Bunny Math

Wilhelm Kotarbiński (Polish, 1849-1921)

Crowning the Poet, 1881

Women

Soft fair Roman women weave peonies and roses

Into fragrant crowns in the mild morning

To rest upon the marble brows of venerated poets filling villa courtyards with polite chatter

Receding deep within shadowy villas only when confronted by midday sun

Keeping alters to old gods keeping secrets bearing sons bearing daughters.

Long dead fictions with soft brush marks and heavy gold frames

These are the women who turn up in the Victorian Paintings contemplated in galleries on Sunday Afternoon

-Skye

Image: Poland,1932 Photography: Henryk Poddebski, Poland 1932 Source: polishcostumes

Dziado

Came from Slavic wheat Farming Polish fields under the sun Breaking bread with his mother and sister At end of day

Peasants they owned nothing Not the land Not the wheat Not the roof above them On cold winter nights

War washed him from the continent And off to America With his wife and baby girl

And though he is long dead I still see him

Caring for his cows Feeding his pigs Cooking his eggs With his garden onions Under his own roof.

-Skye

Source: Miles Johnson

The Lover’s Lament

At first I did not understand The roots you planted

Grew Through Me

Leaving me Pinned to The ground.

-Skye

Title: Levitate Artist: MIKKO RAIMA Source: dadalux

Levitation

Rising fast the trees can’t keep you From being carried away You are dissolved light Mere bubbles in a watery atmosphere Stirred by the moon.

-Skye

Image credit: Isolation,23.03.2020, 20:25, Source: flowersinthedustbin

Night Windows

In the daytime people are hidden The building keeping secrets Of things done in the living room Or the boudoir

No one privy to ordinary And extraordinary comings and goings

In the nighttime backlit lives reveal Themselves In bright snippets of window light In hazy shadows playing on lowered shades In the soft outlines of darkness

Ordinary And extraordinary Comings and goings For everyone to see.

-Skye

Eternal

So lovely to stroll in the sun amongst the rambling stones draped in hydrangea the Victorians so loved their flowers

Hands held tight our chatter lively who knows what the long dead think of lovers

of desire

I pull you to a huddled assembly of marble decked in lichen beneath the primordial maple well rooted in the dead

I want this eternity the worn stone the opulent branches throwing cool shadows

but only with you two stones leaning in 100 years on.

         -Skye

“ I’ll find you in the morning sun” Billie Holiday / I’ll Be Seeing You.

St Mary’s, Reigate, Surrey.

Title: “Craving for Power” Author: Ilo Kunst Medium: Pen and ink on paper. Source:Beautifulbizarre.

Mad Kings with Blood on Their Hands

Psychotic Charles IV slew his own knights

Paranoid Ivan T. tortured subjects on Saturday afternoons

Oh, and don’t forget George III ranting incoherently as

America broke away Swearing off kings forever…

-Skye

Photographer: Tartarchuk Nikolay Source: elinka

The Dead Sea

Quicksilver Crystalline Cut with milky sun Salt grows Out of barren Water.

-Skye

Image:The New Bedford Orpheum Theater, Massachusetts Photographer:Frank Grace Source:Ruinationstation

Elegy for the New Bedford Orpheum Theater

The Titanic sank The day you opened

Your gilt was fresh and tableaus bright

It was April 15, 1912 World war had not come Flu had not come World war had not come again

Merry patrons settled into indigo velvet

900 miles east northeast The cold water swallowed thousands While a different band played

Your opulence faded fast Dust caked, peeling, Stripped mostly Bare

You were sold and sold again

The rain came in leaving Plaster puckers, mildew stains, Mushy boards

For-sale sign clouded by rust You are eternally empty

Swallowed whole I tread gently on your aching abandoned bones Lighting candles And singing For the dead.

Image credit: Stephen Shames, Asleep in Car, from series Outside the Dream Child Poverty in America, c.1985 Source: letaobloquista

American Dreamer

The mist on windows hides the grubby face Lit softly in some dream

Big dreams Among the brown bags And beer cans

The rusty sagging car A leaky vessel For anyone’s dreams Big or small

I turn my head Going by.

-Skye