Elegy For The New Bedford Orpheum Theater

Source: hella-compendium

Misty Mornings Next to the Potter’s Field

A dark angel inhabits the margins Coming into the field on misty mornings To dance with the funeral horses Resting there

They come up from their dozing To sway with the angel Unfurling her raven wings They prance solemn and slow As if pulling a hearse In black feathered headdress Through throngs of mourners Tearful and morose

The crowning sun touches the dew She dissolves away with the mist The horses lower their heads Nibbling the clover in morning’s bliss.

-Skye

Artist: Meimaro (Work from their solo exhibition ‘Devotion Bound’) Source: Beatifulbizarremagazine

Fame and Fortune

Whispered making promises I let myself give way

It was easy in my innocence Allowing the Adoration of thousands of fingers Strip the flesh from my desirable bones

Until all that was left of me was Make believe.

-Skye

Seaside Graveyard, Orkney Isle

Long after the flowers died I wait here overlooking the sea

This grave of mine grown over with mosses and salt air I wait here overlooking the sea

The place beside me empty and unbroken No stone no whisper of you just me overlooking the sea waiting here

Waiting for my Sailor To return to me.

Moody seaside graveyard, Orkney Isle, Scotland

April 2024

Tom Mannion

On the Platform

I saw you in the train window

I saw her too

You saw nothing your eyes were closed her fingers tangled in your hair

The train pulled free

The sway and screech receding down the line

I stood stolid on the platform forgotten coffee in my hand

Looking at the hole that had been your train

Wondering how long you have been gone.

Brassaï • Notre Dame Gargoyle-Paris, 1932

Source: afrouif

Brassai and His Conversation with a Gargoyle, 1932

Tucked into Paris between the two world wars

You came to me with the bright lights twinkling on softly rising city noises

And caught me in my common pose rain worn contemplative knowing nothing and everything

Yes, the photographer cried-

I saw this immediately the flash illuminated everything and nothing of you

How can that be old roof top friend that I only think of you in the rain

When in my grainy photo you are always here

-Skye

Source: shadechamber

The Raven

Great Auntie kept a raven under glass in her dusty living room full of curious things

Mother and I sipped tea there on Saturdays Mother and Auntie sipped and chatted While that long dead bird Stared at me with its glassy eye

I sipped seen not heard Under the gaze of this bird Wishing terribly for another cookie

The ladies gossiped and tutted Auntie even reached over and pinched my cheek “Such a good quiet girl”

The raven just stared at me Seen not heard Sealed in its glass

I imagined it soaring Under a blue mild sky Instead of being seen not heard At this Saturday tea

We had a lot in common That dead bird and me.

-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

Eden

Eden is down the road from here just beyond the last row house one step into the cow pasture through the hedge

No one plucks these fruit the red hidden in the messy wild branches the skin with rough brown spots

People pick apples waxed shiny smooth from well lit shelves

Mesmerized by their reflection staring out of rosy skin

I am reclined under branches colored in the sun   that flows through scraggly leaves

Sour imperfect fruits tempting me into sins

Long forgotten

-Skye

Wild Apples…

‘The Fruits of the Earth’ (1911) watercolor by Edward J. Detmold Published in ‘The International Studio’ magazine vol. XLII From the Article “A Note on Mr. Edward J. Detmold’s Drawings and Etchings of Animal Life”

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