He had his kitsch. She had her kitsch. Never the twain could meet.
His lawn sported a Greek pavilion around which sprawled a miniature golf course.
Her lawn spawned stone excrescences of fauns, fairies, and a Michelangelo’s David.
One day, his golf ball took out David’s right . . . ear.
He trotted over holding a bottle of Bordeaux and apologized.
Together they looked at each other’s kitsch admiringly.
Love’s Ballad
Roses he gave her, she took them in her hand
The petals silk warm, still harboring his touch
She knew not where to look, his face was a beacon
A desire of yearning, too bright to stare upon,
So she stared at the roses, their rosy tinge her own.
The years they raced by full of home, hearth, and heaven
Their love knew no bounds and their eyes saw no other
Until the day came when a lone grave boasted roses
One standing alone to see light like a beacon, eclipsed,
And roses ice crusted by death’s wintry dew.
For the listener, who listens in the snow, And, nothing himself, beholds nothing that is not there and the nothing that is. — Wallace Stevens, “The Snow Man”
There ought not to be anything but that my mind has ordered it so —
So I had been taught — for the mind is designer
Reality but the by-blow, bastard child that diminishes as I diminish
But that the Emperor of Ice-Cream has clay feet
Which stand on eternity’s threshold eyeing a feast.
There the bread and wine of Thy design
Grain and grape sweetly lies upon the tongue
To “taste and see the goodness of the LORD”
Yet nothing tasting if not sanctified by Thy Word
Blood spilled and body broken
Spoken gospel of love heard by a few
Who once nothing being are born in You
Till nothing become sons and daughters
Alive to You.
Laura at dVerse asks us to address paradox as a matter for today’s “Poetics” prompt, including using as a starting point and/or epigraph the above Wallace Stevens quotation. Click on Mr. Linky for more and join in!
I wonder listlessly at rapacious melancholy,
its beast-stalking litheness, peripheral,
ghosting my mind-altered diminishment
how in the revenant fury of buried bones
whose salient menace springs expansively
as darkness goes unhallowed by requiescat in pace —
it thrives
I wonder clinging to my devourer.
WhimsyGizmo at dVerse asks us to write a quadrille (exactly 44-word-poem) using the word “go.” Click on Mr. Linky to read more poems.
(A doggerel in the voice of a cantankerous correspondent; Sammi’s Weekend Writing Prompt #197 using the word “call” in a prose or poem of exactly 41 words.)
It was the first meeting of the Dadaist Society of New York’s Upper Downside. Mistrel McGarte chewed her lower lip mechanically. Rrrose IV had yet to show with the coveted clue to the Mona Lisa’s jilted lover’s true descendant: none other than Danette Brown, capitalist author of the DaDa Vinci Code. Mistrel sighed. There was a time for absurdity but not now. The capitalist clock was ticking alongside the urinal in the art gallery. A postman handed her an envelope. Mistrel tore it open. Fine particles of detritus, paint, bone floated free. A note inside read, “DNA here final clue.”
Mish at dVerse’s “Poetics” asks us to take on the persona of a color, “imagine what they see . . . . slip out of our human bodies and become nothing but a color.” So it is written, so it is done, but in the voice of one particular color, Vincent van Gogh’s yellow.
Van Gogh died in July 1890 from a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the chest.
When you turn to me away from Rachel
For whom you sheared your face of an ear
Isn’t the world brighter, like sunflowers?
And the walls of your house in Arles
Lavishly canvased, as the awnings
As cafés, bedframes, straw hats, sunsets
I am the light running before you
Swirling you up to starry nights and moons
Away from the blackness of eyes
That never see you like I have seen you
Radiant in the waving fields of wheat
Until the day you clasp your hands
Round the ochred skin of despair.
Click on Mr. Linky to read more dVerse poems.
Kim at dVerse has this weeks “Prosery” challenge of a 144 word-story using a certain line from Yeats’ “The Song of Wandering Aengus” (in italics below). I won’t claim to having done it or the wonderful Whelan painting here justice, but what fun trying! Thanks, Kim. ❤ Check out Mr. Linky for more “proseries.”
SANCTUARY PORTAL
“A red-ribboned heart he had given me to wear,” the dying woman breathed. “But I went out to the hazel wood, because a fire was in my head.”
The priest nodded wisely. The nun did so likewise.
Outside a young girl stopped to hear all that was said.
“Now I’m unsettled. I miss him so. I lost one world to gain another, both now fading fast.”
A voice came from the portal, a voice that sounded far off. “It’s not too late, my darling. I’ve been waiting this aeon’s passing. There’s more that lies ahead.”
She sat up, her heart failing. She threw open her arms while passing across the threshold’s steps.
The last they saw was a sunlit orb floating into the light.
The priest nodded wisely. The nun did so likewise.
The girl outside the window felt a fire inside her head.
a rose to you and you and you
dear readers that stumbled onto this page
and familiar friends who’ve long remained
through drought or storm as balmy days
faithful ones who exchange the fruits
gleaned from weedy words and pruned vines
some tangy to the taste or sweetly spiced
all enlivened with the sunlit labor of moments
transcribed to screens of dispersed bytes
to be received like petals furled and unfurled
as if a rose is a rose is a rose is a rose
when given in love
For Cee's FOTD, February 14, 2021; Michelle's February Writing Prompts, "Balmy Days"; Joseph's 2021 Home Photo Challenge; also posted on PilgrimDreams.com
Furry paws trudge on
Eyes upwards to silver trees
Light beckons homeward
For Joseph's 2021 Home Photo Challenge 2-13-2021
This Jolly Beggar 