Tree Dance

Tree Dance

For eleven months I wrote to you

every day. Finally I learned to read

invisible ink, empty envelopes;

still I write. Words chase the pen

but never catch it quite, traveling

where we will know love

when pigs fly, when trees dance.

The pen scratches, the words glow

the page fills and runs

with a leaping color, pushing

some obstruction

fouled hard against the wellspring

loose, sprung

to make its way 

down the dark drain alone.

Out by the puncture-vine that mends the fence

as I mouth to the air the word forgive

I see two trees kiss,

their greentip lips grown close enough

at last to meet.

A litter of pines prudent parted at planting

having gathered seven summers, turn

weave and mesh, waltzing their small wildness

handfast, while in the sky

there seems

to be 

         a pig.

~August~September 2012

 Posted for   Poetics   at dVerse Poets Pub

 Karin Gustafson hosts tonight, and asks us to write a poem of the unexpected

Photos © joyannjones

 

Forgiveness

Forgiveness

Sustenance

love, faith, trust;

the giving of it is

not the getting of it.

Hate, anger, comfort

forgiveness;

the giving of it is

the getting of it.

Sometimes

pearls are worn by

swine, death is not forever,

the way black holes are

only a change in breaths,

the way

love is forever

only  lovers change.

~September 2012

55 metaphysical shades of black for   

the g-man

Image: Black Holes on a Strict Diet, by NASA Goddard Photo and Video, on flick'r

Night Words

Night Words

Darkness teaches
a thousand words for night

singed velvet obsidian sky
charcoal calico curtain

closing the lavender gloaming
ebony backed beast

with star reticulated hide

rolling the white of its moonshot eye

leaking quicksilver drops

of migrant meteors,
streaking stitches

to sew up wounds of void.

The absence of your voice

the wind murmur of the stalks

the rustle of your silence settling,

plucked notes of the owl inquisitor, plangent

from a puzzled branch, the old music
snowsoft on my lips;

I number the noises of night

until I lose count.

~September 2012

posted  for  Meeting the Bar   at dVerse Poets Pub

Claudia hosts tonight, and asks us to write about a moment of solitude. 

photo: drops,  © joyannjones

War Dogs

Zdislav Beksinski

War Dogs

Guns barked at guns in the burnt blue alone. 

We heard them (sounds travel) breaking the glass night,
(fast as the dead)  smelled flags burning, 
the sour pant through fat teeth, white bundles

stiff in rows on the street, white lies turned 
to black tapped human sap. The fires screaming set 

money fed, ranting blew. The babies cried

while the fur tried but never flew.

It was just me and the rest of the dog-people

heeling carefully on our hind legs,

when the panic door slammed down

and cut off our feet. Arms out

flung, It appeared, spit flying
bright, ky-aye-ayeing,

pale shirt pressed untattered

beard shaved but dirty where it mattered

eyes mad, mad as a flying trout. Its

syncopated air-suckling mouth

coughed up god like

bits of lung. Darkness too
should have poured infected

to color Its masked face 

but there was only a dancing 

blind eye of blue laser trace,

when the white ran out exhausted from the light;

when the fight exploded in piss and blood night

It was gone. 
They said It never was.
Darkness came then but the fire burned hotter

rockets ate walls, guns brayed faster

and  we all hunkered down hard
howling

on all fours for the bare

mercy that wasn't there.

~September 2012

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

Posted for   OpenLinkNight   at dVerse Poets Pub

Process Notes: Sometimes I have bad dreams.

~*~

Header Image: Untitled, by the Polish symbolist and Surrealist Zdislav Beksinski,

born in Sanok in 1929, killed in Warsaw in 2005

Copyright may apply and is the sole property of the copyright holders

via wikipaintings.org

Footer Image: The Apotheosis of War, 1871, by Vasily Vereshchagin

Public Domain via wikipaintings.org