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.

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



For those who wish to participate in the Skylover Wordlist Challenge, please leave your links in the comment section below

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

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

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



For those who wish to participate in the Skylover Wordlist Challenge, please leave your links in the comment section below

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



For those who wish to participate in the Skylover Wordlist Challenge, please leave your links in the comment section below

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.

Skylover Wordlist: Ballad

Play It Again Toads: Love

L'Arora Form

For those who wish to participate in the Skylover Wordlist Challenge, please leave your links in the comment section below

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.

Skylover Wordlist: Sullen

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

For those who wish to participate in the Skylover Wordlist Challenge, please leave your links in the comment section below

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.

Skylover Wordlist: Sticks

Play It Again Toads: The Art of Odilon Redon

Referencing Melancholy (1876)

For those who wish to participate in the Skylover Wordlist Challenge, please leave your links in the comment section below

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.

Skylover Wordlist: Prayer

Play It Again Toads: Words Count with Mama Zen

For those who wish to participate in the Skylover Wordlist Challenge, please leave your links in the comment section below

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.

Skylover Wordlist: Craft

For those who wish to participate in the Skylover Wordlist Challenge, please leave your links in the comment section below.

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.

Skylover Wordlist: Refusal

Play It AgainToads: Bracelet

For those who wish to participate in the Skylover Wordlist Challenge, please leave your links in the comment section below.

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.

Skylover Wordlist: Others

Play It Again Toads: Speaking in the Voice of Another

For those who wish to participate in the Skylover Wordlist Challenge, please leave your links in the comment section below.

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

Skylover Wordlist: Fern

Play It Again Toads: Caution: Tender Buttons

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

For those who wish to participate in the Skylover Wordlist Challenge, please leave your links in the comment section below.

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?

Skylover Wordlist: Vision

Play It Again Toads: Existentialism

For those who wish to participate in the Skylover Wordlist Challenge, please leave your links in the comment section below.

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

I 

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

***

Skylover Wordlist: You

Play It Again Toads: Taking It To The Streets

***

For those who wish to participate in the Skylover Wordlist Challenge, please leave your links in the comment section below.

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

***

For those who wish to participate in the Skylover Wordlist Challenge, please leave your links in the comment section below.

A Skylover Wordlist ~ 30/30

My Skylover Wordlist for April Poetry Writing Month is sourced from the collection of poems, Deaths and Entrances, by Dylan Thomas.

@skyloverpoetry

I am posting the prompt two weeks early, for those who wish to make use of the words and would like to plan ahead for the April Marathon. Whenever I post my poem of the day, feel free to add your link in comments so I may read and comment on your response. Please tag me on Instagram, if you are posting over there.

Happy Writing!

Tarot Suite ~ The Magician

Let the wind die down. Let the shed 
go black inside. Let evening come.
Jane Kenyon

Copyright Kerry O'Connor
Nexus Cards
@nexuscarddesign

X
The Magician

Let the flame rain from sky
as consorts of creation. Let the earth
be as a womb awaiting conception.

Let the storm plunge its hands
into the ocean. Let the night
invite the stars to bloom.

Let the honeybee find the flower.
Let the wind sleep. Let the seed grow
in the heart of god. Let sun awaken.

Let us be without fear of manifestation.
Life quickens even as it dies, so let it come.
Let mantis become man.



Work still continues on my African Tarotscape Deck. This is my latest piece with accompanying poem, inspired by 'Let Evening Come' by Jane Kenyon.

In Quarantine

Plague Dogs
Source Unknown...
Somewhere in the Middle Ages

I watch as they lay siege

to common ground,

man-made palisades 

repurposed

into barriers of the mind,

flung up overnight 

to sanction 

their infectious ideologies.

I see them marching

in bedraggled droves down 

deserted streets,

chanting entropic threats of death,

like something reinvented.

When did the light

recede to this hollow space

of empty eyes?

My hometown is currently under siege  - literally - cut off from all entry and exit, all commerce and industry suspended, schools forced to close on pain of death as a sector of the community demands the resignation of an allegedly corrupt mayor. Not for nothing is Ladysmith, SA known as Siegetown.
Local News

Current Update on the situation, Friday, March 13

It occurs to me as I endure this enforced "quarantine", that what is happening here is an apt metaphor for what has occurred worldwide, with the furore in response to Covid 19.

Elf

Kerry O'Connor
@skyloverpoetry

I've been weaving the web of stars... Listening to the whispers of time...

A Skylover Wordlist ~ Merciless

You ripped
open the sky
with your teeth
and all light escaped
as you passed through.
Now every day teeters
on the brink
of another holocaust:
we grind guilt
to dust
and dare not
recall the signs
we missed
without mercy.
We have inherited
your darkest hour,
enshrined your despair
beyond earthly hope
of reparation.


