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(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.

In My Absence

Misplaced
@mc_monster
Used With Permission

This fallout-shelter mentality requires
a love of three things:
Bedrock, can-openers,
and the odour of dirt in confined spaces.
You should comprehend the virtue of trauma,
know a certain risqué joy
in the unashamed sacrifice
and thrive on toxicity, unafraid to measure
the half-life of your human heart’s slow decay.
And forego a happy ending.



Prompts, I have missed....

Guest Listed! with Helen Dehner, Monday, September 9

Out of Standard with Izy Gruye, Monday, September 16

.... In 55 Belated Words!

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.

if i could go back in time(when you

(i do not know what it is about you that closes
and opens;only something in me understands
e.e. cummings



if i could go back in time(when you
were mine;i was yours) would i find
the(right)words to undo the wrong
and let them fall,like drops of rain

(when an hourglass shatters,sands
stop sifting the minutes we count
as days between then and now) i
have spun instead the silken years

around the (beating seconds) spindle
of my heart,each a thread to bind
me,and,you (apart together) still
i journey back to your everywaking

(a sundial moves not, but shadows do)
morning,where you again take me

Day 17 ~ TIME

Sanaa is our host in The Imaginary Garden today, reminding us we are Somewhere in the midst of stirring April.

If I had to choose my favourite poet of all time, it would be cummings. He blew the lid off poetic norms, and rewrote the patterns of verse so distinctly than none could ever come close to emulating his art with any authenticity. Thus it is with extreme caution that I offer my attempt at a cummings' sonnet.

Despite This

“Poetry is a naked woman, a naked man, and the distance between them.”
Lawrence Ferlighetti




With eyes closed
                                     I know
                 where in the wild and tangled world
you are
             and the space between us
                                                       unsounded
and the silent clocks
                                still turning
                                                   swallowing
with each revolution
                 the hours of our separation
           
          and seasons
                                 and yet
I know
            everything that is beautiful in this life is
                               
                 you

                         despite this defacement
                                                                of love



Day 12 ~ DEFACE

Shay is our host in The Imaginary Garden of Fireblossom Friday: Love

& Friday 55, for those we lost along the way.

Scarification

Let be be finale of seem.
The only emperor is the emperor of ice-cream.
Wallace Stevens



What seems to be a scar could be a door
sealed tighter than a canopic jar
and within, a small room hollowed out
of your own body, lined red as velvet,
and home to a tiny part of yourself, lost,
forever wandering, in need of an afterlife
reunion with your heart it left behind
in the unchronicled resting place
of a lesser pharaoh.


Day 4 ~ Chronicles

Sherry is our host in The Imaginary Garden today, singing Scars to Your Beautiful.

The Key

A man and a woman   
Are one.   
A man and a woman and a blackbird   
Are one.   
Wallace Stevens



I swallowed the key.
It hurt a little, stuck I think
on the way down
and now it sits
just beneath my breastbone
growing colder
than a cast iron padlock
frozen in place
on a dungeon door.

Love forged my chains.
I was willing to be fettered
by the heartstrings
to you who knew
so well my soul indivisible
between us
you held the key
which I now take back
and consume as my own.




And so begins NaPoWriMo 2019. In the first week, and perhaps for longer, I am drawing my inspiration from the poetry of Wallace Stevens, as I like to showcase my favourite poets in April, as well as writing my own pieces. Other sources of inspiration are The Imaginary Garden (which is hosting the Prompt-A-Day for the seventh consecutive year) and my own word list, derived from the sonnets of Shakespeare.


Day 1 ~ KEY

Marian is our host in The Imaginary Garden, singing April Come She Will.

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.

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.

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

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!

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.

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".