Parabola

 

 

 

 

 

 

Parabola

 

 I've clerked all my life 

in the Ministry of the Moon,

a fixed point on her long ellipse,

recording her perigees, her apogees,

her slow apotheoses,

while she lays

 

her lean silver arms across

the back of my chair, penciling in 

corrections on my sedulous tallies

of tides the heart has taken in

given out, or given up.

These are not erasable

 

but sometimes she

strikes out a line

changes my totals

with her flickering hand,

all in pencil, all by moonlight remote

and hard as hammers;

 

but the sun is her bright clown, only

on fire to fill her midnight eye,

so who am I

not to dance along?

 

 

 

 

last day of June, 2025 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 posted for Word Garden Word List at

Shay's Word Garden 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Images: Aurora vortex, author unknown, via internet   Fair Use

Dark Dancers, ©Gina Jacob     Fair Use 

 

 

Soldier

 

 

 

 

 

 

Soldier

 

 

 

I am a soldier pledged to the sky, become
a sword in her blue pockets, my threadbare fatigues

marked with the grit of worlds. I fight on
because she wears time so much better than I
and vaults the earth with her mother-colored mantle
unwavering, unchanged, uncommanded forever.

Tho Night has drawn his obsidian blade
and pierced me with his heartkiller spear, tho I 

am older, diminished, my moondrops that pooled on

white grass all drunk in the sun's tarnished cup; tho
I howl my warcry unheard in the inkwell dark,
still the hole in my breast

is soft-closed with moss and silver straw
and silence that seeps out
from the green forest floor,
til dreams and signs pillow my head
and swim like sweet fish as pale as winter
through the tears on my war-stained cheeks.

 

 

 November 2024

 

 

 

 

 

 posted for Word Garden Word List

at Shay's Word Garden

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Images: Portait of Maude Abrantes, 1907 ©Amadeo Modigliani   Public Domain

Borage and Blue Sky, ©joyannjones

 

 

Dancing With Crabs

 

Dancing with Crabs

Little crabling bastard

what makes you think
you matter

 

a million like you

hatched a day

for the chef to batter.

You chase what you can’t have;

you get what you won’t own,

a tin can for a hat

 

a scuttle down the sand

sideways slow alone

to lose what you never had.

 Little crabling baby

you know that you’re
half crazy

to want what women have

to love what makes you mad;

to dance, a hermit crab

 

in a white parade of swans.

Little baby crabling

ballet's not for crustaceans.

So borrow from the oyster

loneliness the pearl

that adorns any station.

Last Day of November 

2011, revised August 2023

posted for Lonely Town

at desperate poets

Header Photo: Black Eyed Hermit Crab by Dan Hershman on flick'r

Footer Photo:  Swan Lake by Bella Lago on flick'r

Both shared under Creative Commons 2.0 Generic License

Winter's Relic

 

 

 

 

 

 

 Winter's Relic

Winter is on the steps

and in my hair. She croons

as she starves sparrows

rocks pigeons dead in the cradle.

Spare me her holy patience

her frost palimpsest on the window

her holiday coffins.

Feed me instead

on figs and sangria

scarlet under a firecracker sky

rippling with heat and Spanish moons.

 

Throw me on a bed white with

linen, not this nullity of snow that

 melts away beneath my fever.

Let me have something

besides these starving cats

under my skin, hear something besides the blues

they blow like a train-whistle from

 the feral saxophones of their  throats.

But if I open my eyes,

I see reflected only winter's relic;

a twist of shadow in the blizzard,

trying to hold back the wind,

while around me the plague

doctors work, looking for

blood from the stoned, and

the Fearless Captain stands at the door

overseeing our dispossession.

 

 

December 2021

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 posted for

Shay's Word List

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Images: Looking southwest from Five Barrows under Snow, ©James Ravellius Fair Use

The Snow Queen Flies through the Winter Skies, © Edmond Dulac   Public Domain 

Giant's Blood

Giant's Blood

"In my medicine cabinet

the winter fly

Has died of old age" ~Jack Kerouac

Alone

the tired giant sat

looking at America;

no light but Edison's stars,

no song but subways' caterwaul

in the emptiness of time

that made him small.

Bored

he decided America

was constipated. He invented

a purgative of darkness and fireworks, 

administered every night, 

and in his ennui

took most of it himself.

Restless

he rolled, up and down

the endless ribbon that was

 two thirds the mark of the beast,

til the road ran him down

and went on, its

 pockets full.

Dying

he covered the

spliced paper continuum

til  the page flapped out. He saw

the medicine he'd swallowed

was his own black blood,

while America 

was just exactly

what it seemed.

April 2020

 

posted for

The Sunday Muse

hosted by the inimitable Fireblossom

Process Notes: Kerouac's great novel On The Road was written in one continuous burst. "Before beginning, Kerouac cut sheets of tracing paper into long strips, wide enough for a typewriter, and taped them together into a 120-foot-long roll which he then fed into the machine. This allowed him to type continuously without the interruption of reloading pages. The resulting manuscript contained no chapter or paragraph breaks...

..On the morning of October 20, 1969, in St. Petersburg, Florida, Kerouac was working on a book about his father's print shop. He suddenly felt nauseated and ..began to vomit blood. Kerouac was taken to St. Anthony's Hospital, suffering from an esophageal hemorrhage...He..died at the hospital at 5:15 the following morning, at the age of 47. His cause of death was listed as an internal hemorrhage..caused by cirrhosis, the result of longtime alcohol abuse." ~ wikipedia

Images via internet, authors unknown.  Fair Use

Flash Fiction 55 Special April Edition #1

Welcome all 

to a special poetry month edition of the 55. To give a platform to those writing a poem a day in April, or to anyone who wants to engage in the form, I will be hosting this meme of G-Man's every Friday in April, and I am sure he would approve. So have at it, and share with us a poem, piece of prose-poetry or flash fiction on any subject, so long as it consists of 55 words, no more no less.

The prompt will be live from midnight Friday April 3 to 4 pm Sunday April 5th.

No Mr. Linky here, so just copy and paste the url of your 55 in the comments below, and I will be by to see what you have for us.

~ * ~

Here is my own 55:

Rationing

For today,

only one chapter

two slices bread

three acid tears

four-times-washed hands

to wipe them.

For tonight,

one half-moon

foggy with spring

two hours sleep

three cups chamomile tea

four owl-calls

playing the night music.

For that day

 unknown,

only one page

two ravens

three stubbed candles

four men in masks

to carry infinity.

April 2020

Images: Photo: via internet author unknown Fair Use

Photo: © Sergio Agazzi/Fotogramma via Reuters manipulated Fair Use
[Italian military trucks and soldiers by Bergamo's cemetery after the army was deployed to move coffins from the cemetery to neighbouring provinces.]

Fatal Charm

Fatal Charm

Untie the leaf and let it drop.

Shrivel each wing of the stuttering moth.

Shrink the sun, let loose the dark

to stripe the sky-beast's paneled heart

heavy with more than it can hold;

let the rain come hard and cold,

each death's-head drop a memoir told

of summer's wasting, long-winded decline.

Freeze the fruit and kill the vine

that can't be mine. 

~September 2016

posted for     real toads

Weekend Challenge

Optional Musical Accompaniment

Image: Untitled, by Zdislav Beksinkski  Fair Use
Fall Fade   ©joyannjones 2014