Glass Of Darkness

  

 

 

 

Glass Of Darkness

 

 

 

I see the tall glass of darkness

putting out a pot of cinders and ash

where too many cooks have spoiled

the serenade, sweet high song

of sun's guilt evening

to the kicking horse

that must be shot

before it can be free.

 

I sing along, blind in

this bare attic, but every note

that jumps in my throat

lies, dropping bloodless on the

broken map where cities blur

like stars whose cream light curdles

in a dead sky of greysmoke ghosts;

where nothing is ever free.

But I can't stop.

They say every skull will sing

if the wind blows

just right.

January 2025

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

posted for Word Garden Word List

at Shay's Word Garden

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Images:San Francisco, 1906 post-earthquake © The Atlantic, archives

The Penitent Magdelen ca 1640, Georges De La Tour     Public Domain

 

 

Soldier

 

 

 

 

 

 

Soldier

 

 

 

I am a soldier pledged to the sky, become
a sword in her blue pockets, my threadbare fatigues

marked with the grit of worlds. I fight on
because she wears time so much better than I
and vaults the earth with her mother-colored mantle
unwavering, unchanged, uncommanded forever.

Tho Night has drawn his obsidian blade
and pierced me with his heartkiller spear, tho I 

am older, diminished, my moondrops that pooled on

white grass all drunk in the sun's tarnished cup; tho
I howl my warcry unheard in the inkwell dark,
still the hole in my breast

is soft-closed with moss and silver straw
and silence that seeps out
from the green forest floor,
til dreams and signs pillow my head
and swim like sweet fish as pale as winter
through the tears on my war-stained cheeks.

 

 

 November 2024

 

 

 

 

 

 posted for Word Garden Word List

at Shay's Word Garden

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Images: Portait of Maude Abrantes, 1907 ©Amadeo Modigliani   Public Domain

Borage and Blue Sky, ©joyannjones

 

 

Crow Call

 

 

 

 

Crow Call

(a 55)

 

We always wear black

the crows and I,

call our skies

with a half-born crack,

shadow nests where our treasures lie,

 eat skeleton suppers with glass-star eyes.

 

Never look back.

Never look back

 

at bones we've picked

bleaching dry,

at red we've beaked

with black tails high,

dead in the darkwood

with summer's sigh.

June 2022

 

 

 

 

posted for dVerse Poet's Pub

Open Link

Images: Satellite 2014 ©Bryan Holland, via internet, Fair Use

Antlers, author unknown, via internet, 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

Season's Whisper

 

 

 

Season's Whisper

(A Quadrille)

 

 

Birds falter

from the sky. Kapitans cry.

Bodies lie,

blind eyes on streets

rubbed down to bone.

 

Still

the season whispers.

 

Living wings fly,

buds swell like grief unbound.

The wilding wind 

knows nothing

of our long drown.

 

The season whispers.

Life is found.

 

 

April 2022 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

posted for dVerse Poets:

Quadrille

and 

for earthweals' weekly challenge:

Radical Hope

Note: "..Kapitan is a commissioned officer rank ..in..the NATO officers rank system..[adopted by Ukraine,]used to specify commanding officers of company-sized units..."~wikipedia

Images:Detail of Scene in Bucha, Ukraine, April 2, 2022 after Russian retreat, ©Reuters/Zohra Bemsemra, cropped to sepia,  Fair Use

Magnolia buds against March tree canopy, 2016, © joyannjones

 

Warfire

 

 

 

 

Warfire

In the killing fine fabric

of inflorescent flame

we walk, we burn,

dwindling from kindling

to bullet-bruised smut

alone in a dark

our dying lights up.

  

Murderers in red

boil a soup from the dead

in our hollowed heads

hidden hired thugs move,

their inhalation our blood,

their exhale the air

where the fire fed.

~May 2016

rewritten and reposted for DVerse Poets Pub

OLN March 2022

Image: Ukrainian State Border Guard Service site damaged by shelling in Kyiv region, Ukraine,  handout picture released February 24, 2022. (Press service of the Ukrainian State Border Guardvia Reuters)   Fair Use

Empty

 

 

 

 

 "Hell is empty and all the Devils are here." ~William Shakespeare

 

Empty

(a 55)

 

The door to

the henhouse is

always unlocked

for inside there are

only wind eggs.

