Deadlight

Another offering of two tonight, but I promise not to make a habit of it. I probably should have picked one of these only, as they're very similar, but I thought the contrast in form and non-form might be interesting to some readers. Please don't feel compelled to read both, however. There's a lot of poetry out there to enjoy tonight and I don't want to burn anyone out.

 Deadlight

We walked  together, your fetch and I

under a dry black moon

in a milk wet sky.

I talked at length to what had no ear.

Dead light crunched underfoot

in the burning of the year.

To all I asked, its cloud lips were sealed

and its star eyes were filmed

to blank white wheels.

It had no more breath, no more words than a stone

but yet it was better

than walking alone.

~August 2012

Posted for   OpenLinkNIght   at dVerse Poets Pub
Claudia is hosting a travel schedule of poets from around and through the world tonight. Come join us. Link in is live till midnight tomorrow.

~*~

I rewrote this poem into a syllable-counted, repeat-rhymed Welsh form belatedly for Kerry's Sunday Mini-Challenge:Cyhydedd Hir   after seeing so many excellent examples by the participants at Imaginary Gardens with Real Toads. (Mama Zen and Karin Gustafson, in particular, wrote some excellent ones.)
This is how it worked out:

Deadlight Redux

We walked together

in black moon weather

your fetch and I under a milk wet sky.

I talked, each word dear

to what had no ear

in the burning year, under dead light.

Its cloud lips were sealed

its blank eyes white wheels

all I asked, it peeled from my own sighs.

It had no more home,

no more words than stone

yet walking alone's hard by dead light

I attempt to read both iterations below:

deadlight by Hedgewitch O'theWilds

Process notes:  

fetch (2) — n  the ghost or apparition of a living person
(from the online World English Dictionary)

Images: Black Moon © joyannjones 
Night Holwers, by jurvetson on flick'r

Shared under a Creative Commons Attribution Only License
Cropped by joyannjones with gratitude and appreciation for the original work, which can be viewed at the link above.

Pentas

 

 

Pentas

The harder the times,

the 

more

I stretched

and dried,

the 

more, 

the brighter

you grew.

You were the color

in landscape burnt umber,

I the drab hill-coined

sunflower wilder than fire,

origin unknown.

You were the wrought iron

sun, the shadow soft

traceries of midnight

candle against

 monsters

under the floor.

You filled nothing,

yet the emptiness

slipped away 

in your

 tumbleweed kiss.

 In the

 dryheat storm

you brought the rain

that carried inward 

to the bone.

 You were 

my five pointed star

symmetrical in chaos

flaring flame-blushed coronas 

of uncatchable peace

above the dark soil 

of the heart.

Now there's nothing

in bloom

but words that plump

in acid petals behind my eyes

and cerise memories

even drought 

can't burn down.

~July 2012

revised August, 2012

Process Notes: Pentas lanceolata, also known as Egyptian Star Flower, is a tough and durable bedding plant for climates with extreme heat, and blooms better and more profusely the hotter it gets. It is usually seen in a cherry red or lavender color, though there are pink, white and two toned cultivars also. It has a vivid, lush green leaf and clusters of star-shaped blooms which are attractive to butterflies and hummingbirds. I grow it every summer.

Posted for   Poetics   at dVerse Poets Pub

Stu MacPherson of Poems of Hate and Hope  hosts today and asks us to try to find the Beautiful Sadness. (His photos are better than mine, but not of flowers.)

Images of wild sunflower and Pentas lanceolata  © joyannjones

Lost at Sea

Lost at Sea

The wind's stopped now,

and all forward motion.

She rocks, sails lost,

sieved silk too soft

to sheath another

blade blow.

White horses

stamped the decks;

dazzling blood from

each silver wound

splashed cold

through her belly.

Gravid with flood,

when her water breaks

so will her sides

birthing her last rest

in blue nippled 
wilderness.

