A Note from the Poet

Excuse me while I kiss the sky....

Jimi Hendrix

Dear friends and fellow poets
Thank you for visiting my Skywriting Blog, which has been my creative space for several years.
At present, I am closing the door to this part of the sky, until such time as I have need of it again.

For my work in progress, please visit @skyloverpoetry ~
To read my Collected Works, please visit Skylover Poetry ~
To contact me, please email me at theimaginarygarden@gmail.com

Ceremony in Peaceful Protest

BBC.com (Source)
Fair Use
Protesters kneel to pray in Lafayette Square, Washington DC
31 May 2020

Come, let us kneel
in the burning streets.
Let us raise our hands to pray
to all that is above the smoke and flame
and all that is below the dust
and stepping stones of civilization.
Come, let us bid farewell
to the golden corpse of our idolatry
and bow our heads before
the rough rows of newly dead
that they may speak
in the poignant illustration
of each fresh grave.


I am writing in solidarity with all protest actions around the world against police brutality in the time of a world health crisis, where loss of life and livelihood has been both indiscriminate and extreme. Now is the time to stand together as citizens of the world against violence and bloodshed.


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~


Every Word Counts!

@skyloverpoetry

This is an open invitation to poets to use 3 or more words from my Skylover Wordlist in an original poem. If you would like me to read and comment, please paste the link to your page in the comments below.

Tartarus

How fragile is this hand
as it gentles the ferocious coils
which abide below the halfway mark
of belly, making discords of dogma,
and soothes the grinning sibilance
as the ravenous maw bites through
this tenuous grip on new realities.

Oh Mercy! The poison is luscious as lotus!
Desire welcomes the monstrous tongue
in the throat beyond question
of what will become of these bones
once the leviathan has picked them clean.



Inspired by the artwork, Thieves Blend by the artist, Eli Evangelidis a.k.a. @eliedwardart

Utopia

How beatific the ghostly face
as it turns from grim reality
of painful flesh beneath taut skin
unaware that heart is caged
and lungs are slaves
while bones remain as shackles
to the absurdity of decomposition.

Oh God! Time strikes like a meteor!
Life always ends too soon
to disregard the searing blaze
and ascend beyond the embers
of immolation until consciousness
becomes one with oblivion.



Written in collaboration with the artist, Cemal Eker a.k.a. @abreathinutopia, inspired by the illustration entitled Ayesha.

Flower Moon

Your waxen mask
of magnolia petals
perfumes nocturnal hours
with aqua light
as the landscape
softens at your touch ~
You keep aloof
the implacable secrets
of your alchemy
but it stirs the sleepers
in their beds
who grieve anew
the paradox of spring ~
And dawn does not dissolve
the stinging poison
tail-end of the dream.



Written in 55 moonlit words using the Skylover Wordlist ~ May

When searching for your truth, remember

Designer @eliedwardart
Painter @skyloverpoetry
Copyright is Reserved

When searching for your truth, remember

you are an ocean.
An ocean is deeper than anyone knows.
Light penetrates the surface
then things get darker.
Your skin is holding back the tide.
Your smile barricades
a gulf of unseen currents.
Only your eyes
reveal the true colours of your sea.
You are a creature.
One of mind and matter,
head, heart and limbs
all intertwining.
This creature lives in your ocean
and makes love to life.
You hold truth in your hands.
Your choice is to rise or drown.



I have written this Ekphrasis poem as accompaniment to the art collaboration between Eli Edward Evangelidis and me, entitled Entanglement.

A Skylover Wordlist ~ May

May Day!

Beltane!

Worker's Day!

Call it what you will, this is a day to celebrate life, rejuvenation, the old gods, our beloved ghosts, holy day. With that acknowledged, and the marathon of April poetry behind us, I am offering my monthly wordlist for anyone who is looking for verbal inspiration for poetry.

@skyloverpoetry
#skyloverwordlist

The prompt is open from 1 - 14 May here on my blog (4 - 14 May on IG).
Select three or more words and use them in a poetic interpretation of your choice. Derivatives of words may be used and you may link up as many poems as you write in the comments below. If you are sharing on IG, please tag @skyloverpoetry and use #skyloverwordlist so I can read and comment on your post.

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.

Skylover Wordlist: Deaths

Play It Again Toads: Bang, Whimper, Hiss

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.

Skylover Wordlist: Match

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

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?

Skylover Wordlist: Cunning

Play It Again Toads: The Bard

Inspired by The Wild Wood Tarot by Mark Ryan and John Matthews, with art by Will Worthington.

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.

Skylover Wordlist: Seed

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.

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.

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

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!

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.