Thunderegg

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Lock

Behind this door you will find:

a captive prince who is the true heir of Faery
a wall of grave dirt studded with human teeth
the outside
a kelp forest that is home to three giant octopus and a family of selkies
your next life
a flooded river carrying Chinese junks, ducks and sampans
endless beaches of sand so white it burns your eyes
a room full of fresh-baked loaves cooling on racks
a house full of the ghosts of torture victims
something that will change you forever
the bridge of a warship in the harbor at Alexandria
emptiness
a coral reef full of fish as brilliant as broken stained-glass windows
your true love
a temple carved out of red sandstone and filled with statues of onyx and alabaster and drifting sand
chained dragons with porcelain teeth and niobium scales
a broom closet full of newspapers dated 1912, from every city in the world
the salt flats around the nuclear test site at Alamogordo
a huge flock of swallows wheeling in the sky
Mars
the kitchen of the house you lived in as a child
a blues band playing "St. James Infirmary" in a smoky tavern
knowledge of the secrets kept by kobolds under Storm King Mountain
a window looking out on a desert of blue sand and violet sky
children playing in a backyard surrounded by high windowless walls and razorwire-topped fences

Unlock it. Unlock it if you dare.

image courtesy of Magpie Tales
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Forgetfulness

At birth you must drink a whole pail of forgetfulness
and spend your living days in the vale of forgetfulness.

Wet wrinkled newborns cling to their mothers
and shed their first tears with a wail of forgetfulness.

That radiance we knew from the time before time
is blown out, swept away by a gale of forgetfulness.

Piracy, romance, adventure and mystery:
all different versions of the tale of forgetfulness.

Pilgrims and pioneers, stay-homes and wanderers:
all travelers together on the trail of forgetfulness.

The soul can be injured by an unwary purchase,
but who seeks a profit from the sale of forgetfulness?

In the close confines of the dergah, the dervish
is seeking escape from the jail of forgetfulness.

In the waste, far removed from the doings of mankind
the hermit hopes to break down the pale of forgetfulness.

The last and the least of the seekers after truth,
God grant me a glimpse through the veil of forgetfulness.

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Arise

3 Word Wednesday: Abuse. Cramp. Hatred.

abused souls arise
unstained by years of hatred
cramped wings opening

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Attic Window

She isn't my cat. I just leave the window open for her.

She comes and goes over the shingled roofs that surround us. I've never seen a collar on her, but she's completely at ease in the room. Perhaps she's feral by choice, or perhaps when she's not with me she drinks cream from a china saucer in an elegant drawing room somewhere under one of these roofs.

Once she brought me a dead sparrow, as if in return for the bits of bread and slips of cheese I've given her over the months. Poor fare, but all I could spare from a prisoner's diet. Perhaps she pities my imprisonment. Lord knows, I envy her freedom.

I dream of writing a note and tying it around her neck. Help. I am being held prisoner in an attic. Then what? I don't know what city I'm in or a single street name, and the only landmarks I can give would be invisible from ground level: two roofs over from the chimney pot with the greened-bronze trim, feh.

Last night she slept on my pillow and left the satin case smelling of dust and electricity. This, though it has been raining outside my window for three days. Perhaps she comes to me from some other city altogether. Wouldn't that make a fine mockery of my escape plan?

A moment ago I tried to catch her. She's let me stroke her before, but when I went to pick her up, she scratched at me. I let her go and she vanished out the window.

The scratch is still bleeding. The edges look curiously rough. Almost furry.

I turn from the comfortable bed my considerate captors gave me and look in the mirror. With unutterable relief, I see that the transformation has begun. Long, sensitive whiskers tremble at the corners of my darkening lips. I think my fur will be black.

It's a good thing I've been leaving the window open. In a few more minutes I will have no thumbs on my paws.

--for Magpie Tales
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His Shadow Fell Only

I got out of the car and ran to the back yard
to show you that a bald eagle
was soaring over our house.
I haven't wanted to write about it
as if he was meant just for us, this improbable bird
though surely the whole block could see him.
As he circled higher
sunlight blazing from his brow and tail
he was visible for miles.

The whiteness of his plumage like the snow on Mt. Hood
was seen by all, and owned by all
but his shadow fell only on the spot
where we two stood.

