eyes of the lagoon.

Posted on by Lucy

Father of gunmetal, fingers and sap

kneeling to the blood-red of our faces

from my formaldehyde Grandfather,

in the black elms, a crown of sun pencils

on white skin, now the eyes I find of the lagoon

were treed in artichoke; father’s eyes are mine,

the shore is from the foolish matriarch, babushka’s daughter

and herself.

Occam’s razor had slit feet: bloodlines cannot drown us

from ancestor or ancestress to become their very worst.

Sand-thrown, gallows cripple upon the neck

the eyes that hanged upon father’s head,

burning, gnawing,

into the oak’s edge of wasteland knees

creaking and cracking to a child of stone,

less moonlight on the prey,

the swoon its death will bring, gripping no sea to swim

or ankle to grab quaked with sparred skins; steppes void

in ox eyes, a ghost of dead men,

what fools we must be to believe

that these things can change.

© 2020 lucysworks.com All Rights Reserved.

Written for the dVerse prompt. I chose prompt 1.

Published by Lucy

"Poetess of darkness"–dVerse community; cat hoarder, guitarist, keyboardist, psych major.

51 thoughts on “eyes of the lagoon.”

  5. Just as madness and genius lock arms, and love & lust share the same skin, your gothic filters find darkness at noon, and death in half-eaten grapefruits (which is unique, and clings to you wonderfully). I liked,”a crown of sun-pencils on white skin”–marvelous take on sun shafts of light.

    Liked by 4 people

  10. I love the visual images and the metaphorical images in you poem. The pond with eye all around of every kind. And the thought that only a fool would believe you could change the cycle of nature. Very well done as always!

    Liked by 3 people

    1. How did I miss this lovely comment? My apologies, Ingrid. I thank you so much for your kind words and feedback. I’m so glad you could enjoy this piece.

      Happy holidays in the snowball in hell way. ❤️❤️❤️

      Liked by 1 person

  14. Among the darkness of gunmetal and formaldehyde there is a beautiful lit-up moment, Lucy, which lends this poem its delicacy, the image in ‘a crown of sun pencils on white skin’. I also love the Gothic richness of the lines:
    ‘Sand-thrown, gallows cripple upon the neck
    the eyes that hanged upon father’s head,
    burning, gnawing,
    into the oak’s edge of wasteland knees
    creaking and cracking to a child of stone’.

    Liked by 2 people

  15. I’m imagining a father or grandfather who was hanged and the narrator having more sympathy with them than with the soft female heritage.
    ‘in the black elms, a crown of sun pencils on white skin,’ —I love that image.

    Liked by 3 people

  18. So many exquisite descriptions to indulge in….”treed in artichoke” , “oak’s edge of wasteland knees”, “ox eyes” and “quaked with sparred skins”. I like the dark side that “eyes” took you to.

    Liked by 3 people

Leave a Reply

Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in:

Gravatar
WordPress.com Logo

You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. ( Log Out /  Change )

Twitter picture

You are commenting using your Twitter account. ( Log Out /  Change )

Facebook photo

You are commenting using your Facebook account. ( Log Out /  Change )

Cancel

Connecting to %s