Asylum

 

 

 

 

"..Let the doctor and the lawyer do as much as they can.
Let the springtime begin, let the boy become a man.
I have wasted too much time 

just to sing you this sad song..."~James Taylor, 1971 

 

 

 

Asylum

 

 

 

In the madhouse

on beds of daggers

we slept like crickets

chirping to ourselves

while they tried their best

to make us cannibals.

 

The nuns were worse than

lawyers, praying like accordions,

tracking their sins into our soft 

wax skulls, wheezing like roosters

when one of us cried, laying the greasy ribs

of Jesus on our plates.

They kept you behind

door number six. I'd go to you

with a stolen key, when the noon

smelled bright as carnations, 

when the nights were

more purple than the jacarandas.

 

You spoke of your father

dead of snakebite,

a clockwork marvel with

his million-dollar suit of skin,

and your mother

with the viper between her lips.

I remember your kiss

astringent with reason

as bitter lemons, and the way

your hair blew back from

your dog-brown eyes like poisonous

smoke from the oleanders.

I thought these things

as beautiful as angels

whispering in the dahlias

when I was lost in the asylum,

when the doctors did all they could

to see that we ate each other

down to the bone.

April 2022

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 Inspired by the words of Federico Garcia Lorca,

and a dream.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Images: The Madhouse, 1812-1814 © Francisco Goya  Public Domain

Vase with Carnations, 1886, © Vincent Van Gogh    Public Domain 

 

Home With The Diatoms

 

 

 

 

Home With The Diatoms

 

 

When I was a child

before sleep we prayed

for love to be shown, for safety to stay,

starved children in Korea to be saved.

Then the light would go off.

I'd put my real bed

of conches and nautilus twists

under the toss of the night's waves.

Regal on the seafloor

shells poked their bubbling heads

up out of snow-sand. Aquarelle fins and

gold-grey eye-globes blinked around me,

all greeted with a princess flip

of my green-scaled tail.

Reclined with coelacanths,

eyes blueing in my head,

all my mother-cut hair grown

long as a squid's arm,

I waited to swim into sleep,

watching the shadows of

far-above gulls mottle the green ceiling,

alone yet blanketed in

life watching over me, drowsing

to the epochs' stereopticon flash.

When we met in the deluge

you called in a lost language

for that nightspell to rise, to link us,

to sink us completely

in diatoms, wave after wave,

kissing underwater, not afraid to breathe

not afraid to drown, kelp-hair

in the undertow fanned and fluttered

summoned by a sea-fire of peace

to make ashes of fear.

 

March 2022

posted for earthweal's weekly challenge:

Shelter

Process note: "..Diatoms are unicellular [microalgae]: they occur either as solitary cells or in colonies, which can take the shape of ribbons, fans, zigzags, or stars..Living diatoms make up a significant portion of the Earth's biomass: they generate about 20 to 50 percent of the oxygen produced on the planet each year,  take in over 6.7 billion metric tons of silicon each year from the waters in which they live, and constitute nearly half of the organic material found in the oceans..."~wikipedia

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Images: The Bright Liquid, © Edmond Dulac    Fair Use

Pink Shell With Sea Weed, 1937  © Georgia O'Keefe    Fair Use

Friday 55 September 22 2017

Welcome again to the Friday journey, where everything we desire to say attempts to erupt in exactly 55 words. This concentrated elixir can pour out in any form--free verse, formed poetry, prose fiction or non-fiction, so long as the vessel is 55 words--no more, no less. Post a link to your own message in a bottle in the comments and I will be by to see what you have concocted. We carry on this meme for our own enrichment,and in memory of a blogger named Galen Hayes, the G-Man, who started this particular ball rolling in a way no one will ever duplicate. (You can read more about that here.)

Comment moderation is on to discourage the trolls and the unserious, and the 55, as always, will be open all weekend to allow full time for the creative juices to flow.

Meanwhile, let's get down to business:

Cracking

I noticed today

a crack in the world

where chaos bleeds out

a mislaid horror

fresh from remission;

the dreamer's last surprise

for some things must die

when every glass breaks,

every child's mistake

throws the best away:

your rainwater eyes

hair full of darkness

navy-blue night's luminous arc,

book-breathing walls, shelved larks

sanctuary.

~September 2017

Process notes: I don't think anyone could have gone through this last month without feeling the breath of chaos released--this poem is an amalgam of  many past and current disasters, personal, political and planetary, and disasters to come.

Image: Larson C Ice Rift crack, prior to calving Iceberg A-68, via internet. Fair use
(If you'd like to know more about the recent activity at the Larson C ice rift in Antarctica and its newly calved mammoth iceberg, you can read about that at these links, as well as  here.)

The Traitor

The Traitor

On  the sixth year's
first morning,

Annika

left the revolution.

She'd lost the means

to pay again the

too salty-sticky

stains' red blackmail;

music stopped playing

in the Enemy's screams,

Commander-cursed snow

blessed her

with blankets for the dead.
Overnight

she became a traitor

for glowworms,

the bourgeois bloom

of  marigolds,

the bark-wag

of dogs.

~July 2013

55 choruses of La Marseillaise for         the g-man

Process notes: This was taken from yet another dream, and bears no relationship to the French Revolution, the October Revolution, John Lennon's Revolution #9, or any specific historical event.

Images: Liberty Leading The People, by Eugene Delacroix, 1890
Glowworm, by Sergey Solomko, 
Public Domain, via wikipaintings.org

Sanctuary

Sanctuary

It was the time of cold.

The water from the sky ran black like inky blood

and the tree in the dark storm was ripe for burning,

solitary acolyte in a serpentine ceremony of snow.

You kissed my summer dry palms

just before you ran to your winter white pack

far off along the indigo rim of night.

I heard the howling begin

without me. I pulled in the last syllable of stone,

and stripped to bare words. A single step danced me 

from maenad to anchoress, peering through the squint

at your unconsecrated communion.

January 2011

Submitted for the Monday January 10 Prompt at Big Tent Poetry, which was to utilize alliteration by choosing a letter, writing a word list, and using the ideas it generated for subject with a word from it for the title.

Photo: © Copyright Colin Smith and licensed for reuse under  Creative Commons License.
Cell of the anchoress Christine Carpenter, 14th Century. Shere, Surrey, UK