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Oh Man, Ohman

3 Word Wednesday: Bait. Jump. Victim.

Oregon's own Jack Ohman is a noted political cartoonist and fly fisher. I recommend his book, Fishing Bass Ackward.

baited hooks dangle
wise fish nibble, submerged, safe
victims jump and gulp

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Evocative, rather than descriptive

Ozymandias by Percy Bysse Shelley

I don't have a favorite poem. I don't tend to have favorite things generally; I'm just that way. However, Ozymandias is as close as any.

One of the things I admire about this poem is its subtlety. The transience of earthly glories is a common Romantic theme, and often presented pretty heavy-handedly: for a really atrocious example, read further down in the Wiki linked above, and look at the sonnet on the same subject by Smith...

Shelley frames the poem by introducing and immediately discarding a narrator and then introducing and immediately discarding a secondary narrator, the traveller ("I met a traveller..."). Note that the traveller describes the statue completely without reference to her- or himself: instead of "I saw a statue", we're simply told that it exists, standing in the desert. We're not even sure if the traveller saw this monument or was told about it.

And yet someone apparently looked hard at that ruined statue, and inferred a great deal about Ozymandias and the unknown sculptor. Because the interlocutor remains unspecified, we as readers experience his, her or its insights directly rather than as the insights of someone named "I." What might have seemed a distancing device (receding layers of narration) paradoxically brings the poem closer, immersing us in it without intermediary.

For a contemporaneous example in a similar vein, but one that makes strong use of the narrative "I", consider Keats' On first looking into Chapman’s Homer.

Shelley's device would be difficult to pull off nowadays: a modern editor would likely want to hear more about the narrator (either narrator) as he or she interacts emotionally with the scene. I consider Ozymandias an excellent example of a poem that evokes emotions without actually describing them. What does the traveller feel about the statue? We're not told. What do you feel about the statue?

Upstream

I read this story on a rising flood.
It said: They come, year after year, their sides
all fat with roe and milt. Long ocean dreams
are interrupted by breakwater thunder,
surf that fills the river-mouth with mud.
The salmon come in with the rising tide
blood-called to breed a thousand miles upstream
where spawn-spent bodies drift to stillness under
trembling aspens. Life embraces death.
Grizzly bears and foxes come to feed
on silver corpses light as aspen leaves.
White water, bubbled full of mountain breath
brings oxygen to strands of amber beads,
the eggs that dream of salt and crashing waves.

--for Big Tent's prompt: talk about your favorite poem
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A couple more blog awards...

Everyday Goddess nominated "Radiance" for her weekly blog award. I can always use some sunshine, so thank you, Elise!


Fellow poet Ninotaziz nominated me for the Pink Award. I'll update later with the rest of the meme.

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Radiance

If you wake up, really wake up
the world seems changed.
Radiance is everywhere. The smell
of roses. The fragrance of
a garden overflowing with the
thousand songs of Milarepa.
Suns dance hand in hand. You
were sleeping all this time. Wake
to see the bubbles of time
burst. Kick-start yourself
into eternity, into perpetual motion,
the dream of engineers forever.
Sky is the only limit
that the awoken recognize. Who
would dream on when they could
be awake
like this? Who would choose
the comfort of dreams over the
splendor of reality? Which
of us sleeps and which watches
the clockwork of the universe?
Mighty God, Most High
One of many Names
I lie wide-eyed at your feet. I
am your dog, your slave. I have
become your lover.
Death is only
the gateway to eternal life,
shatterer of chains, opener
of doors. Wake. The radiance of new
worlds awaits.

--for Big Tent's stegonagraphy award.
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Blogging award

One of 40, awarded by Awarding the Web, sponsored by Online Doctorate Programs.

Awarding the Web is out of University of Washington ("You-dub", if you live in the Northwest).
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Unextinguished Fire

These are the signs of an unextinguished fire—

grey smoke plumes from a distant hillside
dervishes tremble like a hot-air mirage
subterranean rumble from an old volcano's throat
slow heart beats in a humpback whale's breast
saints hover above sun-baked desolation
red coals stare from a coat of white ash
lover's glances meet like sparks among sawdust
silver moon mirrors the solar inferno.

Burn, burn, burn, spinning world
burn, unextinguished fires.

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Let Us Now Praise Famous Men

3 Word Wednesday: Gentle. Praise. Vulgar.

famous and obscure
men, women, gentle, vulgar
let us praise them all

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East Fork, Hood River (Hwy 35)

breeder of rockslides, boned with fallen widowmakers
ash-throated, ice-hearted angry young growler
strapped around your father's fleshless knees
like a belly-dancer's belt of coins and bells.
We laid a road down in your bed
to be ravished with washouts.

