Indoors

Indoors

As the long night passes over

tugging everything apart

with its rough spatulate fingers,

slapping back dreams

as if they were fits: hysterics

not visions;

chewing with windy teeth

at the logs on the hearth,

crackling their bark like bacon

shooting embers out like bullets

into the dark bitter smoke,

how I long to take

my wakefulness outdoors

into the flowing black air

that cleans without teasing,

that polishes stars to a dazzle

even fogged-over eyes can see.

Instead the murk and clouds

break the blood moon, 

white frost covers the lookout

and the enemy creeps in.

~April 2014

Image: Lunar Eclipse,  by Lloyd  Overcash via science@NASA

Repost: Walking On The Moon

Walking On The Moon

Since you left

I've been walking on the moon,

in the cold solar shadow, angel- and

demon-forsaken, unmused in a sinless place,

a floating cloud of cosmic diatoms weltering 

in undifferentiated asteroidal algae, working the

eyes of night for some buried beauty, some pandemic

of peace to infect me.

The dark side is

a rock rack, stone bed for the syncope when

white hope exhausts all exits with her rapid retreat.

I undrill in the dustbaths, naked in wallows of comet collisions,

bathed in dunes of ruthless radiance, where stars are

sprinkled in spilled saltgrains over eternity, vague and

sharp on the black velvet tablecloth

I once wore for a dress.

The sun side is harsh, but

even I tire of constant dark at times;

I know it's the side you see, fat harlequin

croissant of a sickle honeyed with words defying

gravity, toasted in the gold heat of your almond eyes.

I live on the grilling grid, fancy you making a meal

brioched of dark chocolate void where somehow

I've flavored the filling in dreams.

I walk on and on

light as the dead and sometimes

I find debris; yesterday an artifact

cast from the celestial dig of thee and me,

a vessel that used to glow, pounded to atomic dust, settled

in the flattened shardshape of a heart where I stepped

silent, and stood with the sudden choke

of moon in my throat.

~June 2012

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Challenge: Fireblossom Friday

The inimitable Fireblossom asks us to revisit poems of the past and submit what we think is our best. This is a hard thing for a writer to pick, and I think I may only be picking a personal favorite here, but this particular poem is the one I thought of first, so after agonizing for an hour or two, I'm going with it..

Header image: A Voyage to the Moon, by Gustave Dore, 1868, engraving

Public domain via Wikipaintings.org

Footer Image: Moon @ Utrecht-zuillen, by HSmade, on flick'r

Shared under a Creative Commons License

If you'd like to hear the poem read by the author, click below:

Pieces of Moon

Pieces of Moon



Four Lunes

The wind's a stiff broom

tears of snow

clean the scratched moon's face

~*~

The heart's star falling

just a spark

in sapphire void

~*~

The unwise lover

did as told

but the moon still set

~*~

Water rolls off old

fingerprints

 greasy on the soul

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Sunday Mini-Challenge: Lunes

Grace challenges us to write a form invented by poet Robert Kelly to make the intent of Japanese haiku more natural to write in English. The form, called the lune, is three lines, with a syllable count of  5-3-5.

Photo: Drops of Storm,  © joyannjones 2012

Storm Flower

Storm Flower

When day began to

split the night like cordwood,

winter went on a

week long masquerade

wearing green west wind

for robes, sunning

the pear into too-soon white ruffles,

paper petals suddenly browning

in the late frost

of unmasking;

under blurred blizzard

midnight
 March blooms instead
the moon's white eye,

 a living flower

of  storm.

~March 2013

55 sepia petals for    the   g-man

Image: Pear Blossoms, © joyannjones