Passenger Moon

@skyloverpoetry
on Instagram

Whoever you are, and however lonely,
look to the Passenger Moon
with her iridescent bronze feathers
and black-spotted wings, captured
on camera a century ago, and know:
none of us was built to last the famine.
You long for a hand to hold, don’t you?
No-one wants to be the last of their kind.


A Friday 55 for the old year in its death throes.

Ink, Pen & Paintbrush Illustration

Sonnet 27

@skyloverpoetry

This sonnet is from my archives, written in ink for my Instagram page. I shared 3 sonnets for the festive season.
My collection of sonnets, Tangled Gardens, can be read on my Skylover Blog.

Visit our Tuesday Platform, hosted by Pat on Christmas Day.

Thylacine Moon

(1861)

With the Thylacine Moon on the rise,
we weigh what remains of Earth’s depleted heart,
design charts, petition god on t-shirts
to save our soulless selves
from the acres of waste product in which we burrow;
hiding our eyes from the smog-blotted heavens,
we crouch like moth-eaten tigers
on the brink of extinction,
teeth bared.



A poem in 55 words.
I have doubled up on this week's prompts: Fireblossom Friday (Lament for the Thylacine) and Moonstruck, the weekend prompt hosted by Toni Spencer.

Poems for the Summer Solistice

Extracts from Love Poems

Notebook Poetry

Copyright
Kerry O'Connor

Copyright
Kerry O'Connor

Copyright
Kerry O'Connor

Three recent posts to my @skyloverpoetry Instagram page, shared on The Tuesday Platform hosted by Vivian Zems.

Gephyrophobia

or Fear of Crossing Bridges

in Three Parts

A poem I wrote back in 2010, reworked in ink for The Tuesday Platform, hosted by Sanaa.

Bridging

We hide much of our grief
under bridges, in the dark space
between stones, or weighted

--let it sink beneath the silt—

We hope for the shadows
to consume our untold woe,
all bridges being built for crossing.


For Marian's Fussy Little Forms: Puente

The Wheel

@skyloverpoetry

The wheel is no measure
of civilised thinking:
not much of a leap from rolling rocks
downhill bemused by momentum
when fear persists, turning
quickly to blood
but we learn to wake
and sleep,
count the days,
scratch our names on stone
while fine philosophy burns out
against a murky backdrop
of human history.

This is a rewrite of an older piece, which I cut down considerably. 

Singularity

This black hole eyelet
absorbs light ~
All gravitates towards
the event horizon ~
Vision narrows to particles
of black and white ~
This is the point of no return
nothing survives beyond singularity ~
To gasp for air
would be pointless now
but time for one last smile ~
Keep your finger on the trigger
ready to squeeze ~




For Camera FLASH! 55, which features a vintage photo of Jessie Tarbox Beals.

Five Cherries

@skyloverpoetry

Cradling five cherries
in my palm, I feel the weight
not of crimson fruit,
but of your fingertips
when I was mother to the child.



For Toni's inspiring prompt, Mono No Aware in the Imaginary Garden.

With a love poem, my thanks.

I love you more
than meat and bone, only the true
shape of you, belongs to me.
And if I say, I love your face,
I mean the face of you, behind
your eyes that touches
my eyes, my true face.

I love what is inside
your smile, and hold you
to be closer still to that dear part,
stronger, even, than heart
that beats, and with thanks,
my daily need, you
until the last breath I take.



For Karin's midweek challenge: Giving thanks with a love poem

Counting Days

A knife, a fork, a plate, a spoon
and muted chatter to be consumed
as meat, delicately sliced from the bone –
What did I not do, that found me here,
                                              so far from home?




For Kim's Weekend Challenge: And the days are not full enough.

A Bruised Sky

When your neighbour chops down an avenue of 100 year old trees..

I thought all the birds
would leave the sky
the day they cut down the trees –
I cannot forget the sound
a branch makes
as it tears away from trunk –
Gathering up
the flowers which fell like drops
of purple blood from a bruised sky
I heard the persistent call
of an olive thrush –
But, less forgiving
I have cursed
each man who laid axe to wood
into the next generation –



So this is what happened to rip my spirit to shreds this week - Monday to Friday, I watched as these trees which have been a part of my skyline for 18 years were chopped down one by one.. seven trees. My curse may be as ineffectual as Caliban's but I have said the words.

