Totem

Totem

Spirit Eater

White Waltzer

secret inside my skin

snailcurled in snowdrift

sleeping, black lips closed over

teeth big as carrots, dark poppy-pod eyes
shut, REM flutter stilled

silent as the melting flake;

in dreams you

come to eat the gold yolk

from the half-egg moon called

winter’s sun.

Wake when the hunter comes,

lift your chainsaw paws,

show him your ivory-yellow teeth

scrimshawed by the obduracy 

of your kills; shake 
his bones from your throat
with a growl.

Ice Orphan
White Diver
my only protection now.

All winter you reaped

sleek black bodies of grief,

turning the ice

salty red with your patience,
and when the dark time came

and there was nowhere else, you wooed me

 with garnets and alabaster, freshcut from
the sorrows you'd slain for me.
So I gave you

sleep in the black heartcave

content to barter away

all yesterday’s skins

for the talisman necklace

of your ebony claws.

~January 2011

Originally Posted for   Fireblossom Friday   at real toads


(Hannah has a very similar prompt up at real toads today so I resurrected this but did not link.)

Header image: Post card. Bear totem on grave. Ketchikan, Alaska.

Source: US National Archives, series: Photographs of the Inhabitants of Metlakatla, British Columbia and Metlakatla, Alaska, compiled ca. 1856 - 1936
Public Domain via wikimedia commons

Honey Is Sweeter Than Blood

Honey Is Sweeter Than Blood

O I know you loved me

like the tiger loves the goat

and that was why we went to sea

in a cask that didn't float.

That was why you talked to me

with jungle in your throat

and crooned so comprehensively

each note the wild things wrote--

but when we broke up in the foam

it was plain I was a bear,

and you--just a heavy honeycomb

I'd pulled from a tree of air.

~May 2016

 (Homage to Dali for title)

posted for     real toads



Weekend Challenge

Optional Musical Accompaniment

Study for Honey is Sweeter Than Blood, 1926, by Salvador Dali

Tiger in Love, 1979,  by Corneille(Cornelis Guillaume van Beverloo)

Fair use via wikiart.org

Lost Bear

Lost Bear

Lost bear

collapsed under the streetlight

drunk on smells

of trash and tea leaves

full of cold beans, coffee grounds,

dead things; silent

you sleep heavy, turning garbage-grey,

wishing for berries, silverslipping

riverflash of trout,

white water, winter-wild

repose in caves of dreams;

to wake in warm dark

with wholeness welling,

two cubs pushing,

life scrabbling

in place of

what's forever

 gone.

~December 2012

Posted for   real toads

Sunday Mini-Challenge: Dolls, Revisited

Margaret Bednar brings us more photographs of the amazing dolls created by a group of enterprising and very gifted students. The doll I chose was created by Elizabet Puksto.

 Process Note: I normally don't read others' prompt responses before writing, but today I read Fireblossom's first. Rereading this now, I think I owe some of this poem to her take and original theme. Thanks, Shay.

 Optional Musical Accompaniment

Image: Photo by Margaret Bednar of Doll by Elizabet Puksto

Gingerbread Man

Gingerbread Man, or
How I Got Away

Drawn to the wreck
rubbernecking your

everbleeding heart

your crippled soul, a young

fool still I expected that the vast

disassembly of you, out of control

scattered and laying

in parts, 

could make me whole.

And so you did

if pain itself is a completer

of a circle that can’t

be finished any neater.

So you did 
know the way

to make my heart whir

like a clockwork toy

until time came to pay,

to load the gun, barrel by barrel, 
against a fast sloping night feral 
with teeth. You screamed

like a caught thief

broke like a gingerbread boy

stumbling on your crumbly leg,
button eye glazed with fears

your fingerless mitt, so round 

and soft, 

raised uselessly, too late

at the oncoming bears,

making lovely bait.

April 2012





Posted for   Open Link Night   at dVerse Poets Pub

Image: Gingerbread Man, by Danny Key on flick'r

Shared under a Creative Commons License

Totem

Totem

Spirit eater

White waltzer

secret inside my skin

snailcurled in snowdrift

sleeping, black lips closed over

teeth big as carrots, dark poppy pod eyes

shut, REM flutter stilled

silent as the melting flake;

in dreams you

come to eat the gold yolk

from the half-egg moon called

winter’s sun.

Wake

when the hunter comes

lift up your chainsaw paws and

show your ivory yellow teeth

scrimshawed and snagged by

the obduracy of your kills;
shake 
his bones from your throat
with a growl.

Ice orphan, 
White diver

            my only protection now.           

All arctic summer you sidled closer

in your need, your frost breath

following me across another country.

All summer you harvested

the sleek black bodies

of grief, turning the ice

salty red with your patience;

only the fleetest fled unfurrowed, 

melting a path to

 that stonecold 
immeasurable abyss.

When the dark time came 

and there was 
nowhere else, you wooed me

 with garnets and alabaster freshcut from all 
the sorrows' spawn you'd slain

 for me. 
So I gave you

sleep in the black heartcave

content to barter away all

yesterday’s skins

for the talisman necklace

of your ebony claws.

January 2011

Posted for   Fireblossom Friday   at real toads

Header image: Post card. Bear totem on grave. Ketchikan, Alaska.

Source: US National Archives, series: Photographs of the Inhabitants of Metlakatla, British Columbia and Metlakatla, Alaska, compiled ca. 1856 - 1936
Public Domain via wikimedia commons

The Starving Bear

The Starving Bear

The starving bear

turns over trash cans, tips the dumpsters,

learns how to eat away their lids

like scooping out a honey tree.

For one who’s used to

excavating logs and eating the results

a limp french fry is only

a slower kind of worm.

Dancing with debris,

dodging the tranquilizer dart,

he makes chaos out of order,

scavenge out of substance.

No berries, no salmon; he tears the soft

white sacks, scatters maggots like rosebuds

in the famine processional  of maniac summer

at the feet of his  bridesmaid crows.

Sometimes he screws the pooch.

but she knows better than to growl;

it’s an easy mistake to make

after all, and better screwed than food.

She will get

her dinner tonight.

But the  starving bear

must feed himself.

June 2011

Posted for     Form Monday    at the inimitable OneStopPoetry

Image: courtesy google image search  
originating site