Reading With The Fishes

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Reading With The Fishes

 

 

 

For many years I lived

in a hollowed-out book

before I was eaten by fishes.

 

I can't say how

they found me. I thought

I was safe there

 

wrapped in my blanket

of words, deep in the good

leather smell but

 

fish it seems

are surprisingly quick

and genuinely hungry.

 

At first it was nibble and tickle

but soon my eyelids were history,

and I won't be needing lipstick any more.

 

After that, I took my words

and went to live

with the animals.

 

We have an understanding: they

don't write poetry, and I

don't have them for dinner.

 

 

 

 

 April 2025

 

 

 

 

 

 

My second copy--wore out the first

 

 

 

 

posted for the Word List

at Shay's Word Garden

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Images: Fisherman's Shack, 1994 © Jacek Yerka    Fair Use

Immortal Poems, 2025, ©joyannjones

 

 

 

Pumpkins, Hornets and Dinosaurs

 

 

 

 

 

 

Our Trance

 

There he was, drunk as Baudelaire

and twice as fishy when

he unbuttoned the pearled rain from

my shoulders. I'd eaten stars

for dinner, so I didn't care

if it was a trance. 

That night

we were happy as pumpkins.

 

 

 

 

 

Archeology In The Dark

After millions of years, archeologists

found the dinosaurs

playing poker and spinning poems

in the tar. "We never knew we were lost,"

said the dinosaurs, "but thanks

anyway."

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Funeral At The Old House

The old house was full of hornets that morning.

Hornets cooked the breakfast( ham and eggs

and mealworms.) Hornets washed the dishes

and went out for funeral groceries.

Hornets paid the bills and mailed them

with the correct postage. They mean well

but they sting.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 Lucky

 

I keep wondering how

I got shut in with Frankenstein

and the old blind man

who ceaselessly 

lights candles while Frankenstein

smokes all his cigars.

Just lucky, I guess.

 

 

February 2022

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

posted for Shay's Word List #12

Richard Brautigan 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Bonus: My favorite poem by Brautigan:

 

 

 

 

" Lions are growing like yellow roses on the wind

and we turn gracefully in the medieval garden of their roaring blossoms.

Oh, I want to turn.

Oh, I am turning.

Oh, I have turned.

Thank you."

 

 

~from Rommel Drives Deeper Into Egypt, by Richard Brautigan 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Images:Pumpkinhead Self-Portrait, 1972, © Jamie Wyeth  Fair Use

Illustration of dinosaurs from the Late Cretaceous.© Jorge Gonzalez Fair Use

Vielles Maisons, 1920 © Helene Guinepied    Fair Use

Still from Bride of Frankenstein, 1935, Universal Pictures  Public Domain

Roses and Beetle, 1890, © Vincent Van Gogh   Public Domain   

Labyrinth

 

 

 Labyrinth

 

I played in the field of the minotaur's horn.

The rose trees stretched for twenty miles.

His black eye blinked

my slow heart's beat. I danced all day where

the elephant's hip burned blue in the shade,

where I glimpsed the escape the animals made

before the age had been born.

 

The green grey moor 

was soft as a sponge 

on my cheeks where tears

disappeared in the mist.

I wondered if we'd ever kissed

in the halls behind the labyrinth's door

where the beasts blew their breath on the shadow play.

I saw them come at the end of the day

with all to give and nothing to say. 

Their souls each put in a hazelnut

that sank in ripples of earth's wet heart

covered in time from fire and flood,

from our hands that pull the world apart,

that turn his field from grass to chalk

where roses blow for twenty miles

and the animals at last

have begun to talk.

August 2021

 

 

 

 

 

posted for earthweal's

Open Link 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Images: Minotaur Caressing A Sleeping Woman, 1933, © Pablo Picasso  Fair Use

Swans Reflecting Elephants, 1937 © Salvador Dali  Fair Use