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