Firefall

 

 

 

 

Firefall

 

 

 Lightning falls tonight

along the border of change.

Summer made a brass mirror

hot as Hell's floor to flare

the prairie grass to fire. 

Now her demon child

walks the storm.

We built a tall white tower

a colossus to catch the wind

for us to eat. With a flick of

staggered shot the lightning felled it

melting it

like an interrupted dream.

And so it was

when you and I

met to hold the lightning

in our palms, flaring in

a mutual fire, to give back

the reflection of love

from eyes of brass. Too much

heat cracks the shell.

Too much

of the electric touch

and towers melt,

lightning falls singing

a crackling song that says:

no one can own me

only the end I bring them.

 

 

August 2022

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

posted for earthweal's weekly challenge:

Lightning Falls 

 

 (with apologies to Brendon 

for shamelessly using his theme title)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Note: Last night we got one of those wild storms that pop up along an advancing front. Most of it missed us here at my location, saving some very welcome thunder and rain, but parts of the state got flooding downpours, downburst winds up to 75 mph, and a lot of lightning, a bolt of which melted this wind turbine in Custer County and set it on fire.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Images: Volcano and lightning, author unknown, via the internet. Fair Use

Burning Wind Turbine, Custer County, courtesy of Oklahoma News 9 Weather, Fair Use 

A Delirium Of Butterflies

 

~SCROLL DOWN FOR THE 55~

 

 

 A Delirium Of Butterflies

 

 

There will be

a delirium

of butterflies

after the fever wins,

when the sterile step is taken

under the star-masked void,

when the bounce hits dust a thousand years

unstirred by wind or small-handed rain,

 

then

 

in freefall

instead of white detritus

butterflies stagger up

owners of the impossible

hitting your protective suit

like a trauma of cotton candy

 

then

 

you have crossed the threshold

of sweetness, otherness

 

then

 

 what you call

your life

will lose its casing

will become

a fluttering

an awe

a delirium

of 

butterflies.

 

 October 2020

posted for 

The Sunday Muse

 

 

 

Images: So Long As You Wish it, © Liz Houston Fair Use

Unknown title, unknown author, via Sunday Muse  Fair Use

Snapped

Snapped

Staring blinkless
through the image-hole,

what looks back at you now?

Before you left me

for the yielder's dark,

you braided vapor
into handcuffs, strung

me shackles in beaded
star-strings blue as lake ice

dripping symbols, medals,
seals and skulls, seven secrets

made from sickened pain
and spider's valor.
Your single eye
webbed the mayfly hours

from child's cotton wings to 

landing thud of
my woman's bleeding.

If I
could stick a pin
through the paper moment
numbed with poison,
the abdomen of

exactly when
you began to require

annotations for my
cloud to ground work,

I'd  know exactly

how you froze me
to my snapshot,

ciphered me down

to this subset of myself.
Will there be less of

these prickly pear tears
these gestures of negation
now

that we have no faces,

only hats floating light

while I wonder

if I can ever miss you 

without that forgiveness 

which will not come.

In your shutter's last squeak

I smile flattened: a mist rising up

from the wrong side of the lens.

February 2020

posted for

The Sunday Muse 

and
earthweal Open Link

Image: Author unknown, Fair Use

Walls

Walls

I'm not good enough at love to understand

this way you have of working undercover,

of fixing and of making things entire

without a self-congratulating mutter;

how all your walls are strong and mine are sand.

The love I understand is more a flyer,

spirit made of air with hollow bones

adept at breaking longer into shorter;

a wind that pulls down trees and tumbles stones

can't see walls or know what they require.

I'm not good enough at love to work with mortar,

make useful shapes from viscous mud and straw.

I only know I'm flightless in your hand,

leaning tired shoulders on the wall

that keeps me safe and caught within its border.

~April 2015

posted for       real toads

Margaret's Play it Again Challenge

I chose the envelope quintet described by Kerry O'Connor 

here.

 Poem 26 for April.

Note: This poem was written this morning, and is offered without normal polishing and editing--apologies, but that's the way the poem goes in April. ;_)

Images: The Watercarrier, 1908, by Eugene de Blaas, Public domain via wikiart.org

Barn wall, copyright 2015 by joyannjones 

Love Story

Love Story

I.

He lives alone

with her

and I suppose it suits

them both

for each a given room

built for something shattered 

long ago, patched, imperfect

hanging stiff, a prosthetic

to protect
from the pain

of being touched.

II.

But together

things get done.

The long illness of life

is a fog they

navigate with muted beams,

brassy horn of a crabbed

autonomy fussily sounding,

while traffic doctors mumble,

 there should be a lane change here;
less sideways, more forward,

some turn

toward recovery.

III.

She lives alone

with him

in carved out rooms

that never touch,

her music mute before

it drifts too far,

his face obscure behind print, the

picturebox that swallows his couch.

She only comes out

when he sleeps,

to look at the stars

to blind herself 

with the fire, the moon,

a glass of cold stone-flavored wine

its petrichor the ash of auto-da-fé
on her  tongue.

IV.

In the mornings,

they laugh at cats,

penguins, politicians, fools;

make their way to town

for words and bread

point at the house for sale, 

talk about the weather domed

over the chaos where independent

a delicate mechanism

still whirs, clicks and

joins the invisible

 revolving

wheels.

~February 2014

posted for     real toads
Sunday Challenge: Play it Again,Toads
Margaret Bednar once again brings three vintage toads' challenges out from the vault and asks us to reconsider them. I have chosen to write more directly than in my first attempt to the old Fireblossom Friday prompt  called Lights!Camera!Love! where Shay asked us to tell a love story of two people that might be a movie.

Top Image: February, by Michael Sowa
May be protected by copyright~posted under fair use guidelines, via wikipaintings.org
Footer: Caravan, by Remedios Varo
May be protected by copyright~posted under fair use guidelines, via wikipaintings.org