Over Chenobyl

Scientists Discover
that birds are adapting to Chenobyl Radiation (2014)

This dream is fragmented – 
I pick through the remains, a small pile
of dark feathers, soft to the touch
and too easily rubbed to ashes between
my thumb and fingertip,
slowly piecing it together, laying out
the ink-black quills
and overlapping each plume
in hopes of finding order
amid the chaos.
Will this bird ever fly again,
a raven over Chenobyl?


Written for Bjorn's Weekend Prompt in The Imaginary Garden: Chenobyl and Our Fears

The Froward Tongue

The mouth of the just bringeth forth wisdom: but the froward tongue shall be cut out.
Proverbs 10:31

Gustave Dore: Death on the Pale Horse (1865)

I have been to the dream-world
and returned lucid with visionary dread.
There is nothing demure about Death,
who rides a slipshod horse, and fist pumps
when he gets it right –
tending the acreage of humankind,
willingly blind to carnage, deaf to hunger,
immune to disease in others –
There are signs, here, in this alternate realm
of hashtag messages momentarily
flickering across every hand-held screen
but the language of prophecy is arcane,
rendering young brains witless.
Believers are few. Wrist-bound, tongues
pulled, they have learned it is better not to pray.



A rather bleak, Blake vision bred of medieval torture, Biblical tracts, contemporary disinterest and Get Listed! with Fireblossom, whose words were altogether more promising than I have given them credit here!

Metamorphosis

Metamorphosis
Kerry O'Connor

@skyloverpoetry

Metamorphosis

Sinkholes appear
on arrival of the solstice
and this one is no different
though whether valedictory tunes
are beaten out with the bones
of vanquished enemies
on hairy hides pulled taut,
or echo a two-step garage
drum machine in the grime,
I cannot clearly distinguish.
                                         No matter,
some dark hybrid syncopation lies
tightly coiled and vibrating
at low frequency
while meteors tear up the sky.
My hands feel empty:
a nervous tension writhes
along my backbone as I wait
for my carapace to split open
and some newer, shinier fusion of self
to emerge, damp and wrinkled,
into the  reverberant present.


This is a poem from my Skylover Collection, recently edited and illustrated for the Solstice, whether that be Summer or Winter depends on your relationship to the equator, but nonetheless the change is felt by all, especially we, who have passed through the longest night.

Shared in The Imaginary Garden for Toni's Weekend Mini Challenge.

Unwakeable

Image sourced on Pinterest

I have never walked in this forest
nor stood beside the hidden lake
except that I have set foot upon
these mossy stones and balanced
in the caesura, before sleep ripples
the reflection of my mind, thoughts
sinking to underwater dreams –
I have never felt so unwakeable,
so lost and out of sight of home.


A woodland 55, for my Human-Landscape Interactions prompt in The Imaginary Garden.

Untitled (This flabby life)

Death of the Myth
@skyloverpoetry

This flabby life slinks into a quaint story
of a gorgeous book, undulating in plain time.
A drab home may be beholden to magnificent things.
Clean nights will long for this place
of bald days, alive with unsightly study –
fancy eyes arising in an unkempt world.


A late entry for Magaly's weekend prompt: Exquisite Corpse Poetry

A Story of Our Own

We lived in the gaps between the stories.
A Handmaid's Tale ~ Margaret Atwood

We live in the pauses before
climax or post-conclusion
of various histories

flesh / bone
dissolves
thought / word
prevails

We reveal hair-line faults
in sinking foundations
of the universe

boots / fists
decay
lyrics / songs
remain

We persist on the outskirts
of misfortune’s village
neighborhood

frown / scowl
drowning
care / concern
floating

We have jumped over gaps
between the cracks
hand in hand

names / numbers
squared
scars / smiles
shared

We will complete the arcs
of our stifled sisters'
dislocated stories



I wrote this poem several years ago, while reading The Handmaid's Tale, and have revisited it for Sherry's Wordy Thursday  challenge to write for women in our times. I needed revision, but the essence remains the same, as the role of women and gender stereotyping does not yet seem to have reached its Renaissance.

Erasure Poetry

A little experiment in blockout poetry.
Please scroll down if you want to read the text written out.

Erasure #1
The Medieval Talisman

@skyloverpoetry

Erasure #2
The Astrological Chart

@skyloverpoetry

Erasure #3
The Sun in Splendour

@skyloverpoetry

#1

I did love him
My storm of heart
I saw in his mind
And my soul
I left behind.
Love
Let me go.
I beg with heat
To be free

*******

Unfolding
recklessness in my
innermost nature
and witness
my own true
companionship


#2

This is true:
My offending speech had,
Till now,
Wasted little of battle.
Therefore I,
In speaking for
Your love, drugs, charms
And magic, am bold
To fall in love,
In spite of everything.


#3

Talk you of heaven?
With all my heart
I hope you know thy sins
Are loves that gnaw you
for loving passion
Yet I hope they point at Peace.
Be still.
I will love thee.

Walk Uprightly

We learn to walk uprightly
a delicate balance between mind
and the need to crawl into a muddy space to hide.

Our organs continually
spasm and twist with parasites
to whom we are little more than feeding grounds.

Uncentred and impious
we dig the meat from between
our teeth and dirt from the cracks in our soles.

But we seek absolution
nonetheless and train our eyes on
the nebulous heavens expecting an infallible reply.



Marian has given us Just One Word: Muddy, a glorious epithet for the toads.
Title Ref. Ps 84:11

Dreams of a Passing Season ~ A Tarot Reading

Run Moon run Moon Moon 
I hear the horses’ hoofs 
Leave me boy! Don’t walk 
on my lane of white starch.
Federico Garcia Lorca

"The Shell Deck" @ellasedge
Tarot Cards by Nicoletta Ceccoli
Fair Use

The boy emperor rocks
on his little wooden horse
and fights the old demons
of his seasoned imagination.
The man loves this small
wounded boy inside himself
as he rocks back and forth
on a journey through her dreams.

Through her dreams the girl embraces
her own fragility and clings to fear
of leaving all she has loved behind
to face the sorrow of abandonment.
The woman is in love with her
own dreams but wings have sprung
from her ivory shoulder blades
in this nesting place of an old season.

An old season has shed its leaves,
her eyelids are open, all tears spent
and her heart, she keeps safely tethered
high above the world floating free.
And the man who was her emperor,
he waits behind the empty doorway
of her final dream, awake at last to
the notion he has lost her forever.




This is my reading of the Shell Deck Tarot Cards provided by Ella Wilson as today's Guest Host in The Imaginary Garden. As I contemplated the cards, a story of past, present and future emerged.
My spirit guide was Federico Garcia Lorca, born 5 June 1898.

Ravenwood

Eli Edward Evangelidis
@eliedwardart
Used With Permission

Let tricorn blade be keen-edged
honed on a serpentine whetstone
and strike throat
like a green stem with fresh cut.

Let blood drop as rowan berries
in the brambles of violent obsession
and gaze upon
death behind obsidian eyes.

Let bitter nor’easter be guide
to you in raven-winged moonlight
when you’ve drunk
from the salt marshes of cruelty.


Art FLASH! features the pen and ink illustration, Beauty Forgotten in Survival's Eyes, by Eli Edward Evangelidis.

Artistic Interpretations with Margaret gave us a list of paint colours to work with and I have included several in this poem.