Tag Archives: Poetry

The Stench of Doom

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Breathe on Me, Breathalyzer

What is that sulfurous smell?

Is it the mouth of Hell?

Or is it only Morning Breath?

With you, I cannot tell.

oil pastel on paper

Through mystic haze and mystery,

Through funky dark and gloom,

Throughout the house and yard and park

And to the edge of doom,

It penetrates both brain and soul

And harries unto death—

Begone! foul demon, Hell-bound hound,

And take your stinking breath.

oil pastel on paperTake Thou Thy Hindmost Hence-ward

If thou must wind down, go downwind, please;

I’ll remain up here while thou tak’st thy ease,

for I’ve found if a lady’s downwind of thee, she’s

immediately an endangered species.

A Whisper in Your Ear, My Dear

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graphite drawingFriendly Advice to a Feckless Youth

The true Reckless Endangerment

is seldom what you’d guess:

not often quite so obvious

as acting under stress,

thus putting others in harm’s way

for physical duress;

more likely, it’s just saying things

much better left unsaid

about your girlfriend’s hairstyle, or

about great-uncle Fred,

who is your mother’s richest

relative and, shortly, dead.

It’s bad enough your note on Fred

will cut Mom from his will,

and likely keep you from her own

good graces longer still,

but there’s your girlfriend left to calm.

Let’s hope the bitter pill

of your ill-thought hairstyle remark

won’t make her wish you ill.graphite drawingWhen Ladies are Dancing

Patterns of elegance, synchronized moves,

Footsteps as fluid as flowing in grooves

Down sides of a fountain afloat with champagne,

They leap and they glide and they dance the refrain

As though they were ageless and weightless as light,

Each gesture, each pattern, each detail so right,

So proper and grace-filled, expressive of joy—

Intimidate wholly the poor sidelined boy!

Nervous Nellies and their Little Mysteries

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digital drawingHyde and Seek

In my youth my friends and I,

When we were of a mind,

Played little games, amused ourselves,

Were seekers of a kind,

But then grew old and cynical,

Unable to unwind

The fright of not just how or when,

But whom, we feared to find.digital drawing

Things of which one ought to be scairt

The fretful Porpentine, I hear,

Grows scarier from year to year,

No less than Jabberwocks and ghouls

That frighten us and make us fools,

And like Godzilla and his ilk,

Make desperate for hugs, warm milk

And night-lights, all us children who

Are scaredy-cats, like me. And you?

Interludes: Songs for Dancing

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digital painting from a photoSounding

In the hands of a master

The melody played so sweetly runs

Like a playful rivulet down the hall

Spilling an invitation to

Light-footed dancing, to

Birds chittering along, to light

Flickering between the window blinds

To call all of us down the passage

To bathe in its cool musicdigital painting from a photo

All our Loves

All our friends are singing

In the chorus on a Saturday

And though I know they will be fine

And sing it well, I have to say

That hearing all our friends ring out

In chorus is more complex still

Than polyphonic harmonies

And counterpoint, and what we will

Be loving best and savoring

On the occasion, likely, is

The sheer delight of soaking in

That all these loves are mine and his

Companionship or Conspiracy

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P&I + textP&I + textP&I + text

A Mockingbird Appears

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photoWhen ideas and inspiration have ceased, at least for the time being, to well up from the inside, it’s a mercy that the wide world contains so many and will hand them to me if I keep my senses ready enough. I often find myself too distracted by the busyness and pedestrian chores of the workaday world to see the magical other dimensions right within my reach, and need some helpful pricking from a sight or sound or scent as I pass through to remind me to open up the eye and ear and heart and take advantage of the universe’s generosity when it’s poured out so liberally right within my grasp.photoI walk in a haze of dully daily thought, lost to the world of rich and rare delights I’m walking in, when suddenly a mockingbird appears and turns its bright eye on me and seems to contemplate how absent I must be to almost pass it by when it’s quite nearly underfoot. In that shining eye a world reflects in which the other me is wrapped around with blooms, with drifting clouds sailing across a broad blue sky; with jasmine-scented breeze, with mist as the sprinklers spring to life, with happy shouts from a handful of little playing school kids passing me, looking for miracles of their own everywhere because they are yet too young to have forgotten them so foolishly as I have done. When the bird takes to its stripe-blazed wings and dives back into the air, my thoughts begin to follow and fly with it again: I am awake once more to flight and tune in to the rippling, rolling variations of its song as it rises to the trees, and soars above, and makes me remember that I am in a world full of wonder, if I will only let it fill me again.graphite drawing

Gleaming Afternoon

While I would soar, would gladly fly

Wide, in an arc across the sky

Whose dome of hotly burnished brass

Encompasses at every pass

The great wild height of atmosphere

That would engage to hold me here,

I can, eyes shut and spirit wide,

Pierce heaven to the great Outside.

Rodents on the Run

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graphite drawing + textgraphite drawing

Moments of Music

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graphite drawing + textgraphite drawing + text

Unforgettable and Inseparable

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watercolorSince My Beloved’s Death

Since his death, my cryptic lover has arranged my life right over

Into something odd and eerie, weird, disquieting—I’m leery

Not of ghosts, spirits, phantasms, or of devils’ arcane chasms

But of gaiety and sunlight and those things that once were right

For breathing life into old souls—now my new kinship is with moles,

Uncanny, strange, peculiar, creepy, and with bats, with creatures weepy,

Wailing, enigmatic, curious, with things dark and dire and spurious—

Now, unnatural and bizarre unsettling things surpass by far

Those former comforts and delights that soothed my days and lit my nights.

With my lover’s jarring death came an uncanny loss of breath

That turned my sense of truth elastic, to include the strange, fantastic,

Doubtful, worrying, portentous and the puzzling, the momentous—

I have seen since that dark minute all the sinister things in it

Turn to lovely deviant longings, love of the aberrant, wrong things,

Something like a lust for sorrow and disgust for growth, tomorrow,

Or any such former hopes—now esoteric isotopes

Reflecting what I once desired, but with a twisted, counter-wired,

Left-handed version of the past. At this I might have been aghast

Before, but now it’s all I crave, since both of us lie in the grave.

For that, you see, explains my ache for things outlandish, no mistake:

That when my late beloved died, I did so too; am at his side

Within the crypt, where our decease no more is strange or ominous

But makes it plausible that I should love the darkness where we lie.watercolor

Gleefully Grim & Wilfully Wicked

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mixed mediaToast with a Time Limit

Here’s hoping the missing good cheer

That should have been prevalent here

Shows up at the door, not another old bore,

Or I’ll have to be leaving, my dear,

For your party is killing my joy

And particularly, to annoy

Me: wasting my time with dull boors is a crime

I’m not quick to forgive, my dear boy.photo

Coming-Uppance

Relegated to the lowest

Rank of feebleniks and fools,

I can see my betters’ failings

And their breaking of the rules,

But I keep my quiet counsel,

Counting nothing disconcerting,

Never flinch, for I remember:

Blackmail can be quite diverting!mixed media

Emptying the Vessel

Under my penitential veil,

Blue-socketed and ashy pale,

I genuflect and toll my faults,

Demurely dance a pious waltz;

I bend and bow and pine and scrape,

Dressed in hair shirts and chains and crape,

And when my guilt’s no longer sore,

I’ll dash right out and sin some more!photo

Close Shave

The opportunity occurs

So rarely, it is true,

That I can scarce resist the urge

To put my hands on you

With malediction in my heart

A glacier in my veins

A purring curse through smiling fangs

And voltage in my brains

That perks nefarious Nemeses

Like me to work your doom—

But I’d be left too much bereft:

No You to hate? Then, whom?