Under Repair

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Greetings of the season to all! 

 

During the next few weeks, my aging (2013) computer is

going to be gutted, reformatted, tweaked and brought up to date so it can run the latest version of Windows. My son is in charge of all this, and I'm very grateful he has the skills I lack to do it.

When and if all is operational, I will be back. Til then, thanks to all of you who so generously share your poetry online, and who take the time to visit here and share your thoughts on my own.

 

As always this time of year, I wish for everyone the happiest of whatever holidays they celebrate, while I myself will be doing my best to

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Friday 55 Holiday Edition 2020

 

 

 Welcome all, to the final Flash Fiction prompt of 2020, a Holiday Edition of the Friday 55. This year has been a slog, and it's not over yet, but the time has come to acknowledge it will not last forever, and in fact is in its last throes of weirdness and upheaval as we speak. Whether your mood is celebratory, contemplative or still an utter roil of feelings, you're invited to write it all out here, in 55 words, no more no less, on any subject that strikes your fancy.

 

I will leave the page open for contributions til December 31st at midnight since this is a busy time for all, even in isolation. 

 

Post the link to your 55 in the comments below, and I will be by to mark the passing of this Hell Year with you.

Brighter Days Ahead.

 

 

~ *~

 

My 55, such as it is:

 

 

 

 

 

 Supplication To The Old Year

Jack Frost, Jack Frost

crack the wind

for what we've lost.

Kiss the tree,

break the wood.

Show us all that's gone for good.

 

Toss the cow over

the mad moon's head.

Put stars on her horns

in the land of the dead.

 

Numb my hand, burn my ear;

then keep your promise and disappear.

 

 

 

 

 

December 2020

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Images: Vintage Victorian Christmas Card, circa 1890  Fair Use

Illustration for The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayam, © Edmond Dulac  Fair Use

Cow and Moon, © Alex Colville    via intyernet   Fair Use

 

 

Friday 55 Thanksgiving Edition November 24 2017

Welcome to all who celebrate and all who don't this annual American voyage into the triumph of materialism over spirituality, known without a shred of irony as Thanksgiving. On this day we gorge ourselves painfully, watch football or not, gather with family and friends if we are so blessed, and then go out and spend our cash on trinkets and baubles in a mad frenzy of manipulated marketing. The original purpose of this holiday (to mark the kindness of the Native peoples to the starving Pilgrims) has devolved into a caricature, and the spirit of being grateful for such things seems to be lurking somewhere else. Nonetheless, there are many things to be grateful for, not least the memory of a warm-hearted and giving man named Galen Hayes, and the opportunity to share our words here in the meme he began--55 of them, no more no less--and of course, to enjoy our family and friends in spite of everything. So if you have found the time or the inspiration to write a 55 this week, please leave a link in the comments, and I will be by to check it out. Either way, happiest of holidays to all. This prompt will be good through Sunday.

And here is mine, in the spirit of the occasion...

Thanks Given

Thanks to the little god that

Hides in the moon, lord of night-dance

And spaces. On his face the sun, his back the dark,

Never talking, hands open;

Knowing to last you can't clamp on to

Fire or ice either one. He's my guide

Until the journey's done, from

Love to loss to harvest home.

~November 2017

Thanks to all who played. The 55 is closed till next week.

Images: The Harvest Moon, 1892, by Charles Rennie Mackintosh. Public Domain.

Moon and Cow, 1963, ©Alex Colville. All rights reserved. Fair use.

Moondogs

Moondogs



We stood and watched the moondog
bark in the cold white air.
Sharp lines of tree branch

scratched Hecate's iris blood-blue
with shadow. We talked all night
to a square empty world

till angles gave birth to circles.
Nothing that wasn't alive came there
where we two

stood laughing
moondogs round
our eyes.

~December 2015

posted for    real toads

Flash 55 Plus

Process note: A moon dog [paraselene or mock moon] is a relatively rare bright circular spot on a lunar halo caused by the refraction of moonlight by hexagonal plate-shaped ice crystals in cirrus or cirrostratus clouds ~wikpedia

Images: The Borger Oak, 1919, by M.C. Escher.  Fair use via wikiart.org.

Footer: Moon Dogs by quel. All rights reserved. source: trekearth

Urge For Going

 

 Dear blog friends and readers, 

 

I believe I have come to the end of the trail here for awhile. 

~*~

Thanks for everything you have given me through your own creative gifts, and to the few who have stayed with me throughout this journey, through your most generous gift of all, consistently reading and giving me feedback on my poetry. I can never thank you enough for that.

~*~

If circumstances permit I will be back, and no matter how empty the chair, there will always be a candle burning for you and this place.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Image: Paul Gauguin's Chair, by Vincent Van Gogh

Ghosts of All Hallows

Ghosts of All Hallows

This night puts two specters

always beside me: the

white wavering hand

of an ectoplasmic man
reaching up its rebirth

from the past's still river

and the red-trimmed ghost flint
of knife sharp December.

First one will cut me

then the other dismember,
making their wailing

promises for breaking, insisting

to midnight how real, how strong

how mine their congealing,

my self-propelled hex-helix
to annex the fetch of a feeling
or the sterile slipping steel

of each coward surrender.

How I remember--you didn't mind the knife

if it was in your hand.

I didn't mind the blood

so long as it was mine;
now it shines, the pale smile of the drowned

as if murder makes a healer not a butcher.

Oh it may; still it's time
to switch off the sound,
kill the moon,
cut to black this double feature
so both erase except for what
is left behind them in the mirror---

no lie is ever dearer
than the one you tell yourself.

~October 2014

posted for    real toads


Challenge: FireblossomFriday
 from Shay at the Word Garden:  Hallowe'en.

Three Hands, Two With Knives, Study, 1884,Vincent Van Gogh
Public domain via wikiart.org