The First Crack

 

 

 

The First Crack

The first crack

always seems easy to mend,

an almost invisible fracture in

 an otherwise perfect thing; so, too,

 the first pock on the face of the moon.

Yet let a few years pass and her skin

is a ballgown of craters.

So I knew when the peacocks

cracked November with their

idiot's scream, when you spit the last

 blackberry from your stained lips, that the

 first bleach of sun on Rhea's hair

would turn your head, 

make you thirsty

for the black cup of ocean, the yellow

manes of lionesses blowing on the sand,

the kelp smell and the wind-draggled lillies,

leaving me alone in this Pharisee's garden

with nothing but a raddled moon

and the smugness of

peacocks.

November 2021

posted for Shay's

Word List

 

 

 

 

Rhea was a Titaness, a goddess, daughter of the earth goddess Gaia and the sky god Uranus, the consort of Cronos and mother of Zeus, as well as grandmother of Persephone and Dionysus.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Images: Lunar Craterr, 2015, ©Æstronomær shared under a Creative Commons License

Peacock Consorts, © Charles Tunnecliffe   Fair Use

 

The One-Legged Pilot

The One-Legged Pilot

When the trip begins the shore

is decorated with shipwrecked sunspots,

round mirrors of messaged bottles

I save from their cold blue exile,

and littered with rags of the rescued

I've replaced with nothing 

but the silken silver whisper

of my hair on salt-splotched skin.

The sirens call us, shrieking,

arabesque on their wayward rocks,

to sing us the torment of flesh,

of which there was never enough;
They curse

each plank we walk, and

even the death below

so nothing can really save us,

yet the peg-leg pilot 

steers us onward. The beach rears up at last; 

dry sand drinks our tears

while the sweet hormonal sea,
its tidal pulsing

the sirens' operatic hypnotic, even the grace

of salvage itself
abandons ships and sailors and

I am what washes up

alone on an arctic rim, hollow 

as a rind of frozen shell.

But the demon in the song is always full

and he is true still.

He's watched at the drydock of my bed

as decades rolled themselves up

like razor wire, tangled and untouchable

drawing blood at the slightest move.

He's seen the candle lit

and blown out
lit
and blown out
til the stump is smaller

and flatter

than even the look in your eyes.

A faithful sea-dog, my demon pilot

strong on a single leg, old but hot as pitch

his ivory teeth bigger, brighter--

a white flash in the liquid night

that only shows when he smiles.

~March 2016

 posted for        real toads

Weekend Challenge


Note: This poem has been edited since the reading



If you'd like to hear the poem clumsily read by the author, click below:

The Siren, and
Ulysses and the Sirens(Detail), by John William Waterhouse.

Public domain

Blue Sail

Blue Sail

Blue frosted as a winter berry

your eyes’ light and the freight they carry

heavy as the slamming fall of night

why should only a glance bring such delight?

Blue sail, silhouette of a free blown boat

against a sleeping lion sun that seems to float

caved and hidden where mare's tails cover care

drifting like fire on the clamor of air.

Blue dark as deep and soft as summer sea

pulls at my heart's locket of memory.

Blue song high and sweet no singer can sing;

blue candle against the dead this night will bring.

June 2012

Posted for   real toads

Sunday Mini-Challenge: The Blues Stanza

but though I love the blues in all its forms, it didn't want to cooperate, so this is the free verse option of the challenge, to write on the color blue.

 Optional Musical Accompaniment

Image: Impression,sunrise, by Claude Monet, 1873

Public Domain, via Wikipaintings.org

Rán's Road

"...With fearful might the sea surged

Methinks our stems the clouds cut,-

Rán's road to the moon soared upward..."

~The Prose Edda

Rán's Road

Back home

from nowhere

on the sundown road again

out beyond the ending

after the wildest wave,

a light floods

sunfallen scarlet in seastream.

Feeling stops, mind in

memory’s mooring

no longer finds netted

maritime eyes of pearl
rippling sundrops

chained shells of silver

to barnacle the heart.

Still, far inland

a spring wells

dripping from the split rock

a dribble, compared to that

vast redstained road flowing

from white Rán's mouth, yet

quenching, sweet not salt;

time stops the oarsmen,

the twin bladed hands

are still in the dark.

