collage

Of Eden, or: Paradise Lost

Once rampant with color, its fragrance long gone,
the paint has dried into textured lines–
afternoons of melodic stillness now mourned–
decorative traces lost inside frozen time.

The paint has dried into textured lines,
ringed by the noise of questions unasked–
decorative traces lost inside frozen time
bleeding destruction we haven’t yet grasped,

Ringed by the noise of questions unasked
life is tenuous, scattered, emotions removed–
bleeding destruction we haven’t yet grasped,
as over and over we bandage the wounds.

Life is tenuous, scattered, emotions removed,
following roads that only disappear–
over and over we bandage the wounds–
the darkness rises, overwhelming with fear.

Following roads that only disappear,
like the garden once bursting with growth—
the darkness rises, overwhelming with fear–
sky is silent, empty, brittle as bones

We lived in a garden bursting with growth,
afternoons of melodic stillness, now mourned–
sky is silent now, empty, brittle as bones–
once rampant with color, its fragrance long gone.

I love pantoums, but I usually don’t rhyme them, so this proved challenging to me. It still could use some revision, but I need to let it sit for awhile. Punam asked for a pantoum on the theme of abandonment for her W3 prompt this week. I had also been thinking about Sherry’s prompt at earthweal, asking us to write about all the species vanishing around us. And Colleen’s prompt for Tanka Tuesday, a painting by Monet (below), had me thinking about what we’ve lost since Monet painted all his overflowing gardens at Giverny. Will we one day only know such beauty as a digital image?

I also started out with a lot of words from this week’s Random Word Generator, but some of them dropped out during revisions.

keeping time

My message today from the Oracle. I’ve been thinking a lot about time. It gets more confusing every day.

each moment is filled
with more asking

if never comes,
will we find out
where we belong?

in dreams
spirit dances between
language and music–
stars growing wings
inside your heart

The Oracle also seems attuned to the collage book I’ve been working on lately.

five ways of looking at hawk

1
on hawkwings return
me to the timeless before–
climbing windswept paths

2
currents ride
wings that touch both here
and yonder

3
rootpaths follow earth–
wings listen to ancient moons–
blue rivers of night

4
perched in place,
sharply focused, air
paused, waiting

5
stillness of being–
feathers answering the wind–
open, becoming

Brendan supplied some images this week at earthweal to inspire ekphrastic poems. I chose to work with hawk, above.

Soundscape

Of course I always notice the birds.

I’m waiting for the robins to begin my morning–the cardinal, the flicker, the mockingbird.  Then I will be certain spring has arrived.  But the crows are back, as opinionated as always, and the crowds of blue jays and sparrows never left.  A mourning dove croons from a nearby roof outside my kitchen window as the sun rises.

I habitually tune out the sirens, garbage trucks, helicopters, low-flying planes, motorcycles, cars and buses, construction—all the normal background noise of city living.

But the air itself has gotten louder lately.  Sometimes when I wake up in the middle of the night I can barely hear myself think over its whisper-hum.  My head is completely emptied of dreams; I am conscious only of my body in bed, surrounded by a constant movement murmuring in my ears.

Daylight does not mute the stormy sounds that show up suddenly and randomly, demanding attention, interrupting thought.  The nonstop intersection of voices, layered in a language I don’t understand, drowns out all other discourse.

It reminds me of the ocean–unbroken, all-encompassing, alive.  A presence much larger than my own.  To be inside of it is perhaps all the translation, the guidance, that is necessary.

on the street dogs bark–
the sky darkens—lights turn on–
I breathe in, then out

I’m a little late with Sherry’s prompt from last week at earthweal of Soundscapes–I’m squeezing it in at the last minute for the weekend open link. I’ve also used some of this week’s random word generator oracle words, which you can find here.

All art is from the archives.

WORLD LEADERS DECLARE AN END TO WAR

Armies To Be Disbanded, All Weapons Destroyed

Yesterday the earth’s nations signed an agreement to end armed conflict between any and all of its peoples.  There was dancing in the streets as all over the world people joined hands in unity and sang about love trains and peace trains and harmony echoing through the land and into every human heart.

Handmade signs spoke in multiple languages waving above the crowds:  “People Have The Power!”, “I Ain’t Marchin’ Anymore”, “War Is Not The Answer”, “We Are All Human”, “Nothing Funny Bout Peace!”, “Study War No More”, “Get Together”, “We CAN Change the World!”, and the simple and ubiquitous “Imagine”.

The assembly spoke in a single voice as the papers were signed:  Amen.

Selma’s W3 Prompt this week was to “Write a ‘prose poem’ in the form of a news article you wish would come out tomorrow”. Yoko Ono took out ads in the NY Times on John’s birthday for a number of years promoting an end to war, and a few years ago when I was doing my “headline haiku” series on altered pages from the newspaper I used some of them for my art. So it seemed a natural subject to choose for my news story.

…with thanks for words of inspiration to Martha and the Vandellas, The O’Jays, Cat Stevens, Nanci Griffith, Patti Smith, Phil Ochs, Marvin Gaye, Anti-Flag, Nick Lowe, Pete Seeger, The Youngbloods, Crosby Stills and Nash, and John Lennon

Mezza Luna

I pause on the edge of dark, on the edge of light, my direction halted by uncertainty.  Between is a narrow ledge, a threshold balanced on an abyss.  Am I coming or going?  The end is also the beginning and all my questions are merely maps without roads.

I have become abstracted by an imagined journey in which seeking transforms into finding.  In which the visions that ripple my consciousness turn out to be real.  But what if matter is as transient as thought?

half-awake, spirit
splits, expands—crescent-mirrored
into cosmic tides

Frank at dVerse asks us to write a haibun referring to the Mezza Luna, the half or crescent moon. When I was looking for art for the post, I came across the collage at the top, which I used for another of Frank’s moon prompts a year ago.

I am always photographing the moon, so I had plenty of photos to choose from as well. The mirror effect in the first photo is caused by the window through which I shot the photo.

No Match

The music
of your tongue is sweet,
flattering–
yet I re
main unmoved, quite resistant
to the tiresome songs

you string with
vague glittering charm.
A flashy
pointlessness
can be pleasant, amusing–
but rapidly fades

into the
redundancy of
easily
forgotten
old news.—May I direct you
this way, to the door?

Colleen provided the above painting, Portrait of Lady Agnew of Lochnaw by John Singer Sargent, as an ekphrastic prompt this week for Tanka Tuesday. Bjorn’s prompt at dVerse to use an AI tool had me consulting the Random Word Generator–I realized Jane had not posted one this week, so I generated the words below to choose from.

It led me in a direction I would not have thought of on my own, which is the point I think.

As to the collage–as you may have read in a previous post, I’m in the process of archiving all of my art–50+ years of it. This has led to quite a few surprises. It seems I did a group of abstract door collages in 1983–who knew? Not me, that’s for sure. The colors of this one work well with Sargent’s painting I think.