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

thoughts for the color blind

 

love is shade movable as shadow;
it is scintillant brightness;
it cannot be defined as if it were
a color described to someone blind
as orange…azure…emerald… a
dainty pink…a blood deep red

its thinking etches or erases like
lace edged sea foam on a beach

it is invisible as gravity…sensed
like space between tick…tock

no spell is implicit in its sounding
for its spelling is not sacrosanct…
it may as well be evol…olev…velo

enough…for we think of it as warm
or chill or thrill or pain or ecstasy…as
literal as pinch…sustaining as if breath

Bonnie Marshall

Art by Thomas Pollock Anshutz

 

 

 

frankly, my dear…

 

frankly, my dear…

from my movie mind
I gather image word
and feeling meaning

I sort it to my brain
somewhere in a neuron
synapse cell to cell

I hear him say it with
that Rhett Butler voice…
know that cocksure gaze

brilliant framing at the
door between his worlds

at the turning point
he didn’t give a damn

flawless timing…always
absolutely perfect for
remembering of know

 

Bonnie Marshall

Gone with the Wind
Selznick International Pictures

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

 

the complex easy

he sketched her…soft grounded her dark
to pale from his pen…from his spider brain…
and I procured a  numbered print of her
to hang spot lit in the downstairs hall…

his face turned slouching woman… awkward
back stretch angled on rectangles of chair

I recess lit her stark frameless to
a cream white wall…and for a month
or two we lived together…amiably
and then began disquiet for I
no longer studied her…no longer
lit or looked at her

I could not hum mutter whistle her
being present simple in my complexities
of wrinkled cotton islands on wood dusty
floors, my mismatched shoes upon the
stairs…my stale racked stacked emails
my listless voice-ed messages cued
faceless in my cell

she haunted me…and then epiphany…
I turned her almost upside down…
spilled her comfortable into the complex
easy of my life

Bonnie Marshall

Artwork by Richard Diebenkorn