September Ways

shadow boxing with September as

August draws her last few breaths

the flaxen hair of Autumn knows that i have met

her prior to this season;  so aware

her September ways - she knows that i count on her

to fulfill those lost or forgotten childhood days -

days of passing through

the memory the years of yester-season

too, that i count on her to soften

all my sharp and guarded summer reason; my guardian, my

September - mentor

of the Autumn heart - i listen well

for that final beat of August - as

with its passing - Autumn's beating

will at last - finally start

bkmackenzie

copyrighted 2011

Posted for d'Verse Open Link Night

dichroic delusions

sometimes life

is shades of orange and pearest yellows

windows shut, doors locked

windows locked yellow, a splinter filled framework

little blues (can not find the blues)

there - masked behind the oranges

behind the decayed crumbling - a dried out

layer cake, (blues) beneath a surreal grasshopper -dead

mistaken as a living thing, mistaken

risen from the melting 

glass of my dichoric delusions

bkmackenzie

copyrighted 2011

silence

silence moves

backwards like the stepping into a dusty room

long abandoned

there - reflecting solitude, reflecting sits

a sunday kind of soul

self

without sermon or song, without thought or voice

between the hearts beat

allowing recollection

review itself  in the gilding

of another day

bkmackenzie

copyrighted 2011

Posted for d'Verse Poetics

archiving life

i have been regulated

to archive life, scrapbook

family and friends - your face (as in life)

rarely shows up in photos, black & white

or otherwise

it was a Brownie camera

era when this one was clicked

a "Pepsi and a Double-Mint" time

from a now abandoned gas station

for you it appeared

a happier day, a moment of clarity

that never came - movement

that was not far enough away from this

by-passed hwy town - and Pepsi soon turned

to beer, beer to vodka - vodka into

mornings made up of party lines

until the party finally ended -

all that remains now

are windswept telephone poles, still

insulating old gossip - long after

i pasted you to the page

titled "Mother"...

bkmackenzie

copyrighted 2011

Posted for Magpie Tales

fantasy team

i have not come to belly up to the bar

or to cheer on the team

i have come to ask why you are not
wearing your ring and to remind you of

your daughters birthday, but i'll

take a black russian (Putin politics
on ice) check the climate of

our vows - take future bets on this filly

later we can barter in bed, massage

each other's genitals, melt any Siberian

tundra that might remain

i will tell you i love the accent

in your whispers, the warmth

of your fingers across this belly

counting on one 

for the home team - and one for

future of my fantasies

bkmackenzie

copyrighted 2011

Posted for d'Verse Open Link Night

white rabbits

i always - wanted to write plain forward

like Collins - but never thought that way

i always - wanted to write pure vulgar

like Bukowski - but never talked that way

i always thought to be a writer
always thought maybe in time, but

i always had trouble writing straight

and staying within the lines, presented or embellished
as the purity of an art

an artist i never thought i could be, or

would be in shape or  form, drawing empty spaces

drawing attention to etchings with a voice

but, i always purchased pencils sharpened,

pens inked with blackest  black - thinking about the thoughts 

they could or would never say, compositions

illegible with an over use of dash

i always thought i could write wide open

but found it as impossible as the i (i know)

pulling a white rabbit from some

writers - magic  hat  

bkmackenzie

copyright 2011

character (a vision of God)

chiseled, cast - slow

to conform

toward parenting or parish-ship

a life sainted set in grey

relief - stead i

took to a muses handling 

of edge to sharp to stand alone , all

Rilke and rotund - roses spread on a barren

ground - this failing heir of Herculine

fond not of any sculptor's tool

curtailing nights to walk

in dust - foreshortening faith 

to purge the cleansing of any word - from dust i came

so to it - i sit now in full view,  not full of grace

or hypocritical refrain

for a sinful souls renewal

dreamt of it, i dream of it - maquette complete

to hand and with

ancient muse to guide both

word and character to stone, i speak

into the marble - a vision of  God -

that i intend in this life's ending

to be called -  my very own.

bkmackenzie

copyrighted 2011

sculpture by Rodin - La Danaide (1889)

Critic Friday at d'Verse

Herculine Bardin ("the failed heir" reference) - male nor female she/he was classified as both (1838-1868) eventually ending life in suicide.

nymph loved in youth

As nymph loved in youth not only in my mind,

white cotton lace in retrospect

I trimmed to golden leaf -

Years passage, thoughts forgotten, left to mark and kind

Not so this course of summer

but to setting love as loves belief; pure

as the dew of morning, softer than words

spoken to a bloom -

With all  the world my orphanage,  with all

the world as my very own.  So, it was I loved

you then as any bee does love

the blossom new, and you loved as the blossom did

the warmth of summers air,  sweet honey

at the threshold of a royal's throne - 

with lace and hair entwined pulling as freedom 

pulls the youthful heart.

