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)

Giselle

 

In Paris, at that time

we knew of Giselle, the world's most

talented and also hideous torch singer.

Muddy complected,

with white eyes like egg shells,

and skin chock-a-block with blue veins,

the woman was hard on the vision, sweet to the ears.

Have you ever heard

a buzzard that could break your heart?

Giselle could wring your soul with Gloomy Sunday,

make you miss someone

you never met with Lover Man

(Oh Where Can You Be?) She was serious!

Willow Weep For Me used to make 'em bawl like babies.

So one night this strange cat

showed up and started bringing her

trifles -- sugar candies, baubles, pretty shells and whatnot.

Oh, she sang, Just in time,

you found me just in time and she smiled

like a split shoe and ran her broken branch fingers through his hair.

We wondered, is he crazy? Blind? What?

Well, he weren't blind.

Cat could read a menu from five miles off

and he was no bug either, he was some kind of poet.

What we found out, after a long time,

was that this cat was stone deaf from bombs in the war.

He just loved Giselle like a bird loves the sky at dawn when it's

Beginning To See The Light. 

_________

for Word Garden Word List--My Dear I Wanted To Tell You. 

Music: Della Reese I'm Beginning To See the Light

Word Garden Word List--My Dear I Wanted To Tell You

 

Hello my friends and welcome to another Word List! This time our source is an amazing novel by Louisa Young entitled My Dear I Wanted To Tell You.  This title is taken from preprinted cards given to wounded English soldiers to send home. They read "My dear ____ I wanted to tell you", They then went on to say the man had been wounded, and the wounded soldier would then cross out either "slight" or "serious" leaving the other to describe his wound. 

Louisa Young

The novel follows two couples, an officer and his pretty but shallow wife, and a pair of young lovers. The men both go off to the trenches while the women deal as best they can. WWI changes all of them profoundly. The book is marvelous, but also gutting. It's one the best I have ever read, but it also tore me up. So, recommended but with a caveat. It's not an easy story.

What we do here is to use at least 3 of the 20 words provided in a new, original poem of our own. Then simply link up, visit others, and enjoy your Sunday. This prompt remains active until next Sunday when I will post a new one. 

And now, your List:

artistic

bird

bitter

blue

circled

egg

end

golden

hideous

letter

muddy

narrow

Paris

ribbon

scarf

shell

sugar

sweet

trifles

wards

Anyone writing "sweet as sugar" shall be driven into the poetic wilderness by a mob of angry pedants carrying torches.

Sharing an Orange

 

I will share my orange with you,

passing the sharp sweet sections

across the table, and in so doing

pass the branches, the roots,

the sunny days and the rain,

the small leaves and blossoms, 

the whole tree and sky.

I sit across from you smiling,

a child, a woman, and old crone,

eating an orange, existing

as the breeze does, in fluidity.

This orange is gone, but the world

is full of other oranges. One day

we will be gone too, from each other,

from ourselves, from this life,

but time is full of other bodies,

other names, other days. We will

recognize each other. We will pause,

and share an orange again.

_________

Sparrows

 

Love bloomed

like the green buds of the wild weeds

under the overpass.

She lost the thread

when her ears filled with dialogue

written by devils and idiots.

Her love, in wool socks and field jacket,

lost his libido in the war

but phantom desire lives in his memory.

It isn't being coy

to hold back what you cannot save

from the black nest of loss.

Is it dusk or is she going blind?

The robot doctor holds no cures,

just needles with tiny mouths, enthroned.

Under the overpass

there is a constant buzz of insects

who live in old yogurt cups

Singing their serene song

like an engine before the crash

lifting lovers into each other's arms

somewhere beyond the wreck, beyond reason, 

at the edges of sodium lights and night frights--

two sparrows sold for a penny

where crows and cats spend all night calling.

_____________

for Word Garden Word List--The Beautiful Bureaucrat.

Music: The Doors Indian Summer

Word Garden Word List--The Beautiful Bureaucrat

 

Hello my little worker bees, and welcome to this week's Word List poetry prompt! As I am only halfway through Louisa Young's amazing WWI novel My Dear I Wanted To Tell You,  I had to scavenge for a source for this week's List. I settled upon The Beautiful Bureaucrat  by Helen Phillips.

Helen Phillips

I read it some while back and only remember the broad strokes, but I did like it, and feel certain that whoever came up with the concept for Apple TV's series Severance  surely have read this book beforehand and modeled its office and the seemingly pointless and endless work that goes on there, after the office in this novel. This is a post-modernist fable about a woman who gets a job filing, but the whole situation is strange and baffling and bizarre. 

What we do here is to use at least 3 of the 20 words provided in a new, original poem of our own. Then simply link up, visit others, and don't get caught up in an inscrutable and soul-crushing office job. This prompt remains active until next Sunday when I will post a new one. Enjoy!

And now, your List:

baby

boxes

bread

buzz

coy

crazy

dusk

ears

files

fruit

green

handle

insect

memory

robot

serene

squiggly

tactic

yogurt

zombie

Ballad of the Lost Shark

 A song for the lost shark

at the bottom of the sea

A song for the notions

that line up perfectly

A song for the children

who once were you and me

A song for the west wind

and the nest high in a tree

Sing, sing, sing, for no reason

just because you can

A song for the lost car

rusting in a field

A song for the card sharp

who says shut up and deal

A song for the baby

who was born and then grew old

A song for the kind ones

who give their hand to hold

Sing, sing, sing for no reason

just because you can

for the shark down in the deep sea

and you there on the sand.