Myth

The men have written the women into stories;
painted them into pictures; allotting
flesh and virtue,
vice but omitting blood.  Captive,

Andromache
stands at center, at backdrop, jagged hills
and clouded sky. 

She is cloaked in rags of mourning, surrounded,
yet alone.
Arms clasped to chest, head down
like bird at rest.
She protects herself from blades of gaze.

Leighton later frees his brooding image, posing
her deep in dream,
carefully

closing the violet eyes
of England’s most beautiful woman,
so that she might not see
the poison that would kill her.

Liberated from laborious mortality, positioned
now as nymph, her sanctuary lies in sea of sleep.
Here, Ada, aka Dorothy Dene
blooms beneath the brush
stroke of a master.

Finally, a reason to be.
Evergreen,
enflamed
in summer slumber,
uneditable,
engulfed in golden
hues like candlelight
that flicker in the distance.

Warmed in still life.
Imagine if you will, relations between
the artist

and his muse; the classicist and his colors;
the fear of lust,
of men; the mission, then,
to cloister
what is mystery, to vilify as sinful,

the simplicity of love.

Or perhaps, blinded
by the spotlight,
long-limbed

inspiration confuses
love with art, envisages romance
kindling in winter,
unaware she’s doomed to neverending May.

Only when finally, flighted
as Iphigenia’s ghost, does she find her voice.
Under authorship of woman, she states
that the lyricists have lied. 
She did not willingly
sacrifice her life, nor did a hind
arrive to take her place.

Weakness strives

then to possess her but myths
no longer
sway
and she reminds her audience
that “women are no good..
dead.”

 The Sunday Whirl

Quote from The Gate to Women's Country by Sheri S. Tepper

Lectulus

In creating, the only hard thing's to begin...
                                                         -James Russell Lowell


You are Adam
        and
I am Eve,
pre-fall
         and so
vigil held in
pre-nostalgia
waned with wick of wariness,
lessening into daybreak's risk,
and light rising, I signed
             the words, I love you,
then spoke them plain
        saying all I never thought
              I would.
Because lathered in your
before and after
kisses,
        somehow
                        what once gushed
syrupy
seems now likely.

So, here I am, in the wiggle room
  of luck,
believing in the blessing,
            given
           not
by choice or virtue,
but won
by fight,
and the danger of practicality,
looming just above-
        ever easing.

I offer to wisdom all previous
grieving,
repossess
    the wonder.
There is suffering
            still to steer,
              I'm sure,
but together
we
row rapids
  of redemption,
        each wave of what
once was
            and
reaching
            graveyard of the end
                             of what
                                  was once
before,
we'll dig up vision's
bones,
breathe bloom
into the stilted mouths of
                         mocking cynics.
We will
           laugh at sighs and stretching
                         silence,
because now,
voice,
legitimized,
and artificial phrases,
yes, sublimest art.
More is more, and I will serve you
happily
       in return for heart,
because you never gave up
                    chase,
                        and catching me,
you held me long in hidden gap,
wove, like craft, a frame of healing,
waited out derangement
            of my feverish cries
                                              and I
survived.

So, now I give my life to you,
                        my love,
undo
softly, gently,
    false covering of figs,
      abandon fear.
I spill more sumptuous
                           than the fruit
                                              I
tempted with, and ask forgiveness.

Press hard your hips to mine,
                  your lips to mine,
and know the way
by memorizing feel of features.
Know me in the dark and light,
                in the cycles
of our hours,
our habits of formation.
Hear me
in our modern.
In
my notes
            slipped into sack lunch
vows I've never uttered.
Keep them close
as you do my body
in between the sheets
         in early morning
segue.
Taste like lasting taffy,
the sweetness of my thoughts,
        watch my fingers spell
                         in lieu of
                             lines
the pretty gathering of sonnets
                  and regard attempts,
however lowly, to call you home.
Eat with me newly granted
knowledge,
and when spent from toil,
return
   to Eden's bed.

The Sunday Whirl

                                         
           

Art

She grabs her pencils of many colors and she grabs their essence, adding randomness.
 Her hand flies almost as
quickly as her muses
                     move and she finds freedom
                               as never before.

The hues no longer harness but rather create a chaos
            she then tames.
            She lets go of all preconceived ideas and rules, allowing the paper and the medium to discover treasures, stories
     and hidden meanings.

Her heart
has opened to a novel joy; one that comes from within, or maybe from above.

The settings-normal, sometimes mundane- home, space, but the space is theirs.
Where they laugh, talk, eat, play, learn, sleep and she captures its life, its glory.
They compose their songs and she plays them with her colors.

In their gracefulness, she recognizes His supreme grace and now she believes if He can do through her,
    He can do for her.

 He can make art out of what she cannot yet see.