Imparting still life reflections

passed by on such a thoughtfilled day, 

dreaming in the nymph like pleasures

of a summer that too

quickly slipped away.... 

bkmackenzie

copyrighted 2011 

posted for d'Verse Open Link Night

painting by Anders Zorn - A Woman Dressing..

the art of painting

the art of painting any given day

time spent planning is seldom reminisced.  with

all course of challenge, so neatly tucked away,

as that moment when your lips I first did kiss.

foreshadowed plans placed to an empty shelf.

forgotten to author, so forgotten to a season well at hand.

brushing one kiss to my kiss, against

the symmetry of an artist's purse.

a canvas replaced, revised

as love does revise any corporal man,

impressing daylight to a wall

not given to shape or such prior colors versed,

allowing love give way

to the making of loves own

intrinsic master plan. a portrait

not envisioned, not drawn - but immortally rehearsed.

a vision painted as only the truest mortal can....

bkmackenzie

copyrighted 2011

Posted for Magpie Tales

afterthoughts

she moved

in afterthoughts and

un-punctuated sentences

amid summer

mid-day shadows swallowing

walkways of cobble - brindled brown 

contrary a cross stitched 

landscape

dispels duty- throws off prior promise

to shelter her memories

as unconstrained

pathways - unevenly mastered

unlined

or marked plumb

bkmackenzie

copyrighted 2011

posted for d'Verse Open Link night

Moonlight Becomes You..

it was thousands of miles

from Newark to Normandy

it was a hundred years

between him and Peggy Ann

a three-quarter moon

sheltered him from the darkness

Peg sheltered him from the stillness

with pink lemonade, a promise

a phonograph playing Harry James

as Al played out his future

in between the scent of Peggy Ann

the memory of D-Day

"You know Peg every time I saw a pin-up of Betty Grable I thought of you. 

I thought, my Peggy Ann is much prettier than even Betty Grable.  And I

told all the guys that too...they were jealous."

"Oh Al, I am so glad the war is over. So glad that you came home to me."

"Let's not talk about the war Peg"....He cocked his knee turned to

look straight at her. "Now tell me again, how many

kids should we have Peg, three or four maybe?"

"Two boys, two girls...that would be perfect, wouldn't it?..More lemonade?  

"Sure that would be nice."

"What should I put on the phono next Al?"

"How about Bing's... Moonlight Becomes You...."

"You got it Al"

It was thousands of miles from Newark to Normandy....

bkmackenzie

copyrighted 2011

Posted for Magpie Tales

dead things

i drive

Hwy 20 the south

side of the

Sutter Buttes - westward

the road is lined with

nut and peach orchards

empty cornfields, tomato fields - Corriera's boarded up fruit stand

           CLOSED

ahead, i see

there are dead things

all along the two lane road

i see them

black things,

dead things  - they are lying 

in the middle, along the side

ditched things,  deserted dogs

dead things

black things, skunks

bloodied beavers, big black

birds, buzzards half winged and wet in stench

tales in my ear- turn, my right ear - turn

take the river road, it says,  the

river road - just take it, now

my mind is

muddled, mocked to indecision

i mull it over, then again

No, no i can't , i won't take it  - there are ghosts on the

river road, ghosts of old barge men, there are ghosts

of the raped and murdered, ghosts of lost

children longtime drowned - they will stop me,  they always

stop me - they always ask me,

Why do they only see dead things?

driving on west,  i see dead things

black

bkmackenzie

copyrighted 2011

Made some of the changes Luke recommended - thanks Luke for input...bkm

I frequent this hwy every week...along it I always see black things...my mind pictures dead things - from cats to cows - nine times out of ten it is a large piece of black blown tire - a blanket or clothes let or lost ....but until I pass it....my imagination runs amuck....bkm

posted for d'Verse Fri Crit...

the phrenologist

phrenologist:

so what are you

going to do about the chronological

order of things?  being the various

assessments of value

have non-principles amid the principality of non-beings

and that working 

backwards may rejuvenate the skin

but it is the mind you still have

to hold on to with all - and said, thoughts put into motion

(tended to) stay in motion

it is all so so distorted

by the the end of any feel(ing)

reality will and always does

laugh at us phrenologically speaking

speaking from the stand point

of where i stand

all lumped up behind several layers of face masked

and cognac

client:

cognac?

bkmackenzie

copyrighted 2011