Brigid's Song

 

Brigid's Song

Run with me where the moon

wavers in the gloaming

when the spears of the last seed sown

begin to bend their golden heads,

heavy and full in the pod.

Run with me in the dawn's mist,

then lay your head

where it belongs to be

so fine so weary

on the breasts that call it home.

Let the seed untie, let it blow in the wind

between the worlds.

Let your hands pass where

the skin is thin. Let the kite

give her harsh cry unheard.

In the space of a night the field is turned,

sown, and the crop fallen to the sickle moon.

The unchancy cailleach is full stoned.

The fires  flare and  smoke fills the deep woods

from the blaze of the heartwood that falls

but when the snow bites, and thought

and  memory lead the wild hunt

and what's green falls to the white sword,

remember the promise of all things

born to die and watch me go.

June 2011

 Posted for   OneLastShootSunday   at the inimitable OneStopPoetry

This is posted with sadness for the last One Shoot Sunday as One Stop Poetry disbands. Thanks to all who have made the place what it was, and especially to Chris Galford for these always challenging Sunday photo prompts.

Process Notes:

Brigid was the Celtic goddess associated with poetry, healing, and 'all things of high dimension.' She was Christianized as St Bridgit. I have taken liberties with her here and made her a summer goddess. The cailleach is the hag of winter, whom those familiar with my writing have met many times before. Thought and Memory were Odin's two ravens, and the wild hunt is an ancient folk myth prevalent across many cultures, of a spectral group of hunters. You can find more info on it here

Photo by Rosie Hardy

Madness in the Harem

Madness in the Harem

Up in the alabaster tower of carved

stone, the harem is restless.

The girls still chatter and giggle, but they

fidget. They can’t seem to settle to

the morning’s gossip or enjoy the sweets

because of the madwoman

locked up and raving

down the hall.

Once she was fair as a yellow rosebud,

but she was never right and she grew thorny wild.

She cast her prickly brambles across the old walls, trying

to wrap up the girls for trellis, make them long to

speak of her, braid her grey hair with flowers,

sit rapt to listen to her re-tell them tales

of her many imaginary sons, her unequaled

echinate beauty, her exploits and conquests

that now were ghosts reflected in a foxed mirror.

One day, when they once again embarrassed

bent their heads away, she climbed out the window, 

high on the white piercework balcony,

and began to scream and spit the foulest curses, all day 

all night, setting the monkeys howling, till they came

and locked her away, where her cries muted

behind the heavy door to only a far murmur, serene

as the sibilant calling of birds at dusk.

The girls are already forgetting her, lips parted to sing again

the gypsy lovesongs, rippling notes of laughter and desire,

fingers painting blue globes speckled with brown freckles,

boxed in a circle of silk, hatching chicks to fly where

they never can. At night, they watch the white fireflies

embroider the jungle air with needles of lightning,

splash all morning in their scented baths,

and wind their arms together like an arbor.

July 2011

Posted for   OneShootSunday  at   OneStopPoetry

Photo by Neil Alexander, this week's featured photographer

Wings ~ Deal With It

Wings~
Deal with it

No one remembers Icarus flying

Any fool on the street can say how he fell,  

tasting the burn, laughing and crying.

No one remembers Icarus flying.

Heaven’s the place you'll go after dying.

Everyone knows I'm going to hell.

No one remembers Icarus flying

Any fool on the street can say how he fell.

June 2011

*Thanks to Fireblossom for the inspiration for this title.

Posted for   OneShootSunday  at the inimitable OneStopPoetry

Photo: of Graffiti by Chris Galford, courtesy of OneStopPoetry

Tír na nÓg

Tír na nÓg

To the west, beyond the curl

of the parchment’s edge

where no quill could draw it

no robot retina ensnare it

farther than any ship can sail

Tír na nÓg the land of the young

abides

where the wind is foaled from music,

the air a silver horn, sweet sighing

surrendering years, exiling illness,

ill thought, small spiny deed. No sorrow murks, 

nothing of this fouled world can cross except

the sprites of you and me, come 

with the dancing light upon our backs.

