sun moon hand eye circle snake

we grow wings, awaiting the return of the sun
as branches and leaves dance patterns over the moon–
invisible roots weave themselves through our hands
and become imprinted inside our eyes–
alert to the gaps in the circle,
we lie still, glittering like coiled snakes

We shed our skins, discarding them like snakes
and bask in glittered nakedness beneath the sun.
We turn our insides out, become the circle–
shapeshifting, orbed, a secret following the moon
through the thousand doors of the cosmic eye,
the lines on the palm of the soothsayer’s hand.

We stand just out of reach, beyond time’s hand
among the whispers in the wake of the snake.
The sky trembles as we gather into the Devil’s Eye
and rearrange the seasons by summoning the sun,
dropping it into darkness.  Who can contain the moon?
The hares alone see everything, like the circle.

Exposed and whirling us in surprise, the circle
weaves a web of lines into every hand,
a talisman of light reflecting the moon.
It collects our beginnings and endings.  The snake
trades paths with the absent elsewhere of the sun,
a geography that exists beyond the all-seeing eye.

Our spirits walk on the edge of the hare’s eye
as hidden crows echo across the circle
trying to catch the light, steal the fire from the sun.
The landscape breaks apart, a wheel without a hand,
consumed by the changing riddles of the snake,
retrieving its magic by chanting the songs of the moon.

Our hares are like ships that sail the moon,
shining in the mirror of the third eye.
We feast on desire like the dreamsnake,
bending layers of souls into a spiraled circle.
Crow approaches and takes each open hand,
extending its wings to carry us far away from the sun.

Reawakening the moon, we reverse the circle,
crossing the hare’s eye with the left hand.
The snake casts its ancient shadow through the sun.

Lisa and David both posted sestinas yesterday, which reminded me I had never posted this one, which I began with one stanza for the Kick About prompt that highlighted the quilts of Harriet Powers. I later revised and completed it to submit to The Ekphrastic Review as a response to the wonderful print by Jane Burn, above.

For the Kick About, I made felt appliqued circles, similar to those found in penny rugs, taking the motifs from the quilts. I didn’t have a large enough piece of fabric to sew them on, so I photographed them on black paper, white paper, and the wood floor. I’m still undecided as to which background would be best, so the circles are still in a bin waiting to be put together.

There were birds in Powers’ quilts too. I didn’t put them in my felt circles, but I didn’t forget them either.

Wasted

“unguent, powdered, or liquid—troubled, confused”
from A Game of Chess, T. S. Eliot, “The Waste Land”

Her voice attempted to soothe, unguent–
but it grated against his ears like powdered
sand.  Her eyes pooled like liquid
poured chaotically from a troubled
mind.  The aggregate left him confused.

The Kick-About Prompt this week was an excerpt from TS Eliot’s “The Waste Land”, below.

 II. A Game of Chess

The Chair she sat in, like a burnished throne,
Glowed on the marble, where the glass
Held up by standards wrought with fruited vines
From which a golden Cupidon peeped out
(Another hid his eyes behind his wing)
Doubled the flames of sevenbranched candelabra
Reflecting light upon the table as
The glitter of her jewels rose to meet it,
From satin cases poured in rich profusion;
In vials of ivory and coloured glass
Unstoppered, lurked her strange synthetic perfumes,
Unguent, powdered, or liquid—troubled, confused
And drowned the sense in odours; stirred by the air
That freshened from the window, these ascended
In fattening the prolonged candle-flames,
Flung their smoke into the laquearia,
Stirring the pattern on the coffered ceiling.
Huge sea-wood fed with copper
Burned green and orange, framed by the coloured stone,
In which sad light a carvéd dolphin swam.

My collage is loosely based on Eliot’s poetic images, with help from, among other things, several Restoration Hardware catalogs, which always contain the atmosphere of opulent decay Eliot created with his words.

The poem is a silver shovel, taken from the line quoted at the top, for Muri’s Scavenger Hunt. It’s true, all I eliminated was the word “or”, but it definitely made a difference in the feel of my final poem.

Off prompt for NaPoWriMo day 11.

In Answer to the NaPoWriMo Prompt I Ramble On

My dreams are like recipes which incorporate ingredients drawn from a hat filled with not only all the people places and things I ever encountered in my life but all the people places and things that I have not.

My dreams prefer salt to sugar.

My dreams see the future inside the rhythmic pounding of ocean waves.  My dreams taste the stars inside the fragrance of the sea that lingers on my fingers after they trace the spiral inside a shell.  Everything I touch is turquoise.

My dreams have visited van Gogh in Arles and Basquiat in New York but they have not met Matisse anywhere.

Now here I am again, wandering through subterranean tunnels—grey, endless, ominous.  The word “tenebrific” appears over and over in black-light-neon, vibrating from the ceiling—or is it just a very low sky?  How can sky exist underground?  It must have fallen.  Oh well.  Que Sera, Sera.

All of this ubiquitous talk of being is like a door slamming in my mind over and over.  Why can’t we take a break and spend some time not being for a change?

I’m going to tell you exactly what I think.  K. is exhausted.  K. doesn’t want to hear about it.

