Halloween Party

Halloween Party

What shall we be

for the masquerade? 

you asked from

the deep grinning dream.

I already had on my Valkyrie hat,

the one sewn with tattoos and blood.

You must do as you please, I replied
(tho this seemed to bring

 little illumination.) 

There isn't much left
in the bag of tricks; the banker's

taken the vampire's mouth, 

the real estate man is pandering the wig, 

and the clown suit's loaned out

in the service of the nation--

but in the trunk

at the bottom

of the basement stair,

there's a kilt and a claymore, 

so allay your despair

 and grow a pair,

if you're still

man enough to wear 

a skirt.
You looked grim and no wonder,

(pondering no doubt

the smoked mirror legs)

absently fingering a long

sheet-white robe, a thorny circle,

a plastic cross.
You'll have to go by yourself,

I said

into my wandering hat,

if you're thinking of

wearing
that.

~October 2015

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Image: Masked woman, author unknown, via the internet. No copyright infringement intended.

Out Of The Mirror

Out Of The Mirror

"Everybody's wearing a disguise
to hide what they've got left behind their eyes
but me, I can't cover who I am..."
~Bob Dylan, Abandoned Love

She saw the way his restless eye

moved blind past her every word

and so she took his face out of the mirror

carried it carefully home

to keep it nearer.

She put it in a special box,

a casket carved with sunsets,

walled with moon

and told it all the jokes

he never gets.

It laughed so intimate and close

and winked at her with

a silver seeing eye

made suddenly luminous,

all callousness washed out,

sketching sweetness in the charcoal 

smudge of the remitter,

delusion's kiss---

till in some ignorant apogee of bliss,

she let it out.

The box spilled hot laughter hissing
back to its glassy home, and

a bloodstain on the nacreous quilt of dawn,

as surely all along

she should have known.

~February-March, 2015

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The Tuesday Platform

Image:  Still Life with Spherical Mirror, 1934, by M.C. Escher
Fair use via wikiart.org

Carnivale

Carnivale

You said you'd give me the moon

on a piece of toast

or at least the sweet-hot peel

of her cinnamon skin.

You said you'd raise from the grave

my heart, the ghost

to fill with black-burnt warmth

that could begin

a beat to bring horned dancers from the trees

life to lift me lurching from my knees

a revenant in red

that's what you said

that night in the glimmering swell

before the Fall

but it was Carnivale.

~September 2014

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Sunday Mini-Challenge: Promises

Karin Gustafson (ManicDDaily)  asks us to think about the promise behind the chocolates, broken, or missed, kept or imaginary. This is just something that popped up in my head a few months back, and seems appropriate now, as Carnivale is winding down in Venice 

and it is about a promise, of sorts.

Photo by Alessia Pierdomenico/Reuters

via google image search source

no copyright infringement intended

Safe

W.T. Benda

Safe

A Rhyme Royal

Safe is frequently bought and sold

 in the marketplace of the faceless,

 their masks of wood or hard-bitten gold

hand-carved, hand-painted, the loneliness

lost with expression. The false-positive test

is smoothed-over, the feel symbolized

as only a mask can describe.

 

An infant subsists on its mother

for resolution to every disruption;

so the broken bend to another

in the masks that cover dysfunction.

 A commerce is made of protection;

the result is that safe purchased spot

for those who can't face what life's not.




~February, April 2014

A few months back, Fireblossom used the illustrations of W.T. Benda, one of which is shown above, to inpire us to write in a form known as the rhyme royal, explained in full at the link(this is the quatrain/tercet variation, abab bcc.) I started this back then, and have resurrected and revivified  it today for Margaret's Play It Again Challenge at



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Peacock Mask

Peacock Mask
(or, Looking Back)

You stood in the center

in your peacock mask

in your turquoise dress

pushed and over-drenched

in the too bright room: 
The cat, you said,

is a reductionist first

but the bird is blue

and small as air.

The cat moves like light

but the bird's not there.
I'm a sugar queen now
beginning to melt.

Your encircled eyes were wild for free,

but you asked to be locked

in someone's vault, and I knew lies

and curls were all you'd got.

Unbuttoning your chest,

you spread ribs and said,

See, here's a jelly bean

red and sweet.

The bird flew hard to bring it to me.
It's watching you

now, the harder you see

the more you look away.

You dropped the mask

when the feathers cried.

I can't save you, green girl.

You'll have to melt

under the door and so away.

The stain and the taste

I expect will stay but I still hear wings.

The blue bird flies.

~October 2013

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Mini-Challenge: Masks
The enigmatic grapeling hosts today with a subject I've always felt drawn to--masks. I once again wrote and formatted this all online, as the browser is the only part of my moribund computer I can use, so please excuse the roughness of what would normally be for me, a draft. I'm afraid it's not very mini either.

Hover mouse for image attribution, or click on pic to go to photographer's flick'r page

shared under a Creative Commons license

Mi Sueño

Mi Sueño

Mi sueño, you think I don’t know you,

the scar bright, the piercing surprise

but I do, as I know blue diamond-dust rain

sparking on the amber candles of crucifers,

as I'm skinned by the one atom of brain

that guides the devouring mandible

or your bells of lips, your aluminum eyes,

rouged with the fever of Lucifer.

I know each black strand of the pile

you crosscut for the velvet mask;

I wove it myself, wore it myself

in autumn moon and blood, to  hide, to show

only the wells from which we drink. I think 

you don't know me, my dream, but you do.

~July 2013

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Sunday Mini Challenge: The Sonneteers

Kerry O'Connor has managed to penetrate the fog I've been in of late with her examination of two poets born in July, Petrarch and Neruda, who excelled in their own interpretations of the sonnet form. Despite the rough rhyme and stanza breaks, I doubt whether this is really any kind of sonnet, but many thanks to Kerry, and to the poets who responded to this challenge, for inspiring me to write when I thought I couldn't.

Image: Cauldron Of The Sorceress, by Odilon Redon, 1879
Public Domain, via wikipaintings.org

Electric Veil

Electric Veil

We spoke

without moving our lips

in the manner of

the electrically veiled.

We stroked

each others' pixels, pink and plump

on the liquid crystal display,
dry as shed snakeskin

to the attenuated touch

in the febrile flashes

of the tubes of night

malfunctioning.

Atoms surely collided,

neurons fired in an old dance

but the feet never moved

the fingers never

found the frets or pluck

of the plangent lyre.

Only the synthesizer

thumped on till dawn

when the power failed.

~April 2013

 Hover mouse for image attribution, or click to go to the photographer's flick'r page.