Flambeau

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Flambeau

(a quadrille)

 

 

I don't want to write poems

fiddle while Rome's monde nouveau

becomes a flambeau.

They're a medicine-show elixir

a too-loose wrapping

on a fountaining vein.

 

But I have nothing else

as Arcadia burns

but this glittering salt

to seed rain

on a grassfire wind.

 

 

 July 2022

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

posted for earthweal's

Sacred Glimmers

 

 

 

and

 

 

 

dVerse Poets

Quadrille #156

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Arcadia is a region in Greece, historically designated as the home of the god Pan, and synonymous with an unspoiled, pastoral wilderness. (Many towns across the world have been named after this spot, usually--tho not intentionally--ironically. I live not far from Arcadia, Oklahoma, a self-conscious tourist trap on Route 66 near an eponymous manmade lake. So far, it has not burned down.)

 

 

 

Images: Torch, 2008, © Wu Guanzhong    Fair Use

Media photo of grassfire, Beaver County, Oklahoma 2022   via internet  Fair Use

 

The Burning Tongue

 

 

 

 

 

The Burning Tongue

 

 

 

There is a burning that

makes the same smoke

from flower or flesh.

 

Air is dead.

Sound will not carry.

Words will not form

 

on a tongue blackened by 

summer's brass palm, for weeks

held radiant over earth's dry mouth.

Heat is a cloud-killer, builder

of invincible domes in steelmelt

sky. Dust catches fire.

 

Only the insect machines

still rattle. Yet every morning

in the stillborn dawn

 

there is a gasp of birdsong,

begging and faint, staccato, sharp,

freezingly sweet. 

 

In fever dreams

I gasp along, for every note,

for any word, for a charm

 

to make this yield

of burning tongues

sing out

 

in oldest music, 

wilder words,

the sparking chant

 

that death-heat kills even itself,

that someday it might

still be worth the parch

of trying to keep living.

July 2022

posted for earthweal

Wild Language

Images: Dead Woman's Crossing, Oklahoma  by Nathan Gunter   Fair Use

L'oiseau blue,© Marc Chagall 1968     Fair Use

Friday 55 October 20 2017

Welcome, all, to the Friday journey, where we tip a hat to that great host of infinite possibilities now passed on, Galen Hayes, and build our own word-ships for sailing the seas of confusion, with 55 verbal planks of poetry or prose, no more no less, linked in the comments below. The rules remain the same, in that there are no rules, no strings and no obligations. Maybe you feel like playing this week, maybe you are otherwise occupied. Maybe you feel like commenting and visiting and maybe you hate it. None of that is important, except that you write when you are ready, because this is simply a writing exercise---for craft, fellowship and fun. As always, comment moderation is on to keep things real, and the prompt remains live from Friday through Sunday.

And so let's begin...

Leadlight

These words,

these broken bits of

stained glass, stained

as summer's love;

cinnabar, gold, sky cerulean;

fractured light that slants

notice of the

dead end of the year.

Faces are flown 

from the high window

 (unconsecrated now)

 their smiles

a scattered puzzle;
these October words

fall like
frostburned angels,

only good

for whispering to ghosts.

~October 2017

Note: Leadlight or leaded lights, are windows made from small sections of glass supported in lead frames, a generic term now often extended to all stained glass work, though earlier used only for simpler window or domestic casement art.  ~wikipedia

Image via internet search. Manipulated. Fair use.

Fur

Fur

If you've ever had wet hair

fall across your skin in rainy wind,

you know it's not fur. It holds no warmth,

it can't kill cold with a sharp curl's shine

only fly out from our heads, fine

as flurries of fool's words

mingling in snowy breaths,

ends bypassing deaths,

 split-tongued promises

brushing off bets.

~November 2012

55 fuzzy follicles for   the g-man

Optional Musical Accompaniment: