Piecing together scraps

This is the first poem promised in the last post, albeit a bit tardy. I may yet alter it some, but I think it's mostly finished.

Stunning ephemera
By Francis Scudellari

His head open, unfolds...

Silk-tongue blossoms
lip-pressed snugly
between shuffled pages
with bindings worn
by salted drops
their liquid words loosed; a splashing
of seeded gusts

the handy, clipped moments...

Beading sounds dripped,
funneled, threaded
on dangled, thinning strings
that stretch too far
prismatic break
in many faceted spilling
of feathered light

black-white, pasted faces...

Eye-caught baubles
picked up and tucked
in pocketing cocoons
that ripen at
random ages
and burst forth in a clattering
of flitful wings

all collected, thought lost

His life's timing
a frayed patchwork
of ephemeral he
tattered-edge weaves
stitching a mind,
full of disconnected dreams joined
to memories

Teasing works in progress

Because my creative process is taking longer than expected, I thought I'd write a quick tease post about the work that's currently in progress. A poem I'm calling Stunning Ephemera is being built around the following lines:

Eye-caught baubles
picked up and tucked
in pocketing cocoons
that ripen at random ages
and burst forth with a clattering
of flit-full wings

The title is a phrase that quite literally popped in my head while lying in bed one morning. I have no idea what prompted it, but it struck me as interesting. Due to some strange serendipity I experienced around the writing of it, finishing this one is my current highest priority.

The second poem, Argus, is much less further along, but it's another of my attempts to modernize the characters from a classic myth. The idea of the watcher with one-hundred eyes has always captivated me.

Finally, I've begun a drawing inspired by my last poem Footsteps.

Footsteps, reworked

I re-worked the fragment from my last post, and I think this is how it will stay... a bit simple, but I like it.

Footsteps
By Francis Scudellari

A vision of footsteps
long ago's seeming faded
now beckoning, to-be retraced
with a trembling, unsteady finger

What if I was started tomorrow
anew by going back in time
to re-place myself then, first,
most, altar the future

Fragmentary pondering

While pondering things beyond my ken, perhaps too much, the following lines came to me. For now it's just a fragment, but I may some day soon expand on it.

I have a vision, of footsteps
long ago's seeming faded
now beckoning, to be retraced
with a trembling but steady finger

What If I were to,
tomorrow, start anew
by going back in time
and re-place myself, first

Feeling green

My latest drawing... not much else to say about it.

Another dream, another poem

This is another of my poems very loosely inspired by a dream. It's been taken out of that sleepy context, if dreams can be said to really have context.

Mismatched Messenger
By Francis Scudellari

A mismatch-making messenger --
its painted Kewpie doll's head
crudely glued to dovish body --
she frees from a tinfoil-wrapped cage

The bipolar-white wings outspread
to affect a slow-creeping glide
as this at-odds stranger descends
in clockwork-countering spirals

Its too pretty, rounded features
tooled on delicate ceramic
sharpen in edgy marked contrasts,
drawing never closer to me

The lifeless blue star-speckled eyes
string-pulled open by black bar brows;
the twin, red-dotted cheeks pushing
pursed lips not meant to kiss, but peck

Wire-thin, coiled pink talons grasping
a tightly rolled note, loose string-tied
and filled with her mock-poison words
penned at the tip of flaming tongue

The latest targeted missive
that it so precisely drops to
sweet trickle and prod me onward
in love bitterly imagined

Illustrative strangeness

This cartoonish portrait was meant to illustrate the line "flopped gold curls mopping a wide pink brow" from Oranges for Three Loves. It obviously took a bit of a twisted turn, but I'm growing fond of these imaginary faces.

Oranges, concluded with a dream

Finally, here is the last part of my poem Oranges for Three Loves (read the complete poem here). I may yet make some small changes to it, and please feel free to offer suggested tweaks. I should have another drawing or two based on it upcoming as well.

IV. Evening dreamed

As jagged-tooth fence-post's shadow lengthens,
a sudden unthinking appetite grows.
He grabs the last orange, gobbling it all
but a lone slick seed that sticks in his cheek

His magic seeming sadly lost, the kernel
he takes, finger-pushes it in topped soil,
then lays his head next to single-seed bed
and sleeps, drowsed by a soft-chirped serenade

That night, a tree sprouts of strange banded fruit;
perched among its branches, waking he spies
a fairy's green tossed locks, and dreamy she
with limpid hazel gaze smiles back at him