Ghost Songs

 

In a Stretch of the Mind

—Poetry and Photos by Joyce Odam, 

Sacramento, CA

THOSE SONGS KEPT FOREVER OUT OF HEARING

I have dreamed them, soft as lullabies
from ache of childhood,

songs that come in fragments
and tease—

tease for the missing line
or word,

songs that haunt like a broken need—
old, lost songs—sung only by the ghosts.


(prev. pub. in Medusa’s Kitchen, 8/7/18)

 

 

 

Desperado
 

MIND-STRUGGLE    

Tonight, in the tweak of time, life enters
like a thief, taking what I am. Never mind

the hours waiting for my dreams,
the sweet hours of morning

with their energies
and schemes.

I am not willing,
though I doze, and nod, and waken

at moments—lost—and not of counting,  
which is odd. I have a clock and calendar,

I have plans, small as they are,
not like tireless sands of sleep,

mindlessly drifting—over and over,
through the same container that I am.

I free the night,
I free the weightlessness. 

 

 

 

Back in Some Beginning

 

RUMOR AS TRUE

What is this force of blueness
that comes from everywhere,
that we know will swallow us.

Look how it is forming—   
becoming a climate.

It knows where we are.
It has not yet made a decision.
Come, let us dress for the weather.

_______________________

DISCONSOLATION

 

. . . ah, here is someone to love,
someone playing a piano
out in the rain
in the way of
a wide sunbeam
claiming the music
and the one listener . . .
       
. . . here is only the sad memory of
a stranger who has wandered
into this scenario,
to whom
love is not given,
only taken from the wild
reverberations of the music . . .
       
. . . and here is someone
looking out a window
at the piano which is ruined
by the music of the rain and the
encompassing sunbeam that takes
these pictures—these words—
and blends them into this rain-story
and makes the window glass shimmer . . .

 

 

 

Pianissimo #37

 

 

THE DAILY KISS

Each day she goes to the picture on the wall,
her long hair hanging down in disarray,
the gold frame holding nothing but his face—
his dead face—turned away in profile—turned

from all her longing as she puts her mouth
against his mouth, and there pretends his kiss—
pretends, and weeps the harder, and the deeper.
What a waste.  He can’t remember this.

 

 

 

Rue as Cost

 

TO LOVE

one kiss upon the brow,
a tragedy to love,

it interrupts
the sigh

the kiss
is wine enough

this is too much
to bear

eyes
close

no word
or touch

time is not
captured here

the tragedy of love
one kiss upon the brow.

_____________________

WEDDING
After “The Wedding” by June Jordan

They are caught in the long drift down together—
they are caught—trembling like two leaves in
a gold wind—warm in the light. They shine.
They almost love. They are caught in the
long drift down. They flutter softly to
the music—graceful and slow, as if
there was only this sweet falling—
no tree to memorize—no earth
to fall to—no grief to know.

 

 

 

In Verdant Depth

 

THE WEDDING PARTY

They will dance in the arms
of promise,
slow and sensual
in public shyness;
they will whirl softly
to a tune that will be theirs,
that they will weep to later.

Her white dress will wrap around him
as they twirl;
his arm will hold her from falling;
the others will join in,
press near, press near,
and move away in unreality.

Soon they will slip away
into the life,
into the beginning;
they will slip away
to a car with cans and shoes
under a feast of rice-blessings,
under a wave of floating wishes;
they will blur away in a dust of hurry;
the child in her body
will be sleeping, sleeping;
they will drive away
into a few
or many years.

                                        
(prev. pub. in Pudding, 1995)

 

 

 

Nuance

 

THE MISERY

I carried your sack of misery
with me until it turned into
travel-dust.

I strained against it
even as I strained against you,
while you held the rope.

Valleys were hard,
as mountains were impassable.
The sea stopped me.

You were always there—as
naggard—as ubiquitous blame—
even to the long pier over the water.

We were both prisoners—
one of broken love, and one
of chronic anger for love’s misery.

What of the core—what of
the center—what of the edge?
There was no buffer to save us.

Sometimes I laid your grief down
onto quicksand,
but it would not drown.

Sometimes you even tried to
retrieve it, but it was empty
as I had told you.

Grief is a proud metaphor—
for sadness—or pride—for willfulness
of intention.   

Eventually the grief sack opened
of itself
and you were nowhere to claim it.

What would I carry now
that bore such awful weight
as this old futility?

 

 

 

Etcetera

 

SUMMONED

True as the gold light in your eye
that fastened like a sun
to my dark mirage,

a circle of stars, a core of words,
like a power surrounding you.
I was only heat-shimmer,

spinning in the light.
We did not reach,
I was dreaming on a blue ice floe,

you on another.
There was nothing to save us,
but love. Even our souls wept.

_______________________

Today’s LittleNip:

WEDDING PRESENT
—Joyce Odam

How we laughed years ago
when we opened one

particular wedding present—
one joke-bottle of glue—

Super Glue.
How we laughed.

_______________________

Courtship is our recent Seed of the Week, and Joyce Odam has presented many faces of it. Thanks, Joyce! Our new Seed of the Week is “Prisoner/s”, in all its many guises  (I’m noting that the singular has a slightly different connotation than the plural.) Send your poems, photos & artwork about this (or any other) subject to kathykieth@hotmail.com. No deadline on SOWs, though, and for a peek at our past ones, click on “Calliope’s Closet”, the link at the top of this column, for plenty of others to choose from. And see our Form Fiddlers’ Friday for poetry form challenges, including those of the Ekphrastic type.

________________________

—Medusa

 

 

 

 Is there a fox in the the hen house?
—Public Domain Photo

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Photos in this column can be enlarged by
clicking on them once, then clicking on the x
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