Blown Away

 

 

 

 

Blown Away

 

 

Come look

at what I salvaged

from the breakdown:

 

in this jar is Chicago

with its concrete throat

that tried so hard to swallow me

 

and here is Montana

mountain wild, spruce bending

to save me, painted

 

in five colors on my spurious tongue

that cracked ripe hearts

like nutshells in

the vise of logic. The rest

of what I had sailed in my witchboat,

to a quiet Viking funeral with

 

 no one watching--riddled

seeds, costumes and seven secrets

wrapped in your trinket kisses--

but I kept the beach

at Point Reyes, where the wind

clean off the ocean

is strong enough

to blow away

your life.

October 2022

posted for

Word Garden Word List

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Images: Untitled (marina) © Zdzislaw Beksinksi   Fair Use

Point Reyes, California, Tomales Point Trail with Wild Radish, NPS/A. Kopshever   Fair Use

Way(ra)s Of The Past

 

 

 

Way(ra)s Of The Past

 

 I.

 

There is a road, cold

as stark nightmare's mane, weaving

a winding-sheet memory

choke-tight, wringing the eyes

dry, smearing the heart, called the past.

 

II.

 

There is a tollway

never cheated by moonlight

never unwatched by day. Don't

squander your soul walking

down it; the past collects its debts.

 

 

 

 

 

November 2021

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 posted for dVerse Poets

Poetry Form: The Wayra

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Images: Footsteps, 2016, © Joshua Philip Hart

Photograph of the Author, 1956, photographer unknown,  Public Domain

Landfall

Landfall

(Harvey at Corpus Christi)

Launched from the center

of the sweaty swayback

of the dustbowl

driving to the sea

Texas is endless; brown, olive, bone

hills and beige flats,

griddle hot

a country of dead hours

of creosote bush and yucca

city sprawl, void and suburb eternal

before the silvered rim of Padre

shows hazy in the wave-trough,

a glint in the dead eye of

the Body of Christ.

How many times did we

drag the corpus of our

cross-nailed marriage over the plains,

one desert passing over another,

with what relief to leave that

four-wheeled cell

and feel a living air.

Then, bottle in hand, already lost,

you'd sit in your folding chair on a beach

 so bright and primeval all
such things, like us, were anachronisms.
The boy would run from the war

to the waves, freed and blazing delight

to slip into a salty blue singing that

drowned the sound of failure.

I'd walk up and down, in

and out of the surf, gripping shells'

nacred lifelines, finding a washing of watery
peace, transitory and recurrent

as the sky-swallowing

shadows of gulls cawking above.

I had no god then, and none

tonight,
yet I pray for that country

as the vast weeping Eye crawls across it 

with death and rage in its tears,
spilling blood or toy refineries

to soil and poison that white beach

where grace so waywardly hides 

giving her kiss to all flawed things.

~August 26, 2017

Optional Musical Accompaniment

 

Photos © joyannjones  Corpus, Gull Shadows, circa 1986

The Spider Captain

The Spider Captain

An old stuffed dog

and a long legged spider

a bed like a boat

and a web in the corner

a neon nightlight

from the downstairs sign

stiff faded curtains with red designs

to cover the moon;

too many children, not enough rooms.

A place on the couch

that hides a bed

a long legged spider

to cover your head

to rock you to sleep

while the bed-boat sails where

there's a whole new place

you didn't know was there

with 

a purple bracelet and knots in your hair

for Mother to comb out

and make you cry.

On his way to work,

the spider kisses her goodbye.

~February 2017

Looking beyond the obvious

for Fireblossom Friday

at real toads

Image: The Big Spider's Diamonds,  by Edmond Dulac

Fair use via wikiart.org

Broken

 

Broken

They were married by the moon

on the Pyramid of the Sun,

best man from the Society of Jaguars,

for bridesmaid a flower boy

who loved her yellow hair,

who thought he spoke English,

words lava reefs cooling

in the Pacific of his Español.

They walked, a sun-specked

collection of curiosities, laughing 

along the Avenue of the Dead,

asked the moon, the sun, the stars,

the snarl of the watching Jaguars

for a child

but none came. Broke,

they went back to the States.

He threw the I Ching; the marriage

was annulled. In the neon-long after,

she lost the feel of his deer's eye

startling wild in the dark, the dazzled

pink walls, azure doors, stone streets 

and jade palms of Mexico

where her heart was emptied

on the altar of the Sun.

~May 2016

posted for   real toads

Weekend Challenge

 You can read about the setting of this story, Teotihuacan, Mexico,   here.

Image; by Saiko: Terracotta figures from Teotihuacan in the Louvre, via wikimedia commons

Manipulated.

Low Pressure System

Low Pressure System

There is a mist

in what you say

each droplet a word

around meaning obscured,

each sound a dulled echo

of something forlorn

wrapped in pale softness

as blank as its warm;

a fog to disarm.

There is a snow

over what you say,

a blanket of blur

for a hiding away,

a mask as white, as smooth

 as its cold,

as gentle as numb;

I need a new sun 

for when your words come.

 

~September 2015

Image: Sparks, 1906, by Mikalojus Ciurlionis
Public domain via wikiart.org