Soldier

 

 

 

 

 

 

Soldier

 

 

 

I am a soldier pledged to the sky, become
a sword in her blue pockets, my threadbare fatigues

marked with the grit of worlds. I fight on
because she wears time so much better than I
and vaults the earth with her mother-colored mantle
unwavering, unchanged, uncommanded forever.

Tho Night has drawn his obsidian blade
and pierced me with his heartkiller spear, tho I 

am older, diminished, my moondrops that pooled on

white grass all drunk in the sun's tarnished cup; tho
I howl my warcry unheard in the inkwell dark,
still the hole in my breast

is soft-closed with moss and silver straw
and silence that seeps out
from the green forest floor,
til dreams and signs pillow my head
and swim like sweet fish as pale as winter
through the tears on my war-stained cheeks.

 

 

 November 2024

 

 

 

 

 

 posted for Word Garden Word List

at Shay's Word Garden

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Images: Portait of Maude Abrantes, 1907 ©Amadeo Modigliani   Public Domain

Borage and Blue Sky, ©joyannjones

 

 

Quadrille Of The Poppies

 

 

 

 

 

Quadrille Of The Poppies

 

 

In Mexico

you wrote me word by word

into the book of your hips.

We traded salt naked

 

lip to lip; your 

listening kiss

heard the colors come

as poppies and geraniums stirred

 

rustling from my earth,

turning their dark faces

towards yours,

opening. 

 

 

February 2022

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 posted for dVerse Poets:
Quadrille #146: Salt

using words from

Shay's Word List #14

Pablo Neruda

 

where I am hosting for Shay this week

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Images: Textile Bookbinding from The Netherlands, ca 1621  Fair Use 

Oriental Poppies, 1908, © Georgia O'Keefe    Fair Use

Several Pleasures

 

 

 

 

 

 

Several Pleasures

 

 

 

I've never found anything perfect

except a flower once that never died.

It swiveled in the sun's slow swing

slept in snow, woke for the Bride

in spring, plush and wild each year from

drinking sky.

 

I've never had anything last

except that flying summer of love for light

where children briefly burned their hungry fear;

that spark became the wildfire of my life.

Its living fire keeps me whole tonight

protected from the winter-walking years.

I've never had a dime I didn't spend

except the gold we minted for love's pay.

Spendthrifts can lose a fortune in a day,

yet keep it all in a sun-vault of a safe

with two last coins for final fare on eyes

that see their dreams at last without disguise.

 

 

 

 

 December 2021

 

 

 

 

posted for dVerse Poets

Open Link

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Images: Narcissus 'Sir Winston Churchill' © joyannjones 2014

Dancing couple, featured on the cover of Newsweek magazine, Woodstock Festival, Bethel, New York, 1969. © Jim Marshall Photography LLC  Fair Use

 

Vessel

Vessel

When the moon

is winking

like the Grey Sisters’ eye

passed from housetop

to housetop, glassy bright

and wide as a fawn’s,

I feel your touch;

wind in the night

cool on fever’s summer.

Your kisses taste of a rain

that breaks the drought,

your look slips over skin

wet and terra cotta slick

as the clay on the wheel.

Run your potter's hand

across my back,

reshape my days, my nights

with a maker's fingers
then fire me 
where the blaze

burns morning white.

Paint my curving sides with a

bard’s young colors: jet and gold,

blue as the wandering sky,

jade, yellow, crimson

with every flower;

then take me to the well

where thirst is quenched.

September 2011, mildly revised February 2020

re-posted for earthweal's 

Open Link

(Scroll down one for the Friday 55)

The Graeae: old women", "grey ones", "grey sisters", or "grey witches"; alternatively spelled Graiai (Γραῖαι), Graiae, Graii), were three sisters who shared one eye and one tooth among them. They are one of several trios of archaic goddesses in Greek mythology.....~wikipedia






Header Image: Explore #360, ©  slokaa Fair Use

Sweetener

Sweetener

I.

I put you in my tea

tannic with memories;

stirred, they go down smoother

sipping on your ways.

Put on my plate you make

an evergreen presentation,

dressed in rue and fired clay,

so haute cuisine, salad of baby greens

tossed in hope and fear, before

the soup of dreams.

II.

