Thursday, April 30, 2020

Entrances//Deaths ~ Deaths

In the April of Covid 19
Day 30

“And all your deeds and words, each truth, each lie, die in unjudging love.”
Dylan Thomas

Deaths


Words
I have sought to 
convey pass only as shadows,
Beloved, across your sleeping face
in patterns of fern, feather, constellations
of life’s common comorbidities, griefs, graves:
history of these last weeks penned in poetic obituaries
carved on tombstones while angels keep company
with princes of the underworld, salting tears.
The last thing I will say before death 
or dawn claims both our lives:
Mercy is an act of 
Love.



Play It Again Toads: Bang, Whimper, Hiss


Wednesday, April 29, 2020

Entrances//Deaths ~ Match

In the April of Covid 19
Day 29

“There crouched bare in the shrine of his blazing breast I shall awaken”
Dylan Thomas

Match



This
is almost
the end, we said as
we made love amid the lilacs
and stones: let us own these delicate
injuries, these dark prophecies of ourselves
and sacrifice life upon the pyre of lesser nobilities 
than the passion we ignited in the kiln of cosmic
self-creation: we are owed this bare hour’s
finality of mutual conflagration.
Let us be the ones
to strike the
match.




Play It Again Toads: This is (Almost) the End


Tuesday, April 28, 2020

Entrances//Deaths ~ Mockingbird

In the April of Covid 19
Day 28

“… and then (sang) another in which she said her heart was like a bird’s nest ...”
Dylan Thomas

Mockingbird


        Woven bed of milkweed.
Lambswool and lichen. Braids of grass.
        My heart-nest where mockingbird
composed her song of skyloving weather.

        And the bird pecked feathers
from her breastbone. Gave up flight for
       brooding in the hollow chamber.
A voice of numberless notes unseeded.

        Now the nest lies abandoned
in this cage of my ribs. And I search
        the forgotten summertime
of singing trees in hope of wings return.


 
Skylover Wordlist: Numberless
Play It Again Toads: Harper Lee

"Mockingbirds don’t do one thing except make music for us to enjoy. They don’t eat up people’s gardens, don’t nest in corn cribs, they don’t do one thing but sing their hearts out for us.”
Harper Lee

Monday, April 27, 2020

Entrances//Deaths ~ Transfiguration

In the April of Covid 19
Day 27

“A she bird sleeping brittle by her lover’s wings that folded tomorrow’s flight”
Dylan Thomas

Transfiguration

We never strove to mingle with saints
        but knew the joyous grief
of submerging our soulless limbs
        in sultry waves of conscious
will to drown in the infusion
       of our sacred selves
as fearless lips imbibed
      the shattered corpses
of those whom we had once been
      before the flood cast us wet
and shaken upon the shore
      awake in this new country
of the blessed damned beatified by
      the transfiguration of our intimacies.


Skylover Wordlist: Intimacies
Play It Again Toads: The Way of Tea by way only of diction.


Sunday, April 26, 2020

Entrances//Deaths ~ Zodiac

In the April of Covid 19
Day 26

“For the country of death is the heart’s size and the stars of the lost the shape of eyes.”
Dylan Thomas

Zodiac


I am learning the language of stars
  beyond voice-pointing,
and my signing hands, which grasp
       but fail to thread the song
when the needle is blind that pricks
       the skin of being we call night.

I am reflecting the light of ancients
  myself a point of refraction
with less of a meaning than a means
  to radiate the text of elements
through the flesh they made of me
  my zodiacal bone and sun.

I am trusting the dissolve of darkness
  the depth of preconception
and loosening the lullaby of my tongue
  in mute exchange of eyes
and fingertips, that smooth erasure
  of lines between constellations.



Skylover Wordlist: Zodiac
Play It Again Toads: Reboot, Rewind, Recycle


Saturday, April 25, 2020

Entrances//Deaths ~ Asylum

In the April of Covid 19
Day 25

“Silence, silence to do, when earth grew loud, in lairs and asylums”
Dylan Thomas

Asylum


What becomes
of the mad woman
in her garden?
Driven beyond sorrow
of her fallow bed of weeds
and dandelions
to the cloister
of barren rockeries, 
she digs deep
in furrows
of scars for words
that once bloomed
in abundance
now swept away
with autumn leaves and
heaped on the bonfire
of her silent asylum.



