Jamie Dedes
(USA)
Between Language and Myth
In the garden of light, I stand,
between language and myth.
Strands of wild green words
weave irresistible vines to climb.
I find the rules of grammar written
in the language of cellular memory,
strung like seedlings and pollen dust
around my bare and willing neck.
Each day I walk to the quarries
to hard mine for the sweetly lyrical.
I blister from digging in hot sands
and hard stone for parables.
The walls that bind my heart
are broken by the solace of
language spun on a vision quest.
I stride the hills of my heartland.
I write as though the fables are
my only real nourishment –
perhaps they are
Once Upon a Sea Green Day
We flew along the freeway yesterday under
a cold coastal expanse of a blue ceiling.
It reminded me of you and how we dusted
the vaults of our minds to rid them of fear
and the old lexicons of grief and guilt, the
whalebone girdles of unfounded faith and
common conventions, saccharine and sticky.
I thought of that one sea-green day we spent
under just such a sky in a land far away and
how we changed your name then, reframed
your story to tell of hope and not despair.
You sketched flowers blossoming in the dust
of a spring that promised but never delivered.
Now we don’t speak of men but of cats with
their custom of keeping heart and claws intact.
We tell ourselves stories in rhythms that resound
in deep sleep. Soon now the ancient calls to
feral festivals will still and the time’s arrived when
our only play is in the margins, fate hanging from
our skeletons like Spanish moss on old oak.
It pleases me that life’s passage spins
into poemed reliquary and a memory of the
red peau de soie I wore to your prom that June.
Le Fée Verte, Absinthe
in the wilderness of those green hours
gliding with the faerie muse along café
walls virescent, sighing jonquil wings of
poetry, inventing tales in the sooty red
mystery of elusive beauty, beguiled by an
opalescent brew, tangible for the poet and
the pedestrian, the same shared illusions
ascending the rosy ramparts of heaven
A glass of absinthe is as poetical as anything in the world, what difference is there between a glass of absinthe and a sunset.
Oscar Wilde
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Bio
Jamie Dedes, a former feature writer, columnist, and associate editor of a regional employment publication, currently runs The Poet by Day, an information hub for poets and writers. She is the managing editor of The BeZine published by The Bardo Group, a virtual arts collective that she founded. She is a weekly contributor to Beguine Again, a site showcasing spiritual writers. Her work is featured in a variety of publications and on sites, including: Ramingo’s Porch, Vita Brevis Literature,Compass Rose, Connotation Press, The Bar None Group, Salamander Cove, Second Light, I Am Not a Silent Poet, Meta / Phor(e) /Play, and California Woman. Her poetry was recently read by Northern California actor Richard Lingua for Poetry Woodshed, Belfast Community Radio. Jamie Dedes was featured in a lengthy interview on the Creative Nexus Radio Show where she was dubbed “Poetry Champion.”
Jamie Dedes,
Web/Zine The Poet by Day
* The BeZine: Waging the Peace, An Interfaith Exploration featuring Fr. Daniel Sormani, Rev. Benjamin Meyers, and the Venerable Bhikkhu Bodhi among others Short linK: http://wp.me/pne74-etc
“Every pair of eyes facing you has probably experienced something you could not endure.”
Lucille Clifton