~August 2012

Posted for   MeetingtheBar   at dVerse Poets Pub

Where Claudia asks us to write with an Impressionist's brush

And also, discerning eyes may have noticed,  this sailor's shanty contains

 exactly 55 drops of cold blue sea for

the g-man

Image: Rocks at Java~The White Boat, by Joaquín Sorolla, 1905, oil on canvas

Public domain, via Wikipaintings.org

Bending

 Bending, or

The Queen of the Roller Derby

A Villanelle

When the world finally comes to an end

we won't have to drag the work scene.

We'll be able to breathe and to bend

in ways yogis can't comprehend.
We'll be skinned in magenta and green
when the world finally comes to an end

There'll be no more flyers to send        
no enticements for washing machines;
even dirt will be able to bend.

We won’t have to sit and pretend
that the hurting will help us get clean.
When the world finally slops to the end--

no more aps, got talents or #trends,
no more broken glass soup in tureens,
no more shatter before you can bend.

It will be true then that we were just friends;
the Roller Derby will have a new Queen
when the world finally comes to an end,
I"ll remember the right way to bend.

~August 2012

Optional Inspirational Accompaniment

Posted for    real toads

Out of Standard with Izy

Hair-raising wild women(and men) must unite behind the challenge thrown out by the inimitable Isadora Gruye to make something happy from the end of the world as we know it. I can do that, but I need skates...

Image: The Virgin, by Gustave Klimt, 1913, oil on canvas

Public Domain, via Wikipaintings.org

Bonsai and Pantoum

Two poems tonight; please only read as much as you are comfortable with. The second is a pantoum, for Sam's prompt last Thursday.

Bonsai

         At evernoon 
the garden burns again

scorched by a sun no less denying

          than the coquette rain.

Only  fools

 grow roses in a desert.

Pressed and cut,
transplanted too much

in  seedling stage

nothing takes root;

                               matured, only a dwarf of

what was meant                         
                                                             twisted in miniature,
stunted to be

a curiosity.

Those with a taste

                                                 for the odd, the extreme,

occasionally collect it

but soon pass it on

                       as too difficult

to maintain.

~August 2012

Photo credits: header Bonsai importado, by Kenneth F Andrade

footer: Bonsai,M J Ambriola, both on flick'r both shared under a

Creative Commons license

Posted for   OpenLinkNight   at dVerse Poets Pub

 ~*~

For those who participated in last Thursday's FormforAll, Samuel Peralta hosted a pantoum session at dVerse. It took me awhile, but here's what eventually bubbled up, with a few liberties taken. As always, late to the party.

Three Egg Omelet

(A Pantoum)

Three blue eggs nestle

no one can see

deep within the thistle,

down among the rosemary.

No one can see

three words miscarry.

Down among the rosemary,

two lives we bury.

Three words miscarried,

the moment passed beyond recall.

Two lies were buried;

sun sets, moon rises, stars fall.

The moment passed beyond recall;

planes crash, trains wreck every day.

Sunsets blind highrises, curtains fall;

hearts bend, love ends, songs replay.

Suns crash, stars wreck every day

and fall into the thistle.

Hearts bend, lies end, songs replay,

three blue eggs nestle.

~August 2012

If you'd like to hear the poem read by the author, please click below:
three egg omelet by Hedgewitch O'theWilds

Header image:Blue, by Jon Eriksen, on flick'r
Footer image: Robin's nest in trumpet vine, by b4b2, on flick'r
Shared under a Creative Commons License

Static

© Teresa ~ Razzamadazzle

Static

There's a party across the dark

or only across the fence

wild yells and sobthump of bass,

heartdrums to rattle the thin bones that

showcase the throats of a competing band of frogs

all wailing on in the one-armed oak 

oblivious.

The noise is just past

the shifting planes of the haunted cowyard

floating over the restless translucent stock

with the howl of the ghost train's whistle, there

where the wild things, the young things are,

drinking and drugging and howling

in ways even wolves have forgotten.

They don’t know about

the night things, about who

owns this darkness;

they have no idea

that they are only a bundle of swagger,

passing background noise,

static or food.

~August 2012

the haunted cowyard © joyannjones

Posted for    real toads

Sunday Photo Challenge: Teresa @ razzamadazzle

Top image is all Teresa, bottom is one of my own photos--I hope she doesn't mind that I borrowed a trick from her and hunted it out because it illustrated part of the poem.