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Ordinary Fruit

Tongues protrude from sun-black blistered wrecks
that stare with empty steel-rimmed eyelets at
the summer sky. Like nooses around necks,
or cradles made from string to catch a cat,
their laces loop and knot. These sneakers dangle
from a roadside cottonwood whose limbs
sprawl half-dead in an awkward thirsty tangle
overlooked by shadeless canyon rims.

Imagined fingers run along the bark
and underneath their touch, these words appear:
If you're not our kind, drive along. Don't park
and never let the sun set on you here.
Yes, smile at tennies and abandoned boots
but other trees have borne far stranger fruits.

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Three Keys Waiting for a Fairytale

A key made of iron
a key made of agate
a key made from hummingbird bones
a triple-locked casket of cold alabaster
in a sandalwood cabinet in a palace of embers and smoke
surrounded by gardens of vegetable stoplights of green turn to yellow turn red

Waiting for hands gloved in velvet
waiting for hands gloved in steel
waiting for hands that can carry a pen or a lute
in search of a captive or wealth beyond dreaming
in search of a story with scenes of escape and adventure
a fish with a ring in its mouth and a cat with a bell on its handwoven collar

And if they don't make stories like they used to then we have to write our own
and we'll start with clues inscribed inside a walnut shell
and a key embedded in a ripe tomato
and a road map in a sidewalk crack
a key made of music
a key made of moonlight
a key spun from spider-silk and silverfish scales.

--image courtesy of Magpie Tales
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BP & US

3 Word Wednesday: Acrid. Bane. Tepid.

acrid black oil spills
bane of oceanic life
response is tepid

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Crocosmia

Flaming hair escaped from tight green cornrows
hung with hummingbirds like jeweled pins
bumblebee-sized hovering emerald and ruby

swaying in the evening air's warm flows
caressing our sun-stung sweating skins
with cool condensed nectar. Sweetness drew me

away from the sidewalk where stubborn rose
scentless petals and dry thorny leaf-thins
flaunted pointless pink. Crocosmia grew free

rambling in ferny backyards and hedgerows
rustling deep damp around deep-tanned shins
red-orange eye-heart rocket blossom blew me

into orbit low earth hummingbird hover
rocked in rocket arms by Crocosmia lover.



Images courtesy of UBC Botanical Gardens.
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Mint Tokens

I trust in you to know what I meant
though all I gave you was a mere token.

A teabag full of faded peppermint
shares my pocket with an old subway token.

When the field is cleared and the herbs are taken
they sell mulch made from the remains of mint.

The fairground is littered with discarded tokens,
edged with the fragrance of trampled mint.

You won't spend more than a precious minute
contemplating the road not taken

and yet hope springs like summertime mint
around every real or imagined token.

Like moonshine dreams of commercial tokens
brand-new quarters roll out of the mint.

--for Big Tent's odd word-couple prompt. I got "mint" and "token" from Watch Out 4 Snakes' random word generator.
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Bits & pieces

Alice Shapiro has put together a very nice page featuring Pushcart-nominated poems and poets. You can view it here. "Pleistocene Relic" is included.

Also my submission "(E)Vocations" was a finalist in qarrtsiluni's chapbook competition. A poem from it-- "A Date with Ben Franklin"-- will be appearing sometime in August.

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Jigsaw

Time was you had all of the right puzzle pieces
and arms around shoulders were snuggled in tight
like pictures with siblings and nephews and nieces
the edges lined up and the world was right
the edges were lined up, the world was all right.

Four right-angled corners connected straight edges
you found all the borders and got them in line
like shrubbery trimmed into labyrinth hedges
and life was a picture made to your design
and life was a picture that you had designed.

Someone shook the box up and the pieces all got mixed
Someone shook the box and now the picture can't be fixed
The image won't assemble and the colors don't connect
And life's an unsolved puzzle with no prize you can collect
And life's a jigsaw puzzle where the pieces don't connect.

You don't have to be what it shows on the cover
You don't have to live your life inside the frames
The picture's too narrow to capture your Lover
The picture's too shallow to contain the Names.

Someone shook the box up and the picture-frame dissolved
Someone shook the box up and the puzzle can't be solved
You're looking for an answer that the jigsaw can't define
You see beyond the puzzle when you look outside the lines
You see outside the puzzle that the jigsaw can define.

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