Goat's Delight

 

 

 

 

 

 

Goat's Delight

 

 

 

The yellowed moon hangs low,

a pendant swung from night's cold neck,

blind platinum stare bent

blinkless on the baleful earth 

where simpering dawn is frozen in

pink slippers on the hill.

 

Last night the bloodglow of the sun

gave false fire to the anorexic trees,

scarlet-purpled sheets of light 

burning hope to killed music,

all that once was dancing

turned ash on a shifting wind.

 

Only the goat-woman is left,

the greyed-out girl

covered in indigo roadmaps traced

by her traveling heart, denim-fade eyes

croned to clouds, 

still raking coals ablaze

 

with the crooked stick of memory

wild in her wavering hand, feral

as a goat indiscriminately devouring 

all the broken cities of the years, 

following a random hunger

up to this winter hill 

 

where she sits remembering 

how to be free;

a prisoner on the edge

of her skinwalking escape.

 

 January 2026

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

linked to 

d'Verse Poets Pub Open Link  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Images : Moonrise, 1884  ©Stanislaw Malinowski   Fair Use

Soulmates ©Kseizycolica    Fair Use 

 

 

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 

Three Wheels

 

 

 

 

 

Three Wheels

 

 

 

I dream the ghost;

an old woman who sits staring,

tendril-wrapped in the cold wet

wood with her soft face

washed away.

 

I dream the ritual;

an old woman who pedals

fast, pedals frantic, hunched

simian over three thin wheels

meant for a child.

I see the flooding quarry

and what they dig there that

 must not be found. The old woman

pedals madly, seeing all that goes

around and round.

I dream the Völva;

a grey woman who throws back

her unmade face and howls in runes,

traveling Time with red eyes

she calls from night.

I hear the pack's full cry loping

as one; to rend, to tear, to save

the secret moon before

she can be dug

from the water and sold.

 

 

October 2021

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 posted for Fireblossom

at The Sunday Muse

 

 

 

I have written this roughly in the cadralor form, tho I have taken a few liberties with it. 

 

 

 

Process Note: Völva: "A Völva is a female Shaman in Old Norse culture, religion, and mythology..A Völva practiced three different kinds of indigenous magic within Old Norse society: Seiðr, or shamanic ritual, was the ceremonial weaving of a new or different future..Spá, or prophecy, was the art of foreseeing the fates that were being continuously woven into existence by the Norns.. Galdr, or incantation, was the art of singing or chanting for the purposes of changing or influencing an outcome..." ~Shieldmaiden's Sanctum

 

 

 

 

 

 

Images, both via internet, attribution unknown.   Fair Use.

Blue Flame

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 Blue Flame

I was the woman who

loved you hotter than a sun

hard as a granite gravestone

once,

but time has chosen to

braid me differently, tying years

into grey knots

behind which the crimson

of memory

coagulates and fails

making it seem as if there

is not, never was,

love as stubborn as a pebble in a shoe

piercing every step.

A parody of a woman

rolled in a circus tent, lurches like

a wheelbarrow when she walks,

from the pebble, from the weakness, from the void.

Her flesh sags like a

campfire marshmallow melting

on the stick.

Yet in the mirror gateway

my eyes avoid, sometimes a flash;

the high snow-swept cheekbones of that girl,

the sunburnt hair longer than winter,

the bell glass body moon-rounded, glowing

a blue flame within, feeling

your touch so

 

fluent in flourishes of stars;

 

 

 love as sharp as thirst

unquenchable.

 

 

 

September 2021 

 

 

 

posted for

The Sunday Muse

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Images via internet, authors unknown    Fair Use

 

 

Watching

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Watching

 

 

I am the witch of dying things

of things that cling

to a life that's passed,

custodian of the broken-wing

who shakes in the bush

and tries to sing.

I soothe the stings

of the white-nosed pup,

his few days left like clay that clings

to the potter's hands when the pot is thrown,

wagging his tail, eyes growing dim

unsure on his feet, afraid of alone.

I was the watcher 

as life leaked away, you

winding off slow as a traveling snake

loose in the snow, slipping into the maw,

dead at first frost like a turnip top,

grey dust on a root both bitter and raw.

There's none left to be

my watcher, my witch, 

to soothe the sting 

when they see me there

remembering the sun, pretending to live,

old knots of love caught in winter's hair.

 

I am the witch of dying things

learning their ways

while midnight sings.

June 2021

Posted for 

The Sunday Muse

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Image via Sunday Muse, Fair Use

 

 

 

 

Snow Blind

 

 

 

 "If it's peace you find in dying, when dying time is here,
just bundle up my coffin cause it's cold way down there,
I hear that's it's cold way down there, yeah, crazy cold way down there.."

~Laura Nyro, When I Die

 

 

Snow Blind

 

I sit remembering

when we were dragons,

our mating flight in October's

bloodbright sky, 

another country

that rush of scales and fire.

