Ghosts – the flayed

Aching to be clothed

in warm flesh again,

feeling it tight and smooth

against muscle and bone.

Hating this cold nakedness,

exposed to the core.

Waiting beyond time

for another skin to slide across

this osseous frame,

liquid, soft and trembling,

smelling of sun,

a fitting sensuality

once so tenderly touched

by a lover’s hands.

 

It is desires such as these

that binds a spirit

to this physical plane

of sweat and body,

this glistening intimacy.

 

Under the chill September sun

I deadhead the hydrangeas

and geraniums with shining

secateurs.

The withered blossoms fall

into my hand

and soon enough the foliage

will follow, dropping,

brown and wrinkled

onto the palm of earth,

and the garden will become

a murmuration of skeletons

waiting for new growth

to golden on their surfaces.

 

It is not so easy to face

this bone racked spirit in my night.

Its rattling visage is not pretty

and its pleading cries

come howling through my dreams.

 

I peer beneath desires

it breathes,

beneath its mask of dying,

into an endless nightmare

of longing,

reaching to be whole again,

refusing to accept

the flaying of time,

the peeling away

of the surfaces of care,

layer by layer

until there is nowhere else to go

except the beauty of the armature

flying free, released.

 

And you, my haunting,

whipping my heart

with cold filaments of silence.

It hurts, but you are freed now

and covered

by the bleeding veils of love.

 

mixed media painting and poem by clinock

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window interlude – death in Florence

death amongst flowers

Halloween in Firenze

juxtaposition

haiku and photo by clinock

Uncovered Treasure 4

winter’s skeleton

fragments the haunted heavens

but life blossoms on

 

In a recent mid-winter apartment purge I uncovered a set of 35 mm slides from some mist-enshrouded past era of my life. These photographic images enchant me, as they must have done many moons ago when I originally captured them on slide film.

Not owning a slide projector I scanned them into digital form and looked at them on my laptop. The images were visual poetry to me and words began to form around each one…

This post is the fourth of a series in which I will share these uncovered visual treasures paired with writings evoked by each slide.

I am also fascinated by the journey of the process these images have gone through over a long period of time. Originally an unknown photographer created an image using a film camera, manipulating and printing it using chemicals in a darkroom. The image was then purchased, photographed a second time and printed in a book where I found it and transformed it into slide film…a photograph of a photograph of a photograph. Using technology that was barely there when I made the slides, I scan the image, another form of photographic reproduction, adding a fourth layer to the process. Perhaps posting the image on WP could be considered a fifth stratum?

No doubt the images have deteriorated in quality as they have traveled through time but I accept this as an intrinsic characteristic of the process. Rather than treat the aging as a defect I prefer to see it as another face of beauty.

 I have no record of the original photographers of these images. If anyone out there recognizes the photographs please let me know and I will immediately add due credit to the artist.

haiku by clinock.