A late entry for Sanaa's November Challenge.

Epitaph

Dystopian Tarot Cards

© Kerry O'Connor

@skyloverpoetry

The Tuesday Platform is hosted by Vivian Zems.

Untitled (Little Bird)

There is a basin kept full


under my garden tap –

for the seed-eaters’ thirsty beaks


but yesterday, I found a sodden

mass of feathers, beak agape

and wondered how you drowned, little bird.



Marian invites us to write a Fussy Little Form: Cherita.

Blancmange

Photograph circa 19th Century

This blank mind
deserves better,
than a dab of mustard
and sautéed asparagus spears –

I had pursued a level
of detachment, a divorce,
one might say, from the rue
and inconvenience
of photographic memory –

but when one’s brain
is little more than a side of beef
one ceases to wander
in wakeful disbelief at all –


A brainless 55 for Camera FLASH! 55 in November

Gemini

@skyloverpoetry
Inspired by original zodiac tattoo design, Artist Unknown

This poem is for my sister
who never was born
except as the other half of me
the sole companion of my mind

I see myself as myself and
some other more solitary woman
whose hands are empty but hold
my own through sleepless nights

Her voice in my heart beats
recognition in a purposeless world
and bids me remember the girl
who listened for the flower’s pulse

and know that one love is enough –
my undefeated sisterhood of self



This poem is a reworking of one I wrote earlier this year. I changed it quite a bit and turned it into a short sonnet and turned into Notebook Poetry.

Untitled (Nude Sketch #1)

@skyloverpoetry

Inspired by the art of Debra Hurd

Don’t mistake
my fragility for weakness

Split me open
from sternum to navel
and you will find
a nebula
birthing stars –

Slit my throat
and plasma will flow
from my veins
exhaling
solar wind –

Slash through my skin
and you will see
the universe
made me
unbreakable –

Don’t disregard
the gravity of my galactic soul



For my Notebook Poetry Challenge

October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month

Untitled (Nude Sketch #2)

I rise from bed, tie back my hair, touch
the scar where blade met skin
but could not excise my sense of me.

Such a love, I have learnt from me,
to wake from lucid dreams and touch
the tortured path of gravel on my skin

without regret for what was lost; skin
and flesh do not define the worth of me
who loves the mark it pains to touch.

And my skin will love you too, if you touch me.

A Tritina for Marian's Fussy Little Forms,
including words from Sanaa's Get Listed: October Edition
for Breast Cancer Awareness Month.

Heartsong

@skyloverpoetry

Child of mine, I cannot fathom
the endless beauty of your every
changing tide
but your thoughts I hear
like songs of whales – an echo
carried by the amniotic waves – 

There is no ocean deep
as the farthest reaches of your mind
aswim with memories, gifted beyond gold.
No surf more opalescent than your eyes.



A watery 55 for Caitlin, on her 25th birthday.

Locked

Lines Meeting (1932)
Pierre Dubreuil 

Time to lock up the shop
on this one last customer –

He cannot decide if he really
loves the merchandise

enough to commit –
though he has been fondling

silky textures longingly
and won’t walk out the door –

I have places to be, fellow,
and I no longer really care

what you want with my time –



A 'throw away the key' 55 for Camera FLASH 55!

The Mariner

@skyloverpoetry

Remember the day
the sea swallowed the world?
Hard to cover that up
but the politbots did their best
to whitewash the facts
into palatable slices,
clucking, like chickens once did.

It’s not all bad.
Got me this gig on
the Hiraeth Inter-Oceanic Platform,
mostly it’s plain sailing –
no sea-monsters
thriving in these toxic tides.



A new age sea shanty in 55 words for The Tuesday Platform, in continuation of my dystopian series of monologues.

For those who are interested, I am participating in Inktober on Instagram, where I am handwriting and illustrating this series in the first week:
 @skyloverpoetry

The Astronomer

Detail from
Georges Méliès, Man in The Moon, 1902

Once, my kind were mages.
We followed the star,
read omens of a black moon,
divined, sought godhead
in the timeless abyss –
now we are bred
without questions.
Space is the frontier
of the trillionaire techbots
and we, their slaves of input,
must keep minds blank
while guileless engines
pick apart the theory
of relativity.

