soul I tear

 

these days my brain
is incessant solitaire…
it flips present moment
into bits and pieces
through a shuffled time

no matter…luck of the draw…
my flimsy card slip apprehension
plays sequential consequence of now
with all time wasted…scattered to a table
where a three dimensioned plane
is littered with distraction

oh…there is no damnation…none

somewhere beyond this sphere
that pulls upon me…holds me down
spreads immensity of space
where stars collapse and recombine
in chaos of a deep design
I cannot think to think

 

Bonnie Marshall

Artwork by Salvador Dali

prophecy slipped through

 

prophecy slipped through
open windows…born on a
west-wind  fragrance of pale
ocean to agitate her white
curtains…disarray letters
on her desk…speak to her
in the scrape of gold red
autumn leaves dropped so
carelessly upon her porch,
in sunlit torch-ed flutter
imaged on her ceiling wall

a scrying need changed
currents in her blood…
changed direction of  a
subtle weather vane within
her brain to mediate faint
polarities of thought

a water thirst rose underneath
her tongue… a drowsy scarf…
a need to compass steps across
a room…she pinched her palm
for focus…for holding of a golden
thought against fading brevity
of  the pregnant light

 

Bonnie Marshall

Art by Andrew Wyeth
“Wind from the Sea” sketch

 

going for distract

 

oh, Dear Reader…let’s go for distract…
pretend it’s a rainy day…or blazing hot
or something’s wrong with our setting
and we can’t change the world…at least
not these very moments

now consider the reward  of thinking
boustrophedon…come on…stay with
me on this one, for it’s a marvel, and
will prove advantage in a curious life
once you get the knack of it…like
computer glasses…or tapping apps

 

 

there…you  just “boused”…might
tease your eyes a bit at first until you
find the motion knack of it…the plow
of it, like oxen forward backward on
a field, the way some Greeks…some
Romans incised glyphs into their clay

use it now…you’re ready… you…
could try it with van Gogh…his great
“Rain – Auvers”…1890…one from
his final works

start top left…scan seeing thinking
left to right and right to left across
its levels blue to gold to blue…stop
now and then to ponder what he shows
for it will wonder you

and then…there is…his rain

 

Bonnie Marshall

Painting by Vincent van Gogh
“Rain – Auvers” (1890)