Tears Of The Moon

 

 

 

Tears Of The Moon

"La mar no tiene naranjas, ni Sevilla tiene amor..."

(The sea has no oranges, nor Seville any love...)

from Adelina de Paseo, by Federico Garcia Lorca

I.

The sea is made

from the tears of the moon.

They fall like meteorites

to build the splash of azure rivers.

They fall like rocks

the air has set on fire in

a coliseum of dust, an iron mist

burning with the blue taste of salt.

The sea is cold, incalculable

as the heart of my beloved,

changeful, infinite, self-satisfied

and blind. This is why

the moon cries. She knows she lays

her silver face for nothing

across the drenched toss of the

erasing waves. The sea

is too busy,

tonight, and every night.

II.

The sea has far to travel

to kiss the dun lips of Spain, to fondle 

Gibraltar like a primitive doll,

to curl the sand under

on the Costa del Sol,

guitaring sweet lovesongs

to women with eyes like summer figs

who walk with the chiming of rice in the wind

whose hips round as oranges

call night after night

for the men who don't come; nuns

of blue rivers, learning to understand

the tears of the moon

that drip from the lids of

an extinguished rock, while on the

ruined plains of a waterless country

an old woman reads Lorca at midnight,

with the tears of the moon on her cheeks.

~January 2020

originally posted for earthweal

Open Link

 

 

 

 

reposted for Desperate Crossings at

desperate poets

Images: Orange Trees on the Road to Seville, 1903 © Joaquin Sorolla Public Domain

The Font, 1930 © Salvador Dali Public Domain

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 

 

Ghazal Of Saving

Ghazal Of Saving

In my dream I know that I can save

everyone, anything brave.

The heartburst stag, worlds between his horns,

 breathes again inside this spell-sung cave.

The locust green as bottleglass

fallen to a grave of ants still sings--

Fly up all wounded things,

into my hand the nave.

I can save you---I do save;

with this ink dropped sapphire wave

I  save your smile and so bewitch

death's slave and love you living--

Pulled spotless from the bloody ditch,

each cracked bird with bells of glass to ring.

Nothing dies here that can still be loved.

Dreamed joy rings each finger of the witch.

August 2020 

 

posted for

The Sunday Muse

and 

earthweal's

Open Link

Note: This is my attempt at a ghazal: " Traditionally invoking melancholy, love, longing, and metaphysical questions,...[t]he ghazal is composed of a minimum of five couplets—and typically no more than fifteen—that are structurally, thematically, and emotionally autonomous. Each line of the poem must be of the same length, though meter is not imposed in English. The first couplet introduces a scheme, made up of a rhyme followed by a refrain. Subsequent couplets pick up the same scheme in the second line only, repeating the refrain and rhyming the second line with both lines of the first stanza. The final couplet usually includes the poet's signature, referring to the author in the first or third person, and frequently including the poet's own name or a derivation of its meaning." Obviously I have not completely followed these guidelines, especially relating to rhyme, but did include my name in various forms in the final couplet.

Images: Photo © Eugene Kozhevnikov Fair Use

Photo, artist unknown  Fair Use

Camellia

Camellia

"...And a breath of lemon filled the vast moment/as the wind became a flower of gauze..."

~from Nocturnes from the Window, by Federico Garcia Lorca

I am behind the wall now

wearing red and a window.

I will be safe

if you see through me

only white sky, the almond tree

and grass.

I wore the mask til blood

stained through

the sting of a flower; it

told too much with its 

sibilant drip. That 

was not safe.

I am a camellia from

snow country, cut

at the stem, dying in aqua vitae,

a fragrance passing citrus

through your room. I will be safe

when the last petals

cover my cast off mask.

May 2020

posted for The Sunday Muse

I have also used several words from Kerry O'Connor's

Skylover Word List For May

Images: A Distant Future, © Raluca Caragea   Fair Use

Yellow Roses in a Vase, 1882, by Gustave Caillebotte, manipulated    Public Domain

Una Fantasía de Barcelona

Una Fantasía de Barcelona

"---Soledad of my sorrows, the horse that runs away

finds the sea at last and is swallowed by the waves.

---Don't remind me of the sea, for the black pain springs

from the land of the olives/under the rustling leaves."

 ~Ballad of the Black Pain, Federico Garcia Lorca

~*~

Barcelona opens herself at dawn

to the wind off the ocean 

so she may bathe in seabirds

as they rise to her through

apricot clouds, as they sway

past umbels of oleander 

from Morocco,

black-red in pale tubs.

In the crimson sun of noon, she rides

a burning bull to the market

peonies flaring his nostrils,

with eyes of yellow wheat; his horns

of sand gore the stone streets
to a delirium of olive trees. Silver bells 

shimmer cries, murdering dusty nothing 

in the corners of the dark church.

Barcelona in the tourmaline night

remembers her gulls, her gannets and

shearwaters, singing sailor's ballads

to the white stucco walls that

crack with the loss of the sun,

songs of the runaway horse

racing blind to the sea cliff, 

where in freedom he drowns,

lyrics of power and terror, of
flying moons and sinking ships,
and the sweet rustle of the one
who settles in the nest.

Barcelona at dawn
opens herself to me on
her bed of shells, solid as sea foam,

womb-warm and fragrant with

her thousand desires; but

my heart is a white petrel flying

far, far over the razor waves, who

never means to land.

February 2020

with thanks to Shay Simmons for the borrowing of her birds

 posted for
earthweal Open Link

Note: This is about a fantasy of Barcelona, as the title suggests (except that oleander does come from Morocco.) I have never been to Barcelona except in this poem. 


For all the earthwealers, in the real world Barcelona, like the rest of the planet's coastal cities, is exposed to the dangers of climate change, and recently underwent severe flooding from Storm Gloria
".. along the east coast of mainland Spain. The worst coastal flooding was reported around the Ebro river delta south of Barcelona, where the storm surge swept up to 3 kilometres (1.9 mi) inland through low-lying rice paddies. In Lloret de Mar and Tossa de Mar, sea foam whipped up by high winds moved inland from the beach, blocking streets. At the Port of Barcelona, waves crashed as high as 7 metres (23 ft) over defenses, flooding coastal properties..."~wikipedia  

Video clips of the foam blocking streets are quite striking.

Images: Green Sky, © Jose Manuel Capuletti, circa 1950-55? Fair Use 

A gull overflies the Mediterranean sea during strong winds in Barcelona, Spain, Monday, Jan. 20, 2020...(AP Photo/Emilio Morenatti)