Ave Atque Vale

 

 

 

Ave Atque Vale

 

 

 

 

Though

they make

your eyes shine

your hand reach out

not even these dreams can make you love me.

 

It's cruel time breaks like glass but crueler still

to see you smile

as if you

want me

still.

 

 

 

 

 

 

March 2022

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

posted for dVerse Poets: Meeting the Bar

Numbering Ten (Tetrachtys)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Images: Hands, © Eugeny Kozhevnikov   Fair Use

Vistation, photomanipulation © joyannjones

Dionysia

 

 

 

 

 

 Dionysia

 

 

In another century

I was a girl of a certain flavor

grown to twist and pruned to bear

a fruit never eaten, only pressed.

 

You were the satyr,

the goat-song in the convent, a

dovecote of vestals who cooed as you

taught them to break their glass vows.

 

At the bacchanal we all danced

indifferent to stares of the Keres. You stole

the god's thyrsos and wound it with lamb's ear,

soft and treacle sweet as your smile.

 

That cup that was

filled then to overflowing

is broken now, but too late, I think

for those who've already drunk.

 

 

 

 

November 2021

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 posted for

The Sunday Muse

 

 and

earthweal's Open Link

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

thyrsos:  a staff or wand of fennel used in Hellenic ceremonies, espec. Dionysius ~wikipedia

Keres:  female death spirits who roamed freely during the yearly Athenian festival of  Anthestria .~wikipedia

 

 

 

 

 

Images: Wine glasses, author unknown, via Sunday Muse  Fair Use

Marble relief of a maenad and two satyrs in a Bacchic procession. AD 100, British Museum 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

Bells And Bars

Bells And Bars

In the grey cellblocks

of the circus maximus

there's a mad girl listening

to a bird singing,

a soft wind-ringing of lily bells.

The notes are trickled

from a carillon throat

in a dark made of rock;

the crowd flickers its shadows

at the last hour of day.

Outside the barred columns

the notes of the thrush

candle the dusk

like glow-worms signaling stars.

Nothing moves 

but the sinking bright pillars

of burnt-out sun, prison-harsh, and the

wing-blurr of a thrush to show us

what now is a ruin

once was a song.

~August 2016

posted for    real toads

Challenge: Voices, Spaces & Songbirds

Bird Singing In The Moonlight, 1939,  © Morris Graves, Fair Use via wikiart.org

Time, Far Ringing

Time, Far Ringing

Time has taken my sex 

and snapped the tongue
from its stringent bell;
my heart no longer beats a wind

that blows to own the night,

but trips and

flutters

as if my breast

were made of falling feathers
drifting in autumn light

white among the scarlet leaves

like the airy swirls of mist

that pass for thought,

a stutter

as I deadhead my rosary

of each exhausted memory. 

The astringent nyx of 
Novembers remembered
slides her turquoise lips

into a smile,

flattering

a naiad singing still

beneath the thin blue ice

of forsaken winter,

and over the wet south wind

I hear the name she calls

her fingers fitful tapping;

fluttering

feathers of snow

above and dropping
notes of softened cold that
tumble down

tickling an invisible ear

with distant music:

Time far ringing

the tiny
clamorous
bells.

~November 2015

posted for        real toads

Weekend Challenge

Nyx: the sister of Erebus, associated with night in Greek mythology, also: nix, nyx or nixie,(Germanic) a shape-shifting water sprite.



Apologia: Karin was kind enough to share some of her thoughts for this challenge with me early, as she knows I do not write well spontaneously. Therefore, this poem (and the writing exercise on 'I remember'  that birthed it)was started well before the misery and horror that took place yesterday in Paris --I apologize for being so out of sync with that here, and feel that I should write something on that subject instead, but I just am not as yet up to it. 

Images: Observatory Time: The Lovers, 1936, by Man Ray. Fair use via wikiart.org

St Cuileain Bell*, 7th-8th, 12th Century, via wikimedia.org, by Jononmac46, Shared under a Creative Commons License. Manipulated.

*For those interested: "The Bell Shrine of St. Cuileáin or Glankeen Bell is a mediaeval Irish bell shrine found near Borrisoleigh in County Tipperary, Ireland. [It] was made in a number of phases. The inner iron bell was made in the 7th or 8th centuries AD. The more elaborate outer case was produced in the early 12th centuries AD...The enamelled and niello inlaid crest of the outer case is decorated in the Ringerike style, which reflects the influence of the Vikings on contemporary fashion."~wikipedia

Fairytale Eyes

Fairytale Eyes

A lie in the light has

a harsh color. It

takes more from you

than the whispered fictions

darkness speaks.

Her doll button eyes so black

and slick as bullets,

dead as Tut without the glitter tomb

dead alive as the man

peeled off the cross sent

spinning into limbo,

are looking at a hundred

pink and purple moons.

Black on black and black again;

a pungent sponge of shadow

fills the killing jar, 

whose thin glass is so
unexpectedly unbreakable

unbearable until it tells itself

the once upon a time
transformation

the shimmering glamored lie.

The moon does not
at her moment of fulfillment
dress in lace and belled skirts.

She's not some cinder-urchin

after midnight, so don't say she is--

you with your cracked mirror

and blue iris of ice.

The moon is no drudge

pushed wretched in the ashes

befriended by anthropomorphic mice,

some missing slipper profaned

by Brobdingnagian feet.

~*~

Doll button eyes

were turquoise once, 

before she was locked

so firmly in this box

(or before she opened in 

this unaccountable

exploding burlesque.)

Now they're a noisy void,

Kleig lights on a stage

for mincing dreams, productions

of pranking Punchinellos, pageants

of Catherine-wheel princesses

lit by slender flames of wicked

wick'd stepmothers

dancing spots and talking dots,

who grant favors to their own,

sly torments to the rest with

circle-faced smirks
of mime-white and red.

The moon is no sleeping beauty,

more the witch whose mirror
always tells the most
obvious unwelcome truth,

or perhaps it's the apple itself
swollen with the viridian
juice of malice, so round

so beautiful so dead, 

floating its centuplicated replicas

all so wavering bloody pink, 

so saturated purple

that just one lovely bite

can drown the world.

Black on black pours out still

the lie of colors drop by splash

to the last: the changeling's
handsome prince, dashingly

backlit in psychedelic flash, 

the recapture-when-released technique

of the King of Beasts, the Beast Himself

come to lap the tears of weeping Beauty,
a savior wearing gold and green 

and Bluebeard's face,

the key to the sealed room

teasing in his pocket.

~September 2015

posted for    real toads

Weekend Challenge

Process Note: I have chosen to write about Charles Bonnet Syndrome, also called 'visual release hallucinations,' a neurological condition of the blind which produces vivid, often formulaic hallucinations, discussed by Oliver Sacks in his book, Hallucinations.

Images: The Fire Wheel, 1893, by James MacNeil Whistler, public domain, manipulated.

Bluebeard, 1862, by Gustave Dore,  engraving, public domain