Hungry Ghosts And Thirsty Spirits

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Hungry Ghosts And Thirsty Spirits

 

 

 

 

Nine snow-white candles to ward my bed

as the Hunter's Moon glares against my door.

 

Rowan and hyperion at foot and head

but your fetch is strong. I need much more.

Last night I could tell it would need to be fed.

I felt its cold lips that the flames couldn't kill

 

pressed on my skin like a waxen seal,

saw its stubbled neck scrawny, stretched and too real

as thirsting you came, crawling over the sill,

but the gods in their mercy allowed me one grace:

 

to never again have to see your face.

 

 

 

 

October 2023

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

posted for

Open Link Weekend at desperate poets

 (inspired by Night of the Desperate Dead)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Process note: Rowan and Hyperion(St John's Wort) were said to be protective against evil spirits and witches and were often hung indoors or planted at the doorways of houses:

 

"The European rowan (Sorbus aucuparia) has a long tradition in European mythology and folklore. It was thought to be a magical tree and [to]give protection against malevolent beings.. It was said in England that this was the tree on which the Devil hanged his mother..British folklorists of the Victorian era reported the folk belief in apotropaic powers of the rowan-tree, in particular in the warding off of witches...Sir James Frazer (1890) reported such a tradition in Scotland, where the tree was often planted near a gate or front door. ~wikipedia

 

"The common name St John's wort comes from the fact that its flowers and buds were commonly harvested at the time of the Midsummer festival, which was later Christianized as St John's Feast Day on 24 June. It was believed that harvesting the flower at this time made its healing and magical powers more potent. The herb would be hung on house and stall doors on St John's Feast Day to ward off evil spirits and to safeguard against harm and sickness to people and livestock. ..Because of its supposed potency in warding off spirits, the plant was also known as fuga daemonum (loosely "demon-flight").."~wikipedia

 

 

 

 

 

Images: Title unknown,  ©@coven of ceridwen via internet  Fair Use

La Mort: Mon ironie depasse toutes les autres! 1889 ©Odilon Redon   Public Domain

Winter's Relic

 

 

 

 

 

 

 Winter's Relic

Winter is on the steps

and in my hair. She croons

as she starves sparrows

rocks pigeons dead in the cradle.

Spare me her holy patience

her frost palimpsest on the window

her holiday coffins.

Feed me instead

on figs and sangria

scarlet under a firecracker sky

rippling with heat and Spanish moons.

 

Throw me on a bed white with

linen, not this nullity of snow that

 melts away beneath my fever.

Let me have something

besides these starving cats

under my skin, hear something besides the blues

they blow like a train-whistle from

 the feral saxophones of their  throats.

But if I open my eyes,

I see reflected only winter's relic;

a twist of shadow in the blizzard,

trying to hold back the wind,

while around me the plague

doctors work, looking for

blood from the stoned, and

the Fearless Captain stands at the door

overseeing our dispossession.

 

 

December 2021

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 posted for

Shay's Word List

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Images: Looking southwest from Five Barrows under Snow, ©James Ravellius Fair Use

The Snow Queen Flies through the Winter Skies, © Edmond Dulac   Public Domain 

Will O The Wisp

 

 

 

 

 

 

Will O The Wisp

 

 I walk tonight

and wish to be

the burn in a lantern;

I walk tonight

in the darkness.

In the darkness

with a black moon

on a path you can't see,

in the darkness

following me.

 

Following me: all

 the days and the years

in bright dresses

swallowing Orion,

coming to me.

Coming to me

with the twist of a moon

gone black in the sky,

coming to me with

wishes and bones.

 

Wishes and bones

are all I am,

and lantern's burn.

Wishes and bones and

fire in darkness.

 

 

 

 

 October 2021

 

 

 

 

 

posted for

The Sunday Muse

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Note: This isn't a form per se, tho it's something like second cousin once removed to a cascade. I just made it up.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Images: Deadlight, 2010 ©joyannjones 

Lantern photo via Sunday Muse   Fair Use

 

Positions

 

 

 

 

 

Positions

 

 

You sleep flat in

the fire of all that was

and never burn;

ice doesn't.

I sleep on

the ashes; a body in

a prehistoric grave,

with stones, ivory rings

and broken pots,

curled tight to shield

all the soft things

that rot away.

 

 

October 2021

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 posted for Quadrille Night

at dVerse Poets

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Images: Bronze Age Pot from prehistoric burial, Southern Urals © Finn Shrieber  from article 

Neolithic skeleton of a woman, from 4500 year old burial in Germany, by Archaeros, from article

 Fair Use

 

Hungry Ghosts And Thirsty Spirits

 

 

 

 

 

 

Hungry Ghosts And Thirsty Spirits

 

(a sonnet)

 

 

 

 

What gift could the dead of the living want

if not to pour again the living's light,

that whiskey warming throats of dreams they haunt;

to sing, to laugh, to lose their drowning night.

My dead are old yet various and new,

the dancing sparks of a youth that ran away.

The love we had so tenuous and blue

flickers out the past and so transforms the clay;

but when you come you paralyze the soul

with heart-remembered cold like glacier melt;

a frozen thing so trapped by pure control

will feel the same negation we once felt.

Take back the miseries living in your eye.

Don't bring me where the sun forgets the sky.

October 2021

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  (with apologies to Poe and the entire 19th Century)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 a little something for All Hallows, at dVerse Poets

Open Link

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 Images: Styx,  © Marius Lewandowski  Fair Use

Author and title unknown, via the internet.  Fair Use

 

 

Killer

Killer

Why do you come 

to stand in the dark kitchen, eyes

dull as shrapnel, dangling

your .22 from your hand

like a femur, no silver on you,

charity-thin?

You were the one

who wouldn't quit what killed you.

You were the one

who knew everything first.

Why do you hold

the rifle so tightly? 

I tried to save

all I could of you,

worried at the

pain when it came

with twelve

teeth of morphine, but

you screamed  

yourself away in

that minute I forgot.

I see

you still watch me

like a tilted tombstone,

staring flat-eyed, eternal

as a ghost lion's

hunger. 

Don't

drop the gun to 

hold out your hand.

 

April 2020

a  bit of surreal dream for earthweal's

Open Link

Just a reminder: On some word press blogs my comments are still disappearing. Please check your spam folder.

Images, both Untitled, © Zdzislaw Beksinki    Fair Use

Flash Fiction 55 Special April Edition #1

Welcome all 

to a special poetry month edition of the 55. To give a platform to those writing a poem a day in April, or to anyone who wants to engage in the form, I will be hosting this meme of G-Man's every Friday in April, and I am sure he would approve. So have at it, and share with us a poem, piece of prose-poetry or flash fiction on any subject, so long as it consists of 55 words, no more no less.

The prompt will be live from midnight Friday April 3 to 4 pm Sunday April 5th.

No Mr. Linky here, so just copy and paste the url of your 55 in the comments below, and I will be by to see what you have for us.

~ * ~

Here is my own 55:

Rationing

For today,

only one chapter

two slices bread

three acid tears

four-times-washed hands

to wipe them.

For tonight,

one half-moon

foggy with spring

two hours sleep

three cups chamomile tea

four owl-calls

playing the night music.

For that day

 unknown,

only one page

two ravens

three stubbed candles

four men in masks

to carry infinity.

April 2020

Images: Photo: via internet author unknown Fair Use

Photo: © Sergio Agazzi/Fotogramma via Reuters manipulated Fair Use
[Italian military trucks and soldiers by Bergamo's cemetery after the army was deployed to move coffins from the cemetery to neighbouring provinces.]