"Everyday in every way I’m getting better and better" - Emile Coue
Thursday, September 5, 2019
Smoke and mirrors
your words are smoke
elegantly cursive, seductive
at first sight. your shadow
is gilded by moon-silver
and burning lies are painted
festive sparklers to match your coat
you play with time, but time needs no coat
to reveal your true desires under smoke
like curtains daggered to sides, faint
outline of you, plain to see, rusted
stripped away as when one holds shiver-
ing hands of a dying loved one. shadows
grow from your eyes, spilling roses-
you drop your mask, unbuttoning coat
showing me your mirror. I am silver
by guilt, but here are words buried broke
awaiting light & forgiveness
and above all, love in all its colors
Posted for dVerse Poets Pub - OpenLinkNight. Title inspired by our past poetics on this theme. Join us when the pub doors open at 3pm EST.
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I love how all changes once the cloaks of lies are gone... It's a good thing when we can accept the truths, and see beyond the smoke and mirrors
ReplyDeleteThat’s a coincidence, Grace! I heard the expression ‘smoke and mirrors’ in a BBC radio play this afternoon on the way to the vet with Luna!
ReplyDeleteI like the idea of smoke being ‘elegantly cursive’, as if writing a message, in contrast to the burning lies, which are ‘painted festive sparklers’, and love the lines:
‘you drop your mask, unbuttoning coat
showing me your mirror. I am silver
by guilt, but here are words buried broke’,
a tragic description of a magician-lover.
A portrait of true love, for sure Grace - beautifully and oh so tenderly painted...
ReplyDelete"shadows grow from your eyes, spilling roses" what a great line, Grace. I take that as the rose-colored glasses fall off
ReplyDeleteThere truly is many colors and layers
ReplyDeleteI like your description of being a mirror: "I am silver
ReplyDeleteby guilt, but here are words buried broke
awaiting light & forgiveness"
"stripped away as when one holds shivering hands of a dying loved one" - a very compelling line. Bare, naked vulnerability. A lovely write.
ReplyDeletesmoke and mirrors one hides and one reveals - I like the hope that there is forgiveness and above all light in all colors.
ReplyDeleteThis is incredibly deep and gorgeously rendered, Grace 💖💖 Especially like; "you play with time, but time needs no coat
ReplyDeleteto reveal your true desires under smoke
like curtains daggered to sides." Wow!!
Very well done Grace! I love your ending...
ReplyDeletebut here are words buried broke
awaiting light & forgiveness
and above all, love in all its colors
A wonderful wind from the apparent and untrusted to the intimate and true. Whose smoke and mirror? And what love doesn't sprout from false apparencies?
ReplyDeleteThank you. "My time is yet not come : but your time is always ready. The world cannot hate you; but me it hateth, because I testify of it, that the works thereof are evil" (St. John, 7:6-7)
ReplyDeleteAi am sorry about that; the profile image on this account of mine had to be changed, and that is a test and try like affair, and the border on the image above will not appear. This data god, one has made, is not polite.
DeleteAnd; why the heck is the border wider on the top? Is that a sign of persecution, from the side of the data god? Am aI paranoid, thinking that data god is unfriendly?
DeleteThis has so many wonderful layers of emotion...love consists of both smoke and mirrors and the trick is to figure out which is what.
ReplyDeleteLove this! :-)
ReplyDeleteProfoundly moving poem, Grace. I enjoyed picking up on aspects of both the sestina and your use of homophones. That part about holding the hand of a dying loved one really got to me.
ReplyDeleteWhat an interesting verse of secrets , unsaid words and love in between..
ReplyDeletePS : Just noticed that I am in the same city as you.
Amaya's Smoke and Mirrors prompt was wonderful wasn't it? And this is so lovely and layered. Wonderful to see that it is love that can be underneath the layers to be the essential truth when all is stripped away. Our Socieites, uor religion, and especially important - our individual relationships are so burdened by survival and political imperatives that we lose the root of joy.
ReplyDeleteThis brought mixed tears from just the verdant loveliness and recognition...
"I am silver
by guilt, but here are words buried broke
awaiting light & forgiveness
and above all, love in all its colors"
like a cat confidently offering a bird at the back door to a bemused mistress... I want to show you my Smoke and Mirrors piece.
ReplyDeletehttps://lonagynt.wordpress.com/2019/08/23/btt-63-walking-the-dog-on-the-fairway-at-9-pm/