Milk and Honey

I have killed myself, sweetly
bare around the throat
stained with dried cherry

Her long body, eaten thin
mouthful of plump berries
licking the corners of a candied moon
velvet moist, peeling apart a tender crust

When he is with me, delicate white
sour sweet, pouring
over a blood clot night

Silk cotton hour casts a shadow of empty morning
I foam to the top of the cup
Our moment full of sugar washes to the shore
where he once served me, warm milk and honey


*Written for the Sunday Mini-Challenge at Imaginary Garden with Real Toads,
where Grace is hosting a day in the kitchen.

Autumn

A wistful song
for a leaf that begins to shake
against the cold

the light that begins to fade

holding, with thirst, the twilight of day

the bringer of silence
in perfect harmony

as the seasons meet

a hush of air that crawls with scattered leaves

our spirits
in balanced order,
on this night
through a crease in change

Happy Autumn Equinox!

Shared at Imaginary Garden with Real Toads, Open Link Monday.

Beauty

Who are we

the ones that fall quietly from the sky

hang from thistle string

in our luxury

know nothing of the havoc 

below the light

Poetry for the Firefly Jar for The Sunday Challenge at Imaginary Gardens with Real Toads. 

Dance in Air

I count and wait as they dance on:


After the flake and the flurry
there is something left behind
in her eyes, a powered sky

Our wings mix with colors
where the snow bleeds red
in my hands, a pocket of time

A night between thin air
Her song, danser dans l'air
in my heart, blood stains blue

Earth empties its waste
I count and wait
in her scent, love holds true

The darling buds of May
a moon beginning to wane
in my dream, I dance with you


Inspired by Marian at Imaginary Garden with Real Toads where she shares her admiration for The Jayhawks.
Shared at Sunday Scribblings, my form of 'stretch' is to dance. 

Shadow of Hope

When a revolution was fresh, life was good

From a royal bloodline, it's nobility of Italy, a commander was born

It has been repeated that Bonaparte was 

the greatest military commander of all time

His coup d'état, the 18th of Brumaire, 

led to French Consulate, and on to Emperor

His campaigns, so victorious

Would he have ever dreamed, two hundred years later,

military academies would study his tactics all throughout the world?

Bonaparte, the Emperor

With a Grande Armée, their faith so religiously placed upon him

He who spent his youthfulness hating a country he would one day rule

A barbarous Corsican, stories would say

He would eventually conquer his conqueror

and he would have his good day

An idealistic revolutionary

He vowed that Corsica would be part of Revolutionary France

Exiled, a mountain man for days, his own people chasing him out

He became a refugee, banished from the land of his birth

Little did France know, what rebel their beloved Emperor would be

When he was twenty-six he wrote, "The enemy attacked us. 

We killed a great many of them. Now all is quiet... I could not be happier."

And on he would reign

With a guerrilla in Spain, Napoleon would shake

Bonaparte would soon make his most fatal mistake

An invasion of Russia, would leave the French hegemony in Europe,

bitter and weak

Crossing the river, Neman, half a million men strong,

the Grande Armée marched through western Russia

The fate of the war, decided on the Moscow front

Napoleon's army, frailed

Russians, settled and scorched-earth

The largest and bloodiest single action of the Napoleon Wars

While he was left with no more men waiting to refill his loses, 

Russia rained with millions

With Russia replenished, someone else lived this good life

Napoleon was forced to retreat the same way he had come to 

Moscow, emptied

And riddled with death

When Tolstoy wrote, soon after, "..one must believe in the possibility of happiness in order to be happy, and I now believe in it.

Let the dead bury the dead, but while I'm alive, I must live and be happy.”

He would write of Napoleon's war and his peace.

For Fireblossom Friday at Imaginary Garden with Real Toads