(nowhere) to be found

it’s the alone in
the dance that makes the never
knowing so complete

Amaya at dVerse asked us to consider music that brings us to tears.  There are many candidates these days, but I chose Jackson Browne’s “For a Dancer” for it’s longevity and continued relevance in that department.  People, places, things…they are always “dancing in and out of view”.

And a ghazal for the song as well.

In the quiet of a summer’s afternoon I think of you
in the absence that is always in this room I think of you

My mind plays tricks and mixes up the present and the past
in memories recalled and then exhumed I think of you

Bananas peaches lemons oranges strawberries and limes
in fruit that ripens and releases its perfume I think of you

I search for guidance in the symbols of mythologies and stars
in portents that appear like ghostly runes I think of you

The fiber spun and dyed the needle waiting in my hand
in threads that cross like patterns on a loom I think of you

Sometimes I seem to recognize a voice calling and turn
in the abbreviation of my nom de plume I think of you

Pay attention to the open skies.

 

Wayfaring Stranger

It wasn’t heaven above surrounding me like stars
on a distant shore—I wasn’t a memory like stars

I had not become a child swimming in the sun, a sleepy
summer afternoon of endless play, swinging free like stars

Hovering in the form of an invisible crown,
it was not a hurricane holding its eye to me like stars

I was not a journey through the tunneled darkness
following the trail of all things hidden ghostly like stars

Becoming what I yet wasn’t, I crossed everywhere–
in a nameless endless shedding of all identity—like stars

A poem of wandering for Ammol at DVerse, in the current featured poetic form, ghazal.  I find the form to be somewhat awkward, but I’m beginning to think maybe that’s the point of it.  It mirrors the thought process.  Or maybe I just need more practice at writing them.

 

moonflower

In honor of this month’s May flower full moon, the Oracle gave me a lai nouveau.  I know dVerse has moved on to the ghazal already, but I’m not ready yet for June which is still a full week away.

the moon a flower
cloud air and water
gentle
wild gardens wander
secrets uncover
cycle
we follow after
blossoming color

shine over summer
spring fall and winter
fertile
beneath blue murmur
listen as nature’s
soul fills
cloud air and water
the moon a flower

 

misdirections

here or there
and then what?  so far
so up–then
down, between
lost and left behind–climbing
the chutes, the ladders,

the maybes
and the knotted, the
ready and
the not yet,
the pointless and the lines drawn
in the sand…which way?

A nonsense quadrille for dVerse using the word “up”.

sailing the mares of night

The Oracle gave me another lai, the featured poetic form at dVerse for May.  She began with darkness and ended with light.  They are always switching places it seems.

what blackness this storm?
it covers the moon
and sky

beneath shadowed dream
wind remakes the when
of why

time sings of spring sun
the light whispers come–
don’t cry

May 2019

Maia, Good Goddess:
garland the earth with bouquets–
unfold us shining

A circle grid for the new month.  The flowers have arrived!

Also linking to dVerse Open Link Night.

 

surrounded

I consulted the Oracle this morning and ended up with a Lai poem, the featured form at dVerse for May.  The rhymes are pretty slanted, but the message suits this fine morning that has cleared from grey to breezy blue.

I’m posting this for NaPoWriMo, but I may try the Shakespeare prompt later if I have time.

the apple was already eaten

The human body is composed of 206 bones. But sometimes bones fuse, and the body contains less.

One in 200 humans has 13 ribs, but not all of these humans are identical in gender to Eve.

Bones are light.

Flesh lies heavy, uneasy, impermanent. Flesh apologizes for itself, asks to be concealed.

To be light.

anima opens,
immense—like Pandora’s box,
inside singing out

The Poetics theme proposed by Anmol at dVerse is Myths and Legends.  My collage is based on an Alice Neel painting called Symbols,  which I have always found intriguing  and was lucky enough to see in an exhibit in March.  That’s my photo of it above.

I’ve done a collage based on the painting before–the one, above, done in 2010, was a much more literal interpretation.

 

 

 

 

Alterations

I am following a voiceless sound,
a heaven-circling gravity
larger than the known,
a floating moon-blown body
invisibly dense

I am weighed down
by its absence

My phantom limbs grasp
at the tide-looped nothing
that pulls me into its wake,
that surrounds me
with unsheltering, refusing
my exhausted tear-culled pleas

I cannot move and yet
the journey continues

I cannot sing and yet
my mind is full
of dust-tongued chords

I shed my skin,
leave my bones behind

I am going
absolutely nowhere

fast and endlessly
eclipsed by a juncture
of dark-vowelled circumstances

without limits

I’m not sure this follows the NaPoWriMo prompt to assume an unusual point of view, but it does contain hyphenated words from Dylan Thomas, which is the dVerse Poetics prompt from Laura Bloomsbury.

containment

For what shines after all
through the dust in the air?
an opening, a clue, a wall—

what do we see or recall
through the threads made bare?
for what shines after all,

glittering amidst free and fall?
an answer within now and here?
or an opening, silent—a wall,

a shadow, the wind, a spell?
the hand that holds all we can bear?
for what shines after all–
an opening, a touch—or a wall?

For the NaPoWriMo prompt, a villanelle with homonyms.  Also linking to the dVerse (slant rhyme) villanelles for April.