[x]

rain showers soothe,
leaving reflections
upon my skin

the wreckage
within
untouched, unclean

never mind the pain,
when you are near
how sweet the rain

Neon

I am a smoke ring floating
upwards from your open mouth
whispering your poetry,

a tabletop is littered with
playing cards and tater chips,
soggy lip-rouged ciggie butts

from fiery redheads tipsy
with one too many vodka shots,
to consummate a truckers' stop--

you ransomed me your miracles,
the first time when you heard me sing
my favorite songs to you that night...

and semi-trucks downshift their loads
that flicker from the neon lights
alongside the old interstate.

sunflowerthe pale of winter is begun while
I dream of a time long ago...

as a girl, it was a season of romance,
a fancy I was too young to indulge in,

unless you count my affairs
with living things in the grass-

a warm late morning of an early spring day,
sunlight unblinking in my hair,

I was more aware of the moment,
absorbed in my world near the ground,

shared with a hundred ladybugs
drifting in and swirling round

milling across the yellow of my dress,
their wings tickling my bare knees

cross-legged in the lush tender green
and the down of dandelions,

courting me like a sunflower,
commiserating on my arms-

I asked

Deja Vuscrub:

I don't remember
but
I've been here before

I can't recall
though
my body feels it

your eyes dwell
deep
in recognition

it undoes me
without
knowing how or why

I'm at a loss
without
feeling lost

it doesn't surprise me
when
you take my hand

I wait to recoil
while
time beats askew

the door locks itself
rolling
me like a thief

lying like a fish
gutted-
the steam rises up

your face so close,
shining
from the open maw

I watch from afar
unable
to make eye contact

the timbre of your sobs
sounds familiar

you should be strong
because
I can't cry for you

I've been here before
but
I don't remember

Breathless"Breathless"

Guests milling impatiently without and within
while distractions make me
indifferent
to their plight- so taken am I
by you and your conflictions.

The way I regard your age...
how it shows despite
the youth you've spoken of-
of years ago
when your eyes grasped everything.

I love the maturity you have over me...
your sunken eyes that go dark
in spite their hue.
How hollow your face becomes
from your need.

Your voice raises me to an arousal of
things no one would suspect,
because it's your voice speaking
with a knowledge I crave.

There's something about your years
that at once
pulls me to what you can

Mangosrunning barefoot down
narrow paths sodden by
a deafening downpour
through mangroves and palms,

in this land where
no corn grows, and
sugar cane rows blind the view
from untilled slopes of
low-slung emerald hills-

I don't recognize the rain,
it smells of volcanic ash
and sea salt burning

as I search for the stain
hopelessly trodden,
changing its course

if only I could find a tree
that bears familiar fruit,
and see colors or hear sounds
that point me to you

but I'm a stranger-
this path wends to the shore
where the island comes full circle

offering dead things in the sand
and no escape
because you're not here...

I

Corruptwhy do I pine the love and
mourn that which has never left?

a humming dulcimer-
raindrops strike the wrought iron

is there no one [else] left?
I lost everything to love

alone... so alone
your hand reassures me

you've always found me beautiful
in spite the perversion

your distance humbles,
resurrecting me, well-meaning,
to have it dashed

seeking not penance, but
the fires of your corruption
taking my body in the conflagration,

becoming one at last as my
ashes blow back onto you

duetThe earth is not perfect
in its circumference,
it wobbles and shudders
as does its song-

the pitched layers of
atmospheric frequencies
and deep molten throbs.

Each person makes a noise
that drowns out the sound
against a tsunami's push
or the tumbling thunder.

Do they ever know the song
before it's too late, will they
mute themselves long enough
to know the words.

When you and I are together
we quietly hum in hopes of
hearing it in tune,
of being a duet in sync.

When we can't, we touch;
the friction of bodies
becoming tuning forks

vibrating with the tides,
of bird and beast migrating
by the silvery tines of stars
t

the end and also everything

listen with the skin

I've lost the album of my life
vistas and their episodes
ones that you were in

the wind is warm
impossibly
more alive
than nights or vessels

the wind is
all there ever is

~*~

today
it comes: the universe
is not adding
light to darkness

we are the shadows
shielding sockets
from
obliterative
birth-song

sometime
we'll leave the outside
white
and reoccur
from one to One.

Sylviahow ingenious-
a photo taken
the year of their marriage,
hands grasping his
around her waist

and years later
arms holding their children-
and in between,
the New England tanned blonde
to English mouse brown pale-

still
always those dark eyes
penetrating
telling on herself,
showing plainly

the frailty, the pain-
the wire she walks
between
brilliance and sanity

between
chaos and poetry,
between a child's cold
and suicide-
still

coveting the prolific,
the tenacity
and determination,
yet fearing
the unstable nature-

the lover, the writer,
their father-
she was so lucky
never seeing another
the way she saw him

bu

Natural

An acoustic string was gently plucked
reverberating through the chambers
of my life's cage when I saw you.

The seasons of many years
reduced to the sound of the sea,
the breeze of which was hardly noticed;

so natural it all seemed to me.

