what haunts my days, what hunts me in my dreams – my heart is a volcano
in the June-time, under a hoopah tree, that only the new moon saw
first a fierce heat, second a piercing red, third a wrenching and rupture –
in the moon-mist, beside the hoopah tree, I cool my toes in the stream
NaPoWriMo24 day 19 – prompt from napowrimo.net, to write a poem that responds to the question, What are you haunted by, or what haunts you?, then change the word haunt to hunt. I wrote this strange poem yesterday (I was in a strange mood, I guess) for a prompt from the poetry scavenger hunt hosted at A Different Perspective, to write a Sekar ageng, a verse form from Java that is traditionally a recited song. I revised the first line for the napowrimo prompt.
And since it’s a strange poem, I’ll add to the strangeness with this NaPoWriMo19 poem, when the prompt was to write a poem that incorporates surreal, wild images, that doesn’t make formal sense but that engages all the senses and involves dream-logic. Peace to your!
Lamentation
Hush, hush. The greenwillows are weeping again,
Weeping for lost Lindolito.
The key by the sour-moon tree the speckled loon stole.
Do you hear? The key the speckled loon dropped into the lemon sea.
Oh! The salt and the sour! Who will weep for Lindolito now?
He walks with the crooked snake.
The moon has gone missing. Do you hear?
Bitter herbs grow by the tooth of the hound.
Oh! The bitter and the sharp! Poor Lindolito with his crooked hip.
Who will weep for the moon?
The river that divides the ocean in two. Do you hear?
Who will cross it in half? Not Lindolito with his bent back.
Not the moon, hidden in the shadow of the sun.
There will be tears. Oh, the tears! The sour, salty, bitter tears!
They have bitten the moon.
Do you remember the key? The key the speckled loon stole?
The greenwillows are weeping, searching the sea with their green arms.
Poor Lindolito with the crossed eyes and the forked tongue.
Poor, poor moon, bleeding into the lemon sea.