Wither

 

 

 

 

 

 Wither

 

 

 

I feel an ending

traveling through my bones.

It stops for gas

just short of my liver,

looks for some diversion

 

a roadside attraction

 

as it spreads a cloth

under an infested juniper,

making a picnic of fingernails

and rheum, mumbling,

"Damn the bagworms."

How long time seems

 

in this heat-strangled house

carpentered by a coffinmaker sun,

with no appetite for increasing,

no single cell willing

to grow and not die.

 

We gracelessly surrender

 

to the wither

of merciless azure. Even the land,

with its skin drawn taut

as a snake's winding sheet

drying in August's crinkled moult,

 

knows when to quit.

 

The newborn rain comes,

leaves flush and spin;

when this red shambled summer

finds its cold-spangled grave,

 someone will laugh

up a pumpkin-spiced sleeve

 

under feckless wild stars

 

while the goldenrod blooms and my ending

takes a short vacation.

 

 

 

 

 

 

August 2023

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

posted for Summer's End

at desperate poets

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Images: Gas, 1940 ©Edward Hopper      Fair Use

Native Oklahoma Goldenrod, via okprairie on Pinterest  Fair Use

 

 

 

Friday 55 May 4 2018

Welcome, readers and players. It's time for another 55 foray, for fun, for craft, for (in my case) a bit of a political spew, a mental reaction, or a cry from the muse--whatever dilates your third eye. The rules remain the same, 55 words of prose or poetry, no more, no less, no strings. Link the child of your pen in the comments below between Friday morning and midnight Saturday, and I will be by to visit.

Please notice that the Friday 55 will no longer be active on Sundays--by then the weekend is too far gone to kick any ass if it hasn't already, and I certainly am, as well.

Mine is prose-ish this week, a book review of sorts...

"I wrote this book because I hope it will be useful to people living among the flames..."

~ James Comey,  A Higher Loyalty; Truth Lies And Leadership

Twilight Of The Dogs

He wore white shirts, the Fool dancing, damming back blood, bile and all dishonesty, walking the sewerside without a spot. Until the sewage rose, alive, saying, "Swear you love only me." 

The Fool said No.

The filth-tongue rolled, spat, vomiting him out; naked, tarred with stink, first to fall in this twilight of the dogs.

~May 2018

Note: A great many on both sides of our political divide hate former U.S. District Attorney, former Deputy Attorney General and most recently, former FB1 Director James Comey. During his varied career, he prosecuted the Mob, stood up against illegal surveillance during the Bush administration, and famously, foolishly but sincerely dared to speak his truth to both political parties, the president and the public. The price was his job, but not his soul. His book, A Higher Loyalty, is fast-paced, literate and informative, and even, perhaps, inspirational. I enjoyed reading it very much. 

Top image via the internet. Copyright may apply. All rights reserved. Fair Use. 
 The Fool, Rider-Waite Tarot deck     Public domain.

Carnival Night

Carnival Night

You come for me

always on carnival night

after the bark of the midway stills.

We're not meant for the light.

Our act is all torches

juggled in shadows fooling

to the foolish, invisible by day.

Day is for hunting

working the marks

big guns and high flyers

after the tigers, the drilling of oil

the milling of coin, the candy-coated crowds

 mice in the grain to be

 poisoned again.

We bring the doves 

we bring the flutter

and sigh of their unexpected

wings, dazzling soft rockets

that burst from our hands,

born for last grace escapes

from an unseen cage.

We are announced

when evening turns dark,

when all that's left of the sun

is a dead tiger in the sand,

and a high-wire hawk

tricking the sky

in a blind noon. 

~April 2017

posted for Kerry's Picture Painting









Optional Musical Accompaniment 

"In history, we've painted pictures grim
the devil knows we may feel that way again
the big wind blows, so the tall grass bends
but as for you, don't push too hard my friend.."

Images: Carnival Evening, 1885, and The Tiger Hunt, 1895, by Henri Rousseau

Public Domain via wikiart.org

Fool's Box

Fool's Box

From its box of cloud

the lightning howled

to find the trap

of the fool's grey walls,

crack'd them with a fitful fire,

rocked the cradle hard and higher.

Wild, wild, it played within

the morephemes of his box of skin;

burning hot as rain was cold,

too bright to lose, too quick to hold;

 til, sun-collapsed and blue air-bled,

it left him with a pen instead.

~April 2017

for      Brendan's Fools

(a tongue in cheek take for the theme of  April's 30/30)

Images: Untitled, © Zdizlaw Beksinski Fair use via wikiart.org

Hunter's Wish

Hunter's Wish

I see you in dreams,

arms akimbo clutched one-handed,

a beige on blond bending

two-dimensional distortion,

Modigliani-stretched 

or a cave painting:

Hunter, missing one forearm.

Thin as the spear

you no longer throw,

reluctant to grasp

anything at all, 

or pick up the wish

so long on your table,

staring you down,

sealed or smeared,

perhaps just trash or

scratched in a code

mathematically impermeable.

Yet I with no math,

no science, no separated brain

can read,

flat and open as a daisy,

the plain letters curved as

salmon's backs leaping,

your wish for hunt's end:

only be good, it says,

(in antelope tracks, in burnt bones

in crumbled earth,) 

be good

to yourself.
Don't forget how to use
the hand you have left.

~May 2016

posted for     real toads

Challenge: Fireblossom Friday

Image: by SiefkinDR :Photo of outline of a human hand, dated 27,000 Before Present Era, dsplayed at the Musée d'Archéologie Nationale (Museum of National Archeology). in the Chateau of Saint-Germain-en-Laye via wikimedia commons

A Turn At The Asylum

A Turn At The Asylum

I was looking for the

miracle office when I

walked through the unlocked door to see

no trace of a sign, just

Monica at the front desk offering a full

line of cosmetics, lipsticks in drawers

red pink and black,

each shade sheathed, chicly

discontinued.

From the walls gazed the founders

benevolent and plump, framed

in pince nez and patents,

spats and Van Dykes. No strait jackets here,

just the soft pavane smoothing

the sensitive system of Dr Tarr

and professional stars

and a ceiling of doctoral feathers.

And there I found you,

the last thing I expected,

thick and hot and immediately tangled

between my legs when the warder

walked in, unaware of course for his secret

success was a modest mind, 

and kind.

While the cashier was distracted, 

divvying up the day's

proceeds,(bales of hay and clockwork bears

and a chiaroscuro Tintoretto) we slipped like smoke

out to the veranda, covered safe 

in the polka dot patter of

St John Stockworth Sinclair, whose plans

were about to quite soon

reach surprisingly lush fruition.

You found us a dry corner

on the freshly hosed concrete

and blew up yellow as a daffodil

our rubber bed of air

and the love we made there

was enormous, a theatre of smiles

and soft screams, for the whole point

of the miracle office is that

everyone gets their own dreams.

 ~April 2016

 posted for   real toads

Challenge:Turns of the Tale

Images:
The Grounds Of The Asylum, 1889, Vincent Van Gogh

The Madhouse, (Detail) 1814, Francisco Goya

Public domain