Skylover Wordlist: Rockery
Play It Again Toads: Willard Asylum
Flash Friday 55: Hosted by Hedgewitch.


Friday, April 24, 2020

Entrances//Deaths ~ Burial Sight

In the April of Covid 19
Day 24

“Lie watching yellow until the golden weather breaks, O my heart's blood…”
Dylan Thomas


Burial Sight


Let me choose
the season of my passing
on this golden day
that I may line my narrow grave
with the fallen prayers
of the plane tree,
kiss to my lips ripened apricot
blessings of honeycomb.
Let yellow be the wings of Autumn skies.
I will go to ground with eyes open
so my heart forgets to grieve
the bitter tang of this
dying lemon sun.



Skylover Wordlist: Narrow
Play It Again Toads: Natural Wonders




Thursday, April 23, 2020

Entrances//Deaths ~ Question

In the April of Covid 19
Day 23

“Time shall unfold what plaited cunning hides…”
Inspired by the words of William Shakespeare on the anniversary of his birth//death

The Wild Wood Tarot
Balance
Image Source with Reading


Question


To be or not
to begin if beginning
means to forgive the living
and the dead, the sunfoil moon
and the sun itself for rising,
to beg the bird 
for birdsong and time
when it unfolds
what plaited cunning hides
in its dark inheritances,
to wake or not 
to shatter eyesight with sight
of terror twisting grief
every question unresolved
of this mortal dream?


Play It Again Toads: The Bard
Inspired by The Wild Wood Tarot by Mark Ryan and John Matthews, with art by Will Worthington.

Wednesday, April 22, 2020

Entrances//Deaths ~ Seed

In the April of Covid 19
Day 22

“Fair seed-time had my soul, and I grew up
Foster'd alike by beauty and by fear”
William Wordsworth

The Wild Wood Tarot
The Sun of Life
Image Source with Reading


Seed


When as a child
I discovered 
my little claypot heart
rich with barren soil
I burrowed a finger deep within
and planted a secret seed
left to grow
 through the lonely years
and flower unseen
with an ache
beneath my breastbone
a pain to be buried
as compost
to the rootbound 
trust I had placed in my life
that one day I would
see the sun.



Play It Again Toads: Poets of April (William Wordsworth)
Inspired by The Wild Wood Tarot by Mark Ryan and John Matthews, with art by Will Worthington.


Tuesday, April 21, 2020

Entrances//Deaths ~ Parable

In the April of Covid 19
Day 21

“And the birds of the winged tree flying my name”
Dylan Thomas

The World Tree
The Wild Wood Tarot
Fair Use


Parable


This side of the grave
and endless wandering
I come at last to the place
where I shall lay
my cheek upon the chest
of the one tree press an ear
to the heartbeat
of an unfolding tale
and surrender my name
to the roots
of the world that I may become
the parable of four seasons
leaf fall and bud
rotten and growing beyond
the living maze
and firesong guardian
 soul of the ancestors.



Skylover Wordlist: Parables
Play It Again Toads: Tree Mythology
Inspired by The Wildwood Tarot by Mark Ryan & John Matthews, art by Will Worthington.

Monday, April 20, 2020

Entrances//Deaths ~ Orison

In the April of Covid 19
Day 20

“Friend by enemy I call you out.”
Dylan Thomas 

Orison


The salt
of this curse
coarse and white
upon my tongue
must speak
its truth to heaven
as I chain
the scattered stars
and bind them
in their oblivious acres
to my will.
Friend I call you
by name
that you may feel
blessed to be cursed
by my orison.



Skylover Wordlist: Salt
Play It Again Toads: When good wishes go bad

Sunday, April 19, 2020

Entrances//Deaths ~ Pity

In the April of Covid 19
Day 19

“And for the woman in shades saint carved and sensual among the scudding dead and gone”
Dylan Thomas

Pity


The crouching angel
beside my grave
feeds despair
into the empty mouths
of spring
beckons
while frost sharpens
its blades along the throat
of crocus
whose wound bleeds
blue and saffron
down the dark edge
of wistful dawn.
Pity on the living
who forget death comes
with the lightening.




