Crazy

 

 

 

 

Crazy

 

 

 

The psychiatrist sat
in his belle époque chair,
his beard a quenched fire,
crossed leg a hot wire.

He stared at me fixedly,
flirtatiously, fictively.
I closed my face another notch;
crushed haven on the velvet couch.

The questions were wrong
denser than dusk, older than insects,
each one packed with boxes
full of white mice and foxes.

Can you remember? not Can't you forget?

So much smoke and hot ash;

and after all that, his cigar

was just a cigar.

 

 

 

March 2025 

posted for the Word List

running with the bureaucratic theme this week

at Shay's Word Garden

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Image: Woman Leaving The Psychoanalyst, ©Remedios Varo  Fair Use

Murmur Of Flight

 

 

 

 

Murmur Of Flight

There is a murmur in the roost.

There is a rumor in the mist

and a feather in the dust,

a drop, a stall before you fall

into the long flight away

far from the silver cage of the rain,

far from the river that spies on the moon,

far from the shudder when wings are torn

by ruby traps and diamond rats

who gnaw soft parts of dreams away.

There is a tremble at the lock;

there's an assembly under the wind,

a memory at doors the sparrows tend

whose lintels are stars and whose handles, hearts

turning to open the musical sky.

August 2023

originally written for In the Footsteps of Our Feathers

and posted for Open Link Weekend at

desperate poets

Images: Three Sparrows In A Rainstorm, ©Ohara Koson  Public Domain

Ornate Door in Fez, Morocco  via internet author unknown   Fair Use

The Nature Of Fire

 

 

The Nature of Fire

"The  great desire of a flame  is to continually burn.

 The nature of fire is that it always wants more."

~Corvidus the Elder

Under the wing of the Crow

hides a feathery system of madness;

students burn syllables of darkness

spat into the alembic of sanity,
turning gossip of  metaphysicians
wanly cadaverous by starlight,

whispering quicksilver clues.

The philosopher's stone still eludes them

though they work with the frenzy of madmen

to dry the cold humors of water, push
a natural progression of vileness
to purity using the flame.
The nature of fire is that it's immaculate;
the mourning of fire is that it always wants more.

They speak these glowing desires

in the tongue-twisting gibberish of blackbirds,

court the devilish salvation of  oddity,

vulgarly cawing of victory in the

soothing-sweet chant of the damned.

I cannot credential this lunacy

despite my degree in Catastrophe.

I toast it instead with the elegy

of a memory;

our glasses hold legions of flames' flickered casualties

like ladies lavish with luxury

pile amusements in portmanteau'd  piracy,

 

knowing fire will always want more.

 ~December 2013

 

lightly revised, July 2023

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

reposted for desperate poets

   Woe For My Spurs

Original process notes: Poe prefaced many of his short stories with quotes, and many of them were ones he made up, as I did here with my  excerpt from the works of the imaginary alchemist, Corvidus The Elder.   

 

"The philosophers' stone or stone of the philosophers (Latin: lapis philosophorum) is a legendary alchemical substance said to be capable of turning base metals such as lead into gold... It was also sometimes believed to be an elixir of life, useful for rejuvenation and possibly for achieving immortality." ~wikipedia   And what deserves an elegy more?

 

 

Image: Alchemy the Useless Science, Remedios Varo

 

 

The Briar Maid

 

 

 

 

 

 The Briar Maid

 

When I slip off this

rumpled dress and slide

down the gullet of time;

when I go, and it won't be long

no matter how long;

I want what they take

from the oven to lie

at the tangleroot feet of

the Briar Maid.

 

She is faceless, fierce, ever

green as her puncture-vine cloak

drawing blood at the touch;

though I pull her strangling hands

from oak and hackberry,

with her thorns she circles sanctuary.

Whatever is left that lives knows

she marks the line

past which Time may not go.

