a fantasy of ancients

 

three minor keys of dusty bones
appear from gray blue smoke;
they windmill arms akimbo
around a mound of castoff rags;
they growl shriek howl,
sideways sashay with cramp-ed slides

they antic dance and mimic bow;
they sack the piled rejection
of worn sole shoes and mismatched socks,
of grime stained  pants and ragged shirts,
a wooden leg, a glass cracked eye,
red wig…stained bandage stash

into full fathom coats and rubber boots
they stuff their loot as if it were all treasure
to disappear as limitless and formless as its start
as warmth appearance healing comfort; then
they disappear into a wisp-ed trailing fog,
into a fantasy of ancients…into a laughter

Bonnie Marshall

Artist: Joseph Beuys
“Witches Spitting Fire” 1959

extended metaphor…a life flight

we take off and we land
our necessity of days
take on…take off into
the charting of our years
on routes long-established
by others…by ourselves

and we fly passengers…
are attendant to their needs
accordingly in first class…
business…coach…we transport
parcels luggage mail…and we tank
energy to fuel them safely into sky

and we accumulate and jettison desire
not to weigh us heavy into earth…
not to limit soar…not to impair
workings of our parts and send us
crashing into mountains…sinking
into seas…barely reaching shores
we’ve charted on our maps and
lifted to in dreams

 

Bonnie Marshall

Artwork by Kaye Bishop

Money Mecca in the Desert

Money mecca first is glow behind dark hills
then flames to razzle-dazzle boulevards of sidewalked
believers seeing visions…offering flashing idols
metal paper plastic…handing chips and cards to proxies
in temples where prayers of the faithful…please god please
rise to heaven through tobacco incense haze toward
all seeing watchers over them.

Where devotion…caffeine stoked…blurs lines
of day and night as acolytes peak intensity
with alcohol and speed, and where testosterone
sifts in city air to blend with auto fumes.
Where dulled disciples receive comfort
at the altars of buffet, and toss trample
paper icons of nude gods and goddesses
offered from street stationed church of
Eros zealots.

Where each Monday, delegated deacons
follow morning rites, bag chips left in
collection plates at Sunday’s mecca churches,
appear at the temples’ gates for a ritual
of redemption.

Bonnie Marshall

 

Artwork by Leroy Neiman

chanting arid windsong

 

straw dry …drought crack

riverbed flakes skin…darkens

rain forced to fresh mud wash

 

skyed sparks stream static trace

north poled…arched by fingertips

and… moss gleams phosphorescent

 

geometric moonbeams drift listless

up and down and left and right,

scrape pockets in the night

 

islands slip their moorings…form

new continents of Latin mass for

chanting arid windsong

 

Bonnie Marshall

Artwork by Fred Williams

my star is in Electra

 

 

my star is in Electra…
my place in the Pleiades…in Taurus
where I’m B6174556 etcetera because
he gifted it to me…gilt framed registered
on parchment one year for my birthday

gave me a cosmos print complete
with triangulated lines centered to my
spark so I shall know where I always am
and where I’ve always been and always…
where I’ll be nailed to a hallway wall with
a painted still life and family photographs

no matter…I’m no believer…I shall cast within
the cosmos of my mind…watch dry crystal hurricanes,
hear clang of three tone chimes brake scrape like trains,
breathe deep rum raspberry gunpowder charred steak
and welding fumes in that so iced and flamed a world

 

Bonnie Marshall

Artwork by Kenneth Brauchler