Skylover Wordlist: Beckon
Play It Again Toads: Get Listed in April!


Saturday, April 18, 2020

Entrances//Deaths ~ Fourth Station

In the April of Covid 19
Day 18

“Forgotten mornings where he walked with his mother through the parables of sunlight”
Dylan Thomas

Fourth Station


It was my thirty eighth year
After winter when you passed into the swallow 
Hallowed and star pointing dusk
And I knew
No matter how long the journey into night
I would never awaken again to your
Easy laughter, your easy tears
Your hand
I held close with a daughter’s hand.
Here, again, is the sun of April, showery
Swallows spinning 
Woollen clouds of your birthday away
And myself to set
Paint upon the canvas of another year’s turning.  
The fourth station of our paths crossed
Mother and child
Always ends in farewell


After, Fern Hill by Dylan Thomas
On the anniversary of my mother's birthday.

Skylover Wordlist: Stations
Play It Again Toads: Encouragement

Reference: The Fourth Station of the Cross is significant at Easter as the moment Jesus of Nazareth met his mother on his path to execution.
I do not practice religion, but my mother was born on Easter Sunday, so I have used this motif.

Friday, April 17, 2020

Entrances//Deaths ~ Safe Harbour

In the April of Covid 19
Day 17

“Listen and look where she sails the goose plucked sea”
Dylan Thomas

Safe Harbour


The white caps, the whale surge,
the gull-pecked clouds, the topgallant masts of joy,
high water mark, the depths of drowning grief,
forgotten coastlines of summers past. I fall

through the open hatch’s wild
splash of blue, through haze of sweet seagrass
and dive into all my yesterday’s forgotten rue.
With open eyes, despite the brine, I swim to you.

My safe harbour, still waters
tempest-shredded sky, crepuscular rays, tide wall,
foam-laced breaker on rain-spotted sand. Beloved.
You are my anchor. I am sailing home to you.



Skylover Wordlist: Harbour



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Thursday, April 16, 2020

Entrances//Deaths ~ Conversation

In the April of Covid 19
Day 16

“he who taught their lips to sing weeps like the risen sun”
Dylan Thomas

Conversation


               In the remains of conversation
we kneel amid shards.  Our fingertips are pebbles.
Our tongues taste the grit. The toll of centuries. We
fumble in the fragments but only the weeping wind

remembers the words of our song.
Aphrodite’s breasts rise like white loaves from the ashes.
Her shattered face with soulless eyes. Carved lips unsoft,
too late for whispered breath of love to breach the divide.

We petition the cloudless sky
for drops of autumn rain to fall upon our upturned
mouths. To slake our thirst for speech. But only dry
rattle of leaves. Only the bitter tang of truth. Stifled.




Skylover Wordlist: Conversation
Play It Again Toads: Remains


Wednesday, April 15, 2020

Entrances//Deaths ~ Folly

In the April of Covid 19
Day 15

“And we have come to know all places ways mazes passages quarters graves of the endless fall”
Dylan Thomas


Folly


I own my folly. This construct of heart
and latticework of broken arrows:
bee-brimming honeysuckle athwart
the splintered kisses and thrusting iris

barricade cannot disguise the ruinous
neglect, the rotten staves and fallen arch
of my breastbone, the concave pool of rain’s
cold tears, where grief has grown to ache.

Unluckily, such folly is beyond repair,
this monument to woeful pride,
and hope of Spring cannot empower
the lovelorn roots of my desire.



Skylover Wordlist: Unluckily
Play It Again Toads: Folly


Tuesday, April 14, 2020

Entrances//Deaths ~ Invisible

In the April of Covid 19
Day 14

“Time and places grip her breast bone, she is breaking with seasons and clouds”
Dylan Thomas

Invisible


I am invisible. A strange pause. A flint
before the strike. I am a fragment of ether
sensual, formed as woman, flesh-flaunt
of binary star nipples, nova, matter other

than thighs and belly, white as milky way.
I am a life held in suspension. A part missing
from your sense of whole. I am the why
of your sleepless night, the message

you seek to decipher in the half-faced moon
at your window. I am hidden. Always here.
Your skin thirsts for my stroke, throat moans,
hands grope in darkness for light of my hair.



