete and Repete's

Back when I threw away the North, sick of being

Honeybunch Kaminski, 

and came South to be the sweeter, 

smilin'-for-a-dime grits-totin' Rita,

I wrote some verse,

perverse but not diverse

about your tiger eyes because

the ram was a disguise and

I knew you had the spotted skin

big cats can never change--

and so you showed me.

Down the highway from Nelda's

where I trickled out sweet tea and pepper sauce

(7 different varieties) stiffed

by shriveled 'pokes who found me too remiss

in my amateur bottomless
refills, I heard there was a joint

called Pete and Repete's and wondered if
there the hamburger dills were greener, but ended up
at Girlie's to learn the trick

I wouldn't turn, hustling joe and pancakes

in the dusty starlight night.

I  missed you on the day

you came up plumbing,

found instead my cat-eyed body-man  

deep in the buckwheat thicket

his pulse on mine in temporary candlelight 

he never understood, a repulse of who he was
that couldn't stay. Main squeeze: Tvarscki, cigarillo

and the thousand fifty lies that kept him

shiny as hammered chrome. Those Karo eyes

that still saw only Honey in the wild bunch

gone in the black blizzard,

tho the afterlight remains, pouring a bottomless cup of shadows

repeating down a dead-end red dirt road.

~February 2015

posted for     real toads

Challenge: Get Listed

Grapeling (Michael of it could be that)  provides us with a list of words that reflect each other in spelling but have no meanings in common, and asks us to use at least two of them or invent a few--I have tried to do both, though I have strayed a bit from the pathway in this, my autobiographical indulgence and not very serious cautionary tale of the Lovely Rita, non-Meter Maid.

optional musical acompaniment

Process Notes(and/or Spoilers): I worked at several diners including the ones named(except for the famed "Pete and Repete's Restaurant" in Purcell) when I first came to Oklahoma in the seventies.  From what I can find out on google, they all seem to be defunct. I couldn't stand being constantly hit on under my own name, and stole and wore the name tag Rita, left behind by a less stoic ex-waitress, thus assuming my first pre-Hedgewitchian alias. (And yes, the slogan I wore in a strategic spot on my uniform apron said : 'They're stacked better.'  ) My current husband's company did all the plumbing work for the Girlie chain, but we never met until much later, under very different circumstances. But that's another tale.

'poke is short for 'cowpoke' and for those who haven't known the joys of waiting table, 'stiffed' refers to not receiving a tip.

"Black blizzard" is a 30's term for the worst dust storms of that era.

The character Honeybunch Kaminski, by counterculture cartoonist R. Crumb, was one with whom I strongly identified at the time.

Images: courtesy google image search Cup of Joe source
Girlie's source
No copyright infringement intended--will remove at request of copyright holder.