Tossed on the wild black glamored horse

to ride, let him gallop

beyond the waves of blood, while we cling

knotting together again

our mingled strands of breath

his glittered ornament,  

beginning to remember how to sing.

So long apart, so never found, beaded on

the opposite ends of the wind,  but there

I descry we’ll be together

as  trees are together,

bound fast at the root, limbs interlaced

when we fall feathery miles from the back of the stallion

onto that clouded land no eye can see.

After pain I’ll birth your peace

and place it pearling on your lashes, on my cheek

falling from the moonpool while you set

your sky colored star upon my brow.

Your eyes the grey of mountains will close

because no eyes are big enough

to watch what we can do in that land of mist.

I’ll call you brother just as speech

begins to leave me, sister

you’ll breathe me back in ragged whisper;

lips carved linear in scrimshaw kisses 

devour all the salt denials, the only hunger left

in that land of youth remembered  

where no difference can be measured

now between me and you.

June 2011

Posted for   Meeting the Bar   at dVerse Poets Pub

Victoria's prompt: Where in the World Am I? 

I wrote this about a year ago for One Shoot Sunday, and the idea of a poem reflecting a sense of place brought it back to mind. Apologies to those who've already read it.

Process Note: I've borrowed the concept of Tír na nÓg from Irish mythology, about which I know very little. My interpretation of it here is purely symbolic.

Originally Posted for   OneShootSunday  at the inimitable OneStopPoetry. I've removed most of the comments from back then to make it less tedious for new readers.

Image:Fanad Ireland, by MickHay on flick'r
Shared under a Creative Commons license

Under the Purple Leaf

Under the Purple Leaf

Something about the faerie girl

the way she makes the green leaf curl

to show it’s purple blood within

then laughs beneath its tarpaulin,

something about her isn’t right

and yet she's perfect in the night,

her violet eyes that come and go

too bright, too wise in the briar shadow

as she steps her ivory feet, each toe

bends like wicker in her leafy shoe;

something about her smiling seems

to drift the air with breathing dreams.

She's so wicked soft and small

she almost isn’t there at all

under the tumbling  purple where

the moon casts darkness on her hair.

Something about the faerie girl

makes my northern neckhairs curl,

makes me back up pace by pace

and leave her here to own this place.

June 2011

Posted for   real toads
Open Link Monday

(Originally Posted for   OneShootSunday   at the inimitable OneStopPoetry)

Note: the photograph used for this prompt is no longer available for duplication,
but Purple Phase, by Rob Hanson, can still be viewed on

Rob Hanson's website

Current Image: Canna with purple crape myrtle foliage,

© joyannjones 2012

In the City of Android Dreams

In the City of Android Dreams

Down the latticed steps checkered with emptiness

leaving pillared buildings replicated endlessly

to arrive at their multiplying clones

in a bleach boned City of one shape,

dappled with green sulphur light I walk,

on a pavement that moves beneath me like

an animal twitching in its sleep, irked by

the buzz of yellow hellbeams that pierce the fretwork stairs.

My feet obey and slide me downward

in the inexorable fashion of the rolling belt.

The factory of my life hums as I descend,

through a rain of tumbling forms, a good machine.

There is no whirr, no clank, as the guardian statues watch,

not even the comforting blanket of a  natural terror;

only the ponderous attractive white building

which is every building, opening its million mouths.

There is no end to the steps going down

and there is no end to going down them

into that greengold sulphurous heart

that long ago ceased to beat,

into the light that is a violation,

down, down to penetrate the

atom, to be a particle forever

trapped on a stair spiraling around

the silent maelstrom’s eye.

I ask the shadowed statues

the only question I can’t answer;

the words drop, falling planets

in a black well of void.

August 1987
revised 2011


Posted for  OneShootSunday  at the inimitable OneStopPoetry 



Image by Walter Parada
Mr. Parada's website

 

Medea

For those who might feel the tale below is too dismal for this day, here is also a triolet lullaby:

Medea’s Cradlesong

So sleep my babes, and dry your  eyes

for yesterday’s gone and tomorrow’s not here

you’ll dream of frogs and honey pies

so sleep my babes and dry your eyes

just hear the bird that sings as it flies

I promise to keep you safe from all fear

so sleep my babes and dry your eyes
for yesterday’s gone and tomorrow’s not here.

