Jane Dougherty's Blog, page 60

Random word generator

I’m getting this in early because I won’t have time later. 100 random words from Oracle II. My poem is below. The Oracles work as a team.

Waiting for the rain

1.
I hear the crash of dark waves
and the intake of mussel breath.
Lighthouse, coastguard, the beacon on the hill,
sentinel from another time, watch the darkness.
Fear, trepidation or curiosity hold our gaze,
waiting to see what will drag itself into the world.

2.
We challenge history, deny the truth,
draw it out like chewing gum,
wrap it around a stick and toss it in the fire.
We have always done it, rewritten the facts,
and it has always been to justify
the flawed incubus of the present.

3.
Some word associations feel uncomfortable
like Satanic verses, yet we see them
writ large in fiery letters every day,
their net cast and drawn in, wriggling and squirming
with the dark deformed things
that should never have seen the light.

4.
Quickening, the leap of joy
that sometimes missteps
and never leaves the crucible of potential.
Not every wish is granted, not every shoot will blossom.
The quick and the dead, all the same in the end,
it’s just a question of time.

5.
Cloud hangs low, damp smoke billowing,
and we watch for stray lightning bolts, listen for thunder.
Most of all we listen for rain, not the gentle foam hiss
among dry leaves, but the purifying torrent.
Night falls with the first drops
amid the release of withheld breath.

Reptile

Once again, the Oracle shows that she sees and understands.

Reptile

Heat lies still,
a basking dragon,
where dew once watered roots,
and claws scratch runnels
where rivers ran.

Heat sings
a dragon song,
brass and bronze,
discordant
as an ugly dream,

beneath a throbbing sky,
where blue
is an intangible shade
of steel,
sweating drifting feathers.

Les plages du Nord

We walk the dust

A second octelle for the dverse prompt.

We walk the dust

We walk the dust of spring’s parched wealth,
of tarnished gold, we stole by stealth,
the dust of death, stunted shoots,
scuff the dirt, reveal dried roots.
Vengeance in wildfire burns,
same cracked recond turns and turns,
we walk the dust of spring’s parched wealth
of tarnished gold, we stole by stealth.

Sunset fire

For the dverse prompt.

Sunset fire

In flames that lick the line of trees,
the setting sun’s a whisper-breeze,
spitting sparks, a grinning threat,
incandescence, no regret
for beauty lost, carbonized,
dreams that won’t be realized,
in flames that lick the line of trees.
The setting sun’s a whisper-breeze.

Profit and loss

Profit and loss

No grass in the pastures
brown-crisped by the sun,
too many mouths to feed,
too many mothers and their young to keep,
too dear the hay, too cheap the milk,
too little, too much, not enough.

So the cows low in their sunless sheds,
in their shackles, and each listens
for the voice of her child
as the truck pulls away.

Taste of past places

I wanted to write a cadralor for the dverse prompt. I don’t think this is one really, and it needs more work, but it’s late. I’ll look at it again another time.

Taste of past places

1.
We never ate out when I was growing up.
No money for that kind of thing
and where would we have gone?
Only with you, always with you, to sit watching you,
the sensual joy of watching enjoyment, indulgence,
and on your skin, the candlelight.

2.
Hilltop town encircled by vineyards,
Giotto colours, background of ochre and eggshell blue sky.
I never even imagined living there.
Too close to perfection, even longing
for a green-shuttered house of orange stone
would have been a sin.

3.
Shrieking brakes and voices raised,
anger dying down as easily as it flared.
Laughter and the roar of a scooter.
The gutters were full of cigarette packets, Nazionali,
And the streets always smelled of urine,
and pizza bianca from the darkly enticing trattorie.

4.
So many times we slipped in among the students
and workers, the noisy, crowded places
where food was cheap, and there was no menu.
Always spaghetti with tomatoe sauce. Basil leaves.
We were i ragazzi francesi
not knowing enough Italian to put them straight.

5.
Nights I smell things. The migraines do that.
Perfume sometimes or odd, dead things.
But I never smell pines and Nazionali,
sun cream with sand in it, pizza bianca,
Frascati and red Colli di Trasimeno.
I never smell the past that was where we began.

Moon flight

A quadrille for dverse.

Moon flight

There is a certain light
at the start and ending of the night
grey pale as doves in flight.

There is a type of love
that soars on moon-pale wings above
the stars, feathered nestling-soft, a dove,
and it fits us like a glove.

And on the eighth day

I wrote this 7×7 poem and then rewrote it as a sevenling.

And on the eighth day

The days burn like touchpaper,
the blue throbs, fierce pulse beating,
and the bare earth is riddled
with holes, swept of all beauty.
Moles, mice, nothing lives beneath
the field’s cracked skin, lifeblood drained
into the deep, mocking core.

Sevenling (The days burn)

The days burn blue and bronze
with a heavy throb of gongs and drums—
a buzzard glides, mewling.

Chicory blue fades ash grey
into the orange dust,
where black holes gape like mouths.

Roots are white bones, feathered spring flown.

Random word generator

Another 100 random words to play with. My poem follows.

Hope perhaps

The clouds are scattered long since,
promises of rain unfulfilled
no plums on the wild trees, no cherries
and apple trees brown and autumn-dry.

Something soars with the heron
through the harsh bronze light,
with steady wing beats, grey as clouds
from a heavy sea. Hope perhaps.

I dream of deep pools, cool weed-tangle,
where silver fish flick their tails
jack-knifing the gloom and filling it
with the soft glitter of moonlight.