Lilacs And Ashes

 

1. ‘The studio was filled with the rich odour of roses, and when the light summer wind stirred amidst the trees of the garden, there came through the open door the heavy scent of the lilac, or the more delicate perfume of the pink-flowering thorn.’- Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray, Dent Dutton, 1955

I brought you lilacs and ashes

wrapped in paper milled from early mornings and blind starlings.

On the paper were written a million words

that when translated sickened and when spoken disappeared.

I touched you and grew old but was reborn in the lilacs.

You gave me caramels and sickrooms,

wide verandas where ghosts sang madrigals with sisters of the moon.

You gave me the world's most beautiful door but kept the key.

Your skin was sweet on my tongue, but my tongue became a road to nowhere.

In the ditches there were lilacs, on the hillsides, marigolds.

I wrote you a million poems and grew leaner with each stanza.

You said, "Come in! Come in!" from a dark hall that narrowed into nothing. 

Such was our love. Such was the starling with its injuries,

hiding in the lilac ditch. Such was the silent book,

the radiant rose, the bright marigolds on the coffin of time.

The moon makes me remember and I cannot forgive

its ruined face

so pale

so luminous

so sorrowful

like a Japanese lantern at the canceled wedding of joy and misery.

_________

for Dverse Poetics, hosted by Linda Lyberg. 

Word List Is Moving

 Hi friends. Word Garden Word List is on the move. It will now appear on the third weekend of each month over at The Sunday Muse. See you there!

Refraction

 does light lie?

do these leaves deceive? 

what is green 

but a word for a thing 

we see a certain way

inside our skulls where no green thing grows?

here is my yellow dress.

my yellow hair.

and yellow fields stretching flat and far.

inside, my reasons.

outside, the sheltering trees, 

our house in their lee.

also, your face, the flickering planets, and stars.

i want you, but i want the wind.

you say i deceive,

but what is wanting

but a word for a thing

for which there is really no word at all?

does light lie?

here is the yellow sunflower

and the yellow night-window

but they never

called themselves those things.

here is my silver ring and my yellow ticket--

i love your face, even though you don't believe

and wish me damned and dead because i go.

____________

for Sunday Muse #204

Waiting For April

 When I was seventeen, I set out oranges 

for turkey vultures on the glass top of a table 

with pastel yellow legs, in summer.

I said I did it because death is sweet.

Don't ever lie. Mutism is one way

to stay honest, but turning one's tongue

to a violin is another. Many early saints

were buskers, though they died stoic, silent.

What I'm trying to say is, it might snow in Falstaff

while it's 90 in Phoenix.  You might look for robins

and find peacocks, with their weird piercing call

that makes you feel suddenly faint and homesick.

I've grown slow and stiff, my hair is white

from a blizzard of mistakes and sorrows.

Surviving from March to May seems as sweet

to me as your kiss once did, but I'm cautious now,

Not like I was when you knew me, not such a fool.

I keep a .45 laid on the leather of my bible 

to test for truth, so think before you speak

because my ears are dull and dead, but I read lips.

_________

for Word Garden Word List #18 (Leonard Cohen).

Word Garden Word List #18 (Leonard Cohen songs)

 

Hello everyone, this time our list comes from a man who requires no introduction, Leonard Cohen. Specifically, this list is taken from his songs. At some point I plan to make a list taken from his poetry as well. 

Please use at least 3 of the 20 words in an original poem of any length or style except haiku or haibun. There are other venues for those. Then link, visit others, and enjoy. This prompt stays "live" through Friday. 

.45

angels

avalanche

blizzard

choir

curious

heroine

kitchen

meter

Motown

oranges

peacock

Phoenix

reviews

revolution

robin

sorrows

strategies

tempted

violin

Glass Acrobat

I stood on my head for years

and grew glass skin

to keep myself contained. 

I stood on the sky

and wept on the ground.

All my birds died of thirst.

 I let go and fell up,

became an ocean in all directions

carrying a second sky on my back.

"It's dangerous!" someone screamed

from the shore, but I could hardly hear them 

over the wild rush, and shattering roar.

______

for Sunday Muse #203.

A Brief Instruction On Style

 Many hands make light work

and many hats make the Hydra happy,

thus, the night shift at the haberdashers.

Dig the butterscotch factory windows,

the glittery silver mercury pulse of industry!

Have you ever felt the urge to relocate to France,

reinvent yourself as a nun in a nation where faith is an artifact?

You and Saint Joan and a renegade postman

delivering visions, swordplay, and cafe au lait around the clock?

I have spoken to the Hydra with its ruby eye and hissing susurrations

hidden in a yellow profusion of forsythia.

It keeps a Wurlitzer and baseball cards and the Cretan Bull in there with it

and the beauty of their hats makes statues weep and flagstones dance.

Whether fez or porkpie, bowler or kepi,

one cannot think without a lure for angels atop one's golden dome.

Whether wide-brimmed or ostrich-feathered,

loveliness must begin nearest the seat of the Divine

And the Hydra with a set of nine, waves like sea grass

by the coastal shores of Nice

with the haberdashery humming behind it, all lit at night

like a cause,

a very banner 

or a blue streamer above the brim of the shining world.

____________ 

for Word Garden Word List #17 (Joni Mitchell).

and

Dverse Poetics: Leave Your Hat On.