Medea

In her cold bed by the Black Sea's shore

the niece of Circe stirred and felt

her fate, rushing over the wine-red waves.

She slept no more.

The world was still wet in its placental caul

new and vast as the unbordered sky

when she its deep daughter dressed herself

and came to the hall.

The Thief of the Fleece stood proud as the sun

all sweet smiles in a home she must leave

as Eros bid. Her eyes blinked once

and so it was done.

All that tale of love and death

of blood and flight,that was yet to come 
took form there then behind her eyes 

in a final breath.

She beat for him the killing ox,

the drake's quickened teeth. The dragon itself

she charmed  to sleep so the Fleece rode to Greece

between the oar-locks.

They sailed in a darkness rigid and blue,

flickered by death. She cast her spells,

she learned to kill, to make him king

for a year or two.

She poisoned, hexed, foresaw, fought to shore,

bore two strong sons to the Argonaut thief,

knowing he’d leave her as thieves always do  

for a princess whore.

The weapon children she drew from their sheath,

the boys he loved and left behind. 
Their blood was hers as it dripped from the knife. 
Their hair lay soft

as a golden fleece.

May 2011

Posted for One Shoot Sunday at the inimitable OneStopPoetry

Image: Jason and Medea, by John William Waterhouse, 1907

courtesy wikimedia commons

Blood and Sand

Blood and Sand

Blood in the sand where no waters run;

words  grow tall where crops all fail.

God hides behind a burning sun.

Robbers go and robbers come,
centuries turn in the hot wind’s tail;
blood in the sand where no waters run.

The desert eats what the heart’s begun.

Blood is drawn like oil from shale.
God hides behind a burning sun.

The crow will pick when the jackal’s done
and leave the bones to mark the trail;
blood in the sand where no waters run.

Prayers come from the end of a gun.
The dervish whirls and  women wail.
God hides behind a burning sun.

It ends and then it’s just begun.
The crop of words will never fail.
Blood in the sand where no waters run;
God hides behind a burning sun.

April 2011

Photo by Rosa Frei

Posted for OneShootSunday at the inimitable OneStopPoetry

This poem is written in the villanelle form.

Out Of The Gate

Out of the Gate

My bike was a pony once.

Lacking all originality,

I called her Buttermilk, after

Dale Evans’ fairy buckskin,

but after all, I was only

eight.

We rode the trails of north chicago

cantered through long-armed elm-roofed tunnels,

barely escaping their scrabbling fingers,

across acres of glass-strewn treacherous

desert concrete, along the weedy mountain ridge 

of the el. She picked her way with intelligent care, 

one delicate black hoof after the other

through the perilous car-infested rapids

of sheridan road.

Wherever we roamed on that big range

she never let me down.

She stayed like a quarterhorse

when I dropped the reins

and ran like a thoroughbred out of the gate

when I raced her with Donny

whose bike had no name at all.

Now I’m on a new pony, waiting

at the gate, under a leafless roof

looking down the long stretch,

sitting slumped in the saddle

surrounded by fences,

no legs to pump the peddles

but, still…

I wonder how fast

she can go?

April 2011

Posted for OneShootSunday at the inimitable OneStopPoetry 

Title Image: Photo by Greg Laychak

Blue Nowhere

Blue Nowhere

Riding a blue wind

into nowhere

she hangs on the sea line, blowing

like a sail from the rippling filament,

above the ever torn and ever mended waves,

and nowhere peace.

The wind has stripped her will,

the shadows and the sun have

blinded back the black and vacant rocks,

given restless wrack and seething foam

a splashing spurious pirate gold,

but nowhere peace.

The perfect angled arch, the symmetry

is hers, the art and all

the making hand of man,

the walls that crumble,

the bleeding words that ran,

and nowhere peace

except the peace

her being brings

unknown, past measure.