But tomorrow is bound to be different.  It will emerge in some other costume, some novel era.  The future is not only shifty, but questionable.  It has nothing at all to do with my dream, or any dream that has forever been lost inside the other dreams that are waiting to be found.  Who said dreams are sweet?  I prefer them salty.

But tempus fugit.  My dream says this monologue has gone on way too long.

The turquoise on the edge of a spiraling wave.

The NaPoWriMo prompt today is actually a list of prompts, each supposedly building on the ones before. I remember when I did this previously I rambled on without making sense, too. I think the purpose is not to make an actual poem, but to come up with some things that might be extracted and used somewhere else, and it certainly could work for that.

But mostly I’m using it as a vehicle for showing the collages I did recently for a Kick-About prompt, where I used artist postcards (including Basquiat and van Gogh) as my base. They are in the same spirit as the NaPoWriMo list I think.

Oh, and tenebrific means “being without light or without much light”.  I’m quite sure I’ve never seen it in a poem, or anywhere else for that matter.

Star Children

stardust embodied–
matter merely a vessel
for luminous spirit–
did you find what was lost?

the spiraling center
returned to elemental form–
in life but not of it–
stardust embodied

opening into dreamtime,
orbiting the moon,
spinning to the farthest away–
matter merely a vessel

empty spaces crossing
infinite galaxies–
wings sailing oceans
of luminous spirit

a welcoming heart, a gentle touch,
warm arms to enclose you
in peaceful sleep–
did you find what was lost?

I did these embroidered watercolors and accompanying poem for the Kick-About prompt that asked us to look at the Père Lachaise Cemetery. My response was inspired by the Jewish Children’s Memorial, below.

Today is International Holocaust Remembrance Day.

In memory of all our lost children, all those without homes. The numbers grow larger every day.

flower of november

you fling
the blooms, graceful–
hands filled with abundance,
harvest untroubled by
time’s immanent
decay,

the cost
of seeds waxing–
each life encircled by
its opposite—how all
language breaks in
to tears—

but dance!–
the seasons are
not closed—the same sun that
sets early now will grow,
expand, greet sky
open

again,
in tangible
contrast to our useless
attempts to resist, turn
back clocks, challenge
the tides

My response to Merril’s autumn ekphrastic prompt at dVerse. I chose the above image, Child Dancing With Chrysanthemum Branch. Chrysanthemums are the birth flower of November, symbolizing both long life and mourning or grief. I’ve used Jane’s Oracle 2 words as inspiration.

I did not realize until after I wrote the poem and was searching for appropriate images how well it fit this response to Nick Cave’s soundsuits that I did for a recent Kick-About prompt.

The soundsuits created by Nick Cave, the artist, are totally different than the songs created by Nick Cave, the musician.

Volcano 4

halfway
is never fixed–
merging not in a line,
but positioned between–
too brief to be
resolved

the madness of fate–
consummation and release,
sweeping life away

Another collage inspired by Elisa Ang’s painting, paired with the Badger and Kick-About poem, above, and my Pure Haiku Volcano contribution which you can read here.

Volcano 3

puzzling
destinations–
the details repeated,
magnified, untraveled–
living outside
a map

random lines break down–
the page explodes, caught trembling–
from nothing, vast light

The Kick-About poem and collage and Oracle 2 Badger above serve as a prelude to my third Volcano offering at Pure Haiku, which you can read here.

Volcano 1

what season is this?
dark, enigmatic, grown wild–
spilling from our eyes

don’t weep–
rings encircle
us inside life’s limits–
we must learn to accept
the turning of
the tides

Elisa Ang provided the artistic inspiration, above, for my series of volcano poems appearing this week at Pure Haiku. Serendipitously, the Kick-About recently hosted a prompt based on Turner’s painting of Mt. Vesuvius, for which I made a series of collages and wrote a cadralor of volcano-themed poems titled “In Search of Venus”. And Jane’s Oracle 2 words provided further inspiration for me to write five Badger poems to go with the volcano theme.

You can read my poem at Pure Haiku here. Thanks, as always, to Freya Pickard for her continued support of my work.

trick or treat

if is a word
that seems to gravitate to me

a word
I qualify my meanings with

as if
as if

nothing is allowed to be
permanent or definite

who is the them that is
me?  define me

I think perhaps
I will choose to be someone else
I must accommodate myself,
defer to my mask

while the other me
struggles to understand what
we both have
in common

am I who they think I am?

or am I a secret
that will never be
explained?

These drawings of ventriloquist dummies in the Vent Haven Museum in Fort Mitchell, Kentucky were inspired by a book of photos of the dummies taken by Matthew Rolston. The Kick-About prompt of a circus immediately brought them to mind.

Haunting and aware, I had always wanted to try to capture some of the sentience of the photos in a drawing. And so I did, randomly opening the book to 4 different faces. 

One of the essays in the book says they are meant “to suggest life”—but any supposedly “inanimate” object so entwined with a human life is alive.  Any child can tell you that.  They may have been separated from their humans, but these faces remember them.

You can read more about the Vent Haven Museum here, and read more about Rolston’s book here.