The Infernal Operator

 

 

The Infernal Operator

The incubus is having

another rough night;

a bitter bell keeps ringing

between his horns, foreign, 

off-tempo, pounding like

the gallop of a three-legged horse,

or the arrhythmic crash of cambered granite

tumbling from a fallen cathedral,

and to top it off

there's an angel in the fire,

feathers burning acrid, ashy black,

dialing, dialing the clouds, asking 

the great silence left when the clacking

rotary wheel cogs home: Where is the bird-winged host, 

my alabaster birth brothers, the holy
triune fatherspiritson
to pull me out?

The incubus knows the angel

has landed in the wrong fireplace for this,

yet still he wishes

it would happen, to see at last a miracle 

not born of tormented flesh 

or the familiar's lascivious alembics,

 

and also so the noise would stop,

the pale, luminous eyes round as blue worlds

cease following him

from window to window as

he tries frantically to let out the stink.

Doesn't it care, this minister of grace, that

the incessant ringing, the billowing smoke

of its rendered virtue, distract him 

from his greatest opus?

(50 Shades of Damnation,

to be published next spring.)

Why doesn't its everpresent

compassionate disaster master save it?

Instead it burns and burns

as the phone rings on unanswered,

sweetly smiling, staring at him 

as if the lines weren't down

in a world on fire;

as if there was something

he could do.

 

 

 

~October 2015, lightly revised June 2023 

 

 

 

 

  

I couldn't as yet find any angels to wrestle, but I do have the incubus and his quandary here.(To read poems in this series, click the eponymous tag.)

posted for Wrestling Angels at desperate poets

 

 

 

Images by Salvador Dali, Fair Use via wikart.org

Top:Debris of an Autobile Gives Birth to a Blind Horse Biting a Telephone, 1938

Lobster Telephone, 1938

Friday 55 March 9 2018

Welcome to this week's 55, an exercise, a journey, a discipline, a memory of a meme originated by a genial and giving man named Galen Hayes, and carried on by my inadequate self, and all of you who come to read or to play. As always, no rules except that your contribution be 55 words of prose or poetry, no more, no less, linked in the comments below between Friday and Sunday morning. I look forward to reading what you have to offer.

My 55 this week is just a singsong mess that I couldn't dislodge...

Heaven's Door

Heaven's door stands open.

Peter knows I won't stay--all my angels have wings

just to fly away.

My darling dreams he's a fever

too hot for decay. My flowers open in darkness

and uncolor the day.

I'm a stone rolled downhill

for the unquieted grave--only angels have wings

so they can fly away.

~March 2018

Optional Musical Accompaniment

Images: Open Door On A Garden, 1934, by Konstantin Somov   
Public Domain (Manipulated)

Open Darkness, ©joyannjones 2018

Calico Dream

Calico Dream

Calico ghost

cowgirl on the whirlwind,

drinks dusty nectar

from the thimble of

a wildflower's face,

dances on a wagon wheel

across a wicked wasteland,

eyes on the blue mountains

and the swallow's last home.

Her well-wound heart

chimes soft as a pocket watch

under cool cotton covers.

She washes in sunsplash

and curls up contented 

to whisper when the coyote howls.

She's nothing but a promise

guarding the river

that sinners can't cross.

Calico girl

sings me at sunset

a tune from the Territory

a chant from the Tribes

beaded with pollen hot from the prairie,

keeping her hands clean, hiding

the hunted, defying the flag.

She follows the trail

no murderer can see.

~August 2017

posted for Izy's Unseen

( nothing more unseen than a cowgirl in a dream)

Images: Cowgirls, public domain
via wikimedia commons

Eye Spy

Eye Spy

I spy with my little eye

a unicorn on a piece of pie,

an iron cross and a butterfly;

I spy the day I die...

Asleep I was

a wasted storm, a wandering

rain in stony void, blowing

over shabby

sparrow bodies on the scree,

over cast-off rocks

warm from the hand of lust, thrown to kill

in hunger and in pain, keyhole-seeing,

bent, your face again.

I awoke

rigid in a night

of fallen birds, back

still pressed on the wheel of love,

your bear-brown eyes, your

warmth on mine, your laugh as close

as dawn to day

before the waking

breaks it all away,

alone then, and more alone to come

locked in a crime no exit wound explains,

for the angel and the demon boys agree

they'll never open doors for the likes of me.

~January 2016

posted for   real toads

Bits of Inspiration; Weekend Challenge

Images: Sanctuary, 1965, by Max Ernst. Fair use via wikiart.org

That Which I Should Have Done I Did Not Do, 1931, by Ivan Albright.

Fair use via wikiart.org

The Infernal Operator

The Infernal Operator

The incubus is having

another rough night;

a bitter bell keeps ringing

between his horns, foreign, 

off-tempo, pounding like

the gallop of a three-legged horse,

or the arrhythmic crash of cambered granite

tumbling from a fallen cathedral,

and to top it off

there's an angel in the fire,

feathers burning acrid, ashy black,

dialing, dialing the clouds, asking 

the great silence left when the clacking

rotary wheel cogs home: Where is the bird-winged host, 

my alabaster birth brothers, the holy
triune fatherspiritson
to pull me out?

The incubus knows the angel

has landed in the wrong fireplace for this,

yet still he wishes

it would happen, to see at last a miracle 

not born of tormented flesh,  

and also so the noise would stop,

the pale, luminous eyes cease following him

from window to window as

he tries frantically to let out the stink.

Doesn't it care, this minister of grace, that

the incessant ringing, the billowing smoke

of its rendered virtue, distract him 

from his greatest opus?

(50 Shades of Damnation,

to be published next spring.)

Why doesn't its everpresent

compassionate disaster master save it?

Instead it burns and burns

as the phone rings on unanswered,

sweetly smiling, staring at him 

as if the lines weren't down,

as if there was something

he could do.

~October 2015

posted for    real toads

Fireblossom Friday

(For my other poems in the incubus series, just hit the eponymous tag below.)

Images by Salvador Dali, Fair Use via wikart.org

Top:Debris of an Autobile Gives Birth to a Blind Horse Biting a Telephone, 1938

Lobster Telephone, 1938