River DreamWhere I exist
the seasons linger
or die too soon

I cannot see
the subtle changes
or hear the cadence

I feel the shift
and taste the residue
between our lips

and on the air
where
it also lingers

his passing
will bring the rain
but I covet him more

suspended as we are
between the seasons

and when the dusk
is touched by
the brows of moths
he will walk away

a harbinger
of autumn's end
before it has begun

while I drift
a river dream
over which
a new moon ascends...

an oar dips silently
and I shiver

tanka of transitions

the lanterns of boats
moving through evening mist
become fireflies
moving through evening mist
like the lanterns of boats

letting gothe moment suddenly comes to me
as night is alive with the

chattering of leaves letting go
from gusts of wind,

finally letting go all at once
the way I hope to do,

cartwheeling down empty streets
and sidewalks

imitating the rain I long for,
waiting for it to take me away-

to hear the wind and feel the rain
to hear the rain and feel the wind

becoming the wind and the rain
pulling off your bedclothes,

washing clear the watercolors of
fever from your brittle face sleeping

before I'm gone, riding the mist
of a moon sloop just as sunrise begins

KachinaLining canyon walls are
spirits of ancestors
and the cosmos of their Kachinas.

In the darkness of a new moon
you let me drive your truck
as you call out the way-

Raybans perch on your cropped hair
with speckled hawk feathers
spinning in the wind-

over bridges that span gullies,
riverbeds long parched by
a drought never-ending, since the

memories of our grandfathers
who stomped their feet and
shed their skin when bone whistles blew-

the pickup bounds headlong and you
let out a war whoop while, spiraling
in the moonless sky, bats fly unseen-

headlights over the wash pierce the
swirling dust from the bridge that
straddles f

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More from `jade-pandora

Signing in KoreanSigning in Korean as rain falls
in another land, and within my mind.

A robe of cranes wraps around my
willow's body, following my every move.

I gaze through my fingers as they weave
and separate the rain turned to ice

with hands that flit and beat silently
on a petrified drum

through the constantly shifting air
from which snow will soon drift

with the flight of cranes
into another land, signing in Korean.

Natural

Smooth PebblesEvery swooning blade of grass vindicated.

The deep blue silence of a turning wheel.

A precise number of fireflies in the apples.

The coiled jealousy of all reptiles.

The palsy of a prisoner's first sob.

A tranquil sorrow in a dog's ribcage.

All faces obliterated from the moon.

Nirvana observed among smooth pebbles.

The slough of mountain summits in decline.

Every planet reprieved of its orbit.

The ecstasy within a mandala.

The space between spaces.

Honing the blade.

.
.
This also.

Thin Icevignettes

The wind blows high across the tops of evergreens
giving off the sound of loons that left long ago.
My ears pin back to listen as I walk the pond's rim.
The shirring of branches and breezes frosted to a standstill
are whispers of unseen dangers that judder and pace.

i.
The abrupt appearance of an old man who's plastic peering
catches me unaware, his hands covered in socks with holes
for his fingers stretched wide
to push hard against the ice
to make it crack and break apart.
To urgently inhale the brittle air,
grabbing for my ankles
dragging me under
to disappear beneath the agitated water
trapped in the gaseous bubb

clair de luneIn the bitter cold of its white light as
winter approaches, the contemplation of the
moon that clouds your face brings a melancholy,

uncertain as it is embraceable
in the arms of the vision it extends.

And when it's over, lying back quietly listening
to your favorite rendition of Clair de lune,

the moon will return, and you'll draw close
to the warmth of me, and for a while
you won't feel so alone. And neither will I.

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Submitted: December 31, 2009
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mbira

by `jade-pandora, Dec 31, 2009, 8:36:05 PM
Literature / Poetry / Romantic / Post-Teen (Mature) / Free Verse

The rain has moved on while he's away
and I listen to the thrum of a
Zimbabwe lullaby played on the mbira.

How still the air, yet there's the
scent of unlit candles; gifts from him
because they remind him of me-

I can't help but smile as I recall,
we were together shopping one day
when he exclaimed, "I smell you!"

Now the last of the empty thunder
rumbles low as I consciously inhale...
I don't have the heart to burn them.

mbiraby `jade-pandora

Literature / Poetry / Romantic / Post-Teen (Mature) / Free Verse

mbira = [link]

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*katarthis May 8, 2012 Hobbyist Writer

Now you make me wonder if that is why my Grandmother never wore her "white shoulders" ... This is beautiful.

k

*AlecBell May 14, 2011

a fragile and lovely poem

`jade-pandora May 17, 2011

I'm so glad it touches you, Alec, thank you.

`RetroZombie May 9, 2011

how vividly the images spring back into life as I reread this wonderful poem.
I don't have to ask, because I know
that you still have the candles

_{and I still have the incense}

*beeinthebottle May 9, 2011 Writer

I love the imagery on this and most of all the unique perspective.

`jade-pandora May 17, 2011

Why thank you, dear heart, for letting me know how it touched you.

*beeinthebottle May 17, 2011 Writer

You're very welcome.

`thetaoofchaos Sep 28, 2010 Hobbyist Writer

so sad and precious, how we imbue objects with the magic death and rebirth of universes.

`jade-pandora Sep 28, 2010

That's a very beautiful way to read this piece, Shane.

!Sub3r3 Aug 22, 2010

oh his is extraordinary, the imagery and the sound in it are overwhelming. phenomenal work

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