Beautiful is a tired word but I found you so
with the intensity of your obsidian hardness, and silver starburst flaws.
A black-leaved water lily with
blooms of conventional white, like a nun
if the nun were carnal, and clever,
and forever drowning in her own roots.
How like the Host are your white blooms,
a transubstantiation from habit-black to bland bright,
a false face like a lady's fan
or a death's head
and I just had to touch, take into me, and be wounded by
the carmine-edged cuttings you took from yourself.
Weren't we beautiful, for an hour as the day turned crimson,
making poetry from nothing but dirt and gold?
We wore only our flimsy paper costumes
printed with deadnames and roses
and a garland of sun-shy violets for a crown.
Finally, we saw each other for what we were--
one a shadow inside a censer swung by the claw of a talking crow
and the other as dim as a dog and as keen to roll in the foul thing it finds.
Beautiful is a tired word but I hung it around your neck
like a prize won for knocking down milk bottles on the midway.
a feat remembered with both pride and shame for far too long.
___________
for desperatepoets LOVE SONGS ON A GHOST JUKEBOX.
images created with Bing A.I.
Music: The Japanese House Dionne
There is an intensity here that you paint with such visceral imagery. Honestly, there are so many stand out lines in the poem that thread together a story for the ages...that said, this line made me call out loud in wonder...."one a shadow inside a censer swung by the claw of a talking crow." Brilliant poem.
ReplyDeleteI remember when the moon was so close to Earth that a kiss was high tide for a life (or puberty, whichever ended first). Nothing like black fire to lamp the wings of Eros ... And nothing else to do (not now, anyway), but write the poem of it, somehow, closer and closer to that annihilate possibility, long vanished from sight of days but never memory. Hard to separate the dirt from the gold here, they are the A and B sides of the same record, played weirdly at once on our ghost jukebox. Walk on by or burn forever: not easy choices when pride and shame are mint of the same coign. Black fire is the holiest way to burn. If the poem's calibrations are correct, you and missus Jones sure had at it. Great platter for the challenge.
ReplyDeleteAlways loved that Billy Paul song and still have it on my iPod.
DeleteBeautiful may be a tired word, along with so many others, but here you infuse it with life and grief and all the powerful, sad magic of the heart.That entire second stanza is sharp and bright as a scalpel or the high note of an unknown bird at dawn, and that final stanza a gut-punch full of the kind of wisdom one wishes one never had to learn. Just gorgeous, stellar writing, Shay.
ReplyDeleteOh my goodness, you speak an incomparable language when you speak of love. No one does it better. "one a shadow inside a censer swung by the claw of a talking crow / and the other as dim as a dog and as keen to roll in the foul thing it finds." Oy. But to love like that - what does one remember best - the glory of it or the pain? Stellar writing indeed.
ReplyDelete"A black-leaved water lily with
ReplyDeleteblooms of conventional white, like a nun
if the nun were carnal, and clever,
and forever drowning in her own roots." - I mean, damn, that is just absolute quality.
"a transubstantiation from habit-black to bland bright,"
"Weren't we beautiful, for an hour as the day turned crimson,
making poetry from nothing but dirt and gold?"
Yes, beautiful is a tired word but there is an unmistakable beauty inherent in everything you write edged with pain which makes it all the more so. Really stunning, Shay.
And am I right in thinking you're not hosting your Friday word lists any more? How gutting if so!!
Unfortunately yes, I discontinued the List because i couldn't justify the effort and time to put it together when almost nobody was participating.
DeleteI'm so glad to have my Sunra friend back around! Think of all the mischief we can stir up. :-P
I must remind myself to bolt or brace my jaw when reading your work to keep it dropping and hitting the floor. You write from an extraordinary place with a mastery of language and image… damn… beautiful is a tired word but…
ReplyDelete“if the nun were carnal, and clever, / and forever drowning in her own roots.” classic Shay.
ReplyDeleteWow. Can I still say that after having read so many of your poems? I certainly do. This poem is among my favorites of yours. Those final lines. Yes, wow.
ReplyDelete