Opportunity

Opportunity

The lullaby

I sing you

always puts me to sleep.

When I pour

out the wine,

I drink from your glass.

My painting

of you

becomes a self-portrait

and when I cook

you your dinner,

it's my favorite dish.

"Thank you my love

for all this you give me---

You're welcome," I say,

under my breath.

~April 2015

Poem 21 for April

I will not be linking much for the remainder of the month, but am grateful to everyone who reads, and will do my best to return the favor.

Image: Self-portrait with Model, 1903, by Louis Corinth

Public domain via wikiart.org

Love Letter

Love Letter

[From/To Self]

An hour choking at the compassionate basin

coughing up the vinegar of your indifference,

pen an ungainly stick insect that jolts and poses

on the leaf, leaving behind its pinprick holes

and black tar droppings.

Your saloonful of buffalo girls are

making a mud-wallow of your business--

broken bottles, shots at midnight, the clumsy winding

and unpicking of the bandage, the childish rush

to clean the wound,

needle threaded with a flame

to poke white hot into your swelling

bringing only tainted blood and no relief.

There's no hero dawdling home upon

a handy wine dark wave, no velveteen nurse

to blot the nightsweat from the page,

no diagnostician or connoisseur of blight

to assure you fatality is a condition

that with proper care and rest

may show improvement.

There's only one who loved you once

and whom you've since

taught better, and no one here at all

to read a letter
never mailed.

~January 2015, rev. February 2015

Process note: I have added the subtitle (from/to self) above to clarify the intent and the point of view, ie, the 'you' here is the writer.  I have reached the point where I am through with rewriting and editing this for now, and the poem still apparently doesn't make itself clear. Apologies, and at some point may revisit to do a better job.

posted for     real toads

Kerry's Challenge: Is Love a Tender Thing?

Kerry O'Connor (Skylover) asks us to ponder some of the more obscure corners of this thing called love. Or even " to write to the theme: Love Thy Enemy or Love is The Enemy or Love, Despite Your Enemy." This is a poem about love and the inner enemy.

Image: A Lady Writing, 1665,  by Johannes Vermeer

Public domain via wikiart.org

Love Story

Love Story

I.

He lives alone

with her

and I suppose it suits

them both

for each a given room

built for something shattered 

long ago, patched, imperfect

hanging stiff, a prosthetic

to protect
from the pain

of being touched.

II.

But together

things get done.

The long illness of life

is a fog they

navigate with muted beams,

brassy horn of a crabbed

autonomy fussily sounding,

while traffic doctors mumble,

 there should be a lane change here;
less sideways, more forward,

some turn

toward recovery.

III.

She lives alone

with him

in carved out rooms

that never touch,

her music mute before

it drifts too far,

his face obscure behind print, the

picturebox that swallows his couch.

She only comes out

when he sleeps,

to look at the stars

to blind herself 

with the fire, the moon,

a glass of cold stone-flavored wine

its petrichor the ash of auto-da-fé
on her  tongue.

IV.

In the mornings,

they laugh at cats,

penguins, politicians, fools;

make their way to town

for words and bread

point at the house for sale, 

talk about the weather domed

over the chaos where independent

a delicate mechanism

still whirs, clicks and

joins the invisible

 revolving

wheels.

~February 2014

posted for     real toads
Sunday Challenge: Play it Again,Toads
Margaret Bednar once again brings three vintage toads' challenges out from the vault and asks us to reconsider them. I have chosen to write more directly than in my first attempt to the old Fireblossom Friday prompt  called Lights!Camera!Love! where Shay asked us to tell a love story of two people that might be a movie.

Top Image: February, by Michael Sowa
May be protected by copyright~posted under fair use guidelines, via wikipaintings.org
Footer: Caravan, by Remedios Varo
May be protected by copyright~posted under fair use guidelines, via wikipaintings.org

Unwinding

Unwinding

Turn down the twist

in the ticking

will you;

the flickering,

take it away

from the weave.

Bring some quiet
even if

it only comes in black.

Drop it

like snowdazzle

into the tic of the eye

and lay a cover

over the clutter

of what must rest

before it breathes again.

~May 2013

posted for   real toads

Challenge: Interpretation with Margaret

The artist's eye of Margaret Bednar once again presents us with inspiration derived from the works of a talented group of young artists. The image above is the copyrighted work of Chelsea Bednar, and used with permission, for which much thanks. .

Fleck

Fleck

Disturbed by some scuttling shadow

on the white edge of vision,

half-asleep in a city where

 buildings are served

in chocolate slabs,

pieces of crumbling cake

under a sweet spread

of buttercream moon,

I curl up my edges,

dream a fleck of

epicurean raft, floating

a picnic for dragonflies

on canals of

the murmuring night.

~April 2013

55 deviled mosquito eggs for   the g-man

Image: No longer available