An astronomical poem in 55 words for Physics with Bjorn in The Imaginary Garden. Another chapter in my Dystopia series. 

If anyone would like to link up a Flash 55, please do so in the comments below, and have a Kick-Ass Weekend.

The Breeder

You become accustomed
to the term ‘miracle’.
They apply it as a designation
around here, speak in hushed tones,
and your belly
is much admired (and measured).
They feed you up
and send in pamper-bots
so you never complain
about the service,
just wait patiently
until the day they come to harvest
your pumpkin womb.



The next installment in my dystopian series of 55-worders.

Verdure ~ A Sonnet

Starved of the colour, come September,
my eyes are hungry for the night rains
and I hear the roots of grass gasp in pain
to feel the sap rise – and I remember

the touch of your eyes upon my bare skin –
reflection of thick-leaved trees on the lake,
the woods, the weeds, the pasture-path you take
and every journey’s end brings home the green.

True, the drought depletes, grief feeds on ashes
yet a full moon drips silver from sultry clouds
on upturned hands of imploring branches –

love returns, scattering seeds on dry ground
and we can only grow again, live passion
as verdant buds springing fresh from the brown.



A Neruda-style sonnet for Kim's challenge: A Rainbow of Sonnets.

The Philosopher

They promised us eternal life
at the Schadenfreude Wholeness Centre:
“No Exits: Only Entries” –
such believable smiles
on the faces of the doc-bots.
We should have known there’d be a catch
when we thumbprinted over
‘cerebral autonomy’
but deliberate ignorance
is the last survival tool of those fit
enough for the brain-farms
of cyber science.



A paradox in 55 words for Friday Flash, inspired by Fireblossom Friday in The Imaginary Garden.


Anyone wishing to share their 55-worder, please leave a link in comments below.. and let's have a Kick-Ass weekend.

The Harper

I wouldn’t call it employment –
rather a mad ploy
to avoid retrenchment
(I’ve been to the trenches…)
The electro-harp wasn’t my first choice
but I’ve my set pieces
(nocturnes preferred)
and we’re all fish under water
in this fog of the euthanasia wing
but the clientele are big tippers
and seemed soothed
in their passing.



A dirge in 55 words for Friday Flash, an ekphrastic poem based on the image supplied by Visual Verse for September.

Anyone wishing to share their 55-worder, please leave a link in comments below.. and let's have a Kick-Ass weekend.

Heartfruit

for Jaime

@skyloverpoetry

You are to me
the true tether – the indivisible
umbilical attaching moon
to the ground beneath my feet –
the fruit in the heart
of the flower before it buds –
the certainty
that high tide will follow low –
There is no poem as perfect
as the curl of your fingers in mine
on the first day


A birthday poem, in 55 words, for my youngest daughter.

Toni's prompt on Real Toads, asks poets to Step into the Void. I believe this poem speaks of the Two Dimensional Realm - 六畳の間 (roku jo no ma)

Memoriae

Damnatio Memoriae

Shell
Edward Weston (1927)

Memory curls inward

self-contained in little rooms

pearl-boxes, nacre chambers

spiralling dark matter

of this day

of that day

a Fibonacci sequence

that won’t stay buried alive

but must dig itself out crabwise

delve through detritus.

Camera FLASH! in The Imaginary Garden

Untitled (Aubade)

Love, love, the clouds went up the tower of the sky..
Pablo Neruda

@skyloverpoetry

See the gloss of daybreak
how light curves from oblivion
cuts a path over water –
you rise from bed, leave

your lover dreaming of a silken shore
and you, distant, a smooth pebble
skimming the mirrored sky
as the horizon burns –

Your eyes, deeper than estuaries –
your familiar hands, unravelling
songs written by the blue



For Karin Gustafson's Going, Going, Gone challenge, a poem in 55 words.

This is an open invitation to share your Flash 55 in the comment section below.
Here's to a Kick-Ass Weekend, for Galen and Hedgewitch, in her leave of absence.

