a poem

WOULD-LAND




5 AM. One-quarter past.
Distant chimes inform me this.

A bell peal knells the mist.
And sunlight’s

not yet bludgeoning.
But some light gets blood going.

Last night it was snowing
and now

every path’s a pall.
Though mine the only footfalls

at this hour of awe. Above
hangs a canopy of needle leaf.

Below, the season’s
mean deceit—

that everything stays
white and clean.

It doesn’t, of course,
but I wish it. My prayers

are green with this intent,
imploring winter wrens

to trill and begging scuttling bucks
come back.

There’s something that I lack.
A wryneck

bullet-beaks a branch.
His woodworm didn’t have a chance.

What I miss,
I’ve never had.

But I am not a ghost.
I am a guest.

And life is thirst,
at best.

So do not strike me, Heart.
I am, too, tinder.

I’m flammable
as birch bark, even damp.

Blue spruce, bee-eater—
be sweeter to me.

Let larksong shudder
to its January wheeze,

but gift these hands a happiness
just once.

It is half passed.
And I am cold.

Another peal has tolled.
I’ve told the sum of my appeals.

I need not watch for fox.
They do not congregate at dawn.

But I would,
were I one.

© 2011, Jill Alexander Essbaum
From: Poetry, Vol. 197, No. 4, January, 2011

.

Abigail Berenika

nothing feels right

to love a picture

"my feelings toward your picture are none of your business"

“i just love your picture, not you. perhaps you would ruin all of my dreams, so i dont want you as i only know your photo”

Thanks to Ozkan

there was this room of curiosities

LA Mobile Arts Festival 2012

well played

I think you're finally rid of me.

Took a village, didn't it though?

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This gorgeous image is by LiLiROZE

and the quote is by Poe.

“From childhood's hour I have not been. As others were, I have not seen. As others saw, I could not awaken. My heart to joy at the same tone. And all I loved, I loved alone.” ― Edgar Allan Poe

a scene from a movie I'm watching right now...

Blue in The Face on FLIX: 11:30 a.m. to 1:00 p.m. PST.

of dreams awakened o' lucky ones

"And in the midst of this wide quietness
A rosy sanctuary will I dress
With the wreathed trellis of a working brain,
With buds, and bells, and stars without a name,
With all the gardener Fancy e'er could feign,
Who breeding flowers, will never breed the same:
And there shall be for thee all soft delight
That shadowy thought can win,
A bright torch, and a casement ope at night,
To let the warm Love in!" (lines 58–67) John Keats - Ode to Psyche



Photo by Herbert Bayer (April 5, 1900 – September 30, 1985)