Tongue-Tied
(2 May 1808 AD)
bottle tops unscrewed
tighter than the tightest
oyster refusing to open
pointed knife and scissors
plastic this many layered
onion-skin’s pliant defiance
waging its guerrilla war
against arthritic fingers
words tongue-twisted
damning dark mouths
white picket fences
midnight the faces
lightning the teeth
felonious figures
grimy with grimaces
Mother Hubbard’s
cupboard empty hearts
robin redbreasts
battering heads wings legs
against stony cobbles
if only stones could speak
what stories they would tell
this city this sunny square
anywhere
Comment:
El dos de mayo, 1808, marks the start of the Spanish War of Independence. The people of Madrid rose up against Napoleon’s Mamelukes and Goya painted that encounter in his Dos de Mayo. On the third of May, 1808, Goya also bore witness to the shootings when Napoleon’s troops took hostages and shot them. Two great and wonderful paintings which we can celebrate today and tomorrow. Also well worth a visit, today and tomorrow, is Mr. Cake’s Cake or Death site with his blog on Seasons of Witches and his introduction to Goya’s Black Paintings. Another site that merits serious attention is Geoff Slater’s art site.
rogermoorepoet 
Wonderful, Roger! I love the fast pace of the writing!
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Thanks, Meg. These are all new poems written in a new style. The feedback is wonderful. Thank you so much.
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You’re very welcome! It’s good to read you again. I’ve been so behind in visiting my friends here. Although in my defense, I am more than the normal busy!!
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Me too. Three eye “procedures” since last November and the last on Wednesday last, hence Starry Night. I couldn’t believe the stars out there. I hadn’t seen them for years.
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Ah that is wonderful! There is nothing so beautiful or humbling than to gaze out into the stars! I’m glad your procedures were successful and you’re seeing well again!
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It is indeed a great relief. I don’t even need glasses at present, except for the wine I drink.
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Haha! Those are the best sorts of glasses! I’m so glad you’ve got your. Sight back!
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I never really lost it, just looking at the world through a blunted sight that has now been fully restored. I must admit, it does feel good.
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I can imagine! My mom just had her final surgery and is getting her sight back. She’s so relieved to be able to read again. With the cataract on the left eye and the right eye damaged, reading was not impossible but difficult. For a reader, that’s a tragedy!
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That’s very true Meg. Starry NIght was a revelation to me, in so many ways. I have had a couple of e-mails commenting on it. Give my regards to your mum, a fellow sufferer! My last day on 2 drops 4 times a day, today.
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Oh the regimen of drops! That’s a relief too!
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i am reminded of accounts of Georgia O’keffe’ having great pleasure from holding riverbed stones when the Chamos River in New Mexico was dry.
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There is a wonderful, tactile quality to stones. Robert, I do so much appreciate your presence on these pages, and your comments. Thank you so much for being here. “If only stones could speak
what stories they would tell.” How many stepping stone have we trodden during our lives? They have taken us from here to there. And they all tell a story, our story.
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I think the bottle caps are made to keep us old folks out of the medicine bottle!
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The whole advent of plastic packaging is doing just that to all manner of things. Some of the food we have been getting has been wrapped in five or six layers of plastic. We are trying to avoid the ‘mucky stuff’ and we also recycle, but it is a losing battle against very heavy odds.
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Wonderful poem Roger, compact and quite menacing with its gnarled analogies. Thanks for the shout out as well.
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No problem. I have been enjoying myself with these new poems. A sort of epiphany that said ‘why shouldn’t I have fun with words’. Menacing is the word, though. Thanks for the comment.
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I find it menacing but that is fitting. Excellent Roger.
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