Totem

Totem

I am cauldron
of the dark side of the sun –
multifoliate flower
on the blasted bough of midnight

I am furnace
burning with blackened flame –
tarnished coin
on the eye socket of death

I am shadow
stain of the blood moon –
mirthless medallion
caught between teeth of a fool’s grin




For Brendan's Totems challenge:  How would you carve your totem song?

Simplicity

@skyloverpoetry

Because of you, I love simplicity –

the flower of strawberry
five white petals that fall too soon

as I love the green certainty of fruit
in knowledge that summer returns

I love the simple courage of your hands –

I place upon your open palm
the sweet ripe berry of my heart

Because of you, love –




Because it's Friday, and time for Flash 55! Any one else who would like to participate, please add your link in the comments section below... and let's have a Kick-Ass Weekend for Galen & Hedgewitch, in her absence.

As A Stormcloud

As a Stormcloud
on Instagram

The west wind blew in
a poem lovely as a stormcloud –
it electrified my hair
and rained in my teacup
but I stirred, stirred
until it dissolved away
and I swallowed the bitter brew –
opting instead
to feel nothing today.


Micro Poetry ~ A Poem Lovely As

Sleep-Walker (Visual & Spoken Word)

I have recently ventured into the world of Instagram, looking for a new way to display my poems. Here, I share the pictures of a poem written with nib pen and ink in a moleskine notebook, and the reading on Soundcloud.

Sleep-Walker

Sleep-Walker
Instagram

Simple Remedies (Flash 55)

Simple things became surreal, malevolent
Maureen Hynes

@skyloverpoetry
Instagram

Poison doesn’t kill
you overnight
when you sip it slowly –

you forget the sting
of a bee
on the back of your hand
and marvel, instead
at its lightness of being –

you shed tears
for eulogies of strangers
merely half a cup of grief –

forget to mop the saltwater
bonfire of your own
unswallowed fears –



This poem is in part inspired by the title of Milan Kundera's post-modern novel, The Unbearable Lightness of Being, and in part by the photograph, entitled Still Life (1908) by Adolf de Meyer.
I have also used a selection of 5 words from the poem, The Horses, the Sorrow, the Umbilicus by Maureen Hynes and featured in Sherry's Wordy Thursday

I am posting selected poems on Instagram, so please follow me HERE.

For Friday Flash 55 Fans:

If anyone would like to share their 55-er this weekend, please leave a link in the comments below. Let's have a Kick-Ass Weekend.

For good measure, a reading.

Circadian Rhythm

“It is the time you have wasted for your rose that makes your rose so important.”
 Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, The Little Prince

Clock of the Académie Française, Paris
Andre Kertesz (1932)

She has gathered pigeon feathers
from beneath the clock tower
where they lie scattered like little bits of wind
or piled in iridescent drifts
beneath window arches and cornices.
Now she is weaving them
into a mantle of bright shadows
pinkened down, tealed plume
pinions of smoke and ash
to cloak her frailty
in a cloud of dull light.

He is keeper of the clock
winder of coils and springs,
inspector of the great hands’ slow toil
and pendulum’s swing,
who has measured his life
in gradations of the hour; all that is circadian, mute.
Now he is peering down at the world
but all he sees is time
in the painstaking march of tired feet,
a minute too late to contemplate heaven
and the last angel
dwindling from grey into blue.



Camera FLASH! in the Imaginary Garden.

Untitled (Life in itself is nothing)

Not only under ground are the brains of men 
Eaten by maggots. 
Life in itself 
Is nothing
Edna St Vincent Millay




A year ago, the ground cracked wide
beneath my feet –
darkness clutched my ankle
and I fell into my grave.

It is a lonely thing to live interred –
the smell of cold clay
sifts into your skin, an embrace
whispering of decomposition.

The sky is reduced to rectangle
devoid of the sun –
the rain finds your place in the night
and seeps through veins to heart.

Imperceptibly, your brain grows roots
fine as hairs, thick as fingers –
when it is time to rise, you find
you have grown attached to death.

A year ago, I went down to earth
but I did not die –
I returned to the land peeling off
tattered remains, a ghost of myself.




For Izy's Out of Standard prompt on day 26 of poetry writing month.

