Fantômes de Versailles

 

 

 

 

Fantômes de Versailles

(a 55) 

 

 Ghosts go hungry

at Versailles. 'Let them

eat cake,' the custodian mumbles.

Marie-Antoinette tries to bake

but flour falls through her fingers

dust to milky dust.

Marie starts the minuet.

Diamonds drop off the

Shepherdess like old flesh.

'Les riches, she murmurs,

are not quitters.'

In the Labyrinthe,

fables dehydrate.

The custodian

watches World Cup.

 

 

 

November 2022

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

a little historical nonsense

 posted for

Word Garden Word List:Ghost Eaters

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Notes: Marie-Antoinette and her waiting women often dressed as Shepherdesses and played at being country peasants in the elaborate gardens of Versailles. 

 

Regarding the Labryrinthe, or Bosquet de la Reine at Versailles: 

"In 1665, André Le Nôtre planned a hedge maze of unadorned paths in an area south of the Latona Fountain near the Orangerie.. In 1669, Charles Perrault – author of the Mother Goose Tales – advised Louis XIV to remodel the Labyrinthe in such a way as to serve the Dauphin's education..Le Nôtre redesigned the Labyrinthe to feature thirty-nine fountains that depicted stories from Aesop's Fables..accompanied by a plaque on which the fable was printed..in verse..; from these plaques, Louis XIV's son learned to read..[C]ompleted in 1677, the Labyrinthe contained thirty-nine fountains with 333 painted metal animal sculptures. The water for the elaborate waterworks was conveyed from the Seine..[and used by].. fourteen water-wheels driving 253 pumps.. Citing repair and maintenance costs, Louis XVI ordered the Labyrinthe demolished in 1778. In its place, an arboretum of exotic trees was planted as an English-styled garden. Rechristened Bosquet de la Reine, it would be in this part of the garden that an episode of the Affair of the Diamond Necklace, which compromised Marie-Antoinette, transpired in 1785..."~wikipedia

 

France is defending champion for the 2022 World Cup. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Images:  L'Entrée du bosquet du Labyrinthe, © Jean Cotelle le Jeune (1642-1708) Public Domain

Marie-Antoinette Queen of France 1775 ©Jean Baptiste Gautier Dagoty

Poem For The Last Day In April

Poem For The Last Day In April

April grates her last

most bitter notes

from quickened buds

flashfrozen in their green.

Mute prisoners doze

gone blind in empty rooms

while gilded trains

freight ghosts to plastic ruins.

The mad things 

dance together nights and noons,

cannibals mouthing drool

as stolen jewels.

For they've caught the hunger here

and now's the time

when hearts are meat,

when mothers' blood is wine,

when gold is god

when little deaths are fine,

when human good is bad

and bad divine.

The gentle break

as hate and fear align;

so here we are--

devoured under April's fallen star.

~April 2020

posted for Imaginary Gardens with Real Toads

Bang,Whimper, Hiss 

and Kerry's Skylover Word List for April, 

Deaths

Process note: My state lifts most coronavirus restrictions tomorrow, regardless of the fact that we have not had a drop in cases for 14 days as per CDC guidelines, and little testing and no contact tracing is being done, all so the serfs can go back to work for their corporate overlords. Insert Poe quote from Mask of the Red Death here.

Images: April Freeze, ©joyannjones 2019

The Plague Hospital, 1900 by Francisco Goya    Public Domain

Clocking Out

Clocking Out

2:07 pm in the 1932

over the flattest bridge

in the arrondissement, flyblown

with grey men in black hats,

where I hadn't been born

just to die but

many

many who had

were getting ready

after a glass of Pernod, of absinthe,

after another gasper.

I punched in

for the

salvage, for the

love-making bedded

in mustard-gas linen

with souls of dead boys precison-worked

behind lively eyes, 

(mais pas les généraux, 

or insects in black hats.) My

sequins bright as

the flash

of rat's eyes in trenches,
feathers to fly
my velvet cloche helm v.
the midnight sword wind
off the Somme, the sweep,
the stench. It
was only a dance
beneath the clock
of statues, of bones, a few seconds
excused
from hundred-year plagues

sent by that god who gives nothing
a  defense--jamais de la vie!--
not even the bee

except for
the sting that kills it.

~June 2018

for Kerry's camera

Another one without much editing--thanks to Kerry for the photographic nudge.



Image: Clock of the Académie Française, Paris
Andre Kertesz (1932)

Violet Serenade

Violet Serenade

In the dead hours

I try to remember

why they put me here,

what happened before the trial.

I try to remember the long ago

tune, violet in the gypsy twilight,

the fiddle scrape outside the window

that painted the difference between

a cell and a home.

All I hear in the tiptoe fog
is a grey twist of sound

that might be
the plague wagon's caterwaul

but I choose not to

bring out my dead.
 

In the paralyzed hours

when even the bonecleaners are still

I pace continually
fourteen steps across and back
while shadows hold their séance,

try to remember
which spirit to ask
for the shape of the song,
the one who will build me
on this cold floor

the circle of the dance,

the dissolving fire

of a purple skirt, and

the calling serenade
of barbwire violins.

~May 2013




 posted for   real toads
Sunday Mini-Challenge: Violet
Kim Nelson challenges us with the many shades of violet. Mine is rather dark, and not very mini, I'm afraid.

 

Hover mouse on image for attribution, or click to go to photographer's flick'r page.

 

Plague Ship

Plague Ship

In the dying twilight time

after the machine gun wedding

after the brotherhood of the bomb

after the last furrow fails in the fallout

when nothing prospers but wasting,

the damned have a dance they do

on the deck while the plague ship glows.

After the falter of centuries
they remember the helix of plague twists,

sail hard on the blood of a rat pack, 
raise masts rigged with plastic explosives, 
wear their red masks over the lesions, 
landfall a corpselight cotillion 

docked at the irradiated port of blue ruin.

The straw man is playing the bone flute.

The jackal is drooling, the deaf mute

feels up the fat girl by the bat tree

and Pan is perplexed in the pantry

where the death watch beetle clacks

in all the joints and cracks

the music of the end of the world.

~April 2013

Image: Ship of Fools, by Heironymous Bosch, 1500
Public Domain via wikipaintings.org