Friday 55 March 16 2018

Another Friday finds us gathered to offer thanks to the memory of the G-man and his meme, and to try our hands at assembling our own models of relative verbal brevity in 55 words of prose or poetry, no more, no less. No rules except the word count, and a link to your effort in the comments below between Friday and Sunday morning. I look forward as always to seeing what creations your craft and imagination can supply.

My 55 for this week:

Cracks

Midnight's blue altar splayed

with a sacrifice of stars,

wind that tells secrets

to a storm darkened moon,

silence knocking with whispers,

blackbirds' questions at dawn

sharp marked on the sky;

all the weight, all the light draped

on the scream of a back

and in the shadow that passes,

the first of the cracks...

~March 2018

Note: I am having intermittent connection problems, so bear with me if I am mysteriously absent.

Images: Blackbirds,  ©joyannjones 2013

Erecthion with caryatids, Athens, Greece, via internet author unknown  Fair use   Manipulated

Friday 55 January 12 2018

As the door to another year opens, we stroll into the shelter of this room of words with whatever we can find to delight the mind, comfort it, or perhaps, clean it out...in 55 words of prose or poetry--no more, no less. As always, we do this to remember a man who gave of himself to support and encourage others every week with this meme, Galen Hayes, and to write in this form with no rules other than to enjoy each other and to practice the craft.
Also as always, the prompt is open from Friday through Sunday, so leave a link to your offering in the comments below and I will be by to see the results. Comment moderation is off for the duration of the post, but I reserve the right to cleanse this mental room of all dubious influences with the powerful smudge of the delete key.

So, I'll start things off then...

Spellsong

A statue's
closed stare,

mind castled in sand,

stone-sweeping sleet

to compass my hands,

midnight dissolving

in fog and quicklime;

all faces in masks

all masks without eyes.

Acid and black-ice

bitter the glass.

Flames' frozen flutter

fits candles of brass;

sighing of wind, dancing of rain,

kiss from a ghost to

burn me again.

~January 2018 

Images: Eyelid to Eye, 2014  ©joyannjones 
photo (manipulated) of 
Moth and Flame Candlestick, 1965  by Salvador Dali  Fair Use

The Tree With All The Body's Roses

The Tree With All The Body's Roses

"She sang beyond the genius of the sea. 

The water never formed to mind or voice,   

Like a body wholly body, fluttering

Its empty sleeves..."

Wallace Stevens, The Idea of Order at Key West 

The world has parrots.

I'm looking for a songbird

in the jade well of deep forest,

a voice to bucket it up.

Behind the plastic house 

I found blue wildflowers,

watched their petals transmogrify

to wings on seeds 

 blowing like the freckles of stardust

mottling the Milky Way,
to daisy-face another autumn day  

in indigo beyond the swirling suns.

All this because a thousand years ago

in banished nights the apprentice read to me

words of a Northern heart washed up

 on a bleach and dazzle of tropic sand;

to me, his caryatid, words for a girl

 he loved I'd never be, that 
magic could not make me,

to sing beyond the genius of the sea.

Yet she brought me here, that girl,
a statue suddenly animate,

to dig and weed the heart's ground
beyond the ocean drench of chemical hope,

past youth itself in its naked greed, til at last a tree

would raise the mind's branch on which

a bird could land and sing

of all the body's roses we

never see.

~October 2017

 for October's Heart-Bits with Magaly 2017:

"The topic is simple: Love Is Love Is Love… and Words. Let’s art our loves with words in them. You can share a story or poem about why you love writing poetry, or telling tales, or singing, or painting, or dancing, or sculpting, or knitting, or bedazzling the skulls of your enemies and friends… write about the art you are happiest to create.
Your posts must contain at least one magical element and some sort of love(dark love, sweet love, ridiculous love, terrifying love, insane love, gentle love…)..."

(I hope the  young love and transmogrifying magic here is enough, even if it didn't exactly work as planned by the magician's apprentice. )

Rosa 'Pat Austen' ©joyannjones 2013
Clouds in Finland, by Konrad Kryzyzanowski  Fair Use

Stone Ghost

Stone Ghost

A Terzanelle (of sorts)

for RCC

There was a ghost then

who seemed to touch my face

who smiled without the words again,

black horses in a broken race.

He thought he was alive;

I thought he touched my face.

I only counted up to five

fingers of flesh and air;

He thought I was alive

when we walked handfast there

above a sea of dust,

soft dolls of flesh and air,

the sharp cliffs shadowed rust

as sun bleached caryatid hair

waved white in a sea of dust,

snagged on the moon's rocking chair.

There was another ghost then,

with a sun blind caryatid stare,

no smile, only words to make it end.

~May 2014

posted for      real toads

Challenge: Play it Again

Margaret Bednar(Art Happens365) once again asks us to pull a challenge from the abundant archives at the Imaginary Garden With Real Toads. I have chosen Kerry's most recent form challenge, the terzanelle, but with apologies, because, as usual, I've not attempted pentameter, or even a ten-syllable line count, and taken a few liberties as well in slightly altering the refrain lines.

Photo: Caryatid, via wikimedia commons

Persona Non Vera

Persona Non Vera

We're just sitting

all of us, after the party

relicts of a game; the courtesan, the too-

precocious child, Our Lady of Sorrows,

posing, dumb as to tongue but

telling everything

how she picked us up,

one by one, how we could not soak

tears, became fears, shaken

and thrown, fluid in stone, tilting

cracked heads, rolling ripple-

glass stares.

Loved we were, one

by one, till each grew tiresome, tight,

fractured and outgrown, but we can't go.

We sit nodding, all of us, cropped, collected,

had, forgotten, listening; showing

everything.

~December 2013

posted from the dark for    real toads

Interpretations with Margaret: The Photography of Jennifer MacNeill

Margaret Bednar leads us to the fantastic(literally) photographic work of Jennifer O'Neill, who has generously shared some of her work with us. You can see more of it HERE on her website, as well as HERE on her flick'r page

(Please forgive any typos or mistakes--the screen is an ailing, dim memory of a display atm.)

Image: melancholy, copyright Jennifer MacNeill, All Rights Reserved

Used with permission.