En Graved (A Love Poem)

 look close--

here is your engraved invitation

the Hubble at your disposal.

A long bone

and rose thorn comprise my stylus--

the blasted dust of the moon we thought so lovely

is wounded into an imago

a blighted imbecile twin, 

love lost and lunatic.

_________

for Quadrille Monday "Engrave Your Name Across My Heart"

Image:  from the excellent indie film Another Earth

Music: Til Tuesday The Other End (Of the Telescope)

Para la Madre Diabólica

 She said that my hair

had turned the moon to ash

as if it were hers, a pet cat

mute in the silent sky.

What she meant was

that I had the wrong face

and the wrong voice, always

wandering from its glass case.

I slipped the crescent moon

through my hair like a garland,

then grew it long and wild,

my name at the root and the far ends.

________

for What's Going On? --"Hair"

Mi Loca Amada

 

The full moon scares me,

and always has.

I become a dropped plate 

shattering along its reflected lines. 

Bless the rainy night,

the wet leaf drip of solace.

Thick clouds hide me

burrow-minded from the mad moon.

My fear of what it might do,

or cause me to do, leaves me w(e)ary.

For tonight I am safe,

there is no moon, but mi  loca amada, no stars either. 

______________

for What's Going On? "The Night Sky"

Music: Snow Get You To The Moon

 

Nyx

 

Here is the Moon, with its baton,

puppetmaster of waters and women

low gravity dancer in the skies over Anytown.

My head is a bowl whose edges ring.

I have buried the years in flowerboxes

under every window. They bud into regrets.

Here is my marriage to a wildflower grave.

Here is the Moon, with its baton.

I want to run amok like an islander,

and may already have done, bobbing 

in my cradle like an avid nun before Nyx,

puppetmaster of waters and women.

Listen, I need a month in the countryside

to knock these Perspex-eyed monsters

out of my dreams, to lighten me and render me

a low gravity dancer in the skies over Anytown.

Baby, I'm freezing, I can't take delivery

of myself anymore. The Sun has reversed

herself, gone down the well, and my head oh

my head is a bowl whose edges ring

with unbearable Moon-song I don't know how to stop.

_________

for Word Garden Word List--Spill Simmer Falter Wither

Music: Kim Carnes Breakin' Away From Sanity

The Landlord of the Moon

 

The landlord of the moon 

likes a little respect with her coffee,

a rose on her pillow 

                                  and all the rest.

She knows she's not loved 

but that's not the point hardly.

She keeps rum on her wrist

                                                and salt on her breast.

It's nothing personal.

No weary argument moves her much,

and it's best to remember

                                             her bird can't sing

except when it's raining

inside suitcases, outside train stations, and such.

Better bow to the east

                                        and kiss the ring.

Still, the landlord of the moon

falters while the factory turns 

and the sun, her master

                                          lounges and leans,

casual and careless

mocking her with jazz hands and money to burn

til she lays, each noon

                                        her heart at his feet.

_____________

for Word Garden Word List #7 (Langston Hughes)                                       

and your bird can sing ^^

The Drowsing Moon

 

"Take the ribbon from your hair

shake it loose and let it fall"

--Kris Kristofferson

The moon drowses now, in her compartment

made of asters on a train to the sea

and she seeks in her dream the department

of missent lilies, mislaid carelessly.

Her petition is dancing so sweetly

that the gods search their memories for tears

to stitch where her silver crescent appears.

The moon is blemished now, by dawn and time

and the train master calls for her sorrow

to be served as gin with a wedge of lime

and then forwarded on to tomorrow

where what they can't buy, the asters borrow

a mixing of winds as a bandage to bind

her with thread of forgetting, serpentined.

_____

for Tuesday Poetics: Fay Collins

art by Fay Collins

this poem is a rhyme royal