Dark Rose/dark blood by Diane Dehler

Dark Rose/dark blood

Sleep

Is the sudden

Thought of departure.

A moment

Defining

Presence

Underlines

It in absentia.

An

Addict goes under

A child dies.

Four

O’clock flowers

Close their blooms.

Trees ungrow become

Smaller and smaller.

I fall asleep.

Sleep

Chases me

Into the island

Of reverie,

Where it strips me

Of daytime

Pretensions.

I stare at nude

Images of myself

Reflected inside

An

Enormous

Engraved mirror.

Petals fall off

The dark rose.

One

     By

          One.

Stop

I say stop.

It all stops.

Sleep

     Gentle

          Sleep

               Coos

Into my ear.

Holds my hand

Softly  leads

Me to the cross.

Where I take my place

Become a sacrificial

Dark Rose/dark blood.

Diane Dehler

First published in, Near Kin, Sybaratic Press, 2014

belle de nuit by Diane Dehler

belle de nuit

droop their petaled heads

moonbathing

In long perfumed hours

of a languid night

Diane Dehler

First published in Moonbathing: a journal of women’s tanka, issue 8 Spring/Summer 2013

Sweet Spot by Diane Dehler

Diane Dehler

June 10, 2013

Sweet Spot

Dandelion seeds unfurl a white thistle sky.

She is dressed as a ballerina in clouds.

Eyes around her are flounces of poppy petals.

She is imperturbable beauty, an entire forest of tall trees.

Her dress: a dream theater and underneath her dress the sweet spot.

They told me about it.

I searched for it myself she said; higher, lower…

A communication that loses itself in its own endeavor for a

body prefers to understand beyond words.

This way- that way, your body adjusts itself against mine.

A wave laps against the seashore, a

merge of in and out.

You are as much a part of my body as a lover, sweet spot.

Your pleasure moist, a mirror of agate soul body,

Agate smooth skin that always knows the way….

Diane Dehler

First published in poetic diversity: the Litzine of Los Angeles, April 2014

Persephone in Ghost Town by Diane Dehler

Persephone in Ghost Town

Persephone walks in Ghost Town at 26^th & San Pablo in Oakland.

Fireworks erupt into violence of a lost and mythic war zone.

Here on 26^th Street drug dealers host a 4^th of July extravaganza….

I didn’t know this.

I told my neighbor, a thirty year old woman with six kids and large

sad eyes that I was planning to “go to” the city fireworks event.

What do you mean she replied, you just go stand out on your porch and the

4^th of July be coming to you.

Smoke and torrents of blood colored displays rained for hours transforming

an urban ghetto into an abandoned city in Hades.

Persephone appeared in the smoke and her three months of habitation

here in the Sorrows haven’t done her much good.

Here, where children are flayed by bullets and human needs waft through night.

-An historic parallel of mythos and brutality.

Persephone’s beauty is as out of place as a Cecilia Brunner bush.

My front yard is a Sleeping Beauty land of pink roses run rampant.

They push through clay soil and a top layer of loam to cover the rickety porch.

It was my fingers that dug deep beneath with a trowel, planted hope.

A barrage of litter blown by wind spills into my small yard that is not an

island, despite the lush perfume of roses.

Yet the roses prevailed long after the occupant of the decayed house fled.

Meaning I eventually got away unlike most.

Ghost Town is homage to a great land of prosperity and poverty’s

discarded children.

I saw Persephone departing with one of them,

foster mother to despair.

Diane Dehler

First published, Deepwater Literary Journal, Issue 1, February 2014

Riker's Island by Diane Dehler

                                                                                                

Riker’s Island is a public cemetery in New York where

inmates and the destitute of the city are buried.

Riker’s Island

On Rikers Island a

sloping field is set

aside for cremated

remains of those poor

and banished. 

Who perish

without the

cost of a funeral,

without provision

of mourning.

It is here

the poorest

of poor are

buried. Where

there is no coin.

 Simplicity of

wildflowers

adorns this

somber

paradise.

Here

sleeps a

newborn child

never touched

or held.

His cry

was a voice

unheard; rain in

the eye of a

ruined flower.

Queen Anne’s

lace, royal

and proud in

its grief stands

upright.

His birth

was a red

poppy that

shredded and

burned.

His death a first

tragedy given to

his mother.  A first

cycle through a

season of fire.

The mother knew

his promise was only

of sorrow. Memory

cremated into bone 

and bleached.

Sad purity of

infants that starve

and die before they

open cornflower

eyes.

Poverty

so primal

and unselective

devours people

& countries.

Poverty

belongs as

much to earth

as bone and

wheat.

Sorrow lives on

Rikers Island,

with the first and

most tender ash

given to earth.

Diane Dehler

First published in Artemis Journal, Spring 2014

Pearl Incantare, by Diane Dehler

Pearl Incantare

Her luminescence is an island of white slumber.

The girl believes pathos is a river that runs a course through stars.

I enter this painting, bring “I” to a place of sleep. Eyelids of the sky vanish. Eyes are the pearl.

She is dressed in lapis lazuli blue.

A flow of vulnerability floods the self.  She is me. You are her.

Secrets of our nature are revealed in her gaze.

The museum guard is unaware that I have unhooked the painting from history.

Slipped it slowly from the wall and hidden it in my soul.

She becomes a poem from my silence to a petal.

Flora fauna self, spring of all seasons.

Girl with the Pearl.

Johannes Vermeer, the sphinx of Delft was a magician

who conjured innocence:

Girl With A Pearl.

A pearl in her mouth.

Pearl teeth of the dream.

A petal, unpetaled from the flower of the fruit.

Poetry written with ultramarine ink etched into pale flesh.

Girl with a pearl, how she possesses me.

Diane Dehler

First published by Pirene’s Fountain, Fall/Winter 2013 issue 14.

Three poems in November edition of Truck

More good news today! Thanks to Anny Ballardini who is the November editor of Truck for publishing three of my poems. Here is a link http://halvard-johnson.blogspot.it/2014/11/diane-dehler.html

forthcoming "De Profoundus Anthology" from Sybaritic Press

Thanks to editor/poet, Marie Lecrivain for accepting my poem, "Lady of Rocamadour" for the forthcoming De Profundis Anthology from Sybaritic Press. I am very excited about this project and was very inspired after reading, Oscar Wilde's Essay.

an orchid for your thought said, Princess Haiku

star flower in a moonlight garden said, Princess Haiku

Stars bloomed in my moonlight garden, heavy with petal and fragrant with breath.

tanka by Diane Dehler

tonight in the
cool arms of another
I conjured you
your breath and touch closer
than the ones that held me

published by Sky Lark's Nest

http://skylarktanka.weebly.com/the-skylarks-nest.html

contemplation on beauty said, Princess Haiku

Today I am musing on the deeper reasons that we make the life decisions we make. On the surface a general sort of logic prevails.  Yet deep within stormy channels, karma carries us toward our destiny. Fate is an interplay of choice and chance. In the end, fortune and fate become a weave; a tapestry of our lives.

a blush of joy said, Princess Haiku

s

a flower that night left behind said, Princess Haiku

a flower heart said, Princess Haiku

red orchid sizzle said, Princess Haiku

The red lady slipper orchid went to the ball dressed as herself. What could be more perfect?

a white out said, Princess Haiku can cleanse the soul

I returned to a primal white, the flower eye of first perception today.

the flower paused said Princess Haiku and I was lost in its gaze

kiss and tell said, Princess Haiku to the orchid...

ghost flowers trailing towards light said, Princess Haiku