Blue Drown

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Blue Drown

 

 

I've been too long

in the blue drown

to feel again now

 

too long under

the mirrorglass glowmoon

that tides me apart

to answer your voice

 

too many waves

with their concrete hands

on my throat

their sucking salt drench

in my eyes and mouth

to ask who's to blame.

 

There's no pain left

on this sand 

swirled trashed beach

where I've come to meet

 

the last falling star,

the hungry crabs.

 

 

 

 

July 2021 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 posted for Open Link Night at

d'Verse Poets Pub

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Images: Looking For Crabs Among The Rocks, 1905 © Joaquin Sorolla  Public Domain

Two Crabs, 1889  © Vincent Van Gogh       Public Domain

I have manipulated both images.

 

 

 

 

 

 

War Staff

War Staff

You are the stick carved

to support the madman's

stuttering canter,

like the Tablet-Smasher's staff,

often breaking to a snake

for maximum effect.

You are the magus-wand

of moving plague

 pulling each first-born

from the unmarked house;
dipping only your tip turns rivers

bloody at your
unexpected pleasure.

When will it burn,

this crutch of tortured alder?
How understand the pushing thing

that has no shape it can own?

So we lie awake,

we slaves, listening for 

the shifting of the snake.

~September 2014

 posted for Meeting The Bar
at dVerse Poets


Karin Gustafson (ManicdDaily) asks us to follow the metaphor through--for me, that has been rather a winding, even snaky sort of path. I am drawing(and transposing) here from the biblical tale of Moses and The Plagues of Egypt.

Images: Staff, by Nakahara Nantenbo

Public domain via wikiart,org
Snake wallpaper via wallpaper.com
copyright information unknown.

Today, Unboxed

Today, Unboxed

Today I'll put you

in the glove box

and only think about driving.

You will not be the road, the departure point,

the destination, but a secret re-folded
after one look, stowed away,

a map where only need
will find you.

When I get back

I'll open the package of daylilies,

ease you out with the roots.

As I pull the peat-drenched soil

from the bag, fill the black plastic pots

around the breakables, you will be only

the smell of moist earth and life
let out of the box, tamped down.

But when I sit sleepless,

watching the fire where you

are the air between the wood
that makes it burn, or hunch night-baffled

on the back porch, trying to reach

through the feeding clouds

stars I once saw
so clearly


you will be in the next chair.

You, slippery as summer on steel,

with your mudslide words,

your river touch,

unconfined and unmanageable;

it's all yours after all

to box or unbox, to love

or lay down.

 ~January 2014

posted for     dVerse Poets

Poetic: Repeat Performance First Time Through
Karin Gustafson (ManicdDaily)has come up with a Ground Hog's Day prompt for us: to write about.." Repetition–in whatever form form form that may arise.  (And hopefully, there will also be some magic.)"

Top Image:Beatus Mappa Mundi, 1050.  from the Saint-Sever Beatus
Public Domain via wikipedia.com

Footer: Cube On Lawn Chair, by Gerhardt Richter via wikipaintings.org
Image may be protected by copyright.No infringement is intended. Posted under fair use guidelines.

The Lathing Song

The Lathing Song

Turn us,
turn us on the lathe,

from our shape
a new thing make.

Take our flesh to fray and break,

 clay no more

 but soft as pine,

peeled of before,
a ragged door

hung on curving spine.

Plane away
the slivering split,

spin us against the Cutter's bit

until we're either broken
 or defined.


~October 2013




 my  Friday 55  for      the g-man...




...and I also wrote this thinking of Dave King, a fine poet I met through the dVerse Poets community who has recently passed. I enjoyed his often witty, always well-constructed poems, and his thoughtful comments and know he will be missed.  With Dave in mind, Brian has asked us to write about friends, and losing them, maybe even, as here, mortality itself,
for  Meeting the Bar today.

Photo by Siebuhr.  Hover mouse for image credit, or click on pic to go to photographer's flick'r page.

Time and Mercy

Time and Mercy

Do you remember when

we sat pretending

to read, numb

in the merciful place

that had been made

as comfortable as possible;

coffee blooming, warm lamplight, soft seats

in an ersatz home, (torture cell

foyer to hell)

where looking past the glow,

grotesque swinging doors

muffled in rubber

buffered the place

where love breaks us,

where the bodies were

explained, numbered and named,

confusing sacks tubed and tangled

in the hopeful rape of machines.

Pain, gasping for air, amnesia of coma

walked up and down across the beds

while we watched helpless

those who came to help but

couldn’t care. The round clean clock

jumped at my face, a monocle

filtering, 

focusing the white waste

through its ticking lens. 

Do you remember? I'll

never forget, or how I thought

I saw us then the way

we really were

and was so wrong.

~September 2013

 posted for     dVerse Poets

Poetics: Try To Remember

Karin Gustafson (ManicDDaily) hosts today's session at the pub, and asks us to follow the winding trails of memory wherever they may lead, or where they get lost. This one took me somewhere I haven't thought about in quite awhile.

Image: Time Transfixed, 1938, by Rene Magritte

May be protected by copyright. All copyright belongs to the copyright holders

via wikipaintings. org

Devil's Dictionary

Devil’s Dictionary

It’s good

to shut the red

book and be

myself again

after the delirium,

to no longer be

a vade mecum

for obstreperous

demons, tauntingly

misquoted,

a dictionary

for devils;

to see the colors

unprismed from

your illusive illustrations,

random wind ruffling pages

not your spirit’s soft

secret fingers;

to feel my hair

an animal’s satiny pelt

and not a misprinted

text of memories

written across

your hands.

It’s good,

this stillness, good

even to grow old

reading my

next words 

from a

blank sheet.

July 2011

A little nostalgia. This was originally posted for the Grand Opening at dVerse Poet's Pub on their  first Open Link Night, (and for the concurrent closing of the inimitable One Stop Poetry) back when I had the privilege of working with Brian Miller, Claudia Schoenfeld, Natasha Head, Joe Hesch, and the rest of the original staffers. It was an exciting and memorable time. Due to various life and health issues, I've been unable to keep up with the ever-growing community at dVerse, but I wish everyone, new and old, all the best tonight, on the first OLN of the pub's third year.

Posted for OpenLinkNight at dVerse Poet's Pub

Also posted for the Last OneShotWednesday at One Stop Poetry

which closed its doors with this final event.

The original Devil's Dictionary, by Ambrose Bierce, was a collection of satirical definitions posing as an actual dictionary, and contains some of the sharpest wit in the English Language. I have used the term here in what I intend as a completely different context, but felt I ought to reference Bierce's work. You can read it online here at Project Gutenberg.

Image: Still Life with Rarities, Jan van der Heyden, 1712, oil on canvas

Jan van der Heyden [Public domain], via  wikimedia commons