The Little God

 

 

 

 

The Little God

 

 

 

 On,

into the soft-gelled 

distance of a gentled day

after dreams of storm and blood

where war gods walk the night

 

opening every door

eating whom they will.

But it was you, belly-up

who turned the knives

to scraping in my brain,

 

your suffering

that is an offering;

a worship

I can't watch

to a little god

 

who cuts up hearts

to sew his cap 

and boots

and the black mask

that shades

 

his razor smile,

your ever-burning

icon.

 

May 2022

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

posted for earthweal's

Open Link Weekend

 

 

 

 

 

also using words from qbit's list

derived form the poetry of Anna Ahkmatova

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Personal note: I've been having a dead spot, but I miss reading everyone's writing and will be around soon to catch up. Thanks to all of you whose support keeps me putting pen to paper.

 

 

Images: Gentled Day, ©joyannjones, 2016

The Return of the Flame, © Rene Magritte, 1943     Fair Use

Satin Stitching

Satin Stitching

The magnificent cause of being,
The imagination, the one reality
In this imagined world

 Leaves you
With him for whom no phantasy moves,
And you are pierced by a death.

~from Another Weeping Woman, by Wallace Stevens

 ~*~

If it was a knife

it was a knife of satin;

if there was blood

it came in embroidered knots

placed cunningly among

the blue-veined flowers

that vined along his cloth

from edge to top

covering the innocence of white

with busy decoration's mutilation

flower handfuls of needled pink

back-stitches, yellow hearts

worked in slippery-strong smooth flosses

in viridian braids, 

a pliant rope neatly crafted,

tied off like night by

the needlwoman's hands;

if there were a rope

or a knife, or any blood

at all, red or blue

still stitched upon that face

before which all life had passed

the unseen flap of its cotton parades,

and then moved on.

~April 2015

 posted for     real toads

 Sunday Mini-Challenge: The Poetry of Wallace Stevens

Grace turns our eye to one of the poets I have lived with longest, Wallace Stevens. This poem shows his influence, if not his genius.

Images: Portrait of Madame Arthur Fontaine, 1901, by Odilon Redon
La Blancheria, 1910, by John Singer Sargent
Public domain via wikiart.org

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

The Child Knife

The Child Knife

For twenty years

I had the care of it--

the blade I  loved--

to sharpen

to keep safe,

a dazzle in my eye

but in twenty years

of slice and shine,

I never guessed

it wasn't mine.

~April 2014

This is a 37-word, revised and rather different version of the poem below, 

for Mama Zen's Words Count

at   real toads

~*~

20 Years Among The Blind

For twenty years

I had the care of it

to love, to shape

to keep it safe, to hold it close

but let it fly, gleaming steel

to lightly touch

 but not too much

a beauty glaring blind my eye,
a deafness living in my ear.

If  I'd spoken less I might have heard
you laughing out your stainless whisper'd word,
 your scream--but silenc,

like any gift I get,
comes late, dawdling in
at the end of the dream;
in twenty years both deaf and blind, 

I saw only shine, felt silver life

and never knew I'd made a knife.

~March 2014

Image :Nourrice assise, tenant son poupon, Georges Seurat, 

Public domain via wikipaintings.org