August in America 2022

 

 

 

 

 

 

August in America 2022

 

 

August is

a box of eyes

closed

pretending there is no

stab of light

a beach of scalded feet

of knees scraped raw on underwater sand

bleeding a string of dead flowers

and too many ants.

May sang once I remember

November wailed but August

holds a hot hand

over summer's mouth stifling sweat-damp

nights of thirst with silent fever 

like a rash

of rumors

 hallucinations of

drowning rain.

No one wants August

to do anything but leave

even if it means red winter

but it stays

only peeling like old paint

spreading like the sour smell

of smoke

in a burned house

backbuilt from blood and sickness

where even the ants

die by fire.

 

 

August 2022

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

posted for dVerse Poets Poetics:

Sometimes August isn't Recognized

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Images: The Enchanted Beach, 1950 © Salvador Dali   Fair Use

Ants © Dunja Zubak via satchiart.com   All Rights Reserved   Fair Use

Falling As Flying

Falling As Flying

When I met the devil's dancer

with his train of rainy knaves

too crazy for the kitchen,

too mean to put outside,

I had to choose to dance beside them

or die without the garden

in the riddle of their love.

They had a salve 

they rubbed my skin with

to make a sudden stunning

of the secret self they sundered

from the untelevised quotidian

unknotted skein of childhood's yarn.

Their eyes were drug enough

at first; their skin became

my memory

burning through the now,

using all the oxygen

droning out the antiphone

disharmony of danger,

that intoxicant of the flesh.

And as the bella-

donna kicked my head

they did my favorite thing:

whisked the cloth from the crystal table

leaving everything intact, tossed me high 

through a shrinking skylight

I never knew was there.

They called the falling flying

and I suppose it's as close to that 

as any animal can come.

~June 2014

Process Note: "Atropa belladonna or Atropa bella-donna, commonly known as Belladonna or Deadly Nightshade, is a perennial herbaceous plant... native to Europe, North Africa, and Western Asia. The foliage and berries are extremely toxic, containing ..alkaloids. ...which cause a bizarre delirium and hallucinations... In the past, witches were believed to use a mixture of belladonna, opium poppy and other plants.. (such as monkshood and poison hemlock) in flying ointment, which they applied to help them fly to gatherings with other witches." ~wikipedia

posted for     real toads

Challenge: Get Listed

Fireblossom(Shay's Word Garden) has leaped into the breach with a short but pithy word list, from which I have grabbed a few selections, combined them with one of my usual incomprehensible dreams, and totally gone off into the weeds. But, you can only use what you got, right?

 Optional Faintly Related Musical Accompaniment

Image: detail from the Triumph of Death, by Pieter Bruegal the Elder  circa 1532

public domain via WikiArt.org

By the Pools of Mnemosyne

By The Pools of Mnemosyne

Somewhere after the first sip,

in your fingers falling across the harp,

I found tangled the smell of rain

on dying earth.

Somewhere in the night air

of your whisper-scent

grass bent and shivered

as I, my love, so bent,

a ripple in larger tremblings

small in the vast, there

beside the pools of Memory,

washed away, tumbled in the flood

of all that had been and yet couldn't be.

Once in the labyrinth you were my string,

another tangle, a sharp discord

that broke and left me wandering, 

where each curve was made to return to me

what I left behind in the fragrant rain,

too wild to know, too wayward to see

I'd beg to find Lethe across every plane.

~April 2014

Process Notes: Mnemosyne (from which we get the word mnemonic) was the Greek goddess of memory., and the mother of the nine muses. She also had a pool in Hades that was the mirror-image of the river Lethe, where instead of being granted forgetfulness after drinking from it, the dead remembered everything from their past lives.

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Challenge: The Art of Odilon Redon

I have the helm at the pond today for our Poems-in-April-fest, and I chose an ekphrasis challenge, to be drawn from the work of French painter, lithographer, pastelist and illustrator, Odilon Redon. For details, and to join us, please check out the real toads link above. Is it May yet???

Images: The Reflection, and Head On A Stem, by Odilon Redon

Public domain, via wikipaintings.org.

Incriminated

Incriminated

There was a pain that came

that changed me like rain

and I was thankful to have it

when there was nothing else

engineered to maintain

the shape of a self.

Your eyes were all purple

lie-bruised and encircled;

your hand shook at the plug

where you took your last charge

for the strength to go hurt-culled

to not cry when it buckled,

when you had to go large.

The room was as empty

as a January pantry

when Christmas is ghostly.

You wore me over your clothes,

my skin protection mostly

from the strontium flu, plastic froze

to the blue while you stayed prime

and when I dissolved in time

you burned me, love

like a pair of blood-stained gloves

still wet from the scene of the crime.

~February 2014

posted for      real toads

Open Link Monday

Images: Untitled,  by Zdislav Beksinski

May be protected by copyright~posted under fair use guidelines via wikipaintings.org

Nightmare Of The Leaf

Nightmare of the Leaf

I've forgotten how to dance.

In that panic freeze

something's wheezing behind me,
ponderous but light

on its feet
as a fat man
who dances like helium.

Big-Belly bumps me
 into a darkroom

whose unlikely window

displays a maple-leaf,
red

rhymed with diamond grief

just past my  hand,

a moment away

from falling

forever.

~November 2013

55 deciduous dream dilemmas for       the g-man

Image: Leaf Motif 2, Pattern of Leaves, both by Georgia O'Keefe
via wiki-paintings.org
May be protected by copyright. Posted under fair use guidelines.