Trois Femmes sur la Cote a.k.a. Three Females on a Beached Will

(For Jane)

(Image from imagesfromus.com)

The girl, the woman, the lady walk
along the boulevard of spoken screams
Along the coast where suns bobbing up and sinking
Are multi-colored balls children play with on the grassy lawns
Captive of concrete marble slabs, benches for weary flesh and soul

Every rising of the sun is a new year of whorls in the tree of strife
Love confounds all but the purest of spirit
Those who need not the wars of affection
Point and go where drizzles and rainbows call
Whispering vows and a skip and a jig

Short Wings

(Image by Luc Viatour from www.upload.wikimedia.org)

Live impermanent of cycles
Memories transparent shimmering
In the dim of sun, gloom of moon
Sisters of dragons flying low, waiting vainly
Of knights blue armor diving smokeless jets
Amassing not for war but for love, peace

A creature that dies everyday cannot go extinct
It lives dead between vampires and recall
Forgetting nothing, eating air
Breeding, springing forth gushers
Nymphs and imps watching
Long may you fly, bye

Yes, No Isosceles

(Image from http://aleph0.clarku.edu)

Summer is never gone from this land
It merely hides during rain,
sneaking a peek at the sky,
waiting for the sun to smile.

The times you think it’s fall,
you are reminded September
wears different clothes near the equator.

You shine in your own way, sunbeam.
Dropping the baby blubber
to be a young woman,
growing miles of legs
that make your mother look skywards,
your pale brown eyes stop boys in their tracks.

Your sister and I share September
the same way your brother and mom
tarry with January.

Facile rhymes and ignored cadences
make it easy to write verses.
Same way three fourths through the year
bring the smell of Christmas near
and carols to the doorstep.

(Image from absolutechinatours.com)

The Emperor’s Reign

Refusing to go
after the king;
they fall over each other
declining chance
to say something.
Too brilliant even for the sun,
Too smart for the report of a gun.
I remain alone
on top of my mountain


(Image from images.bridgeman.co.uk)

The Emperor’s Rain

It comes without
so much as a by your leave.
It falls soft, pitter patter,
or hard, an invading army
hungry for gore glory.

It is food.
It is death.
It is sink or swim,
stuck in the mud.

It is an old lover,
the only friend;
when gods
abandon Olympus
fearful of fear
and a child’s smile.

Nick of Time

(Image from weheartit.com)

The dawn she was born
A star fell from the void
The breeze whispered her name
Mari, her eyes a gift of the sun
But with a mouth that needs soaping
She gives warmongers pause
Wakes her father at 5
Telling him a fire rages
He jolts out of day sleep
Runs downstairs, sees no smoke
It’s her spirit that burns
From the top of the landing she smirks
Mission accomplished

A Storm of Butterflies

Illustration by Wendy Plovmand

Whispered sighs bring about a storm of butterflies
Sweet nothings are nothing
Promises unkept, unbidden, reap a yearning
You tried to lasso a hurricane
With a string of pearls
Breaking it, falling desires turned
into islands floating in the sea
Forests will sprout
on what little soil there is on the rocks
Love and envy will grow
on scorched hearts
A mass of moths will descend
suffocating the sun

Rain

(Image from www.rossphillips.net)

Before tropical storm Ondoy/Ketsana gave Luzon island in the Philippines its worst flooding in memory, I had written down Rain. Whatever relation you may find in this particular verse with the storm in question is totally unintended.

Needles fall, piercing leaves
down roots of memory ghosts.
Pain, guilty moves, singling out
the skin of Avalon’s wounds.
Luck, a hook on string,
waiting for the bug
dumb to vision quest.

It doesn’t last,
this deluge refused
Nirvana’s iconoclast.
The ground still thirsts
heaven won’t fill up.
The sun doesn’t shine today,
it tires of unceasing play.