Gone Away Monday

Gone Away Monday

Does Easter Monday have a name;

of the rolled stone, the fleshless breath of bone, the

hollow's voiceless void; the comfort of a sobriquet, 

a calendar law of foreign Palms or dreadful Goods,

to mark the thing it's not?

The steam, the mayfly dew, the hope, the striking snake

that rises only shimmers happy cataracts 

to disappear; a lie preserved in

language of dead seeds, amber silo filled with

miracles' weeds,

of a cloud we

would become and cannot be, a flame burnt out

we barely know we see.

 

 April 2020

 for Kerry's April wordlist #13: lie

and Imaginary Gardens with Real Toads

Play it Again Day 13 Thirteen is Poetry

(the 13 words: disappear flesh bones voice dreadful

away dead law happy comfort amber miracle flies)

Images: Cave Dwellings near Sperlingua, Sicily, 1933 © M.C. Escher  Fair Use

The Cave, 1901, by Clarence White   Public Domain

The Golden Grey Age

The Golden Grey Age

When water loved air

pitched low pitched black

in a graphite blur

we only walked

where the footing was good

where we knew where we were.

When the mist showed her teeth

after licking our cheeks

while frogs sang like birds

and bugs trilled like frogs,

we went round the soft spots,

we stayed on the rock

we knew, borrowed from time

with the night and the day

handfast gloved in grey.

Suede words in the wind

fell hollow and old, phantoms

fogged out of caves

by drenched lips or tongue

concealed in the dark

of a half-dried smile.

Spirits swayed windward.

Broken clouds dropped rolled,

flowed their cottonwool glaze

on earthenware folds; we hummed air's

humid song, pitched low, pitched black

when the grey age was gold.

~September 2015

posted for    real toads

Images: Beaumaris seascape, by Clarice Beckett, public domain via wikimedia commons

New York Dawn, the Hudson, by Leon Dabo, fair use via wikiart.org

Mirage

Mirage

Can I trace it, that spider footed midnight kiss

that once walked its lips across my crying skin?

Is it hung head down in the cobweb spun across my

crumpled cheek; waiting still? starved rigid?

But no, it ran; I see its mark, staggering spider steps

through dry sand floating on the dust of desert years

at home in emptiness, a secret life uncurled after the

scirocco passes, charming away dead flesh from bone

not even a smell to hang in the drying frame of air.

Any little busy thing consuming convenient corpses

to white skull’s stare knows each precious drop preserves

savor and sweat for a  hankering life spent waiting

for the next foolish thing to drop, hamstrung by thirst

lost beyond finding, hallucinating deliverance

blinded by a lunatic sun that tilts the web's sweet spin

to catch an oasis kiss and in mirage to live again.

February 2012

Posted for  real toads

Sunday Challenge

featuring Ellen Wilson

Top Image: Web, by Ellen Wilson

Footer image: Blossom, by Ellen Wilson

of Ella's Edge, Used with permission.