The Music Of Birds And Lions

 

 

 

The Music of Birds and Lions

If I had to say something about it

I would just mention

the way your eyes

moved through me
like fever through a lion,

like the brown-soled boots

 

of a Victorian explorer

walking lightly

with ownership, a dominion

powered by steam

careful always to
keep an echo-

map of the outback

in beige buckram binding

firmly gripped in your mind,

 

referencing pages dogeared

recording the reasons

not to fall behind on

a dangerous journey;

or that your hands

were always sliding in

a slipstream of tasks, were

water, embracing stones smooth

in their blue satin beds,

leaving behind a geologic

 

Alexandrian library

of lithic messages, codes

in languages of a few extinct

species of birds, envoys and diplomats;

that your long fingers on the stops

were your flight feathers,

playing a recital at nightfall

of calling macaws that come to color

the shadow-fronds of sunset palms

with their bright rest;

 

but there's no need to

talk about what you stored
under my skin, or tattoos in birdsong

that can't be forgotten,

so I only strum the music of it

where the lions rise

in the mauve gauze of
the jungle dark.

~December 2014

(minor revisions, 2022)

posted for earthweal's

Open Link Weekend #144

(Nothing bubbling up from the cauldron this week, so posting another oldie, one originally written for Imaginary Gardens With Real Toads)

Images: The Sleeping Gypsy, 1897, Henri Rousseau

The Moment of Truth, 1892, Paul Gauguin

Public domain

Honey Is Sweeter Than Blood

Honey Is Sweeter Than Blood

O I know you loved me

like the tiger loves the goat

and that was why we went to sea

in a cask that didn't float.

That was why you talked to me

with jungle in your throat

and crooned so comprehensively

each note the wild things wrote--

but when we broke up in the foam

it was plain I was a bear,

and you--just a heavy honeycomb

I'd pulled from a tree of air.

~May 2016

 (Homage to Dali for title)

posted for     real toads



Weekend Challenge

Optional Musical Accompaniment

Study for Honey is Sweeter Than Blood, 1926, by Salvador Dali

Tiger in Love, 1979,  by Corneille(Cornelis Guillaume van Beverloo)

Fair use via wikiart.org

The Music of Birds and Lions

The Music of Birds and Lions

If I had to say something about it

I would just mention

the way your eyes

moved through me
like fever through a lion,

like the brown-soled boots

of a Victorian explorer

walking lightly

with ownership, a dominion

powered by steam

careful to always
keep an echo

map of the outback

in beige buckram binding

firmly gripped in your mind,

referencing page dogeared,

recording the reasons

not to fall behind on

a dangerous journey;

or that your hands

were always sliding in

a slipstream of tasks, were

water, embracing stones smooth

in their blue satin beds,

leaving behind a geologic

Alexandrian library

of lithic messages, codes;

languages of a few extinct

species of birds, envoys and diplomats;

that your long fingers on the stops

were your flight feathers,

playing a recital of calling macaws

that come at nightfall to color

shadow-fronds of sunset palms

with their rest;

but there's no need to

talk about what you stored
under my skin, or tattoos in birdsong

that can't be forgotten

so I only strum the music of it

where the lions rise

in the mauve gauze of
the jungle dark.

~December 2014

posted for    real toads

The last Get Listed for 2014

Process note: I wrote this earlier in the month, when I was undrugged, and it already had several of Michael's words embedded in it. I put a few more in today as I tweaked it, using

 in one form or another music, few, grip, feather, steam, embrace, rise, fall, water, shadow, bed. 

Images: The Sleeping Gypsy, 1897, Henri Rousseau

The Moment of Truth, 1892, Paul Gauguin

Public domain via wikiart.org

River Mountain

River Mountain

Earth and the river

love in secret, miles down.

Their kiss is so forbidden
it lasts ten thousand centuries.

Earth bends in a ripple, muscles sheeted in jade,
river sighs with the leaf-breath of wind
in the vines. Sweat from earth's flanks

drips pearls in the sand. The river

brings ferns, blue feathers, flying foxes, 

and their child is a jungle

under ceilings of light.

Here death's sharply riven

by the futility of entropy, baffled from
fallow by the great golden eye, with

emerald bedding for love in abandon

where the snake of brown river

should hiss obliviously only to herself.

All this should be

the boiled-sterile kettle of darkness,

collision of forces, rock shield and wet spear,

not murmuring of lovers, junction of bodies;

or is light only the blink 

of the godmother's eyelash

a toy beam abseiling, a flaneur-dilettante 

obsessed with the lavish equipment

of flowers, possessed by a

whim to embellish  

what it will never own?

~January 2014

posted for    real toads

Challenge: Out of Standard:Reverse Globetrotting

The creatively convoluted mind of Isadora Gruye once again confronts us with the paradox of a paradigm, and asks us to "Write a poem which features an exotic setting where you have never been and (here’s the twist) where you would never want to go." I chose the incredible and other-wordly Sơn Đoòng Caves in Viet Nam--as I have only the greatest abhorrence for depths of any kind and would never allow myself to be dragged into this magical place without use of deadly force.

Process Notes. Sơn Đoòng translates roughly as River Mountain, or Mountain River, take your pick. Abseil is a caving term meaning to descend by rope. Flaneur is  a French term for an idler, or purposeless stroller, and of course, a dilettante is a very similar type, one who picks up and drops amusements, doing nothing seriously. The  eyelash of the 'godmother' refers to a worship in Viet Nam of various mother goddesses, known as Đạo Mẫu.

Images sourced here.    No copyright infringement is intended.