Turn Turn Turn

A seeker, a weaver
a student and master
voice of the worker,
never a doubter, forever
a singer. No one had to ask
which side you were on.

~January 2014

posted for    real toads

Challenge: Words Count with Mama Zen

The ever terse Mama Zen challenges us to write something suitable for twitter in 140 characters or less; I don't have much interest in twitter these days, but wanted to remember a great man, and no words of mine can ever beat his, so the fewer the better.

 Pete Seeger passed yesterday at the age of 94. Thank you, Pete, for outliving McCarthy's blacklist, for all the great songs that others made famous, for your own light which always shone bright for the working man, and for Everyman.

Image: Pete Seeger at age 88 photographed on 6-16-07 at the Clearwater Festival 2007 by Anthony Pepitone, via wikimedia commons

Shared under a Creative Commons License.

Flashback~No One Remembers Anything Least of All This

Flashback

No One Remembers Anything Least of All This

Do we find the cost of freedom
buried in the ground?
~Stephen Stills



It doesn't matter how high

the white dove flies.
The downplummet fall
is determined by
gunpowder and blood.

Where war meets money
there are only
unequal equations
and the black
hole sucksounds
of mouths
without wings.

~September 2013

Musical Interlude

I'm taking a few days off, folks--I'll leave you with some music till I get back:

Every Color

Every Color

Man in black

is every color you said

scrawling your beaten poetry 

in my sophomore 3 ring, messy and dark

as the purple glyphs on my neck;

walk a child's skip 
so proud so lost 

dreaming down the narrow halls 

of a madman from Odessa

drawling southern meltwords into

Chicago snow.

You thought first times

were a gift;  I who

thought you were the giver
found out soon after 

what all the free really means

first drug there and gone

before needle finds arm.

You called me Angel

which only goes to show

we know nothing of angels

on this earth

only devils 

who know us

too well.

~September 2012

Posted for   Poetics   at dVerse Poets Pub

Fred Rutherford makes his first appearance as host today, appropriately asking us to write about First Times

Optional Dylan

extra-optional texas hillbilly music

Image: Hermits, by Egon Schiele, 1912
Public domain via wikipaintings.org

The Show Must Go On

The Show Must Go On

Not a line is left

of this player's love,
no drunkard's laugh

not a scene or shape

to shift

or spark to lift.

When you've pulled 
the punctured heart,

when my motley mask dries,

another fool will come to wear it

another curtain rise, another starlet bare it

to the house, and overplay the part.

~August 2012

A little drama with 55 bells, and motley

for    the g-man 

Optional Musical Accompaniment

Image: Jester Mask White and Gold, by royblumenthal  on flick'r

Shared under a Creative Commons License

The Wait

The Wait

For so long,

hope has been only the

party dress of a woman

naked underneath, but one night
I know you'll find me, take me

off this skewer in the southern heat.

I'll fetch a sizzled sigh when I feel

your hand on mine, warm and dry

as summer peaches, your eyes

browner than husked pecanshells

earthed and softened by rain.

I'll see you again

through the listless curtain breath

where you walk in puddled shadows, a speck

of substance, flesh of my flesh cut on the

blade of the horizon, 
parted from me only by

the last sigh of the day

coming closer.

I'll go to the mirror

remake my face in fewer years

take away the new fear from the eyes,

the acquired acid behind the soldered lips,

run a quick feather over the pain you left too soon to see
before I blow light into my cheeks and wick

the old roundness for you to globe

in the lantern of your kindling palms.

All that's left now

is the wait.

~August 2012

Posted for   Fireblossom Friday    at real toads
Shay asks us to write a love story for the inner movie lover.

Optional Musical Accompaniment:

Image: Sunset over the Haunted Cowyard, © joyannjones

Bending

 Bending, or

The Queen of the Roller Derby

A Villanelle

When the world finally comes to an end

we won't have to drag the work scene.

We'll be able to breathe and to bend

in ways yogis can't comprehend.
We'll be skinned in magenta and green
when the world finally comes to an end

There'll be no more flyers to send        
no enticements for washing machines;
even dirt will be able to bend.

We won’t have to sit and pretend
that the hurting will help us get clean.
When the world finally slops to the end--

no more aps, got talents or #trends,
no more broken glass soup in tureens,
no more shatter before you can bend.

It will be true then that we were just friends;
the Roller Derby will have a new Queen
when the world finally comes to an end,
I"ll remember the right way to bend.

~August 2012

Optional Inspirational Accompaniment

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Out of Standard with Izy

Hair-raising wild women(and men) must unite behind the challenge thrown out by the inimitable Isadora Gruye to make something happy from the end of the world as we know it. I can do that, but I need skates...

Image: The Virgin, by Gustave Klimt, 1913, oil on canvas

Public Domain, via Wikipaintings.org