Self Portrait in Night

In the secular night you wander around
alone in your house. It’s two-thirty.
Everyone has deserted you,
or this is your story...
In the Secular Night ~ Margaret Atwood

Night Windows (1928)
Edward Hopper

The nights are not dark enough.
I sleep with the windows wide open
and wake at all hours, and always the night

is lit above and below by streetlights
or the diaphanous moon. I rise
to look at my garden which murmurs

like a strange sea and seems to heave
and flow; and I don’t know if my room is atop
a tower, or below decks of an abandoned ship.

I only know that I am alone. And it is night.
Without a god to pray to, or ghost lover
to yearn for, or blindness to hide myself

from myself. Only the undark, the unquiet night.
And my breath fogging a pane of glass
with every question I no longer want to ask.


Instructions for Living a Life, a poem inspired by contemporary poet, Margaret Atwood.

Scarab Blood Moon

Copyright
@skyloverpoetry
Kerry O'Connor

The eye of a god has been stolen
and blind, he turns from our world –
Behold as the Scarab Moon begins to bleed.

What has come into being?
Something arises out of nothing
Khepri at break of this day already dying –

A pharaoh resurrected
shrugging off the carapace cerements
begin to feed on our self-extinction.



Written on the day of the Super Wolf Blood Moon, 20 -1- 19.
Shared with Magaly's Mustn't be Fancy Weekend Challenge (though Mary Oliver might not have approved of my nihilism.)

Coelacanth Dawn

@skyloverpoetry

This will involve a descent abysmal –
Prepare to turn away from light 
as from hope of new day.

With each stroke, you are closer
to the realization that evolution
has forgotten the gills necessary
for life on a water planet.

Yes, sea levels are on the rise –
Already you are a rare sight
among coelacanths.



Izy Gruye has challenged us to invoke Lesser Known Cryptids. The coelacanth is not among those 'listed' but this creature of scientific mystery is native to South African waters, so I have sneaked it in to my Flash 55 of the week.

Hallowed Ground

@skyloverpoetry

I carved a hole in my chest
to see what had become of my heart –
Expecting to find all hollow

I saw the cavity was filled with seeds
tiny as distant stars –
and multiple universes

platelets in a microcosmic stream
ever expanding to the unknown edges
of my interior space –

Set adrift like dandelions
the neutrinos of my extant love
dissipated into the ether –

I do not know if somewhere else
they might take root and do someone good.



Something like a sonnet for Marian's Just One Word (Hollow) prompt in The Imaginary Garden.

Bumblebee Planet

@skyloverpoetry

The bumblebee is already dead
for no apparent reason
curled in the foetal position
seemingly just resting
after a long dry millennium.

I carry it to my ear hoping
for a distant hum,
any sign from a distant galaxy somewhere
that a new planet has been born.

Everything stands in danger of extinction.
Even love.

What we save saves us hosted by Sherry Blue Sky in The Imaginary Garden ` Flash 55 Friday.

The Auguries

Moth-Woman
Luke Eidenschink
Used with Permission

There is a hidden place
in darker hours
when blindness settles at my bedside
and the auguries arise
softly on the margins of sleep
like great nocturnal moths,
snowy-winged and feather-browed,
to pollinate my dreams
with clouded omens of past
spun into visions of future

and poems
waiting for their ink
at break of day.



A poem in 55 words for Art FLASH! which features the pen and ink artwork of Luke Eidenschink, with words from Sanaa's Get Listed! January prompt.

Find Luke on Instagram @luke.ink and visit LukeInkArt.

The Year of the Dodo

@skyloverpoetry

A Happy New Year to all Toads and Friends in the Imaginary Garden!