Words

Words

Write your soul a blanket on the page

with black wrinkled stripes on pure white,

in any tongue on earth. Throw

your zebra quilt over

every shivering   

heart and offer

refuge there,

wrapped in

words.

July 2011

Posted for       Form Monday   at  OneStopPoetry

This poem is in the Nonet form, a nine line single stanza poem where the first line contains nine syllables, and each succeeding line one less, with the last line a single syllable. Thanks to  Corbie Sinclair for this great look at the form, with sincere regrets that this is Gay Cannon's penultimate appearance hosting Form Monday.Thanks for everything, Gay.

 

Musical Interlude ~ CSN & a little Y

This one's been running through the echoing corridors of my insomniac brain tonight. Southern Cross, by Crosby Stills and Nash, from their 1982 album Daylight Again. There have been a few nights over the years where the last verse kept my heart from turning to a shriveled cinder. Couldn't find a decent live version--not the greatest stage band, these guys, so you get the album cut:
  

The little bit of Y comes here with Cowgirl in the Sand,a song Neil Young performed with CSN, and also released on his 1969 album, Everybody Knows This is Nowhere.I've found an old acoustic version with dubious visuals but excellent audio, from a 1971 live performance, where all the quirky lyrics are clear: (apologies to any feminists for the chorus, but "it's the human in you/ that makes you want to play this game" while true, just doesn't have the same ring to it)

hello ruby in the dust...

which reminded me of That Song About the Midway, by Joni Mitchell
lyrics here

was it hard to fold a hand/ that you knew could win?

Madness in the Harem

Madness in the Harem

Up in the alabaster tower of carved

stone, the harem is restless.

The girls still chatter and giggle, but they

fidget. They can’t seem to settle to

the morning’s gossip or enjoy the sweets

because of the madwoman

locked up and raving

down the hall.

Once she was fair as a yellow rosebud,

but she was never right and she grew thorny wild.

She cast her prickly brambles across the old walls, trying

to wrap up the girls for trellis, make them long to

speak of her, braid her grey hair with flowers,

sit rapt to listen to her re-tell them tales

of her many imaginary sons, her unequaled

echinate beauty, her exploits and conquests

that now were ghosts reflected in a foxed mirror.

One day, when they once again embarrassed

bent their heads away, she climbed out the window, 

high on the white piercework balcony,

and began to scream and spit the foulest curses, all day 

all night, setting the monkeys howling, till they came

and locked her away, where her cries muted

behind the heavy door to only a far murmur, serene

as the sibilant calling of birds at dusk.

The girls are already forgetting her, lips parted to sing again

the gypsy lovesongs, rippling notes of laughter and desire,

fingers painting blue globes speckled with brown freckles,

boxed in a circle of silk, hatching chicks to fly where

they never can. At night, they watch the white fireflies

embroider the jungle air with needles of lightning,

splash all morning in their scented baths,

and wind their arms together like an arbor.

July 2011

Posted for   OneShootSunday  at   OneStopPoetry

Photo by Neil Alexander, this week's featured photographer

Work of Art

Work of Art

I hung myself, quite a piece

of work, in the museum

a long time ago. Like

most serious art,

I aged well.

You’d changed so much

the guard had to look twice to

let  you in, with that
light frost of dust

on your smile.

I gazed at you gazing at me

from my frame, then blinked,

reflecting the abundance
I thought I saw

in your eyes.

Easy as time passing I could

see my desire tapestried,

digitally enhanced, imposed on

what’s plain, from behind

shuttered glass.

The closing bell rang.

To my surprise you

turned away your grey

glazed eyes, and never

came back.

Impossible as time stopping to see

the truth with eyes widest,

when two silvery rippled

accommodating mirrors

hang face to face.

You knew, it seems,

the only way

to foil a mirror

is to turn off

the light.

July 2011

Posted for   Friday Poetically   at  OneStopPoetry 

Today Brian's (almost final) prompt is to write a poem inspired by the art of Bonnie, at Original Art Studio. Thanks, Brian, for all the poems you've encouraged me to write with your Friday Poetically series, sadly to end next week.

Image: art by Bonnie, of Original Art Studio

Friday Flash 55 ~ Sunset Dream

Sunset Dream

Dreaming:
sky’s  a card file of
3 x 5’s color-coded
red, orange, yellowgreen

in the end times;

The Queen of Fried Tomatoes
and the Sleight of Hand Man
fall out of the tipping boat;

Lincoln walks the floor,
night before Ford's Theater,
pregnant with his own murder

calm,
just staring at me
as I wake.

July 2011

Process Note: I don't order these dreams, I just have them.

Posted for        Friday Flash 55   at   the G-Man's

Payday Friday

Payday Friday

We left the bar to drive

to the nearest motel

like two kids ditchin school,

me and Hollywood, in his raybans at night.

It was Friday night, payday Friday.