April 2011

Posted for OneShootSunday at the inimitable OneStopPoetry

Image by the gifted poet and photographer, James Rainsford

 

Display

Display

We’ve taken your weapons for

our shinies. They are Art,

looking so good there on the wall.

Not because we needed them

but because you did.

With them, you took

the fleshgift and gave thanks,

clothed by them in the speed of the hare,

the strength of the herd, only culled

lightly by these sticks and blades,

or held them strangled in

sweatslick palms; a silver sickle's flash

in the night meadow of a hidden moon,

harvesting suede-skinned  wives

with pomegranate eyes

half asleep and weeping

in the night.

Some flew, smokesung, charmed

with feathering colors, back to the thrower

magicking  the empty pot,

or were sharpened, adorned, polished,

given names and a will to seek the outsider,

to meet him breast to breast

and drink his life.

But all that’s past and gone now.

Oh pretty yes, but laughable,

adorably primitive, that hand to hand concept

of some sort of personal responsibility.

No match at all for a pinch of black powder,

and the myriad vermicules of filth swarming

from our poisoned pockets.

They look perfect on the wall, don’t they?

They match the lampshades

and paint our power

soulless but infinite

over everything that matters.

April 2011

Posted for One Shoot Sunday at the inimitable One Stop Poetry

Image: Photo by Lauren Randolph

Ceridwen

Ceridwen

She sat in the shadows

her green eyes wide, white wind in her hair

like a rustling of leaves

She chased him

as he sucked his burned fingers,

too wise to stop.

When he was a hare

winding through the grass,

she was a hound.

When he was a fish

flickering in the shallows,

she was an otter.

When he hid,

still and small in the corn,

she devoured him.

He was her mirror,

her face dotting his iris, a small parasite

he carried everywhere.

There was a rose behind her ear

and a stone

in his hand.

Then one day

blowing in autumn’s smoke,

she curled away home.

The cauldron was

boiling over,

the child laughed in the dawn.

April 2011

Posted for One Shoot Sunday at the inimitable OneStopPoetry

  

Ceridwen in Welsh legend was an enchantress, said to possess the cauldron of poetic inspiration. The myth portrays her as swallowing her servant Gwion Bach, who inadvertently allowed some of the liquid to fall on him, and was then reborn through her as the legendary Welsh bard, Taliesin.

 

Photo : Heather Nelson, by India Hobson,

courtesy OneStopPoetry 

 

Transition

Transition

Unraveled by your nearness

drunk with your skin,

body in the  blue crucible, what is cold

compressed  and heavy melts outward, 

a joyful

lead liquefied 

and endlessly rolling where

depth meets depth, and fire water,

hissing,

wavering, thrown 

bobbing on the surface

then endlessly falling down

end over end unshaped,

a spirit of the mercury ocean

transfixed and transformed, liquid

flesh and lead.

Something dies unburied, 

where this other thing is born,

borne upwards by the rippling tide 

of indigo blood and the

sudden balloons of oxygen

swelled in its leaden lungs.

Your hands fly, your quick fingers tow,

your wide eyes of dark surprise pull me,

a bubbled half-formed  thing,

across the quick and silver sea

between dimensions

still liquid, but a liquid fire,

to the plane where water pushes on air

and air hangs heavy over water

where we

burn on a raft of being

between the two

O my love

     come closer

                    still

July 1989

revised March, 2011

Posted for One Shoot Sunday at the inimitable OneStopPoetry 

Image: by Roger Allen Baut (@ChasingTao ) 

Used with permission

Leaving

 

Leaving

The glittering void

is laid across brown velvet, 

a string of trade beads

centering a cysted eye of nacre.

All else is dark, dark

except the running lights

of the impending journey.

Voices in the distance bubble and fizz

or creak mournfully, 

a failure of imagination.

A crowd that is passing

its own shadow on a circular track

of air and darkness

makes no noise.

Later, the screens and screams,

the flags, the stations, the reports,

the caterwauling coupling of

grinding track and moaning air brake,

the yammering and jamming of doors,

the blundering of the blind

coming and going of time.

Now, only the rush of the blood

fulltide in the ear,

the heartpound of desire,

the catch of a breath,

the settling intake of the thought

of leaving, leaving

forever.

