The Little God

 

 

 

 

The Little God

 

 

 

 On,

into the soft-gelled 

distance of a gentled day

after dreams of storm and blood

where war gods walk the night

 

opening every door

eating whom they will.

But it was you, belly-up

who turned the knives

to scraping in my brain,

 

your suffering

that is an offering;

a worship

I can't watch

to a little god

 

who cuts up hearts

to sew his cap 

and boots

and the black mask

that shades

 

his razor smile,

your ever-burning

icon.

 

May 2022

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

posted for earthweal's

Open Link Weekend

 

 

 

 

 

also using words from qbit's list

derived form the poetry of Anna Ahkmatova

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Personal note: I've been having a dead spot, but I miss reading everyone's writing and will be around soon to catch up. Thanks to all of you whose support keeps me putting pen to paper.

 

 

Images: Gentled Day, ©joyannjones, 2016

The Return of the Flame, © Rene Magritte, 1943     Fair Use

Après La Révolution

 

 

 

 

Après La Révolution

 

 

After the revolution we

became the aristos.

 

I fell in love with a

prince of the butterscotch castle

but I could never get past

the guillotine in his head, the wolf

hissing in his flock of noise,

the glitter-ship in his bottle

waiting each day to sail him away.

 

All the devils of summer

came to our parties, flashing

their ruby eyes in the dark, stealing

my stockings, hiding the postman,

eating the silverware. I made a centerpiece

from applecores, black horns and tail-spikes

and called it art diabolique.

 

When the winter night

finally flapped its starstained carpet

over the horizon, its patterns worn

and indistinct as we were, all

the stardust beaten out of us, I knew

we wouldn't make it to the end,

or even to France.

 

La révolution est morte.

Vive la révolution.

 

 

 

March 2022

 

 

 

 

 

posted for 

Shay's Word List #17

Joni Mitchell

Images: Study for the Spanish Dance, 1879, © John Singer Sargent  Fair Use

Charlotte Corday, 1860,  ©Paul-Jacques-Aimé Baudry   Fair Use

Lost At Sea

Lost At Sea

The moon mocks a sailor

on the surface, bobbing and breeching.

Boiling in darkness

the sweet arch of coral

clings with its bones to the breast of a giant,

crumbling to a legend

in its poison bath.

The antic fishes

with their calico colors

paint fading murals in a

melting palace, then rise grey

in their bloat to bleach clouded tides.

The sun's spear drives home

through a broken shield

splits the skin of the ice

so it roams without purpose,

a white wolf with Fenrir's breath
that moving southward slowly starves.

In this wreckage and wrack that's the prize for destroyers

who sold all their flowers to dance in an oil slick

and all the world had

for the price of

a mess of pottage, is there one soul left

who can make a new day?

~July 2017

 For Brendan's changing earth

Images: Untitled marinescape, by Zdislaw Beksinski   Fair Use

Edward G Robinson watches a film of flowers before death, from the 1973 movie Soylent Green

Public domain

Process note: "A mess of pottage is something immediately attractive but of little value taken foolishly and carelessly in exchange for something more distant and perhaps less tangible but immensely more valuable. The phrase alludes to Esau's sale of his birthright for a meal ("mess") of lentil stew ("pottage") in Genesis 25:29-34 and connotes shortsightedness and misplaced priorities..."~wikipedia

Hex

Hex

When night is black

and miles deep

packed around the sleeping sheep,

when stars hang, turning

on the gallows breeze,

past the witchwood, past the reavers

come the shadows, come the hexers.

When steel blade breaks,

when there is no hammer,

the weak must make do

with the flames of summer

to burn the curse in with red and yellow,

with living swords

with poison murmur.

There where the ivy

chokes the oak

old ones fall in the unraveling work

the young complete, for

cradle-cloth ends in a winding sheet.

Hands that bake bread

will dress the meat

and black night will come

neither swift nor slow

to lay kings low.

   

~April 2017

Images: The Sheepfold by Moonlight, 1856, Jean-Francois Millet, public domain

Photograph, via the internet, author and title unknown. Fair use.