I put you on the moon

sitting where she bends

your cloven feet a-dangle in 

their blurred and slippery stars.

You ease Orion’s belt, give cloudy listening blinks;

I whisper in your thunder covered ear until

you put me in the storm

flying with wings of rain 

where cold front meets the warm.

III.

I put you in my heart

little shop of horrors

cobweb seeded, only one

flyblown object on display but not

for sale. Pressed against the glass

your firefly face winks in the indigo night

where ribboned time slips tight in a lover's knot

and tea is sweet as your blue sky mouth my love, 

sweeter than floating memories dead in the pot.

March 2012

an old favorite, in Kerry's triptych form, 

 reposted for 

Fireblossom's Poetic Imagery 

Image: Tea Time, © Ellen Wilson of Ella's Edge

Fallow

Fallow

So many times

you’ve been the field where

storms hailed the crops flat,

your task to regrow them--

the cold eroded shingle

where fire died,

you with numb fingers

in a night of frost and ghosts,

the rekindler. 

So 

let me warm you now 
for that brief time

that I’m permitted

as darkness presses.

Turn the cup upside down,

let your hard hours spill out

to pool in a bottomless green.

Sleep for a season with all life unborn

you the fallow field this once

over which the placid plough horse

passes unhindered, breaking clods of years'

compaction, earth's old demands arable

and dropping open under a citrine sun.

Lightly, surely the harrow passes

in the long afternoons, a music

on those plains where ever they sing

of planting, of the green to come,

not freezes, not blight, not backs bent,

where my rain falls like ocean. Let

every tall crop there be your own.

Let me in you at last give back

seed for root

right for wrong

life for death

and make life enough

so

when time is done with us

in the dusk of a long coming gleaning,

there'll be love in the last look back

before we blow away.

~November 2011

A repost to welcome the slanting light of Fall,  and the fallow time to come

for    real toads

Open Link Monday

Images: The Plough and The Harrow, after Millet, 1890, by Vincent Van Gigh

The Old Tower in The Fields, 1884, by Vincent Van Gogh

Public domain via wikiart.org

Medicine Sky

Medicine Sky

After

the explosion

I found 

pieces of you
in all my poems,

embedded shrapnel,

unclean words,

full of fever's fester.

I scrubbed the wounds, 

massaged the scars,

repeating,

autumn is a doctor, 

winter is a nurse,

night's blue sky body

arches over

the surgery of the gods,

poppy-soft, ocean-deep, capable

of illuminating

even
your lies.

~October 2013, 

revised May 2014

posted for     real toads

Mini-Challenge :Flash Fiction 55

The odyssey of the Flash Fiction 55, so long under the gracious guidance of the G-man, continues on at the Imaginary Garden with Real Toads, where the incomparable Fireblossom alternates with the eloquently terse Mama Zen to preside over our journey into brevity. Please come play with us in the new locale.

Image: The Eqyptian goddess of the sky, Nut
Public domain via wikimedia commons

Wind Chant

Wind Chant

The wind slaps the cedars

and pushes the pines.

Earth rocks restless horses

in a field that's not mine.

The sky runs on cloud-juice

and blue-bottle wine,

while stars fall for nothing,

Moon sits on her hair,
grass has gone dappled
as a piebald mare;

the wind strips the blackjacks,

saying
Let them wear air.

~February 2014

55 windy wisps of plain jane doggerel for    the g-man

The Polar Sucktex gave us some freakish winds to keep the earthquakes company today.

Optional Musical Accompaniment

Photos: Wind in the Pines, Blackjack Striptease, both copyright joyannjones 2014
All Rights Reserved.

Saferoom

Saferoom

Wrinkled pansy sky,

a sunshadow day

where you're constantly 

shaking

the clouds out 

of your eyes;

wrapped in a raincoat

of insect 

and bird bubbles,

earthcrumble fingers, a

sway-bending partner of shovels,

slide-pusher of rake backs,

leveling the world

to make a saferoom 

for what's born

to blow away.

 ~May 2013

posted for     real toads

Challenge: Words Count with Mama Zen

The terse and tres talented Mama Zen's challenge today is to  'Imagine yourself in the safest place you've ever known,' and write about it in 53 words or less. I have actually come in *under* the word count, for the first time ever.