Another Fall

Another Fall

It's a cold cascade through time,

from the strip mall of memory

to neon horizon,

from green waves of forest

to the needle's eye of the heart,

through which the rich, misshapen

moon must pass like a camel,

before the mimes and jokers

intervene. That tumbled road

from the crack in my back

to the crack of your indecision,

Oh I've walked it many times,

chained to my cane

with the Milky Way lambent above

and flat below the putrid detail

of those thousand lies, illusions

masks and false affidavits

that came with your smile.

Now it's time to fall again, in

the beam of your death ray eyes,

an Icarus returned without wax

to  original components,

a thing of feathers and sky

far lighter than either air

or these dark whims, to learn at last

the language of goodbye and bury

 with the bones the syllable why

~December 2019 

Written to Kerry's skylover word list for December:

 

Images: What A Human Being Is, copyright Hilma F Klimt, Public Domain

The Fall of Icarus, copyright Marc Chagall, Fair Use

via wikiart.org

Grassflower

Grassflower

When I found you

washed up by the sea,

a bottled message inked

in tears and scars

I imagined that your love

would be alive,

white and pure, discrete as

pale stars of grassflowers

which no eye but mine

would prize.

But soon I saw

that you were wanton,

no hatch

of sea or meadow,

only alive as fire is

when it uses all it can

for its fluid beauty,

dropping gems of ember'd flame

blistering the hand that tries to

pull them from its dirty smoke.

So my ash sifts like snow

on the grassflowers stiffening

now into fall and their giving,

while you burn the hills

out of control in your own

whipping black wind,

a gaudy and a wailing priest

to death.

~September 2017

Note to my remaining few faithful readers: I am discontinuing linking to prompt sites, but I will be using this blog still to archive my poetry as I write it, assuming such felicity should occur. Meaningful comments are always welcome and will be returned. I have some plans to use both this blog and facebook to try to revive the Friday 55, at least for myself; and of course, if anyone should care to join me, I would be delighted to read your work. More coming on that on Friday.

 Images via internet.  Fair use.

Dreaming: The Snake Act

Dreaming: The Snake Act

It was a day in spring

or the fullness of summer

or a twilight in September

when you took the slug from the rose

and set it on my hand.

 I didn't know that slugs

could bite, but so it was.

While the wind played like pipes

you pulled the green end--so thick so pale--

of the suckering vine from its high dark place

 in the eaves, disappeared in leaves.

It fell for hours, in sweet hissing coils

 til you cracked it like a whip and it

flashed its rainbow fangs.

Then, you gave my snakeskin secrets

to your Kardashian-assed boss

with her eyes white as vodka;

'It's all over,' you said,

as I felt the sickly flush of

being taken for a fool

yet again.

So I took a bus to California

to work the arcades

with Manny and the Batgirl

but on Sundays

I always go down

by the old river graveyard

to water the parched pots

and feed the snakes,

because I still

remember

us.

~December 2015

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The Tuesday Platform

Images: Bullsnake wallpaper, via google image search

The Organic Kingdom, by Wojciek Siudmak. Fair use via wikiart.org

Folly Of The Tulip

Folly Of The Tulip

In his first life,

he studied hard

these things: loving, giving

and forgiving, but

failed his ordination, and burned

the useless parchment of his notes.

In his second life, he found

a way to turn a flower to

a  florin, to a hundred thousand,

to raise gold from the dead dirt

and push the rumor of its breath

around the world.

He sold miracles in tulips 

before the big panic; dreams in
a single bright-flamed bulb,

its colors broken, at a price
that beggared any skill in

a workman's hands,

until the bust turned gold

to empty air, blown

to hell on the bloody

plague-ship's sails

and every coin was scattered

burned and blackened.

Feverish, he thought--

before the bright flames ate all thought--
the night wind brought

the smell of burning parchment
as the candle flickered out.

~April 2015

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Challenge: The Folly

It's my privilege to host today's challenge, which was to write a poem inspired by the concept of the architectural feature known as a Folly, among other things. 
(For full details see the link above.) 
I chose to write to an historical parallel of J. Whitaker Wright's scams, the Dutch Tulip Mania of the 17th Century, the very first 'economic bubble' off which insubstantial and irrational fortunes were made and lost by market manipulation. It's possible it was, most appropriately, ended by  an outbreak of the Black Death.

Process notes: a 'broken' or 'flamed' tulip is one which has been infected with a (harmless) mosaic virus which produces streaks of two separate colors in the petals. These tulips today are usually called 'Rembrandt' tulips, to disassociate them from their rather dark history.

For those interested in more detail on Tulip Mania, see wikipedia.

Images: Semper-Augustus Tulip, artist unknown, 'famous for being the most expensive tulip sold during tulipomania,' Netherlands 17th century.

Flora's Wagon of Fools, by Hendrik Pot, 1640 "Allegory of the Tulip Mania. The goddess of flowers is riding along with three drinking and money weighing men and two women on a car. Weavers from Haarlem have thrown away their equipment and are following the car. The destiny of the car is shown in the background: it will disappear in the sea." ~wikimedia commons

Public domain