Poet

 

 

What I'm talking about is an ailment of spirit,

an ennui of the heart. 

It is not so much a seeking after angels

as a naming of devils.

Though these devils may sometimes be native,

most are introduced

like curare-tainted crosses slipped under our pillows

to teethe on at night.

We wobble into daylight, bright as fevers,

the lovely stricken

who learn to trick demons lazy for years or hours

or just the next blessed moment.

The well is poisoned, yes, but the hallucinations are rare,

butterflies of the injured mind.

We see loves bringing roses that are really lilies

for us discarded, already dead.

We are the gorgeous idiots, God's blind swans searching

for the blossoming branch,

mistaking the loaded barrel for Gilead's balm and leaving poems there

rolled, with ribbons, like answered prayers.

________

for Word Garden Word List #15 (Millay). 

top image: major arcana tarot "The Fool"

the amazing Toni Childs

Indolence

Indolence
is my new
enchantment,

with

redolence
of inveterate
insouciance.

When ice gets tired,
it slips out of its winter bones
and comes down April easy
on my sill where the flower box keeps.

Kiss me.
Why not?
They sell
indemnity for indiscretion
by the pick-up window at the exit door
of the local concession. 
______

Inscribed and intended for Flash 55 at Real Toads.

 

Not In Love

I'm not in love,
and won't be again.
No rooster in the dawn.
No eggs from the hen.

See the sky gone dark blue late.
No bird nor dumpling on the plate.
No stars, no moon
to compensate

for fools who feel like I did then.

By Morning, Disaster; By Afternoon, Despair

What the fucking hell is this?
Another dunning, a fresh demand?
Passed like poison from the hand
of the postman, Satan's accomplice?

What's this annoying stupid shit?
Disguised to look as if it matters?
Faux certified, in official patterns
denoting nothing, largely writ?

Begone, hateful courier in blue!
With your clanking keys on a pocket chain!
With writhing form and crawling brain,
daring to stamp it "postage due!"

Sure as pestilence, slow as a snail!
Stuffing my slot with each babbling ad--
driving me nervous, driving me mad!
Curse you, eagle who bird-bombs the mail!
_____

Mailed in, for Susie's challenge at Real Toads. She asks us for the real thoughts behind the faces in John Millais's portraits.

Historical note: Up until the early 1950s, there were two mail deliveries each day, morning mail and afternoon mail, hence the title.

Knife & Basket

Early morning, knife and basket
to cut and lay the iris blooms;
in vase, by parlor's dying noon,
tasked to do the thing I ask it--
lift melancholy; move the moon.

Fool to love you, fool to miss you,
more foolish still to think a vase
--that plenitude of empty space--
could soothe my heart and keep the bloom,
or separated root replace.
_______

for Artistic Interpretations With Margaret at Real Toads.

image: Still Life: Vase With Irises by Van Gogh

The iris's history is rich, dating back to Ancient Greek times when the Greek Goddess Iris, the messenger of the gods and the personification of the rainbow, acted as the link between heaven and earth. Purple irises were planted over the graves of women to summon the Goddess to guide the dead in their journey. (source: www.proflowers.com)

For J. ( A Sonnet)

"One loves well only once; the first time." --La Bruyere

All that winter I waited, close to you
as breath to words, and yet I was silent,
wise enough to be mute and not intrude,
content as your listening instrument.
No voice was ever so adored as yours--
no hands that made me wish to be the book
they held, so memorized, all else ignored
in my single wish for your favored look.
The devil finds a weakness and within
it builds the sweetest of all illusion.
So, for such deception, thanks are due him;
pieties are best spent when we lose them.

Why did you kiss me, just once, with no word?
Kisses evermore, superfluous...absurd.
__________