The Burnt Angel

The Burnt Angel

Following the jesus of absence,

flying on the defunct

pegasus line,

will the angel come again

when the moon walks through the pines

or under the yolk of sun

frying unbroken above, or

on the dancing floor

where  flying leaves have one last waltz

before they're dirt and leaves no more?

Will the tongue

that was a biting worm

push deep into the shifting worlds

to eat the wide silence

of the last legends ever heard?

How will the hands

that broke down stone by stone

each road and arch, bricked bridge and hall

pile up that rampart place at last

without rafter or wall?

The icewind says nothing

in her bully brief run;

nothing to the questions

the coming dark

asks the sun.

Pegasus flies, but

Icarus tumbles

burning

down.

~December 2014

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Kerry's Weekend Challenge: In Other Words

Kerry O'Connor has been doing a series of prompts focusing on word replacement in the titles of various works. This week she turns us towards some Christmas-oriented titles--yes, this is about Christmas, of the hedgewitchian kind. I have been out of action for awhile, but couldn't miss Kerry's last prompt of the year.

Image: Pegasus, by Wojciech Siudmak

Fair use via wikiart.org

Ghosts of All Hallows

Ghosts of All Hallows

This night puts two specters

always beside me: the

white wavering hand

of an ectoplasmic man
reaching up its rebirth

from the past's still river

and the red-trimmed ghost flint
of knife sharp December.

First one will cut me

then the other dismember,
making their wailing

promises for breaking, insisting

to midnight how real, how strong

how mine their congealing,

my self-propelled hex-helix
to annex the fetch of a feeling
or the sterile slipping steel

of each coward surrender.

How I remember--you didn't mind the knife

if it was in your hand.

I didn't mind the blood

so long as it was mine;
now it shines, the pale smile of the drowned

as if murder makes a healer not a butcher.

Oh it may; still it's time
to switch off the sound,
kill the moon,
cut to black this double feature
so both erase except for what
is left behind them in the mirror---

no lie is ever dearer
than the one you tell yourself.

~October 2014

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Challenge: FireblossomFriday
 from Shay at the Word Garden:  Hallowe'en.

Three Hands, Two With Knives, Study, 1884,Vincent Van Gogh
Public domain via wikiart.org

Blue Ice

Blue Ice

"They tell me of a home far beyond the skies. They tell me of a home far away.

They tell me of a home where no storm clouds ride.

O they tell me of an uncloudy day."

~traditonal Southern spiritual

Each year you've been gone

in the last warmth of ten crawling Novembers,

I wrap the roof in blue lights.

Their infant's eyes in the night

open wide over me.

I don't pull the plug

when the slow seep of the sun

lanterns the cloud-muted sky;

they are the ward

the spell that says

as I speak so shall it be:

blue eye meets blue eye

to spark the white moon,

forgiveness will make

uncloudy day,

love given will tune

out the tolling mistakes.

Home is not

it is not far away.

Each year in the dead cold

of eleven Januarys

I take the blue lights down.

They tangle in my hands like

skeins of  blue ice. There's no

feeling in my fingers when

at last they're packed in the attic,

where their blindness shows clear

 Home is not here.

~December 2013

If you'd like to hear a very rough recording of the author reading an unrevised version of  this poem, click below:

Optional Musical Accompaniment

Photos © joyannjones, 2013

The Science Of Forgetting

The Science of Forgetting

is a difficult discipline.

A woman may study it for years

and get no further along

than misplacing last week's tears.

Deconstructing a memory

is an engineer's fright.

Remove two weight-bearing

steel eye beams' sight

and the roof falls in, with

plaster dust in lungs smelling

thick as yesterday's loving;

a month, a year, a decade swelling

up later, liquid in feverish coughs.

Touch only the tip of the cornerstone---

the burnt bridge flies back

 from the black Unknown

so that ghosts cross it easily,

notes play, that particular song;

and it's all to live over again,

over again, all wrong.

The science of forgetting

should instead be our religion

where faith can clean the memory,

and  forgiveness our decisions.

~November 2013

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A Birthday in December: Christina Rossetti

Kerry presents us with a challenge to write to the poetry of British Victorian poet Christina Rossetti, a personal favorite of mine. I was unable to come up with a sonnet or roundel, but did manage some rhyming.

Images: The Gate of Memory, and Golden Head, by Dante Gabriel Rossetti
Public Domain via wikipaintings.org