Work of Art

Work of Art

I hung myself, quite a piece

of work, in the museum

a long time ago. Like

most serious art,

I aged well.

You’d changed so much

the guard had to look twice to

let  you in, with that
light frost of dust

on your smile.

I gazed at you gazing at me

from my frame, then blinked,

reflecting the abundance
I thought I saw

in your eyes.

Easy as time passing I could

see my desire tapestried,

digitally enhanced, imposed on

what’s plain, from behind

shuttered glass.

The closing bell rang.

To my surprise you

turned away your grey

glazed eyes, and never

came back.

Impossible as time stopping to see

the truth with eyes widest,

when two silvery rippled

accommodating mirrors

hang face to face.

You knew, it seems,

the only way

to foil a mirror

is to turn off

the light.

July 2011

Posted for   Friday Poetically   at  OneStopPoetry 

Today Brian's (almost final) prompt is to write a poem inspired by the art of Bonnie, at Original Art Studio. Thanks, Brian, for all the poems you've encouraged me to write with your Friday Poetically series, sadly to end next week.

Image: art by Bonnie, of Original Art Studio

Lost in the Woods

Moonrise, Alison Jardine

Lost in the Woods

Shadow

and clamor

running through the black boles of elm;

there’s no green at night

no light

only noise to see by.

I played with

the crazy ones

the blue and tatooed ones,

the ones I couldn’t keep

so deep

in the woods.

I thought

I was a wild thing

smelling blood and water

coming to me on the air

my hair

tangled with promises of nettle.

But I was already

tamed, a fallow patch

danced bare

out where

music’s ghost hunts the ear.

And when they

left me

in the clearing

under the masked moon

too soon

I saw the cage.

June  2011

Posted for Poets United Thursday Think Tank #58, prompt: nighttime.

was also posted for  Friday Poetically   at the inimitable OneStopPoetry

Brian's prompt this week is to write from the intricate and surprising visual art of Alison Jardine. I chose an oil on canvas work entitled Moonrise

In addition to Ms Jardine's work,  this poem also owes something to the below song:

The Sun King

The Sun King Comes to America 

A Rondeau

The Sun King’s here, stiff with a smile,

robes of brocade, gold tongue of guile.

Dappled mist melts, senses take flight.

Owl is proved wrong and buzzard right,

the Sun King’s here.

His rays rain over mile on mile,

burning the fair, shading the vile;

angels' despair, gamblers' delight,

with all our gold to spend tonight,

the Sun King’s here.

Darkness slaps back light’s denial.

Truth keeps her mouth shut at the trial.

Gaia bleeds out, war-weak and white,

drained by a blindworm parasite.

Drinking nectar, excreting bile,

the Sun King’s here.

June 2011

Posted for  Friday Poetically  at the inimitable OneStopPoetry

Friday Poetically is hosted by Brian Miller, who I hope will forgive me for taking liberties with his prompt, which was to "write a poem about the sun, heat or use it as a metaphor..." 

The rondeau form is explained here at wikipedia

Louis XIV… known as the Sun King was an absolute monarch, King of France from 1643 to 1715(72 years.) You can find out a bit more about him at his wikipedia  entry if interested. I have chosen to employ him here in a symbolic aspect.

Gaea (Gaia)~the ancient Greek goddess of the earth, mother of the Titans.

Image: Louis XIV as Apollo, 1653,  artist not named, courtesy of wikimedia commons

Three Fetches

 

Three Fetches

Three fetches came to the door last night.

I  watched them come pouring,

pale blood from the world’s wounds,

toward the pearlgrey house of self where I live

but do not own.

There where I sat writing

at the convex monocle of the front window

my eyes pushed against them,

hoping to blink them out, away, back

somewhere, anywhere,

yet still they slithered, ternion missiles

faster than white fire consuming a paper leaf,

than the killing icemelt of cataracting waters,

a sepia triad of naked grue and clutch,

bony fingers long as the last mile.

Before I could run, they slid 

crawling on their bellies, inevitable as the tic

of thunder to lightning, three vapid mouths spreading 
in a parody of breath, closer, faster, to the only door 

on that blur of a street that never was.

They had no bones, they had no souls, 

no voices, only infinite need, 

an abyssal void to fill and the means to fill it.

I screamed. I screamed your name.

I screamed: “Three Fetches!”

You laughed,

you told me it was just

Anita, and Raul’s wife and

the soldier’s widow, coming to the dead house

where you let them in.

I looked before we went down

and saw no wives or widows

nothing named

just the cold wet dripping teeth

the black unblinking amphibian eyes.

April 2011

Alternate post for real toads steampunk challenge

(Originally posted for Friday Poetically  at the inimitable OneStopPoetry)

Image: Release the Ghouls,   by ~pixiepoof

courtesy deviantART

fetch2  ~noun
wraith ( def. 1 ) .Origin:
1780–90;  perhaps short for fetch-life  one sent to fetch the soul of a dying person  

dictionary.com

Yellow Moon

Yellow Moon

If I could write the moon tonight

I’d write it full and round where it rides so near

 a circled teardrop of sunny ink 

to carry on black sky paper, my own balloon

of yellow, a whisper from a friend in a noisy room,

a school of chambered magic 

for those who do not sleep,

teaching the one who drank the blue rain

from yesterday’s boot

 that not only the sun drops golden light,

not only boats sail, beans sprout, but

old worms turn, old sorrows burn, sour can be sweet 

enough to eat, 

and lead an old woman's feet 

from here where there is no sound

to a green dance and music by a pool of dreams.

April 2011

Posted for Friday Poetically at the inimitable OneStopPoetry

(The exercise was to write a poem using a list of words taken from Shel Silverstein's  child's poem, One Inch Tall )

Image: Yellow Moon, by Martin Cathrae, posted on flick'r

Martin Cathrae's photostream

Two Feathers

Contrary to my usual practice, I 'm not providing an image for this poem due to copyright and fair use considerations. Please follow the link provided below to see the painting by Native American artist Jerome Tiger, Stomp Dance, on which this poem is based. Tiger was an extremely gifted painter born in Tahlequah, Oklahoma, a Muskogee Creek-Seminole, who died tragically at the age of 26, after producing some of the most vivid art depicting Native Americans I've ever been privileged to see.

Two Feathers

When everything is taken from a man,

and there is nothing left,

when his home has been burned 

for someone else's crops,

and his moccasins are gone,

then he must go barefoot,

stop dancing

or learn

to dance in boots.

When a man is made naked and

invisible,

then he must dress

in someone else's clothes

to be seen.

When a man's way has been broken and lost,

if he wants to dance it back, 

then he will dance the dance he knows

as best he can

and fly

with just

two feathers.

April 2011 

Posted for Friday Poetically at the inimitable OneStopPoetry

(Brian Miller's prompt for today was to choose any work of art as subject for a poem. Thanks, Brian.)

This poem may make more sense if you  click here to view Stomp Dance,  which inspired it; you can also read Jerome Tiger's biography.