In The Garden Of The Moon

 

In the garden of the full moon

the pregnant moon

the mother-moon,

a silent copper bell rests its eyes.

Bronze from autumn evenings

gives the silent bell

a voice to pray with,

asters to sleep with, and deep red Malaga wine.

Outside the casement windows

which look out on the garden,

the Seasons argue

in voices poured from porcelain ewers.

Do you remember the crows

who ate the pears that hung 

dark and shy like lost children

in the garden of the Moon?

The mother-moon gathers them

with a thimble on her finger

stitching them into tomorrow and tomorrow

while the copper bell and the quarrelsome Seasons sleep.

The child we might have had,

is curled in the casement window

where crows bring silver stars from indigo nights

and a bell rings in prayer and sorrow.

_______

for Sunday Muse #171

Aberdeen

 

Here is the vine that weakened the wall

that dripped with rain in the shrouded dawn.

Here is the touch that tenderly kills,

and climbs so slowly, on and on.

I've forgotten the hat that I wore in the wet

and the path to take to your black-latched door.

I only remember the cardinal that kept

its perch on the pine, and petrichor.

Mornings are early, dusk comes late

and the wall is gone beyond the gate

but the fallen bricks still hold the green

of the ivy, cruel potentate.

__________

the photo is mine, from my yard.

A Fool In Love Is Soon Made Wise

Vase so shapely upon the shelf

holding so lightly within herself

the finest faces all gathered to her

which start to bore and bother and blur

until she meets the one who moves her,

beckoning her come quickly closer

to fall so hard and tumble o'er

to spread her shards upon the floor.

_______

for Dverse poetics--the proverbial. Mine is in the title.

the artwork is Flowers In A Basket 1910 by Seraphine de Senlis 

The Last Auk

 

The last Auk, 1852

was found with menhaden

and capelin

and a series of letters from you.

I weep for the Auk,

the last of its kind, alone.

with its feet on rock, its beak in the breeze,

and a feeling for you in its bones.

Is it the fault of the Auk that its dreams of flight

were scuttled by wings too small?

Was it soothed by Hughes, rent by Plath?

Did it feel anything at all?

It had no mate,

no egg, no day of comfort in the future.

Stuffed on a stand, it asked for your hand

to tenderly tie the last suture.

____________

CQD

 

Membrane Boy's parents have separated,

pending divorce.

They communicate through him, as if shouting

through a sealed porthole.

"Remind Frank to pick you up at six."

"Tell Linda a little junk food won't kill you."

He relays all this as if he were a Marconi operator

working Cape Race.

Membrane Boy arrives home to find

his mother in bed, all vials empty.

He dials 911.

"Man the lifeboats. Stop.

Position 700 nautical miles east of Halifax. Stop."

The 911 operator answers:

"Tell your father not to have his bimbo there."

"Tell your mother to stop playing the martyr."

Stop.

Membrane Boy's mother is a berg,

his father a double hull.

Trapped crew members bang hammers on the side,

A dead stoker smiles at the boy, his eyes blank.

"You have your whole future ahead of you, son," says the dead stoker.

"Full steam ahead," calls the Captain.

The lifeboats are lowered,

their wood between sea and air.

The ship lists, the lifeboats overturn.

Drowning souls cling

to the upturned hulls.

Membrane Boy wants to save them

to push them off

to save them

to watch them die

to be alone

to not be alone

Stop.

PlasticHead

PlasticHead, Our Weeping Lady of Sorrows,

does not see herself in mirrors.

Like a tortoise, drug addict, or victim of a head injury,

her protective helmet lets in nonsense, 

but does not eliminate it.

PlasticHead therefore believes herself a kind of shithead,

her mind a terrarium made of one-way glass.

Her parents hand her texts substantiating this,

wrongheaded maxims, ill-timed remarks and iffy teachings.

Playmates bash her plastic head on the sidewalk.

Enter alcohol, religion, relationships.

Tossed up on the shore of adulthood, 

PlasticHead looks back and sees the smoking pile-up of her various endeavors.

It's all been a lie. 

PlasticHead, manufactured plaything of Heaven,

find angels in the pockets of your apron.

The molded face that took the place of your true visage

was nothing but assigned artifice, fiction, dressage.

PlasticHead reacts with cold anger, freezing herself solid,

thus further and finally shattering the hated doll head.

Her mosquito-pond blood reddens and warms,

evaporating her tears into a silver fog--she breathes herself in,

embraces the Divine like a gator wrestler, 

sleeps well for once,  lives another ten minutes victoriously,

then expires.

PlasticHead, inspirational story to finish the broadcast,

you have no weepy present, no golden future, no awful past.

Be absorbed into the One Mind, The Magnificent Place,

regard in a Mirror of Stars, your true, your perfect, absolutely front-page Face.

_________________

For The Sunday Muse #170, where I am hosting the masked ball.

Vessel Of Your Unmuse

"And the sad act like lepers They stick to the shadows They long to ring bells of warning So that the pure can shut their doors" --Conor Oberst

"We are not amused." --Queen Victoria

Viewed in a certain way,

Even a thorn inspires.

