Starlorn

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 Starlorn

(a 55)

 

 

 

The black dog runs

on the wind that

reaps the world.

 

He bites starlorn

at the moon who knows

his teeth will find marrow.

 

Behind him comes

the scythe that cuts tomorrow

down to bone.

 

Moon must learn to bleed,

monkeys to eat snow,

man to live on tears

where the black dog runs.

 

December 2021

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

posted for Dverse Poets

The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Images: Moonrise, 1884, © Stanislaw Maslowski   Public Domain

Wolf-Dog, manipulated, 1976 © Jamie Wyeth  Public Domain

Premonition

Premonition

The swagger-boys

came at nine

to set back time;

forgot the tics.

They shaved my head

with Occam's razor;

forgot the brain

burned down my house

forgot the windows

confiscated bullets

forgot the gun.

At last they showed the knife

and took my legs;

forgot the heartbeat

that let me crawl away

on love alone.

~February 2017

" [Hitler] has grasped the falsity of the hedonistic attitude to life. Nearly all western thought since the last war, certainly all 'progressive' thought, has assumed tacitly that human beings desire nothing beyond ease, security, and avoidance of pain. In such a view of life there is no room, for instance, for patriotism and the military virtues. ..All three of the great dictators have enhanced their power by imposing intolerable burdens on their peoples. Whereas Socialism, and even capitalism in a grudging way, have said to people 'I offer you a good time,' Hitler has said to them 'I offer you struggle, danger and death,' and as a result a whole nation flings itself at his feet."  

 ~George Orwell, from a review of Adolf Hitler's Mein Kampf, New English Weekly (21 March 1940) via wikiquote

Flash 55 at     real toads

[Plus~ 1984 ]

Image: Premonition of Civil War, 1936 © Salvador Dali

The Tumbleweed Maker

The Tumbleweed Maker

You are the thing that

makes the tumbleweed,

the thing that consuming,

consumes itself.

Not the snake but the fire,

not the mirrored serpent but

the serpent in the mirror,

not the rain, ever,

but forever

the dustbowl wind

that takes everything loose and light

breaks what tries to stand

that    pushes              pushes

pushes

to have its way

then getting it,                     

                             sighs away.

I hide from the sun
you pull out  

to smile benignly

dripping gold on yesterday's wreck

while trusting flowers come, 

tumbleweeds sway in greengold balls

the cat lolls on his back

forgetting to crunch up the doves

and things seem--

O

just 

fine--

until the smile 

opens its can of hell,

curls leaves, drops flowers as

the panting cat thins in parched dust

where

the warped wall,
the emptied weed
the hiding heart

are light and loose and broken

ready for you,

the black wind

that blows it all away.

~April 2014

Images: Homestead and farm in Texas County, Oklahoma, USA, during Dust Bowl.
"Dust Storm Near Beaver, Oklahoma"1935
USDA, NARA respectively, public domain via wikimedia commons 

Papier-mâché

by DvoraV

Papier-mâché

It started the other day

and dripped over tomorrow

from the bottomless bottle:

the syrup of Sanctimony,

the wine of Denial

the milk of Monotony

the sweet juice  of Ego,

seeping. Tomorrow's edges

curled in the damp and melted away,

 papier-mâché pulp-shaped to another day.

Stark karma they say, or the wages of sin,

the white worm within; where everything's

stolen,  having nothing is earned. So drink

by all means--drink again, but leave me dry.

~February 2013

 

© Isadora Gruye

posted for   real toads

Sunday Mini-Challenge: 14 Liners

Isadora Gruye of The Nice Cage blog lends her striking photographs to Kerry O'Connor 's  challenge: 14 line poems, sonnets or otherwise. This is an otherwise, but I include a previously written and flawed sonnet , massively REwritten for this challenge (and for fun.) 

Thanks, ladies, for getting me to finally clean up this one:

New Year's Sonnet

Will New Year bring a pair of secateurs

to deadhead all my wild-seed elflock flowers,

unfinished blooms of rainbow, these my fleurs
du mal et de bonheur in columned hours

tossed into a loathesome braided trug

of blades, composted in forgetting dryrot heat,

or bring a plague of wasps to buzz in my mug

so each sip's a sting to a thirst long incomplete?

But I dream he comes, his arms full up with days

his pale star hands seed-scattering in the skies;

with a quirk and puff of dawn’s seducing ways

to bring the wine of a kiss without goodbyes,

a song on the moon, a sigh you can’t conceal

that opens the flower, feeds and makes it real.

~December 2011

Sevenling: At The Intellect's Wake

 Sevenling: At The Intellect's Wake

At the Intellect's wake--what will you have, scotch mist

watered wine or hot spleen juice for tea? We serve it in numb;

no china pots, crystal cups in an ape's auditorium.

Are there teeth anywhere? Please open wide--

they'll be gently extracted; the buffet is cold mush

lukewarm spoonfuls of treacle, with thin cabbage soup.

Where are the mourners? Out in the rain in a graveyard of swallows.

~September 2012

Posted for    real toads

Sunday Mini-Challenge: The Sevenling

This form was first used by Russian Poet Anna Akhmatova. See the link for details.

Photo copryright and courtesy of Margaret Bednar. Used with permission. Thank you , Margaret.