Some optional musical accompaniment:

Header Photo: Sunset, by Teresa @Razzamadazzle

Used with permission: her photo blog

Footer photo: The Haunted Cowyard, © joyannjones

Old Lace

 Old Lace

"I am small, like the wren, and my hair is bold, like the chestnut bur, and my eyes like the sherry in the glass that the guest leaves."

~Emily Dickinson*

The banner was large but she was small,

and near as a girl's blue-gowned doll--

but still-- big enough to be

picked up and thrown down, so she

made herself small as poppy seed

blown away before she'd bleed

blackened snow

on another knot of dough.

Age began to twist-- and clutch--

to spot the careful square of lace with such

delicate blotted tears--

cindered brown the daisy years

to ecru tracery drawn of voids defined--

cool cotton-- on the cheek that pain refined

loss stretched shapeless, damp sheets rucked

by a called back touch.

It became her business only

to grow flowers for the lonely--

behind a closing door, a dreaming eye--

to listen-- in the wildest night 

to a pen scratching black on white

the buzz of bees in reverie--

to never see the sea--

to never see-- love be.

~August 2012

*in a letter to Thos. Wentworth Higginson

 

Posted for   Poetics   at dVerse Poet's Pub

where Brian Miller is hosting a prompt about what might be hidden in the folds of that faded lacy hanky known as history.

Process Notes: I have made uncharacteristic and liberal use of the dash in this piece, my clumsy tribute to Miss Dickinson's iconic form.

Header Image: Emily Dickinson's grave in the family plot, photo by MidnightDreary

Shared under a Creative Commons License, via wikimedia commons
Footer Image: Cover of Poems, by Emily Dickinson, 1890
(archive.org) [Public domain], via wikimedia Commons

Double Shot of Drought

Drought I.

(55 dustdevils for the G-Man)

When it's hot 

as the devil's kitchen

week after brazen week,

grass fires with a sigh at spark's 

lightest touch, ash tornadoes fly;

fields' green finish turns to 

crackled glaze, the bones of the corn

 soften and flop, emptied by

a marrow-sucking sun;

oh

it's too late to pray for rain

but still 

you do.

~July 2012

[Those playing the 55 game, feel free to stop here. Toads, continue on.]

 Drought II.

The heat came when the fear of it had passed

and made the land bleed dust. Dry coughs, fretful nights.

Often we sat drinking with the bees till past dark, laughing crazy

our faces rolling with the stars and the night more blue than black, and your
eyes fever bright.

Days, the hot southern wind lapped on our cheeks but it was too dry to spit. Hungry as a deer, it licked the boiled-out salt our bodies gave in the sun's long leathering. 

I remember that August the full moon came twice, like a young man or a ripe woman, and it was called blue, still round and silver as a coin. No reason why.

The green fingers of the hills put on gloves of red drought, leaves paper trees brown. Their scent tastes copper flat as blood, dead as stone. Work always, but the baby laughs.

I don't know when the last rose faded, when my face changed with the dry earth. Skin crackled like glaze on an old cup, and I was painted in place with all the colors of forgotten weather.

~August 2012

An attempt at an okyfied  zuihitsu exercise for Kerry's Wednesday Challenge at   real toads

Process Notes: August 2012 will contain two full moons; this is relatively rare, and is the origin of the expression, 'once in a blue moon.'

I've grouped these two pieces together because the second grew directly out of the first, which I had written earlier this blistering hot week for G-Man's Friday 55 prompt. Then I tried to do the same subject with a 'running brush,' random-style, and it escaped and went all over the place. I don't know if I've really fulfilled Kerry's prompt properly with the second piece, but this is what happened when I tried--thanks, Kerry, this was challenging for my very non-oriental, non-prose-prone brain, but it was fun.

Image Credits: Drought I: Drought, by arby reed, on flick'r

Drought II: Unknown Found Vintage Photo, Tulsa, OK, by imarcc, on flick'r
Footer: Crackled Rose, by Big Gray Mare on flick'r
Shared under a Creative Commons License