Sharp edges trim away

Superfluous dressings,

Even those we cherish

Like showy cuffs of lace.

Over the course of time,

Fitting uses are found.

You can use words to bind

Or reopen a wound.

Useless protections die,

Roses are thorns, disguised.

Use these new mediums

Not of skin, but of scar.

Muses of blood that run

Under any radar

So you can ring clearly

Every bell you become.

_________

Pretty much, this is a Spirit's Vessel form, though I messed with the rhyme scheme. 

Shared with Dverse Poetry Pub for "Who's Your Muse?" 

10 Lines About Lucy Medicine Crow

 The dog she got was black and white and wild

and loved the world as a fool, or God does.

For her part, she loved two things--dog and child.

No love for cold or calm or rest because,

starved with fever is what she is, and was.

The dog will dream, the child will change unseen,

calling from their secret side, "Come with us

and speak no more the name that we have been."

Her hair turned white in change from black that was,

a semaphore for fading feet and paws.

______

this form is called a decuain.

Two Poems/ Two Forms

"Getaway"

Stop the crying jag

pack a Gladstone bag

book a lunar junket now.

Stay on the sun side

Moon Rabbit runs by

late for a date anyhow.

Rent you a moon car

with hot tub and bar

green cheese and crackers for free.

Dub yourself Moon Maid

retro your moon grade

stay on indefinitely.

-------

this is a form called an alouette.

for Sunday Muse #169.

________________________

and...

"Recipe For Satori En Flambe"

In the desert, find a mirage that suits,

that lives, that fruits despite the gritty eye,

the thing that dries and rides inside your boots,

the thing that shoots itself but does not die.

This is the thing you'll need the most,

a far outpost of the soul.

There is no whole thing here, just shards

and acrid tars to smoke.

This is not as bad as it scans,

not some madman's practical joke;

a softly spoken barcarolle,

a gondolier mid-stroke.

In the desert, find a skull that sings,

an awful thing sick with the wound you need.

Take it up, feed it well until it brings

(from horrors) wings of glass, and salt, and seed.

In a rib bowl, mix these with buried roots

and tongues of mutes in ash rain from a sky

too close and bright, the silver-sharp of flutes

some god imputes with holy song and sigh.

________

this is a LaJemme poem.

You can see where the connection failed. When I came back the type changed. 

The City Inside My Head

 

The city inside my head

keeps its Sweet Face down

like a Japanese fan in the hand 

of a dead woman whose ghost

dances in air, 

untethered.

I am an ocean on the edge of a nightmare,

a horse gone headlong,

an unseen hand hanging up the cruisers,

mid-air,

sirens sounding like Stratocasters,

wah-wah pedals at patrolmen's feet. 

In the after-time, when you had gone,

the tall grass afternoons went on and on.

There was a yellow butterfly and a glass of gin,

and a thorn in the soft place where you had been.

The nights were cool, the stars were cold,

and together we turned slowly old

on a blue and green revolving ball

until love was dust, then nothing at all.

The city inside my head

keeps its Sweet Face down

like a Japanese fan in the hand

of a busker's monkey whose chattering forms

these poems, this after-time,

this image of the sun behind closed eyes 

hidden and 

glittering.

________

for Sunday Muse #168. Thanks to Hedge for telling me how to ditch the double spacing. Apologies for the varying type size in this. I can't fix it. 

The Angry Damned

On a blue sea beneath a pearl sky, 

time's drunken messenger carved a name on the side

of the shell in which he was born.

At the prow, a maw appeared,

and began to tear at and consume the sea-mother

from whose vomit they had risen.

In the stern, various gods

enormous of mouth, globular, gelatinous,

wounded each other avidly.

On a blue sea beneath a pearl sky,

the angry damned carried this obscene craft on their hands,

filmed with pitch and gasoline.

Cretinous sailors with disappearing arms

composed semaphore hymns sung by trapped demons

who drowned tangled in blind flags.

The angry damned

consumed in flame!

Sea on fire!

Blood immolation!

Worlds cracking, erupting,

lava herds of the diseased damned plunging headlong

into further misery.

Miasma of sick flotillas expanding, gaseous, unwholesome

into the scaled palms

of the shrieking, angry damned

leading each other by sharp hooks through the brain

down into hard pressure depths

where transparent monsters wave phosphorescent pennants

and say, through needle teeth,

Behold, I am the sun, the light, come unto me,

and they rush in, like vermin to a corpse.

_________

with thanks to Arthur Rimbaud, Stephen Crane and Allen Ginsberg. This is either an homage or a rip-off, depending on what you think.

for Sunday Muse #167.

Blogger absolutely would NOT let me fix the spacing at the beginning. It is not meant to have the extra spaces there. 

Happy Canada Day! (repost)

Oh Canada,

Our home and native land

True patriot's love

At all thy son's command.

With glowing hearts,

We see thee rise,

The True North strong and free.

From far and wide,

Oh, Canada,

We stand on guard for thee.

God keep our land

Glorious and free

Oh, Canada, we stand on guard for thee

Oh, Canada, we stand on guard for thee!

Happy Canada Day from down south in Detroy-it, eh? :-)
_______