She stands guard, 

through cyclone wind,

drought, wildfire and freeze,

for grey squirrels' trees,

for greybrown birds 

fed fat on sunflower, blackberry

acorn and mulberry,for

peanut thieves, my blue bickering jays

and black satin crows;

 

box turtle and

blister-beetle know,

roving armadillo, red-tail hawk, butterfly

in his last piece of sky, prairie

grass and the snakes that swim it,

rat and king, garden, garter

and copper-headed,

each thing secure in its

small life to come and go.

 

 

All that really matters of her

holds safe underground

as will I, ash-soul in place,

faceless, fierce

to feed and to become 

with her in season

ward and warden of that space

that was my land, that was my heart,

that is the last try

for all that's been loved

too hard, too long,

too strong

to die.

October 2022

posted for earthweal's

Poetry of Becoming

For those who want to know her better, my original 2013 poem about The Briar Girl is here.

 

 

 

 

 

Photos © joyannjones

Asylum

 

 

 

 

"..Let the doctor and the lawyer do as much as they can.
Let the springtime begin, let the boy become a man.
I have wasted too much time 

just to sing you this sad song..."~James Taylor, 1971 

 

 

 

Asylum

 

 

 

In the madhouse

on beds of daggers

we slept like crickets

chirping to ourselves

while they tried their best

to make us cannibals.

 

The nuns were worse than

lawyers, praying like accordions,

tracking their sins into our soft 

wax skulls, wheezing like roosters

when one of us cried, laying the greasy ribs

of Jesus on our plates.

They kept you behind

door number six. I'd go to you

with a stolen key, when the noon

smelled bright as carnations, 

when the nights were

more purple than the jacarandas.

 

You spoke of your father

dead of snakebite,

a clockwork marvel with

his million-dollar suit of skin,

and your mother

with the viper between her lips.

I remember your kiss

astringent with reason

as bitter lemons, and the way

your hair blew back from

your dog-brown eyes like poisonous

smoke from the oleanders.

I thought these things

as beautiful as angels

whispering in the dahlias

when I was lost in the asylum,

when the doctors did all they could

to see that we ate each other

down to the bone.

April 2022

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 Inspired by the words of Federico Garcia Lorca,

and a dream.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Images: The Madhouse, 1812-1814 © Francisco Goya  Public Domain

Vase with Carnations, 1886, © Vincent Van Gogh    Public Domain 

 

Season's Whisper

 

 

 

Season's Whisper

(A Quadrille)

 

 

Birds falter

from the sky. Kapitans cry.

Bodies lie,

blind eyes on streets

rubbed down to bone.

 

Still

the season whispers.

 

Living wings fly,

buds swell like grief unbound.

The wilding wind 

knows nothing

of our long drown.

 

The season whispers.

Life is found.

 

 

April 2022 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

posted for dVerse Poets:

Quadrille

and 

for earthweals' weekly challenge:

Radical Hope

Note: "..Kapitan is a commissioned officer rank ..in..the NATO officers rank system..[adopted by Ukraine,]used to specify commanding officers of company-sized units..."~wikipedia

Images:Detail of Scene in Bucha, Ukraine, April 2, 2022 after Russian retreat, ©Reuters/Zohra Bemsemra, cropped to sepia,  Fair Use

Magnolia buds against March tree canopy, 2016, © joyannjones

 

Three Wheels

 

 

 

 

 

Three Wheels

 

 

 

I dream the ghost;

an old woman who sits staring,

tendril-wrapped in the cold wet

wood with her soft face

washed away.

 

I dream the ritual;

an old woman who pedals

fast, pedals frantic, hunched

simian over three thin wheels

meant for a child.

I see the flooding quarry

and what they dig there that

 must not be found. The old woman

pedals madly, seeing all that goes

around and round.

I dream the Völva;

a grey woman who throws back

her unmade face and howls in runes,

traveling Time with red eyes

she calls from night.

I hear the pack's full cry loping

as one; to rend, to tear, to save

the secret moon before

she can be dug

from the water and sold.

 

 

October 2021

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 posted for Fireblossom

at The Sunday Muse

 

 

 

I have written this roughly in the cadralor form, tho I have taken a few liberties with it. 