Skylover Wordlist: Strike (Stroke)
Play It Again Toads: Invisible



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Monday, April 13, 2020

Entrances//Deaths ~ Dreams

In the April of Covid 19
Day 13

“When only the moon rages and the lovers lie abed with all their griefs in their arms”
Dylan Thomas


Dreams


Let me lie here encased
in the amber of your darkest dreams
no corpse but that you should feel the warmth
of my breasts beneath your sleeping palm
and taste again my kiss
unwrapped from ice.

Let us be of one mind, sleeper and dream
and deny death at any price.




Skylover Wordlist: Lie
Play It Again Toads: 13 is Poetry
L'Arora Form



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Sunday, April 12, 2020

Entrances//Deaths ~ Ballad

In the April of Covid 19
Day 12

“Love is the last light spoken.”
Dylan Thomas


Ballad


I speak of love as one bereft
of the ocean’s soulful ballad sighing deeply
in the wide embrace of patient arms;
I tell my love
as one who sails past hope
in a whispered word and trust so true

a throb of joy is incantation
sung to the sky all its burning blues.




Play It Again Toads: Love
L'Arora Form

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Saturday, April 11, 2020

Entrances//Deaths ~ Desire

In the April of Covid 19
Day 11

“Begin with singing sing darkness kindled back into beginning”
Dylan Thomas

Desire


Though I must suffer this sequestration
far beyond the range of human touch
your eyes weigh upon me like 
water-washed stones
 sullen as wet moss
but smouldering shadows of green fire.

I give thanks to the triumvirate of stars
that I am lost to all but your desire.





Play It Again Toads: Inspired in part by the SciFi posters of Soviet Kitsch, and by the L'Arora form posted April 8. 


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Friday, April 10, 2020

Entrances//Deaths ~ Melancholy

In the April of Covid 19
Day 10

“After the first death, there is no other.”
Dylan Thomas

Melancholy


I will say goodbye in my own way
wait through all the long tunnels
of midnight’s repeated tomorrow, 
set down my roots at threshold of 
your tomb, scream my mandrake
madness to the hollow ear of hell.
I will cut my hair and burn hanks
on a pyre of incense sticks, curse
the living corm that dares break
ground to bloom upon your grave.




Play It Again Toads: The Art of Odilon Redon
Referencing Melancholy (1876)


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Thursday, April 9, 2020

Entrances//Deaths ~ Prayer

In the April of Covid 19
Day 9

“I turn the corner of prayer and burn in a blessing of the sudden sun.”
Dylan Thomas

Prayer


I utter no prayer to the blackout
god nor the mask faced gargoyle
grinning at my pale mounds as I
bathe in dew of dawn cold graves.
I enable my own metamorphosis,
my passover, amid primrose and 
headstones, burning your name
on my skin, making love to your
shadow self, before the envious 
first light lays claim to your soul.





Play It Again Toads: Words Count with Mama Zen


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Wednesday, April 8, 2020

Entrances//Deaths ~ Craft

In the April of Covid 19
Day 8

“She deludes the heaven-proof house with entering clouds…’
Dylan Thomas

Craft


This is my craft
to shuffle delusion from the beak of a swallow diving
duskward in fall

to cut the deck on a thorn spiking the flesh of footsole
a bead of blood
under the thrice shrouded drops of faint moon shower.

This is my art
to deal the dark leaved oak unspared the axe that cleaves
it from root

to cross it with the first star sinking behind the west wall
calling it hope
that when ashes transmute to tears, you will be mine.


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Tuesday, April 7, 2020

Entrances//Deaths ~ Refusal

In the April of Covid 19
Day 7

“I may without fail suffer the first vision that set fire to the stars.”
Dylan Thomas

Refusal

Here is my refusal
to renounce these invisible chains dark material design,
these cosmic cuffs

delicately twisting my thin wrist bones many creeping 
tendrils reaching 
for the mark of full moon reflected in your night eyes.