March 2011

 Posted for One Shoot Sunday at the inimitable One Stop Poetry

 Photo: Grand Central Station, by James Rainsford

American Tragedy

American Tragedy

Act I

Who wrote these lines?

Not Shakespeare, maybe Chekhov,

possibly Gogol. Masks talk:

boys from the fields are told off to war; 

she watches as they come back 

empty or filling a box,

as men  are shot through the head

to take them out of the game. Sees

the blame never come home,

the deck of life stacked

against those who are numbers not

court cards, those who want

life to be more than a broken stage

where darkness casts the parts.

Act II.

A tree painted on canvas

broken lights, a roof

the color of blood in water,

every detritus disguised to

mimic and twist what’s left of the real,

glamored in a flickering blue that hurts her eyes

where shadows  pose and spew words,

grasp but can’t hold, talk but can’t tell,

sell themselves as they buy,

dancing for an illusion to wear, 

a new drug to drink, an idea to disguise

the truth of the blade that probes and removes.

Who wrote these lines? Not Shakespeare.

possibly Miller, maybe Ionesco.

Act III

The last act reprises the first. War

gets another encore, blood falls to the bottom,

a cadaveric lividity reflected as her ruddy cheeks

in a mirror that conceals never reveals.

Darkness is black light, gold is god, difference is crime, 

evil is duty, and all the targets are merged. Masks speak:

O yes be afraid, the enemy is on the coasts, 

taking the capitol, next door. The stage 

is rotten; how long before

people fall through the floorboards

screaming, pulled from the daze of their lives

into the jerking convulsions of 

the sweet poison they swallowed?

Who wrote these lines? Not Shakespeare.

surely not Euripides, possibly Orwell.

March 2011

Posted for One Shoot Sunday at the inimitable One Stop Poetry

Image: The Show Must Go On, by Jacob F Lucas

D.C. After Dark

D.C. After Dark

The machine of legend looks like its been on a binge,

listing clackless, hungover and abandoned,

screaming out no more secrets

from its rubbery cylindrical mouth.

It sheds bits of rust with the angry silence

of an old man’s  rheumy tears,

as if in its cancerous steel gut it misses

the caressing fingers of the Famous Beltway Reporter

who once sat here, fueled by tanks of scotch,

fat white cigarettes like obscene stiff worms

leaving their spoor on the scuttling fingertips

pounding the keys with a lover's self-focused delight

crescendoing release on the last page.

For years he covered D.C. after dark.

The pettifogging mooncalves

shysters and snollygosters who

bottomfeed themselves in the salons and dives

came to him first with their reeking tidbits.

He thrived on the unspoken but finally discovered,

followed his nose through the fug of sex and death,

tapped out the authenticated fables of braggadacio

or translations of confessions barely breathed in the dark

as innocents say their soft prayers to a predicated god.

He was inquisitor and thief to those who loved their sins,

smug counters and recounters of their iniquities,

his job to rob the boxes under their beds of guilt and proofs

of potency, strip the skin off their success

and show the bloody emptiness within.

His old Royal was a mad scientist's laboratory

where all the lies and ramblings, all the body parts
of stories were given a blood test, 
filtered through clean white adjectives
administered a shocking phrase

then sealed with tight lines from insider sources

into neat packages to alleviate for some few minutes

the bland boredom of the world.

His choice to make banner headlines

out of ginwhiskered rumors or

lay a blanket of newsprint over cold uncomfortable facts

and put them to bed forever.

Now young blogging upstarts sniff and tap while the

empty wind of words whistles down the internet,

for the Famous Beltway Reporter died
like all the rest, coughing up a lung

and wringing out a bad liver,
clackless, hungover and abandoned,

outlived by his byline, with only the cold

sad truth to sit at his bed and

no one even to inherit his typewriter,

a mumbling derelict forgotten,
passed out under some bridge in the night.

February, 2011

snollygoster: –noun, Slang . a clever, unscrupulous person
~dictionary.com 

Posted for One Shoot Sunday at the inimitable OneStopPoetry

 Image: JackAz Photography