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This poem is written with words from my Skylover Wordlist for March and in reply to Joy Ann Jones' call for Flash 55  at Verse Escape, both of which have given me the structure to write down in words the raw emotion I am feeling after the tragic death of a student.

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

This is also an open invitation to anyone who wants to join me in writing poetry from this list of words. If you would like me to read and comment on your post, please paste the link in the comments section below or you can tag me on Instagram.

Dinner

@skyloverpoetry
Copyright Kerry O'Connor

Caterpillar leaflight ~ What silken threads will you spin around my dreams?

Hammer

@skyloverpoetry
Copyright Kerry O'Connor

My heart is shield enough for your hammering ~
Defeat is only ever yours.


A Three of Swords Valentine.

Balloon

@skyloverpoetry
Copyright Kerry O'Connor

Coruscating in silver ~
jelly-balloons ascend towards sunshine.

Serpent

@skyloverpoetry
Original pen & ink artwork by
Kerry O'Connor

Harbinger of underworld colonnades ~
Bless me with your crescent fangs.

A Skylover Wordlist ~ Sufferance at Dawn

Sufferance is contained
in dawn’s uncomplaining hour:
as sunshine broods in the east
early dressed in mourning weeds,
unrequited hope seethes
on a newer horizon.

But such foolishness
will be relinquished
when the faint crescent moon
slips west into the underworld,
silver diminishing
beneath the blue colonnade
of endless days
waiting to be lived again.


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This poem is written with words from my Skylover Wordlist for February
and in reply to Joy Ann Jones' call for Flash 55 Fiction at Verse Escape.

This is also an open invitation to anyone who wants to join me in writing poetry from this list of words. If you would like me to read and comment on your post, please paste the link in the comments section below or you can tag me on Instagram.

@skyloverpoetry
Kerry O'Connor

Untitled

(In Equal Parts: the Science & Faith of Love.)

Night streams around the bed as I lie, waiting
like a closed book forgotten on a grassy pillow

where you have come to the riverbank
from a place of ruin to drink.

I have untied my hair, naked
but for the weight of memories

which press upon me as you lean forward
and part my breasts like living pages,

bend to read the wordless truth of heart
inscribed beneath translucent skin.

Even a holy man must kneel to touch
his lips to the blessed water, and pray.

Even This Twilight

We have lost even this twilight.
Pablo Neruda



A green gloom pervades
this lilypad hiatus
where we hover
above water
below sky
like dragonflies
who have lost
their sense of direction.
We, who have chosen
to be blind
to each other,
see yet where tendrils
of the past grow
and we cling, wings inert
too afraid
of what it means to let go.



Practising the art of writing the Flash 55.

Is this a message?

And you wonder, is this a message, finally, or just another day?
Eleanor Lerman



Life has a funny way
of revealing itself to you:
the closest star burns
its unwieldy light against your eyelids
and you commence with
the patterns of whatever peculiar
plot line is your own,
impelled towards
an imaginary conclusion
unreachable as it may be
but sometimes you remember
all stars are still shining during the daytime,
not only the sun,
and you let the sadness go.

Shadow

@skyloverpoetry
Copyright Kerry O'Connor

Winter passed and then the Spring
like rusty shadows of old songs grown cold.

Flight

@skyloverpoetry
Copyright Kerry O'Connor

The canary-throated raven grows roots while she whistles her platitudes.

Untitled (Eulogy)

@jasonlimberg
Used with Permission
"The raven claw is a wick of an eternal flame, forever holding the gift of life, a flower."

A solitary lily cannot take root
upon the grave of one
who snapped her
from the growing stem
for an instant of bliss
brief as a candle flame
guttering away the gloom -
nor the raven of nightfall
canary a eulogy for one
who could not strive
beyond the barriers
of his self-composed cage.



A poem inspired by the art of Jason Limberg which includes words from my Skylover Wordlist.

A Skylover Word List ~ Apparition

@skyloverpoetry
Copyright Kerry O'Connor

Apparition

I am the voice in your dreams
the apparition who turns her back
upon the moonless night
and climbs into your solitude,
wraps her weightless legs
around your hips
and combs her fingers
through your troubled mind.
I am your yearning.
Made of flesh and memory,
so close, my scent is upon you.
No wonder, then, why you tremble
when you wake to find me gone.



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This poem is written with words from my Skylover Wordlist for January and in reply to my own prompt in the final Play It Again! prompt in the Imaginary Garden: Poetic Voice.

If anyone would like to join me in writing poetry from this list of words, and would like me to read and comment on their post, please paste the link to the post in the comments below or you can tag me on Instagram.

@skyloverpoetry
Kerry O'Connor

A new Skylover Wordlist will be shared on the 1st of February.