 

 

 

Process Note: Völva: "A Völva is a female Shaman in Old Norse culture, religion, and mythology..A Völva practiced three different kinds of indigenous magic within Old Norse society: Seiðr, or shamanic ritual, was the ceremonial weaving of a new or different future..Spá, or prophecy, was the art of foreseeing the fates that were being continuously woven into existence by the Norns.. Galdr, or incantation, was the art of singing or chanting for the purposes of changing or influencing an outcome..." ~Shieldmaiden's Sanctum

 

 

 

 

 

 

Images, both via internet, attribution unknown.   Fair Use.

Mirror Moon

 

 

 

 

 Mirror Moon

 

 

 

There wasn't much left of the moon

when they got done with her.

They walked on her face

turned her rock and dust

blood and bone

to specimens and souvenirs.

Only her bright eye 

stayed open, and her broken lips

still formed the oldest words.

 

She was seen

because she'd learned to

give back light, heat, the radiation

bombarding her, her severed mouth

buzzing at the mad, at poets and priestesses.

Split between fire and ice

shadow and sun, she made a mirror for

silver darkness, perfectly alone

in an array piercing infinite night.

There was not much left of me

when you were through;

a circled eye half blind,

a mumble of separated lips

lost to reason. I found myself

sistered by the moon; she knew me

still despite the shatter

and with her borrowed light

she let me shine.

 

 

 

 

October 2021

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

posted for

The Sunday Muse

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Images: Untitled, author unknown via Sunday Muse Fair Use

Night, 1905 © Mikalojus Konstantinus Ciurlionis Fair Use

End Times Redux

 

 

 

 

End Times Redux

 

 

There's always been

only one end

to a skull run against

a wall of stone,

always a single truth against

 an outnumbering of fools,

 

always ears stopped to

the pulse-drum beating fear,

the microphone vomiting

all the glory lies. Reason's light

is not blown out no matter

how many choose to sit in darkness.

It's always been coming again,

this over-heat in the system;

where the sovereign goes mad

bashing skulls

in Punch and Judy shows,

stuffed with his own sawdust failures.

 

Our love is the ink with which

over and over

we scrawl these wartime sagas,

the spilled blood 

from which the Resistance

 always rises.

 

 

 

November 2020

 

 

 

 

 

 

                              

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

posted for the inimitable Fireblossom

at The Sunday Muse 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Images: top, author unknown, via internet, Fair Use

Bottom: image 1:Ditto;Allegedly the last picture of Adolf Hitler before he committed suicide. Hitler (right) and his adjutant Julius Schaub looking at the ruins of the Reich chancellery, April 28, 1945.

Image 2: Trump returning to White House after election projected for Biden. ©AP Fair Use

Mooncandle

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Mooncandle

 

 

I put my candle in a jar

when all the songs were sung

to send across the raving sea

to the lost land of the young.

 

I watched its flame-eye shake and spill

across the mad night sky

til frozen waves and silver snakes

knew more of it than I.

 

Light and dark were dancing.

Beach and tide were dancing.

Man and beast were dancing.

Together---

away---

one covered the other

like a morality play.

 

But a spark from the mind

the heart's testing tide

keep a candle alive,

cover wrong with right,

 

burn a flame as bright

as the white moon's sail

untangling herself

from night's matted tail. 

 

 

 

 

November 8, 2020

posted for 

The Sunday Muse

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Process notes: Land of The Young: "In Irish mythology Tír na nÓg ; Land of the Young) or Tír na hÓige (Land of Youth) is one of the names for the Celtic Otherworld... [it]is depicted as an island paradise and supernatural realm of everlasting youth, beauty, health, abundance and joy"~ wikipedia

Morality play: "an allegorical drama popular in Europe especially during the 15th and 16th centuries, in which the characters personify moral qualities (such as charity or vice) or abstractions (as death or youth) and in which moral lessons are taught."~Brittanica

 

Images: via internet. Artist unknown      Fair Use 

Celebration in Detroit Michigan after 2020 election, via Getty Images  Fair Use