I am possessed
of this second sight and charmed by my own delusions
that living is more

than breath at the mercy of the elements here below
but up is space
where my soul is linked to yours as tangibly as stars.



Play It AgainToads: Bracelet


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Monday, April 6, 2020

Entrances//Deaths ~ Others

In the April of Covid 19
Day 6


“A stranger has come to share my room in the house not right in the head, a girl mad as birds”
Dylan Thomas

Others


Others may say I
have lost my sense of self along with all my feathers
plucking out poems

stuffing pillows with my night terrors and love songs.
They might point
out my inability to fuse fact and metaphoric pintails

but you know the vein
I have struck with sharpened quill digging deeper
than face value

you have lost that part of me that I have lost in you.
You know what others
do not: our unspoken stories fly truth to the sun.


Play It Again Toads: Speaking in the Voice of Another



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Saturday, April 4, 2020

Entrances//Deaths ~ Fern Time

In the April of Covid 19
Day 4


“Time held me green and dying though I sang in my chains like the sea”
Dylan Thomas

Fern


once I wore
my green dress in a springtime
you dreamed me in the greenery of the
long-forgotten garden where you kissed me
on the ankle after a long absence of days that fell
like pennies down the dark green well that syphons
the time we lost when not spent entwining together
indulging the grassy pathways of rambling pleasure
I wore the green of eyes on my skin and cared for
nothing but that day but today the greenness
spirals in on itself rewinding all the loves
we dreamed alive now tight coiled 
fronds of fern

Time


centripetal
the dreamtime curls back to
beginnings back to the greener grove
and the interspace dissolving kiss point of origin
dwindling fall like grains of sand but never to oblivion
counting days does not remove the mystery of their passing
when souls break through the construct of empirical choice
to shatter the hourglass of expectations upon naked breasts
skin soft as paper thinly bleeding the pain of partition
my lips will move tenderly upon your open mouth
to drink these poems from your mind
I write among the stars
untiming



In the April of Covid 19
Day 5


“For the country of death is the heart’s size and the star of the lost the shape of the eyes.”
Dylan Thomas


***
Day 4
Play It Again Toads: Caution: Tender Buttons

***
Day 5
Skylover Wordlist: Paper
Play It Again Toads: Space/Time



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Friday, April 3, 2020

Entrances//Deaths ~ Visions

In the April of Covid 19
Day 3


“And the shadowed head of pain casting tomorrow like a thorn”
Dylan Thomas



Visions


This is not entirely nightmare this surreal landscape
with all its soul subdivisions and silences
distance is all the steps it would
take to cross out the vision
of my world
without
all the degrees
east north west of my heart
worn thin as a needle of compass.
Should I hold you inside myself unharmed
or know how many deaths I must die before I die?



Play It Again Toads: Existentialism


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Thursday, April 2, 2020

Entrances//Deaths ~ Strangers

In the April of Covid 19
Day 2


“I can hear the womb opening and the dark run over the ghost…”
Dylan Thomas



Strangers


called
through deep
space and cast spells
of binding charged with light 
matter from the equators of orion
and the dark matter of all nothing that lies
between us the sliver only of moon and I wove
this net with fingers made fists until silence
engulfed me and the earth drank me in
drowning my tears with thirsty
roots beneath the empty
ceiling of heaven
recalling
you




***
Play It Again Toads: Taking It To The Streets
***



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Wednesday, April 1, 2020

Entrances//Deaths ~ Fools

In the April of Covid 19
Day 1


“the turbulent new born burns me his name…”
Dylan Thomas


Fools



we
fools
come head
first into these
bodies and our minds
slice cracking the carapaces
of Hel and all the ice lit blue of its 
many entrances cave in upon themselves 
in the fresh chaotic void that is life 
agleam as the eyelids flicker
silent as mothwings
in the cherished 
moment that
awakens 
thus





***
Skylover Wordlist: Entrances
Play It Again Toads: April is for Fools and Poets
***

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