Alone becomes

a mooncell, it’s centromere

suspended, each joining
separating identical
chromotids, a whole

from division’s drilled duality

a sensate totality

light made from shadow.

When

the soul returns

from her long journey

impossible not to know her

under the silver hair

the shabby close

the smile unchanged

December 2011

"...The stormy breast rain-driven,

The wave with red stain running,

Out of white Rán's mouth..."

~Ibid.

Posted for   OpenLinkNight   at dVerse Poets Pub

Note: In Norse Mythology, Rán was a sea goddess.She was the wife of Ægir, a sea giant and god of the ocean, known also for hosting elaborate parties for the gods ~per wikipedia


Image: English Channel at Night by Aaron Phelps on flick'r

 

 

Immigrant

Immigrant

In the year 1900, Chicago was the city with the second highest number of Swedes after Stockholm, the capital of Sweden.~wikipedia

A hundred years ago

he stands on the quay

small in his winter clothes

the boy bruised with

old men’s hopes, starved on

uncles’ dreams, ragdoll boy

who must change everything

blinking into wind freshened

by an icemelt ocean

squinting at tomorrow.
He's tumbled forward,

cheap goods into steerage,

clutching everything there is,
a ticket, his other shirt, a bar of soap;

for wrap a blanket of fog,

for comfort, wet cheeks and his

mother's goodbye on

a rough linen square, tucked in

yesterday morning’s pocket,

too young to know every departure

wears an arrival under it’s coat.
He thought he’d had 

a bellyfull of tongues, 

mumbles of better life,

nonsense new beginnings

until they gave him 
the silence of that deep

blue voicelessness clearer

than any words, whispering
darkness come dripping

by the board bed to
read him to sleep with

leviathan’s salt breath
and disperse the makeshift
ectoplasmic home exhaled
by heart's hard wish.

All his life to come

he would hate the water

that gave the ship its wings, the
feel of slick shoes, 

cheeks wet with tears

long goodbyes and lying

promises blown on white steam from

rough pitcoal to where I stand now,

cheeks wet from my own departures

the only difference between us 

that I am naked 
under my coat.

December 2011

This poem is for my grandfather Ragnar Carlson, who in the early 1900's made the long sea journey to New York City and then by rail to Chicago, from Gothenburg, Sweden, alone at the age of eight. Like many immigrants at that time, he traveled steerage, which was the cheapest accommodation. Below you can see a picture of him and his dog taken a few years after his arrival.

Posted for Real Toads

My dear friend, guide and support through the wilds of the poetry blogosphere, Fireblossom of Shay's Word Garden, is hosting a prompt today at Real Toads on arrivals and departures. Sorry not to use one of your very cool photos, Shay, but this one has been in the works a long time and I'd already illustrated it.

Also posted for  Meeting the Bar:Evoking Emotion  at dVersePoets Pub
Note: I don't do critique, and by participating in this prompt, I am not asking for it, just thought the poem fit the theme. 

Header image: Emigrants on the Wilson Line steamship Ariosto in Gothenburg, Sweden.

Old postcard 
Footer image1: SS Hibernia, Anchor Line, 1868 Nov. 24, foundered 700 miles from the Irish coast as a result of accident to propeller shaft, 78 lives lost
Old engraving Copyright © 2011 Heritage-Ships.
Footer image2: Ragnar & Dog, circa 1920  

Copyright Verse Escape, 2012

Musical Interlude~Thankful I 've Got Ears

Just some rock and roll and stuff, that I listen to on days like this. Browse through and hopefully find something you can enjoy.

Neil Young & Crazy Horse

That's Bullets--not Bull, folks.

 Some classic Zep; Page does some wicked things with a violin bow here:



Personal favorite:



And for Brendan--this might be why Hendrix was number one on that Rolling Stones Top 100 Guitarists List:



Though Stevie Ray's version ain't too shabby:




Not to mention, David Gilmour at Royal Albert Hall, showing why he should have at least made the top ten:




Finally since she couldn't get behind Steve Earle, some psychedelica for Fireblossom, the original Time, all eleven minutes of it:

Happy Holidays, All. I'll be back on deck with some poetry tomorrow.