Also, for Margaret's Artistic Interpretations on day 27. I selected the picture entitled Bones by a 15 year old in the 10th grade.

Those who know me, will remember that I fell gravely ill in the first week of May, 2017. I received medical attention in the nick of time, but my recovery was a long, slow process and I will always bear the deep and painful scars, both physical and mental, as a lasting reminder of the experience.
Strangely enough, I made friends with death in the process - it was life I had to come to terms with.

The Poetic Stranger

But today, the Rock cries out to us, clearly, forcefully,   
Come, you may stand upon my
Back and face your distant destiny,
But seek no haven in my shadow,
I will give you no hiding place down here.
Maya Angelou, On the Pulse of Morning



I am the worm in the heart that feeds on death
cocooned in the silk of evening tears;
I am the dormant corm deep in the bitter mire
of every deserted battlefield;
I am the black eagle, storm-divided from my mate
flying an uneven course on bent wings;
I am the rocky outcrop above the vale, the vantage
of lonely height, one misstep from the plunge;
I am the poetic stranger you may pass on the street
whose words you’ll never read.

But my mind is open wide to the page of your need;
my eyes have looked upon your death and seen release;
my heart has been dismantled, so that yours may mend;
my body I have consigned to the trenches,
to the grubs’ grim feast,
so that a single creative truth
may emerge from my life’s work
like the carrion butterfly rising from the corpse of history
that knows yet how to fly and shine blue.



In celebration of poetic voice on Maya Angelou's 90th Birthday, and in response to Brendan's theme of Transformation on Day 4 of poetry writing month.

Untitled (Poem for my Sister)

In the branches of the laurel tree
I saw two naked doves
One was the other
and both were none
Federico Garcia Lorca




This poem is for my sister 
who never was born

except as the other half of me
the sole companion of my head
where I see myself as myself
and as some lonelier other girl
whose hands are empty but hold
my own against the bleak return
of sleepless nights and hollow days

everyone leaves me but not her
the voice in my heart that beats on
the awareness in a purposeless world
who bids me pay attention to details
to find courage in natural beauty
and know that one love is enough
my undefeated sisterhood of self



April One: One Love

On reading Of the Dark Doves by Federico Garcia Lorca

You & I (How Late the Day)

How late is the day
when you come to me?
I wake from dreams

to dream
of you.

How darkly burns fire
when you whisper my name?
I reach from the world

to a world
with you.

How sweet is salt
when I taste your skin?
You take me from myself

to myself
in you.




You and Me, in 55 Words

I have died to myself
and I live for you.
Rumi

Untitled (Written)

In the face
of these conflicting realities
Time melts to nothing –
dull lamplight
stutters in empty rooms –

your presence
lingers
closer than shadows
and I cannot dismiss
what has already been written –

no turning back the page
or relinquishing
the task –
no point in serenity
if even one shred
of you turns away
or fades –



For The Friday 55 hosted by Hedgewitch

Made For Silence

My tongue was not made for silence
but my words cannot reach you now.

I leave them unsaid, lying awake
through dark hours of morning

listening to the rain whisper her words
of love to the leaves and grass

knowing how this will make things
grow right, even the little birds

huddle closer together on the bough
and the stars are still there

behind the storm clouds, never too distant
for their light to be lost.

My words cannot heal you, but I am here
never further than the star, a small bird in the rain.



They stand there rocking in the ocean’s murderous sway,
two shapes of lingering with farewells neither can say.  Brendan of Oran's Well

For Magaly's Weekend Prompt, Art With Me, in which I have contemplated the power of words (and when it is best not to say them).

Firefly

Even when you pinched my heart small
it continued to glow
with green light
like a tiny fireball ignited
in the palm of your hand.

Does it burn, my dear? Does it trouble you
to know something
exists in this weak world
as indefatigable
as durable as my little heart?

My advice is this: Place it on your tongue
allow the momentary taste
of phosphorus
before you swallow
and enflame your soul.

This is a rare free element, this bringer
of light: let it live beside yours
and shine on
you need it more than I:
this, my firefly heart.

Camera FLASH! features the photograph, Firefly, by George Seeley.

All you ever wanted to know about Phosphorus, "bringer of light".