All night he’d held my hand

across the table, laughed in my eyes,

pulled me close slowdancin George Jones,

bought me half a paycheck‘s worth of

butterscotch liquored chick drinks

basted me head to toe for hours in that

hot brown look, til I was more than willin.

All day out with the crew I’d thought of him,

eight hours of idle mind  on the brushhog:

chocolate eyes, lilt to the voice, laugh of a free man,

dark hair thick as moss, coyote smart.

He thought, I’m sure, of my breasts,

my long yellow corn floss hair, maybe

my hands, maybe my soul that knew

where he wanted it to go, without saying.

The bar was hot and rockin. All the guys from work

were there, all my crew and his, kicked back, all the ones

who’d warned me about him just shakin their heads,

smiles in their beers while we danced.

We never even turned on the light

in the motel room—there just

wasn’t  time, only time for wellspring kisses

smoky whispers  “Do you

love it?” barely time for the old soul story 
we told each other, substance over shadow 
in the big bed, smooth as the necklace of pearls
he strung for me

never put in pawn,

here in my jewelbox still.

Me and Hollywood.

I hope his wife treats him good.

July 2011 

A 3:00 a.m. runaway poem probably best at 3:00 a.m, with a nod to Coal Black for the dropped  g's, and the general proletarian ambience, and to Mama Zen for the chocolate. 

A brushhog is a tractor pulling a large mower deck, capable of rough mowing right of ways and brushy fields. Fun to drive. Hot loud and dirty, but fun.

Optional Musical Accompaniment:

and in case you're in the mood for the funkier original, Lowell George & Little Feat, singing the song that got him fired from the Mothers of Invention:

Header Image: courtesy google image search
no credits available
 

Witch's Candle

Witch’s Candle

I sent my heart, a candle in a paper boat,

sailing out on a white-rimed onyx sea

by the witchlight of a failing auburn moon.

At morning’s crackling burn she returned to me,

finding nowhere any berth or port of rest,

and this is all the tale that she confessed:

“I sailed at first quite blind," her low voice murmured,

“Nothing moved on the silent water’s face

except for my own shadow cast before me.

Then towards midnight, waves began to race.

The paper boat leaned to the blackened sea

as if the circling atoms sang beneath me.

"A  basilisk blue, a serpentine ocean's child

brought its face upturned to split the waters,

slicked with scales of turquoise demi-moons,

natron flame for eyes, black doves for daughters.

It seemed to want to eat me, piping tunes

on an easy azure tongue that danced the dawn,

but it tired of my taste, and I sailed on.

“Then,” said my heart, “ I came to a speck of land.

The paper boat shook out its weary folds,

for what’s so white and thin’s not meant to last,

not nearly last as long as what it holds,

and I was growing heavier with the tides,

but lava lapped the land's membranous sides.

“My own flame paled, lightning of a blinking insect

beside the heat that island caused to flood.

Red rock ran incandescent from the puncture,

a  hissing mouth that spit the worldcore’s blood

and brought its floating lips to my boat’s height,

kissing its creases crisp in the fire’s bite.

“The eagle of four corners stooped above me,

and pierced me on his running ruby claws.

He carried me for twenty leagues untiring.

I watched the obsidian sea and learned its laws.

I saw a million such as I, chained frozen, alone,

or sailing still but dead as a fossil's bone.

“I begged the bird to teach me how to fly.

Instead, he dipped his wing on a downward turn.

He loosed his grip; I dropped, my flame blown out.

So three times turned away, here I return.”

There bottomed in the bright aurora of dawn,

I took her back, so broken and so sore,

called her my one candle, light and life,

and swore to send her sailing out no more.

July 2011

Posted for    OneShotWednesday   at the inimitable OneStopPoetry

Image: The Repentant Magdelen, by Georges de la Tour, ca 1628-45, oil on canvas

posted on flickr by mpt1607

Anvil of the Sun

Anvil of the Sun

The land is an anvil made for the sun to beat

green grass, gold grains, and working heart to dust

when July brings out the hammer of its heat.

The fields are silent but for the combing feet

of locusts’ need. The dancing wheat is hushed.

The land sighs beneath each hot percussive beat.

All blistered day air flaps in a shimmering sheet.

The sun pounds dry the seed beneath the crust

when July brings out the hammer of its heat.

The weapon shop of drought becomes complete;

dead spears of reed, firebombs of grass combust.

The anvil's red and burns with every beat.

Black soil is dead and void as old concrete,           

wind arranges the dried flowers with each gust

when July brings out the hammer of its heat

The rain’s run beyond the place horizons meet.

Life does nothing that it wants, just what it must.

The land is an anvil made for the sun to beat

when July brings out the hammer of its heat

July 2011

Posted for   Magpie Tales  #72

A somber take on Van Gogh's sunny fields, but where I sit today we're well into a streak of triple digit heat and no rain, with 15 of 21 mostly dry days 100 degrees or over since June 14th.

Image: Wheatfield with Rising Sun, by Vincent Van Gogh

provided by Magpie Tales