I shall transfigure…

I shall live…
where life is plane geometry….with
pyramids dimensional and
weighted…holy squared on
bedded rock…as desert reference
to orient my sanity
against a pale horizon.

I shall live…
where great Nile’s
summer floods force
papyrus gifts…impaled
to verticality through
thin siltiness…where
Egyptians draped in shadow
slice pomegranates…figs
with obsidian knives…and
stain incarnadine the
carving wood.

I shall transfigure…
to flensed bones
Ra bleached to whiteness…
burned in a marble crucible
to spare ash…collected…balance
weighed against a
feather.

Bonnie Marshall

The weighing of the heart of Hunefer by Anubis, before the Devourer Ammit: from the Egyptian Book of the Dead, 19th Dynasty, c. 1285 B.C. (British Museum, via National Geographic)

wishing flower blossoms in your tea

silver needle white tea leaves

wrap  marigold or jasmine

carnation…amaranth or lily,

hidden…snug to spheres

and slipped to water’s heat

where minutes bloom exotic

flowers… fragrance poured

a pale gold warmth of pleasure

cup of blessing to your life

Bonnie Marshall

Four in the Cloud

 

internetted

salt air sways bunch grass
on drifted mounds where
mice browse trails on dunes
of shore domain they share
with fiddler crabs that wave
for mates and claw for chance
connections in high tides and
detritus of seaweed wrack…
where tiny plovers stride
twig legged and prod their
arrow pointed beaks for
access through sand silica
to transient nourishment…
where brown-gold spiders
on surf-drifted wood
excrete their capture space
of tensile filament… arachnid
spinners, deep brain spilled
to eight-legged dynamos of
elegant design…they link tangles
in a web-ed universe

Bonnie Marshall

Artwork by Erte

pre-metamorphic

milky news pods
pendulous
drip from data clouds
to clamshell i-Things
discarded
pre-metamorphic
memory erased
on a waveless beach
where tongues twitter whisper
and facemask photo shards
disperse to glitter litter
across infinite sand

Bonnie Marshall

Artwork by Christine Alfery

 

I-Thing, My Ariel

You nestle in my ears
to sing me wondrous songs
and orchestrate full symphonies
of kaleidoscopic sound.

Responsive to my fingertips
you anticipate my need
for instantaneous union
with out of sight dimensions
of thought and imagery.

Then…once you take me there,
you so intoxicate my mind
with vast…prodigious wonder
that…inebriate and tranced
I grow reluctant to return
to tame sobriety.

Bonnie Marshall

Artwork by Leon Bakst

 

 

Third Remove Romance

“Sadie I ♥ u.” :)
“Owen I ♥ u 2.” :)

is expedience…a hug
second remove illusion
of emoticons and symbols
without intensity of gaze
or sincerity of smile.
Other times and places
the lovers Photoshop with apps
with healing tools and healing brushes…
magic wands… magic erasers,
and puppet warp…
for third remove illusion
centuries removed
from cavern walls in Greece
where puppet masters
threw shadows on a wall.

Bonnie Marshall

Photo: Art Arart

Limehouse Blues

 

There has to be fog in Limehouse
soft as whispers
trailing grayness
misting storefront windows
where old men sit at tables
still as crickets
when the mating season’s passed.

There have to be mirrors in Limehouse
above unnumbered doorways
so that restless evil spirits
drift unknowing by.

There must be a woman in Limehouse
gazing at a dresser top
where there’s an unlit lamp…
pink shade…red fringe.
She considers implications
of a single fortune cookie
broken…empty…flavorless
upon a thin white saucer.

 

Bonnie Marshall

Artwork by Richard Diebenkorn

tales told by crones catch us

tales told by crones catch us
in thorns of awe full disbelief
and tangle us in rawness at
beguiling edges of credulity

as when they tell us Mandragora
screams its loosening from earth…
kills the first to hear its  shriek and
carries in its brew a potent sleep
like death enough to bury Cleopatra
in deep hallucinating dreams…unclasp
her wanting until Anthony’s return

as when Circe warned Odysseus
to place bee’s wax warmed… still
honey sweet against the eardrums
of his loyal oarsmen…lash himself
with ropes fast to the mast, so as
crazed with lust…not to dash
their bodies into wine-dark sea
toward distant Sirens singing
prophesies

as when we scoff at fortune tellers,
psychics, casters charting horoscopes
and refrain from seeing meaning in
crows angling through the sky….and
just at midnight…in darkness outside
our bedroom window… owl hoots
that we muffle with our pillows

Bonnie Marshall

Artwork by Unknown Artist