 

The Fall 

is a tryptich:

blackness, dead hearts,

disingenuous calculations. At

the apex

of chaos we have our

decumbiture, 

no thaumaturgy created

cures corrupted

senescence.

Don't

 turn the key

to lock in nothing; 

just open the door

for the foxes.

 

 

 

November 2021

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

posted for

The Sunday Muse

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

On November 19th, 2021, Kyle Rittenhouse, 18, was acquitted of 5 counts of homicide for the August 25th 2020 murders of two men and the attempted murder of a third. The men were protesting the shooting of a black man, Jacob Blake, by a white police officer in Wisconsin. The jury ruled that Rittenhouse, who crossed state lines with an assault weapon to "protect property" not belonging to him, acted in self-defense.

 

 

 

wind egg: an unimpregnated, yolkless, or imperfect egg ...an egg with a soft noncalcareous shell

decumbiture:1 obsolete : confinement to a sickbed. 2a : the time of taking to one's bed from sickness. b : a horoscope of such a decumbiture.

thaumaturgy:: the performance of miracles

~Merriam Webster

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Images: Photo of Door, title and author unknown, Fair Use via Sunday Muse

The Fox: Fair Game, © Alexander Pope  Public Domain

Dead Silent

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Dead Silent

 

 

 

 The buzz cut off in the flower's throat,

the crunch of green in the hornworm's jaw

gone, and that was the first silencing.

The roadrunner's raspy morning cough,

the thud and peep of the grey toad's hop

stopped, the second silencing.

The bagpipe gliss too high to hear

deep in the whales' wet meadowlands,

the third thing silenced.

Science sucked into apathy's muck,

sense and sanity duct-taped dead: 

the brutish silencing.

 

The white noise of fools, the grinder's carouse of greed

eating greed, the barker's pitch for fresh trash and blood

plays loudest where breathing is silenced.

October 2021

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 posted for Compound Word Verse

at dVerse Poets

and earthweal's

Open Link

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

gliss: abrv, glissando, a glide from one pitch to another

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Images: Wing Of A Blue Roller, 1512, Albrecht Durer   Public Domain

Untitled (Firetower) © Zdislas Beksinksi   Fair Use

Snake Smoke

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Snake Smoke

 

 

An eye is a window,

a window an eye.

I can't tell you any more

so don't ask me.

 

A promise is a lie,

a lie is a promise;

curling smoke from my pipe,

a snake climbing air.

 

Chaos the white bride

for a bridegroom of money,

worst man holds the ring.

Priest eats the flower girl.

 

A promise is a lie,

a lie is a promise;

snake smoke from my pipe,

a garotte made of air.

 

A marriage is a funeral, 

a funeral a marriage.

I can't talk now

I'm late for the wedding.

September 2021

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

posted for Fireblossom

at The Sunday Muse

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Note: Yes, it's a cigar, not a pipe. Poetic license.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Images: Wind From The Sea, © Andrew Wyeth, 1947  Fair Use

Photo of Lakeith Stanfield, author unknown via internet Fair Use

 

 

End Times Redux

 

 

 

 

End Times Redux

 

 

There's always been

only one end

to a skull run against

a wall of stone,

always a single truth against

 an outnumbering of fools,

 

always ears stopped to

the pulse-drum beating fear,

the microphone vomiting

all the glory lies. Reason's light

is not blown out no matter

how many choose to sit in darkness.

It's always been coming again,

this over-heat in the system;

where the sovereign goes mad

bashing skulls

in Punch and Judy shows,

stuffed with his own sawdust failures.

 

Our love is the ink with which

over and over

we scrawl these wartime sagas,

the spilled blood 

from which the Resistance

 always rises.

 

 

 

November 2020

 

 

 

 

 

 

                              

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

posted for the inimitable Fireblossom

at The Sunday Muse 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Images: top, author unknown, via internet, Fair Use

Bottom: image 1:Ditto;Allegedly the last picture of Adolf Hitler before he committed suicide. Hitler (right) and his adjutant Julius Schaub looking at the ruins of the Reich chancellery, April 28, 1945.

Image 2: Trump returning to White House after election projected for Biden. ©AP Fair Use