 

Or when you saw me first,

moth with green-eyed wings

on a factory rafter. You knew

 among the nymphs

I was a spriggan

twisted wry but quick and hot,

that on the mountain with the goats

I climbed the highest

to be alone, krampus-girl

too full to eat the darkness.

 

So come, wind of the north.

Blow this west-wind fever from me

with your ice-eyes and cheap bargains.

Mound the cold grey snow

upon this bed, shabby

goblin sheets to numb my sores,

 

rime my lids 

 snow blind, give me

shadow glow, hallucinations, lunatic

visions, his

living face candle-lit,

smiling

at me:

the glass dragon,

the dust-moth dry with

death's-head wings,

broken as easily 

as a candy heart.

 

 

December 2020

 

 

 

posted for Fireblossom

at The Sunday Muse

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Spriggan: "a legendary creature from Cornish faery lore...said to be found at old ruins, cairns, and barrows guarding buried treasure. Although small, they were usually considered to be the ghosts of giants..notorious for their unpleasant dispositions...~wikipedia

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Images: photo of Laura Nyro via internet   Fair Use

Moth Wing © Amelia Fletcher    Fair Use

 

 

In The Tank

 

(SCROLL DOWN FOR THE 55)

 

 

 

 

 

In The Tank

 

 

 

In the tank, watching

the last foam ascend,

no rockets from

this wet womb, nothing

left but the sinking

still

the spirit seed

warm-curled in rainsilk, is

a spark self-shielded,

a voice unheeded

untrained but turning, a

desire piercing

paper-dead husk

with green.

The birth cord was tangled,

the roots softly angled,

a woven squared circle

of sticky heartweb.

There in that secret

float of penumbra

I felt you move.

I felt myself

blowing, unwrapped and golden,

in the tears of the sun.

 

 November 2020

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 posted for

The Sunday Muse

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Images: Artist and title unknown, manipulated,  via internet, Fair Use

Seedling  ©2017, joyannjones

 

 

Birthday Moonsong

Birthday Moonsong

Born  in the wolf moon,

at century's half-crack,

before the moving shadow box

before the singing pocket, the talking hand--

disjecta  membra of a war and peace,

nuclear snowflake crystaled in the cold aftermath,

fallout caught and whirled up

by black arms of concrete

into the sweet dance of chemical fog;

all around me

blackbirds falling

from the sky like almanacs

pages open to the gift of silent prophecy

and in the mirror, a white raven

solitary,
a meal, a target, a danger

to the flock, burning the eye like
a scarlet poppy

on a gravemound, or

a working girl unbuttoned

hungover 

in the convent.

* * *

In the house

at the edge of the world,

with the wolf moon low in the west,

its yellow eye on the scattering stars,

its tongue longing

for the fat white hams of Venus,

the north wind sleets the window glass

bitter green, rattling the taste

of old snow and bad design; the wolf moon

the hunger moon,
stops to lap

pooled pink from blood-red Mars,

swells its belly 

with faltering stars, the small and weak
gnawing them out one by one as I hum

dusting the ape statuettes, the

draped clocks, perplexed still

that the empty chair

stays empty another winter,

while the fire throws white shadows,

while ghosts fall with the snow.

~January 2015

A repost for my birthday.

Images:Wolf Dog, 1976 © Jamie Wyrth  Fair Use

The Snow Queen Flies Through The Winter Night, by Edmund Dulac  Fair Use

Ice Fishing

Ice Fishing

Once the sea lived

wild or smooth, clashed or glass, 

with the sun to wrap or unwrap

in fog fichus, gulls for windchimes, lightning

twisting like time in the mercury sky

until you came

with the endless freeze.

For years now

I've been sitting

on the ice

above the tiny hole

in your roof

line baited, watching your pale

streamed shape below

swallow lesser shadows,

just a hint of mottle, grey and white,

is all you show of your famished dive;

a tug to tease me,

then

an empty hook, blinking above

your bouquets of bones.

I built a shelter once

but it's long since fallen down.

Still I sit, winter's constant fingers

peeling my face, a rictus on my lips

snowclouds blowing my eyes

to stone, bruise-blue cracked ice

under ravelled wool. Will you come

ghost fish, sweet engine of the kill,

to look at me when I am

dead of cold, pause unbeing's

restless body, wink at this stiff

shell with your black spirit eye

before you push away

to the next fool's line and pole?

~May 2018

for Shay's    Edward Emerson Simmons

This poem needs editing and work, but the time is sadly not there today, so I ask everyone's indulgence with its rough state.




fichu: noun, plural fichus [fish-ooz; French] 1.a woman's kerchief or shawl, generally triangular in shape, worn draped over the shoulders or around the neck with the ends drawn together on the breast. ~dictionary.com

 

Images : Night, 1889, and High Sea, 1895, by Edward Emerson Simmons   Public Domain